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| Doctors can get it wrong | | Date Created: Feb 13, 2005, 10:24 PM |
 We will deal with the issue of what you know that isn't so -- specifically the conventional wisdom that 90 - 100,000 people are killed by medical mistakes every year in the US -- another time.
This is about Marcia Angell MD's book on economics, The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. I didn't put it in the review section because I haven't read it yet. I don't need to. I know it's bogus, and I'm a big Marcia Angell fan. Plus, as usual, someone reviewed it for me, and I'm sure did it better than I could.
The latest issue of Legal Affairs includes a review of Angell's book as well as another one, also by a former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. The latter is by Jerome P. Kassier and is called, On the Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health. The review is by Richard A. Epstein, an academic lawyer with a long list of published work. He's one I would vote for on Legal Affairs poll of Top Legal Thinkers in America which they're currently running. I don't know anything about Jerome P. Kassier, but I do know Marcia Angell.
You don't get to be editor in chief of the most prestigious medical journal in the country without a lot of hard work at medical science and in writing. But I can assure you that you don't have time to learn economics. Angell's previous book is where I became aware of her and she spoke at a national Plastic Surgery meeting I attended. The book was called, Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law In the Breast Implant Case. I would read any book with a title like Science on Trial, but at the time plastic surgeons were involved in the hysteria over silicone breast implants, and Angell's book was required reading from an acknowledged medical scientist.
In the introduction of Science on Trial, Dr. Angell states in clear language that she is a liberal politically. Trial lawyers and political liberals have an unholy alliance. But it becomes clear that her defense of breast implants is solely because of her career and training as a medical scientist. The "science" behind the lawsuits over silicone and breast implants was (and is) junk science, and she couldn't let that pass. Her explanation of the real science was superb. You should read that book if you're interested in how trial lawyers abuse science and reason to push their self-serving lawsuits.
But now Dr. Angell thinks she knows business and economics. Oops. Her acknowledged liberal mindset gets in the way. As Epstein puts it, "...the authors are wrong. Their inability to grasp fundamental economic principles about market incentives, gains from trade, the time-value of money, and the importance of innovation leave the authors open to easy attack."
It is amazing how liberals (and in this case doctors) think they know everything and they'll tell you what you should believe, even outside their area of expertise. Just ask me. |
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