Medical

A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD. Most of us have iconic people in our personal and professional lives – those who are worthy of veneration and inspire and compel us to have higher expectations for ourselves.  And we also have role models – those we aspire to be like…

“I am thankful to you SARS-CoV-2 virus as you allowed me to be human again, to make mistakes, and learn from them. You taught me to slow down so that I could reset and redefine my goals. You allowed me to have time for myself, to dream again, and plan my future. You pushed me…

October is traditionally known as breast cancer awareness month. For me, seeing all the pink on social media is a stark reminder of my brush with the terror of breast cancer. As I was about to scrub into an operation, I got a call from my office manager. She asked if I would be at…

A recent conversation among a group of physicians gave me a fair amount of distress and discomfort. The topic was an unproven treatment for COVID-19. The discomfort was the disinformation — in my opinion — being shared. The distress was that the discussion likely reflected what some doctors are actually doing for the treatment of…

Early in the pandemic, epidemiologists made a striking observation. Compared to the general population, people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) were more than twice as likely to contract severe forms of COVID-19. In the last six months, death rates from COVID-19 have dropped significantly, but CVD remains a major predictor of poor outcome. What have we…

As a physician epidemiologist and former public health official, I’m constantly struck by the sheer amount of disinformation that spreads related to COVID-19. I’ll routinely encounter myths about how masks actually cause viral spread. Or I’ll be told that drinking alcohol or raw, unpasteurized milk combats the virus or that putting hot pepper in food…

“To care for dependents, the carer must be cared for, both for the sake of her charge and for her own sake. Without such basic infrastructure, we have anxiety, confusion, and chaos. Contagion knows no independent individuals.  Its boundaries are not the boundaries of our skin. It relies on the inevitable sociality of human beings. But our…

An excerpt from Medical Myths: A Sceptic’s Journey. Most people have heard the joke about rabbits and vitamin A: “Are carrots good for your eyesight?” Well, I never saw a rabbit wearing glasses! Vitamin A, one of the essential groups of vitamins, is necessary to develop the retina in the eye. This area at the…