Our guest is Twila Brase, RN, PHN, Executive Director of the Citizen’s Council for Health Freedom.  We discuss her freshly released book that reveals the ugly truths about the electronic health records and what can be done to escape from this modern day Panopticon. GUEST: Twila Brase, RN, PHN website and Twitter LINKS: Big Brother in the Exam Room:…

Our guest is Dr. Mary Ruwart, scientist, ethicist, and author of a new book that examines the history of the last 6 decades of drug regulation and highlights the unintended consequences on the 1962 amendments to the FDA.  Her meticulous research is an eye opener for anyone interested in health.

We took the EBM controversies to India and consulted with Dr. Anupam Singh, Assistant Professor of Medicine at SMC in Ghaziabad.  He offered a very sound and intelligent perspective on the proper role of clinical trials and clinical judgment in medical care. GUEST: Dr. Anupam Singh’s Twitter and ResearchGate profile LINKS: The EBM Wars: Manufacturing Equipoise (part…

We have fun discussing the controversies about blood pressure guidelines with our guest, Dr. Swapnil Hiremath, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa, and Co-founder of NephJC, a highly successful Twitter-based journal club.  Dr. Hiremath sits on the Canadian blood pressure guideline committee and shares his insights about the question of BP management.

We explore the "less-is-more" movement with Dr. John Mandrola, one of its most articulate and popular champions.  What is the best way to curtail unwarranted therapies?  Should there be more top down regulations or is it possible that more health care freedom will lead to less utilization?

Shared decision-making (SDM) has become a sacred cow of medical ethics almost overnight.  What's more, doctors are now being forced to practice it in order to get paid for certain procedures.  We review the history of this concept and why it is contrary to a sound doctor-patient relationship.

We have a terrific interview with G. Keith Smith, co-founder of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma and of the Free Market Medical Association.  Keith gives us an overview of his pioneering experience and clearlt makes the case that free markets are ethical, workable and, ultimately, unstoppable.

We discuss a blog post by obesity therapy guru Jason Fung in which he pushes back against "debunkers" and self-appointed guardians of "science-based medicine."  We look at the question of science and pseudo-science and how it bears on actual medical care.

We discuss the background policies the effects of public reporting of outcomes on the behavior of physicians and the reactions to a paper that was just published on this topic.  Anish shares a real life experience of a patient of his who was a tragic victim of these misguided healthcare policies.

We discuss a tweet and a paper claiming that pharmaceutical companies don't even need to produce effective drugs anymore.  All they need is "an effective marketing campaign" and billions of dollars in annual sales soon follow.  This is a very dubious claim on the face of it, but Anish did some investigating of his own.