preventive medicine
lborkowski | February 13, 2013This post is part of our Public Health Classics series. Sara Gorman is a frequent contributor to that series, and her Classics post on the Whitehall studies addresses a topic similar to today's subject: the influence of socioeconomic status on health.
By Sara Gorman
How much of a patient’s social context should physicians take into account? Is an examination of social factors contributing to disease part of the physician’s job description, or is the practice of medicine more strictly confined to treatment rather than prevention? In what ways should the physician incorporate public health,…
oracknows | January 2, 2013If there's one claim that practitioners of "holistic" medicine frequently make, it's that "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" or whatever the term du jour for the combining of quackery with science-based medicine is these days is allegedly so much better than "conventional" or "allopathic" medicine (or whatever disparaging term "holistic practitioners" prefer) at preventing disease and keeping people healthy. The claim is a load of fetid nonsense, of course, but it sounds convincing on the surface. After all, CAM practitioners have been disturbingly…