Straight Talking Doc Unhinged
Episodes
74 episodes
Medical TV Shows: Accurate or Dangerous?
This week we discuss medical TV shows, such as House and the Pitt and Grey's Anatomy, as well as medical moments on non-medical shows. Studies suggest that the message of these shows--the doctor as hero, the benefit of aggressive interven...
A Fight at the American Diabetes Association (ADA)
At the ADA Research Convention several members trying to pass out information were forced out after the police were called. They were ADA leaders who wrote an editorial blasting the current Presidential administration for cuts in research...
The Power of Medical Boards
Both Andy and Alan have been reported to their respective medical boards, both have had to hire lawyers, both have had to fight for their right to speak and to practice medicine. The Board of Physicians is an extrajudicial entity, operati...
Medical Inequities
Alan and Andy work in different medical environments. Alan works in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the county, one with many who are uninsured, undocumented, who have to work multiple jobs, who have limited food options, and who had ...
What Doctors are Saying about the Cholesterol Guidelines
We reviewed what several physician podcasts have to say about the new cholesterol guidelines. We spoke about the guidelines
The Emergency Room: Overtreatment as a Symptom of our System
The Emergency Room can be life saving, but also can be a place to be feared. We discuss several cases in which protocols and robotic thinking put patients in precarious positions, exposing them to unnecessary dangers, creating diseases wh...
Big Pharma
We talk a lot about Big Pharma throughout this podcast but today we discuss its many tentacles. Soon after making the podcast, Alan watched a hockey game and there was a drug ad on the ice! The Pharma industry controls virtually all...
Protocols, Medical Boards, and medical censorship
This week Andy was reported to the Maryland Board of Medicine by a local cardiology group because some studies he included in his practice newsletter offended them. These were major studies, peer reviewed, but did not coincide with the do...
The History of Medicine Part 13: Where are we Now?
The first half of American Medical History ends at the Flexner Report, which entirely morphed American Healthcare into a monolithic corporate entity under the complete control of the AMA. Every aspect of healthcare transformed, from educa...
Dementia: Promises and Reality
Dementia tells us a great deal about our healthcare system. Not even noted to be a disease at the time of Medicare's birth in 1965 it is now one of the most onerous and common diseases of the elderly. Why? And why is the incid...
The History of Medicine Part 12: Flexner and African Americans
Two pages of the Flexner Report condemned African American medial providers, hospitals, and patients to decades of struggle. Relying on the AMA's medical-racial script, and playing into the atmosphere of Progressive eugenics, Flexner's ch...
2026 Cholesterol Guidelines: Putting number fixing over people and science
As the medical community scripts new cholesterol guidelines, the media has compliantly announced that our nation's top scientists, most respected medical agencies, and academic centers want to prevent heart disease by screening for high cholest...
History of Healthcare Part 11: The Flexner Report
Once the AMA and William Welch orchestrated an alliance of Progressive reformers, corporate interests, and state medical licensing agencies, it was time to sanctify the cogs of a new medical system. That is what the Flexner Report is all ...
The Medicalization of Depression
Depression is a very vague concept. How do we determine if someone is depressed? What does depression even mean, and how is it best prevented and treated? The realities of depression veer sharply from how the medical industria...
History of Healthcare Part 10: Welch vs Osler
Two of American medicine's pioneers, and co-founders of Johns Hopkins Medical School, represented a fork in the road. William Osler, whose scientific humanism pushed back against a healthcare system teetering between commercialism and qua...
The Struggles of Primary Care
Alan and Andy discuss why they are dinosaurs, why primary care is becoming extinct and why its disappearance will instigate harm to the health care system, to patients, to our national debt, and to reason and sanity in health care. Talkin...
The History of Medicine Part 8: The Cogs of AMA Reform 1900-1920
The AMA grew up in a libertarian America, but chose to change its nature during a top-down Progressive America, where experts and scientifically based rules were determined to be crucial to any viable reforms. Working with corporate found...
Dermatology and the Illusion of our Skin Cancer Epidemic
In the 1980's dermatologists were somewhere in the basement of the doctor world in terms of reputation and reimbursement. It was always felt to be an easy job--not too much thinking, a limited scope of care, no after hours calls--but did ...
History of Healthcare Part 9: Eugenics and Medical Progressivism
As the AMA gained power and scripted a plan to commandeer the medical system, it used its medical-racial script to leap on the progressive train, including an embrace of eugenics. Eugenics flowed from the medical racial script, and according to...
The Dangers of TV Medical Providers
We are always amazed watching TV. What used to be ads for car companies, beer, clothes, products are not proliferated by ads for drugs and companies seeking to sell you drugs. These companies, like Hims and Hers, are willing to prov...
Some truths about nutrition, and it's likely not what your doctor tells you
Few people realize how important nutrition is, and it's not all about weight loss. You can lose weight and be less healthy because you are not eating food that will feed your gut bacteria, energize your muscles, and strengthen your brain....
The History of Medicine Part 7: The AMA's change in direction
Born in Republican America, with its emphasis on democratic decentralization, the AMA was floundering in the late 1800's, with few doctors latching their sails to its agenda. Most orthodox doctors remained fully independent, many graduate...
Corporate Takeovers in Healthcare
The very landscape of organized medicine is being altered by corporate takeovers. Whether in long term care, hospitals, or large groups, corporations are taking charge and offering "perks" that enhance the wealth of institutions, their le...
The History of Medicine Part 6: The African American Experience
Excluded from the AMA and from orthodox medicine, African American doctors had to find their own way in the late 1800's. Virtually no African American doctors existed in the early century, but that changed in the Civil War, especially wit...
The History of Medicine Part 5: Alternative Medicine in the 1800's
While we view traditional medical care as the norm, it was not always that way. Throughout most of the 1800's Americans chose alternative providers more frequently than orthodox doctors; their outcomes were better, their ideas based on co...