After writing a piece on concerns about blood-testing disruptor Theranos, I had the pleasure of being on the business end of Mark Cuban’s fury. And for that, I am truly thankful. Here’s the gist. Theranos aims to make blood testing a lot less expensive and a lot easier. One or two drops of blood are good for dozens of tests. Part of their vision is to enable healthy people to undergo more frequent testing and in doing so, more…
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The Pew Research Center put together a fascinating interactive chart showing how the US has become more polarized over time. A couple of points of interest to me… after the graphic. Here’s what I found especially interesting: Twenty years ago, there was enormous overlap between the two main parties in terms of political views. In 1994 23% of Republicans were more liberal than the median Democrat; 17% of Democrats were more conservative than the median Republican. That overlap has shrunk tremendously…
Comments closedThe other day I heard one side of a conversation about the zika virus and pregnancy. My doctor pal was talking to a world-class athlete who’s decided to skip going to the Olympic games in Brazil over fear that he’d infect his young wife. They’re not planning on having any more kids right away, but he didn’t want to take the chance. What We Know… And What We Don’t The zika virus is plenty scary, and it…
Comments closedThere’s lots of heat but little light when it comes to the issue about how best to handle volunteers returning to the US after caring for Ebola patients in West Africa. Front and center right now is Kaci Hickox, a nurse who recently returned from Sierra Leone after a three-week stint taking care of Ebola patients. Officials say her temperature was elevated on arrival at New Jersey’s Liberty International airport, and that landed her in…
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Welcome to “Clearly Thinking”
Howdy! The focus of this blog is on timely issues about which there’s some controversy about what to do. My goal isn’t to argue one side or another, but rather to help people use evidence to generate some useful insight. For example, there was a time not so long ago in which there was disagreement about whether to allow people who’d been working in areas with ebola outbreaks back into the US, and if so, whether and…
Comments closedAfter Thomas Eric Duncan inadvertently brought the Ebola infection to the US, CDC director Thomas Frieden confidently announced, “I have no doubt that we’ll stop this in its tracks.” Two weeks later, after a nurse caring for Duncan contracted the disease, Frieden acknowledged that the CDC needed to rethink its approach to infection control. Flip-flopping by a public official in the face of a high-stakes issue is nothing new, and we shouldn’t be too tough…
Comments closedThe NY Times reports that the FDA will soon release rules that will “require chain restaurants, movie theaters and pizza parlors across the country to post calorie counts on their menus.” The new regulations are described as “sweeping” and go much further and deeper than most health policy experts expected. The last time I looked, the evidence for posting calorie content was mixed at best. There is some evidence that suggests that when perceived caloric…
Comments closedThere’s a lot of heat but not much light in most of the discussions around measles and whether or not to make vaccinations mandatory. It turns out that’s not the real question; all fifty states currently require the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine for admission into public schools. The problem is that some schools allow exceptions based on “philosophical” and religious grounds. Even more troubling, sometimes the exception process can be pretty easy (e.g.,…
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