Drug Bust by Alan Cassels Archives - Page 2 of 8

We’ve got good people and evidence

All we need now are good institutions DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels Consider just a few classes of drugs that are pretty universally, but irrationally, … Read more

Medical variation

All healthcare systems and doctors are not created equal DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels Let’s compare doctor A and doctor B. A 70-year-old man with … Read more

Which party has your back on health care?

DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels There are stark contrasts between the BC Liberals and the NDP Let us say to the people not ‘How much … Read more

Eating our way to better mental health

Science shows we can DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. – Hippocrates There are very few … Read more

Getting to the bottom of the opioid crisis

It starts by looking at prescribing practices DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels More than a decade ago, UBC’s Therapeutics Initiative (TI) published a very alarming … Read more

Billions wasted on cholesterol myth

DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels The alleged benefits of lowering our cholesterol have never materialized and we have wasted tens of billions of dollars over … Read more

The looming epidemic of overdiagnosis

Where are the leaders in eliminating waste in health system spending?

DRUG BUST
by Alan Cassels

Lately, I’ve got overdiagnosis on my mind.

Currently, we’re living through a perceived doctor shortage in BC, a crisis affecting as many as 600,000 British Columbians. In 2010, the governing BC Liberals promised that, within five years, everyone in BC who needed a family doc would get one. They even made this promise part of electioneering in 2013. How’s that plan worked out?

Well, it hasn’t. A few people may have been helped by a dating service set up to connect doctors and patients, but it was universally considered a bust. Despite promised government fixes, we have about 100,000 more people today without a doc they can call their own than we did five years ago. In early 2015, the government basically acknowledged it was a failure.

Healthcare must engage in a wider discussion about preventive medicine

DRUG BUST
by Alan Cassels

• “Preventive medicine displays all three elements of arrogance…Aggressively assertive…Presumptuous…Overbearing.”

Dr. David Sackett wrote those words over a decade ago in a neat little column in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. He was, in this case, talking about hormone replacement therapy, after the publication of one of the world’s largest studies in preventive healthcare. The results of the Women’s Health Initiative showed that giving estrogen and progestin to healthy women going through menopause, on the assumption that this was vital preventive medicine, did not protect them from cardiovascular disease. In fact, it increased rates of some forms of cancer, heart attacks, blood clots and strokes. In trying to preserve and protect health, the recommended therapies were harming women. On a massive scale, I should add.

Hoodwinked by the diabetes industry

Drugs to lower blood sugars don’t do much for your health DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels • In the last five years in British … Read more

The growing backlash against medical guidelines

Doctors need to “show more spine” DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels • The disease-creation machine continues to creep forward, threatening to consume even more … Read more