Peter Ubel

Whatever you think of Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that the Obama administration decided to keep behind pharmacy counters rather than let women and girls buy it OTC, you have to admit that the New England Journal authors wrote a heck of a provocative sentence, after reviewing the number of scientific committees that had deemed the medication safe. (The article is by Wood, Drazen and Greene, from January 12.) After pointing out that adolescent girls can already buy lethal doses of Tylenol OTC without any questions asked, and after explaining that the only known risks of Plan B are nausea and delayed menses, they land a hard punch right on the jaw of the Obama administration:

“Any objective review makes it clear that Plan B is more dangerous to politicians than to adolescent girls.”

Ouch!

Would it be immoral for a Christian to lack faith in Tim Tebow?

Interesting to see a Catholic scholar’s take on a recent issue of a pediatric journal which discussed the ethics of caring for seventy disabled newborns. I contributed an essay, and the Catholic blogger somehow concluded that most of the contributors were atheists or agnostics.

Here is the link to the post.

See some coverage in Forbes on a debate I participated in at a recent meeting, discussing when decisions are really decisions and when nudges are really shoves.

Click here.

Angie Fagerlin—friend, colleague, and all around inspiration—just took the lead in a paper that is getting some media attention.  (She was kind enough to include me in the effort.)  The paper gives advice to cancer patients about how to make better decisions. This link shows CBS News’s take on it.  (Is “News’s” a word?)

And if you want to see the article Angie wrote, it is here.

As all of you know, my goal in life is to be a regular on Fox News. Well, anyway, here is a link to a Fox News story on happiness and all that stuff, which quotes me, and even places me back in Michigan. Let’s do the time warp . . . ?

There is a good debate starting up on a website called Prepared Patient Forum, about how much information patients should get when facing important medical decisions.  You might want to click on this link and join in.

WHYY in Philadelphia has a report out on a new study I participated in, led by my good friend Scott Halpern. The study revealed the strange lengths to which physicians will go to help their patients, even if it hurts other patients. To see what Scott and I have to say, click on this link.

Risk isn’t all it is cracked up to be, as Amanda Dillard argues (with me as a co-author) in a new paper available on line at the Annals of Behavioral Medicine. At high risk for breast cancer? May not matter, in terms of getting you interested in taking a pill to reduce that risk. But FEELING at high risk? That is a different story. As Amanda shows quite persuasively, after you control (statistically speaking) for women’s actual risk, it is the way they feel about that risk that determines their behavior.

Ever had a doctor present you with a contract, laying out what you need to do or else? Well, this is an increasingly common practice in medicine.

Michael Volk led a group of us who wrote about this topic recently in The Lancet. Click on this link to check it out.