Overtesting: This is interesting

From the NYT:

Growing awareness of the risks of scanning led F.D.A. scientists several years ago to begin demanding more and better information from manufacturers to prove that their devices actually were effective for such clinical applications as cancer screening and mapping blood flows in the brain.
But agency managers responded that suddenly changing the rules for the devices would be inappropriate and unfair to manufacturers, documents and interviews show.

The problem is that these CT scans expose you to a lot of radiation, so a lot of scientists say we shouldn't use them unless we are pretty sure there is something wrong. But the manufacturers want everyone to use them, early and often, and they'd like the government to pay for it: "hundreds of millions of dollars annually."

General Electric, one of the biggest makers of the devices, told F.D.A. managers that the company wanted CT scans approved for colon cancer screenings because Medicare officials and private insurers were “actively discussing whether to reimburse for use of CTC for screening asymptomatic individuals” and “to assist their customers in reimbursement for procedures,” internal agency documents show.

 Great work Gardiner Harris!

Nice write up in "Antidote"

William Heisel who blogs at Antidote, posted the first part of an interview with me here and started off with this lovely introduction. I'd like to think it's apposite, and that's the reason it seems so well put to me (although perhaps I just like it because Heisel is so charitable). Either way, it's always pleasant to have people say nice things about you, and I'm usually overwhelmed with self consciousness when I try to sell myself - so I'm going to push through and paste his description here:

Nathanael Johnson, a Bay Area radio reporter and freelance writer, has made a nice career examining the many ways Americans go overboard – from the food that we eat to the health treatments that we seek. He has written about the Orwellian world of pork farming and the radical raw milk movement for Harper's magazine. He has written about the surge in "functional beverages" for New York magazine. And he has written numerous features, including an insightful piece on excessive medical treatments, for his day job at KALW News.
In February, the Center for Investigative Reporting's California Watch published an investigation by Johnson that made the entire state — and large news outlets such as ABC World News with Diane Sawyer — sit up and take notice.
The mortality rate of California women who die from causes directly related to pregnancy has nearly tripled in the past decade, prompting doctors to worry about the dangers of obesity in expectant mothers and about medical complications of cesarean sections. For the past seven months, the state Department of Public Health declined to release a report outlining the trend.
This investigation had all the makings of a blockbuster. Innocent victims. Shocking trends. And the specter of government malfeasance. But it also had something else lacking in most investigations of this scope: a measured tone. Johnson made sure to underscore how few women actually die every year and, by contrast, how many healthy babies go home with healthy mothers.

Nice huh? Thanks Bill!

People waking up to the problem

Amnesty International finally released it's report on maternal mortality in the US, calling the situation "scandalous," and "disgraceful."

Jennifer Block has a great piece timed with the release in Time Magazine.

And Gary Schwitzer summed it up with "A week of news on overtesting, overtreatment..."

Worshipping the power of tests to stave off death

Richard Ablin had an incendiary op-ed in the New York Times yesterday. He's the discoverer of prostate specific antigen and he writes: "I never dreamed that my discovery four decades ago would lead to such a profit-driven public health disaster. The medical community must confront reality and stop the inappropriate use of P.S.A. screening. Doing so would save billions of dollars and rescue millions of men from unnecessary, debilitating treatments."