Modern Medicine can be Dangerous

…couple claimed, Dr. Susan Moore told them their baby boy would have to be delivered by Caesarian … delivering doctor … refused to perform a C-section … the boy's head breached, but the rest of his body got stuck in the birth canal … In an attempt to pull the boy loose, [delivering doctor] applied traction to his head and "separated (the boy's) head from his cervical spine" … Blood "shot out" from the newborn's neck in full view of his parents … then "pushed" the boy's head and body back into the birth canal and scrambled to perform a C-section, slicing into Betts before anesthesia kicked in … "surgically and completely removed" the boy's head from his body … then tried to cover up the boy's wounds before handing him over to his parents — though the complaint doesn't say how he did this.

A study of babies in intensive care suggests that doctors are getting better at recognizing situations where infants are sure to die or have severe brain damage -- and are often holding back on life support when that's the case. The findings "reflect increasing awareness by the medical community of the need to limit interventions of minimal or very questionable benefit, and particularly if those interventions potentially include significant pain or suffering to the patient," said Dr. Renee Boss, a neonatologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who wasn't part of the new research.

A new report from the Institute of Medicine calls for significant reforms to prevent financial conflicts-of-interests in medicine from hindering patient care or the advancement of medical knowledge.... For example, documents revealed in the course of drug marketing litigation recently revealed that a prominent Harvard psychiatrist promised to deliver positive results to major drug maker Johnson & Johnson before the start of some clinical trials.... from 2000 through 2007, the same psychiatrist received $1.6 million from the drug maker, with only a fraction of that reported to Harvard.....