Q: You wrote that uncertainty about the quality of health care is “perhaps more intense here than in any other important commodity.” Why does that matter for patients?
A: Uncertainty about the cost of medical care can be transferred through the market by means of an insurance policy. But uncertainty about the quality of care cannot be insured against in any simple way.
Age of Enlightenment
Light-activated genes, now illuminating brain circuitry in rodents and monkeys, may help solve mysteries of human disease.
Hard to Conceive
The potential to regenerate women’s eggs is the latest breakthrough in reproductive research. But there are risks to perturbing nature.
On the Trail of Drug Risks
Many problems with therapies show up post-FDA approval. Could mining electronic data and online chatter head off trouble?
Research Gems
Issues of privacy and consent are scarcely slowing the race to build enormous, invaluable “biobanks” of human tissue and data.
The Need for Compassion
There’s ample proof that physician empathy can benefit doctors as well as patients. Next challenge: teaching medicine’s softer side.
Hospitals: The Merger Push
Hospitals are bulking up again, using acquisitions to try to become more efficient. But will consolidation improve care, or hurt it?
Medication: Timely Reminders
Not taking medicine as directed exacts a heavy toll on disease and death. New approaches, high tech and low, could make a difference.
Studies in Free Fall
Research in space, absent gravity’s pull, is shedding light on earthbound problems, from osteoporosis to immune deficiencies.
Veterinarians experience this light-bulb moment on the first day of anatomy class, where horse, dog, pig, chicken and cow cadavers are routinely studied ... all at once!
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avatar [av-ə-tär] n: a term appropriated from virtual role-playing games (and the eponymous movie) to describe laboratory mice that replicate cancerous cells from specific patients to test potential treatments.
