The Envelope Please

Thanks to commenters who have indeed anticipated some items I would have nominated for the top 25. I'm not going to quibble here about CNN's ordering of the stories, nor am I going to get into the way they have been covered -- we'll do that later. Right now I'll just give the Paul Giamatti awards for egregious ommission.

Thanks to Susan_USA for nominating gun violence. I might have nominated violence in general. Violence gets more coverage than anything else on your local TV news, of course, but never from a public health perspective. Why is the U.S. such a violent country? Why do we have much higher rates of homicide and assault than all but the most troubled societies? What can we do about it? The coverage is sensationalistic and focuses on law enforcement and draconian punishment as the only solution.

Speechless, RD and DPR bring up some of the various drugs that have turned out to have undisclosed risks. (CNN has Prozac on its list but I suspect this refers to all the over the top hype when Listening to Prozac became a best seller.) This story is about the capture of the FDA by drug companies, aggressive marketing of drugs like the Cox-2 inhibitors and hormone replacement therapy that exaggerated their benefits, even as the drug companies suppressed evidence that they were dangerous and, in the case of HRT, completely useless, while the FDA collaborated with them to keep the truth from the public.

Court brings up the ultimate four bowler, how we pay for all these miracles, how much we pay, who pays, and how the organization and financing of health care affects what we get, and who gets what.

It shouldn't be a surprise, I guess, but these are subjects I've been focusing on here. So I guess we need to keep doing it.