Onward

In upcoming posts, I plan to pursue two main themes.  The first is a more comprehensive exploration of what determines eating behavior in humans, the neurobiology behind it, and the real world implications of this research.  The reward and palatability value of food are major factors, but there are others, and I've spent enough time focusing on them for the time being.  Also, the discussions revolving around food reward seem to be...

Gartner: Famous Last Words on National Health IT - "Don't Fear Progress"

From time to time I review old articles about health IT via Google and other search engines.Found this analysis/prediction/statement of confidence, by a research analyst at IT consultant company Gartner Group. Emphasis mine:Don’t Fear Progress by Brian Burke | April 17, 2009 | 1 Comment In an open letter blog to President Obama, Burton Group Senior Analyst Joe Bugajski opines that President Obama is spewing “delusional visions...

The First Law of Thermo still doesn't violate The Second Law

Well, I've been meaning to weigh in on the Bray overfeeding study (Effect of Dietary Protein Content on Weight Gain, Energy Expenditure, and Body Composition During Overeating) that made a bit of a splash a little while back. George Bray is especially hated by ardent low carb advocates because he wrote a particularly unfavorable review of GCBC published in Obesity Reviews.   Bray is what Adam Kosloff refers to as a "Calorie Wizard":Regardless...

Because you can never have too much fun ...

In honor of Jimmy's podcast with the new leader of the Insurgency, Peter "War on Insulin" Attia, MD, I've gotta introduce the latest in my series of Lego superhero analogies.  Attia is younger and considerably more photogenic than Taubes and puts a fresh face on the movement.  When Taubes introduced Attia on his blog, I just couldn't help but think "Boy Wonder" ... and it all started to...

Another Cautionary Tale about Conflicts of Interest: the CEO's Stretch Limousine, Golden Parachute, and Slush Fund

It remains fashionable in academic medicine to tolerate, if not celebrate conflicts of interest as necessary to support the "collaboration" needed for "innovation," while minimizing their risks (e.g., look here).  Recently, another cautionary tale about how conflicts of interest signal the risk of all sorts of unpleasantness has appeared in the media.A Sentinel Event: the First Conflicts UncoveredIn 2009, we wrote about some...

Experiments on Top of Experiments: Threats to Patients Safety of Mobile e-Health Devices - No Surprise to Me

As noted by columnist Neil Versel at MobiHealthNews.com in a Mar. 14, 2012 post "Beware virtual keyboards in mobile clinical apps":... Remember the problems Seattle Children’s Hospital had with trying to run its Cerner EMR, built for full-size PC monitors, on iPads? The hospital tried to use the iPad as a Citrix terminal emulator, so the handful of physicians and nurses involved in the small trial...