Reading Room
The reading room includes articles of potential interest to consumers and medical professionals. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the NC Medical Board, its members and staff.
An Ancient Case of the Plague Could Rewrite History
The Atlantic
December 6, 2018
The troublesome teeth belonged to a woman buried in Sweden. She lived 4,900 years ago, and she died young. Archaeologists found her at the turn of the last millennium, her bones jumbled up with dozens of others in a limestone tomb. Geneticists sequenced her DNA a few years ago, revealing her to be, unsurprisingly, one of the Neolithic farmers who occupied Europe at the time.
Opinion: Overzealous use of the CDC’s opioid prescribing guideline is harming pain patients
STATNews
December 6, 2018
During the recent Interim Meeting of the American Medical Association, the organization’s president, Dr. Barbara McAneny, told the story of a patient of hers whose pharmacist refused to fill his prescription for an opioid medication. She had prescribed the medication to ease her patient’s severe pain from prostate cancer, which had spread to his bones. Feeling ashamed after the pharmacist called him a “drug seeker,” he went home, hoping to endure his pain. Three days later, he tried to kill himself. Fortunately, McAneny’s patient was discovered by family members and survived.
Germs on a journey: How infectious diseases become unwelcome companions during air travel
STATNews
November 29, 2018
Everyone knows traveling on passenger planes can make people susceptible to illness. But there are more means of transmission than you might expect.
Who owns your medical data? Most likely not you.
The Washington Post
November 25, 2018
Do you think you own your own medical data? Your hospital and doctor records, lab and radiology tests, genetic information, even the actual tissue removed during a biopsy or other surgical procedure? Well, you don’t. It’s a good bet that the fine print of the consent form you signed before your latest test or operation said that all the data or tissue samples belong to the doctor or institution performing it.
How Do Wishes Granted To Very Sick Kids Affect Their Health?
NPR
November 20, 2018
Tiffany Rowe, a 46-year-old life coach in the San Francisco Bay area, still remembers how it felt as a teenager to be hoisted onstage to dance with Michael Jackson during his Bad concert tour. She was 15 and recovering from an excruciating round of treatment for severe idiopathic aplastic anemia — basically total bone marrow failure.
Top 8 Healthcare Predictions for 2019
Forbes
November 13, 2018
What can you look forward to in healthcare in 2019? The debate expects to get hotter between AI vs. Physicians, Consumer vs. Clinical, Human empathy vs. Machine Intelligence as many new players enter the ecosystem.