Perspectives from Doctors, Patients, Policymakers
Q: Why are drug companies among Placebo Journal’s favorite targets for satire?
A: I don’t dislike drug companies. We need their products, and they need to make a profit. But how can you resist making fun of their creating the impression that your problems will go away if you take a pill?
Chiari Malformation: Facing the Pain
A father and son fight through the ordeal of multiple surgeries to repair the boy's skull.
When Social Ills Become Medical
To treat her young patients, Nadine Burke uses research on how adverse childhood experiences affect health.
Alzheimer’s: The Forgetting Basket
As her mother's memory fades, one writer watches it go, one handwritten note at a time.
Palliative Care: Treating the Whole Patient
Peter L. Slavin and David F. Torchiana explain how focusing on more than just curing a disease can greatly improve a person's quality of life.
Second Opinion
Proto readers tout metabolomics, advocate residency hour restrictions and describe an intriguing personal connection to a past story.
A New Era in Medical Education
With tighter resident-hour limits starting in July, Peter L. Slavin and David F. Torchiana discuss the challenges ahead to train physicians in the confines of a 16-hour workday.
Second Opinion
Proto readers defend the safety of statins, discuss the importance of recognizing addiction and applaud the efforts of researchers studying TSC and LAM.
A Healthy Investment
Primary care physician Eric Weil directs a program that shows more attentive care for high-risk patients may be the most effective way to control costs.
The Healing Touch (Screen)
Medical bloggers discuss how smartphones and iPads will change the way they practice medicine.
A century ago MGH pathologist Richard Cabot forever changed medical education with the introduction of the clinicopathological conference.
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Tune in to Proto: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Medicine on ReachMD. Host Dr. Bruce Bloom interviews Mass General experts about evidence-based medicine, hormone therapy and more.
“Each object found its unhappy place in a person’s trachea, larynx, bronchus, esophagus, stomach, pleural cavity, lung tissue, pharynx or tonsil. Each was removed—and kept—by a laryngologist with the improbable name of Chevalier Quixote Jackson.”
