Best of the WSJ Health Blog for 2010
By Katherine Hobson
Tonight the Health Blog will close the book on 2010 as we head out for the long holiday weekend. Not, however, before highlighting a few of our favorite posts from the more than 1,100 that ran this year. Our thoroughly subjective list includes posts notable for their subject matter, news value or just because we liked them a lot. In no particular order:
Cavs Have a Word for LeBron James: Narcissistic Jilted Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert put King James on the couch in July and came up with this diagnosis, but the sports psychologist we consulted disagreed. As things stand today, LeBron can certainly be described as “winning”; his new team, the Miami Heat, is 25-9.
Here’s What Primary Care Doctors Do All Day A study by a Philadelphia internist lays bare the paperwork involved in running a small practice. One stat: the number of phone calls a physician made each day was higher than the number of patient visits.
For Dendreon, It’s 500 Prescriptions for Provenge and Counting No one’s neutral on the Yankees, and no one’s neutral on Dendreon. This year the company won FDA approval for its prostate-cancer treatment Provenge, and in this August post we polished our math skills and calculated how many patients had completed treatment in the second quarter.
Prevention Task Force Cancels November Meeting; Would Have Included Prostate Screening Vote The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force rescheduled this meeting, originally set for Election Day, for March 2011; one staffer later quit, saying “politics trumped science.”
Caution: This Blog Post May Be Under Embargo The rules surrounding when the media can report on scientific papers are often convoluted, but rarely do they reach the extremes seen in this cancer-drug study saga involving Novartis and the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.
XMRV: Raising the Issue of Contamination This is just the latest thoroughly reported post Amy Dockser Marcus has written on the controversy surrounding the XMRV virus and its possible link to chronic fatigue syndrome. Click here to see all the Health Blog’s coverage on this topic from this year and earlier.
Tapeworms, Cow Gestation and Malpractice: Trolling the NEJM Archives After the venerable journal put its archives online, we took a spin through the articles published in the 1800s to learn about the hot medical issues du jour. (And for once, we knew we’d get no comments about the evils of electronic medical records!)
TEDMED: Soprano and Double-Lung Transplant Recipient Charity Tillemann-Dick Inspirational stories about patients and their physicians are everywhere in medicine, but this one — about a dangerously ill young soprano who refused to give up her singing and the doctor who told her “a happy patient is a healthy patient” — is one of our favorites. Happy new year, everyone.
FOX NEWS has their own list of the top health blogs
Of Course I have my own favorites
It is almost time for Auld angzine, and some bubbly.
HAPPY NEW YEAR !!