HealthNewsReview.org
Summary: This is the podcast for HealthNewsReview.org, a website that helps people become smarter health care consumers by helping them sharpen their critical analysis of claims about health care interventions. The 1st 25 episodes were hosted by our Publisher, veteran health care journalist Gary Schwitzer. Now multimedia producer Michael Joyce brings you the stories. The aim is to improve the public dialogue about health care. You'll hear stories and interviews with people who are passionate about helping people get accurate, balanced, complete health care information so that they can make better decisions. It's a rubber-meets-the-road health care reform initiative. All are archived on HealthNewsReview.org at http://www.healthnewsreview.org/toolkit/health-news-watchdog-podcasts/.
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- Artist: Gary Schwitzer
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Podcasts:
Dr. Otis Brawley is the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. He has provided a strong, clear voice on cancer screening, treatment and research issues. In this podcast, he says that the belief continues that a cancer will kill because it looks like other cancers that spread and killed in the 1850s. He calls this “pathologic profiling” of cancer – and of the people who are diagnosed – based on 160-year old laboratory standards. I interviewed him at the Preventing Overdiagnosis 2015 conference at the National Institutes of Health.
Surgeon and breast cancer specialist Dr. Laura Esserman of the University of California San Francisco is one of the innovative thought leaders in breast cancer research. We talked with her at the Preventing Overdiagnosis 2015 conference at the National Institutes of Health, discussing, among other things, the treatment dilemma facing women diagnosed with DCIS or ductal carcinoma in situ.
Our overdiagnosis series continues with a look at radiology. The p Radiologists specialize in diagnosing and treating problems using medical imaging techniques, such as x-rays, CT and MRI scans, ultrasound and other forms of imaging. Dr. Saurabh Jha says his profession can be both the arsonist and the firefighter when it comes to overdiagnosis. And although radiologists can be at the center of overdiagnosis problems, he says his specialty has been slow to address the issues. He's on Twitter as @RogueRad.
Are doctors over-diagnosing diabetes? Such concerns have been raised - by Dr. Victor Montori of the Mayo Clinic and Dr. John S. Yudkin of University College in London. A special concern is the new category of "pre-diabetes." Yudkin is featured in this podcast episode. He talks about the "idolatry of the surrogate" - bowing to a golden calf - a false idol - of numbers from a blood sugar test "as if worthy of godlike worship whereas they should not be.” I interviewed him at the Preventing Overdiagnosis 2015 conference at the National Institutes of Health.
This is the story of Dr. Hanna Bloomfield, who had a "Howard Beale moment" when she received direct mail marketing that promoted cardiovascular screening tests that she knew she didn't need. Like Howard Beale in the movie "Network," she decided she was mad as hell and wasn't going to take it anymore. It's a story about how careful one should think about the evidence for what you stand to gain, but what you might stand to lose - the tradeoff of potential benefits and potential harms - from pursuing health screening tests.
