Faculty Bibliography

Mad Men [Television Program] -- The reality: 'Many hypertension experts in the early 1960s were still saying that elevated blood pressure wasn't bad for you and that reducing it could cause damage to important organs such as strokes and heart attacks,' says Dr. Suzanne Oparil, director of the vascular biology and hypertension program at the University of Alabama School of Medicine

Despite a recall by the FDA, contaminated heparin has apparently remained on the shelves and crash carts. The FDA claims that this chemical has been linked to severe allergic reaction and at least 81 deaths in 11 countries since last year. But the real story here is about the verbal thrashing that heparin, a life-saving treatment for blood clots, strokes and heart attacks, has unfairly taken in the news. Yes, 81 deaths is a lot, until you consider the thousands who are saved by heparin treatment every day

Eli Stone [Television Program] -- Cooper wants to begin a clinical trial using medical marijuana as a cure for his son, and he is petitioning the Drug Enforcement Administration to allow him to grow his own marijuana for medical purposes (this is legal in California but not under federal law)

The consumer group Public Citizen asked the FDA in 2006 to put a black-box warning on Cipro and other fluoroquinolones. According to the FDA, fluoroquinolones can increase the risk of tendon inflammation and rupture from 1 in 100,000 patients to 3 or 4 in 100,000 patients. But this increased risk is miniscule when you consider the number of lives Levaquin or Cipro save in patients with pneumonia, infectious colitis or serious urinary tract infections. Medications should be prescribed on a case-by-case basis and should be based on reason rather than emotion

Tomatoes, which contain fiber, vitamin C, A, B6, K, folate, niacin, potassium, and plenty of other good-for-you minerals, have been removed from Big Macs and other sandwiches and the shelves at McDonalds - leaving shreds of lettuce as practically the only healthy ingredient

Though our food is by far the safest it's ever been, food-borne bacteria is still an issue. There are 76 million cases of food poisoning in the United States every year, and 5,000 deaths. But produce is only a small part of the problem. Unfortunately, organic marketers have put up roadblocks against safeguarding produce from the occasional contaminant, despite the fact that no amount of washing is completely effective, and even among non-organic growers, culprit bacteria can be introduced at many points in the field-to-market process. Current technology that might be helpful-including methods for irradiating food and using gene-splicing techniques to neutralize toxins and introduce therapeutic proteins into plant cells-are decried by vocal consumers, despite the fact that there's no evidence to suggest that these techniques aren't safe. As far as McDonald's goes, they probably won't be missed. Tomatoes have never had a major presence there. Remember the old jingle for the Big Mac? 'Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.' No tomatoes, but plenty of calories-540 in fact, 260 of which are from fat. Overall, a Big Mac has 29 grams of fat-45 percent of the suggested daily ; value, and that's before adding a side of fries. A tomato could hardly make that meal good for you

The anti-viral flu drug, Tamiflu, was wrongly touted as a potential cure-all for the bird flu craze just two years ago, and its manufacturer, Roche, was ramping up to increase its supply at a time when H5N1 bird flu was responsible for the deaths of millions of birds in Asia but only a rare human being, and hadn't come to the US at all. None of the four anti-flu drugs currently on the market are cures. But these drugs when used judiciously can save lives

General Hospital: Night Shift [Television Program] -- 'It is characterized by encephalopathy [brain swelling] with bizarre behavior, memory loss and lesions to the white matter of the brain,' says Dr. Gary Abrams, associate professor of neurology at UC San Francisco and rehabilitation section chief at the San Francisco VA Medical Center

[...] according to the American Medical Assn.'s code of ethics, 'If a physician knows that a seropositive individual is endangering a third party, the physician should, within the constraints of the law (1) attempt to persuade the infected patient to cease endangering the third party; (2) if persuasion fails, notify authorities; and (3) if the authorities take no action, notify the endangered third party.'

House [Television Program] -- It occurs in about 1 in 10,000 pregnancies, when an ectopic or extrauterine gestational sac finds its way beyond the fallopian tube into the abdominal cavity, where it attaches to the bowel or omentum (the fatty sheath over the bowel), to the wall of the pelvis, onto an ovary, or to the broad ligament that anchors the uterus in the pelvis