Category Archives: Medicine
The Age of Diagnosis – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st July 2025A British neurologist has written The Age of Diagnosis – How our obsession with medical labels is making us sicker. Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan’s book is divided into a prologue, an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. Each chapter deals with a specific disease or diagnostic category that suffers from the unintended consequences of overdiagnosis. This…
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COVID Vaccination During the First Timester of Prgenancy
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th June 2025A study of pregnant women in Israel who received the COVID-19 vaccination during the first trimester of pregnancy has been released in a preprint PDF – ie, it hasn’t been through peer review. The vaccine used in Israel was almost entirely the Pfizer BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. Pregnant women were excluded from the pivotal randomized clinical…
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Limited vs Lethal Prostate Cancer
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th May 2025Former President Joe Biden’s diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer may cause a lot of frightened seniors (>70) to react inappropriately. Some may ask their doctors for a PSA (prostate specific antigen) test despite the US Preventive Services Task Force’s recommendation not to screen for prostate cancer in men older than 70. The problem with PSA…
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The “Experts” on Biden’s Prostate Cancer Diagnosis
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 19th May 2025The press is quoting a bevy of “cancer experts” pontificating on how it’s inconceivable that the former president Biden didn’t have a PSA test while he was president. They seem to think that the PSA test is an infallible guide to the diagnosis and subsequent successful treatment of prostate cancer. The use of routine PSA…
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Cancer Risk and Computed Tomography Imaging
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th April 2025Projected Lifetime Cancer Risks From Current Computed Tomography Imaging is a study just published in JAMA Internal Medicine. The study concludes: “That at current utilization and radiation dose levels, CT examinations in 2023 were projected to result in approximately 103,000 future cancers over the course of the lifetime of exposed patients. If current practices persist,…
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Postoperative Outcomes Following Preweekend Surgery
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th March 2025A paper just published by the JAMA Online (it can be downloaded below) shows a small but “significant increase in risk of complications, readmissions, and mortality compared with those treated after the weekend. Further study is needed to understand differences in care that may underpin these observations and ensure that patients receive high-quality care regardless…
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The Press Loses What’s Left of Its Mind Over NIH Cuts to Indirect Costs
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th February 2025The news that Elon Musk and the Trump administration want to cut indirect costs on NIH (National Institutes of Health) grants has caused a tsunami of hysteria not seen since the year 2000 craze. NIH Budget Cuts Are the ‘Apocalypse of American Science,’ Experts Say. Much of the outcries are the result of ignorance, but…
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The Crash at Reagan Airport – Why Primary Prevention Often Fails
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st January 2025An article in the Wall Street Journal offers an instructive example of the failure of primary prevention. Primary prevention in medicine is the attempt to avoid a disease event that has yet to happen. An example is the use of lipid-lowering drugs to prevent cardiovascular disease in a subject who has never suffered from CV…
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Cancer Statistics 2025
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th January 2025The American Cancer Society has released its annual report on the incidence and mortality of cancer in the USA. The full report can be downloaded below. I’ll summarize the salient features of the ACS’s data. They come from registries that assembled the information (occurrence, outcomes, and incidence data) through the end of 2021 and mortality…
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Report of Florida Grand Jury Vaccine Investigation
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th January 2025The Florida Grand Jury appointed by Gov. DeSantis to investigate COVID-19 vaccines has issued its report. The full document can be downloaded below. It is 140 pages. I have excerpted key parts of it to highlight its findings. The report is remarkably thorough and well-written. It reads as though composed by someone with a highly…
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