Category Archives: Medicine
National Health Service in Trouble – Again
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th December 2022The UK’s NHS is now hit with a nurses strike, though only for a day. The nurses say they are overworked and underpaid. They are. They want an increase in pay of 5% above inflation. That works out to 15.7%. The independent pay board which sets their salary recommended a 4% increase. The nurses’ pay…
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The Science Deniers at the New England Journal of Medicine
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd December 2022[This article appeared today in American Greatness.] The New England Journal of Medicine has published Protecting Transgender Health and Challenging Science Denialism in Policy. It is the latest example of using denialism to denigrate any opinion contrary to that of the latest set of experts to claim sovereignty over a controversial subject. The technique is…
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Why Do COVID Vaccines Fail?
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd December 2022It is now obvious that the COVID vaccines now routinely administered to just about everybody willing to take them has not stopped infection by and spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Data from the CDC show that deaths from the virus occur more often in vaccinated subjects than in those that have not received the vaccine….
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Lowest US Life Expectancy Since 1996
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th October 2022Life expectancy dropped by 3 years for US men and 2.3 years for US women between 2019 and 2021, according to provisional life expectancy data from the National Center for Health Statistics. During this period, US life expectancy dropped to about 73 years for men and to about 79 years for women, the lowest levels since 1996….
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Heather Mac Donald on Medicine
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th August 2022The outstanding public intellectual, Heather Mac Donald has written a penetrating analysis of the current state of medical education, practice criteria, and organizational structure. Appropriately called the Corruption of Medicine, it details the horrible pit the profession has thrown itself into. Gone is first do no harm. In its place is the patient be damned…
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Y Chromosome Loss and Heart Disease
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th July 2022Below is a release from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It summarizes a study published in the AAAS’s journal Science. It deals with the previous observation that loss the the Y chromosome in white blood cells with an increase in cardiovascular disease and death. Whether this loss of the male sex chromosome…
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More on Symptomatic COVID and Vaccination
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd June 2022The New England Journal of Medicine has published online Effects of Previous Infection and Vaccination on Symptomatic Omicron Infections. The study by the Cornell Medicine–Qatar group of investigators has received some attention in the lay press and has even been interpreted as showing that under certain circumstances that vaccination increases the likelihood of contracting the…
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Do It Yourself Screening for Kidney Disease
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 10th June 2022Chronic Kidney Disease is often asymptomatic. The commonest causes are diabetes and hypertension.There are a number of tests that clinicians use to both detect and measure the severity of impaired kidney function. Levey and colleagues examine the use of these tests in a review article in the June 2, 2022 issue of the New England…
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COVID, Masks, and Children
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd June 2022The US policy regarding coronavirus infection in children has not been one of medical science’s great triumphs as is true of its entire package of actions regarding the infection. The epidemic has been a excuse for the imposition of central control of activities formerly felt to be outside the boundaries of government control and up…
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Long COVID
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd May 2022I don’t use the title’s words to describe a syndrome resulting from chronic infection with the coronavirus. I don’t have enough ready data to know if such a syndrome even exists. Rather, I refer to the long term consequences of the virus’s effects on society in its broadest definition. The remarkable truth is how little…
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