The issue of off-label prescribing has been debated for years. For the first time that I can recall, federal forces seem to be leaning in favor of allowing some wiggle room. In the waning days of the Bush administration, the FDA issued a declaration allowing drug companies to provide information on off-label uses to prescribers. This information ...

Last month, I blogged about prostate cancer and the Provenge saga. Since that blog, there have been some new developments. Therefore, I wanted to provide a quick update and my take regarding the new developments. On October 6, 2008, Dendreon, the manufacture of Provenge sent out a press release detailing results at the interim peak of the ...

The article starts out promising good PR for nurse practitioners: ''Peggy O'Donnell, a Lynbrook nurse practitioner, knows a thing or two about picking a good primary care physician.'' This is O'Donnell's opportunity to explain that an NP often can be your primary care provider — and even better, that there are studies that show that NP care is ...

  Yesterday morning my spouse's high school friend, John, had prostate cancer. By afternoon he didn't — at least we hope the prostatectomy did the trick. John found out he might have something to worry about when he got his PSA level checked last fall at a booth at the Texas state fair. He didn't think he needed the test (he's only 38), ...

Follow nurse practitioner Lois Wessel's lead and make national policy briefings your second job. Wessel wrote a touching and informative article for Tuesday's Washington Post, explaining her position at a mobile health clinic in Silver Spring, Md., and the barriers to care the U.S. health system throws up before her mostly immigrant patients. ...

Have you all been watching AMC's Mad Men, the TV series about a Madison Avenue advertising firm in 1960? The premise explores the lofty question of how we create truth — and sell falsehood. We follow the power of sex, ethnicity and money through each episode. The women wear bullet bras, and the men swill bourbon from bottles kept in their desks. ...

  Opening my Providence (Rhode Island) Journal this morning (OK, online), I saw yet another report on physician objections to retail or convenient care clinics. The same article, but with different names, has been showing up about once a week somewhere in the country for the past 3 years. The article always cites physician charges that ...