Chronic Lyme Disease: In Defense of Skeptical Reporting

It's our last Daily Briefing of 2010! Here's what we're checking out today. Happy holidays and we'll see you next year!

Lyme Disease: Respectful Insolence blogger Orac defends a skeptical (and controversial) Chicago Tribune story about chronic Lyme disease written by Trine Tsouderos and Pat Callahan. (Hat tip: the Pump Handle). And over at Atlantic.com, Andrew Sullivan weighs in on whom, exactly, should be judging their reporting (Hat tip: @PalMD).

Food Poisoning: Staphylococcus aureus-tainted holiday desserts from a Chicago bakery are linked to an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness in about 100 people. Good thing we've got that new food safety bill.

Health IT: Upgrading a hospital's electronic health record system is no panacea for improving health care quality, according to a gloomy new Rand study. Check out Neil Versel's ReportingonHealth essay on covering electronic health records for more tips and context.  

Medicare: If you missed it earlier, Uwe Reinhardt's New York Times blog post explaining the "annual drama" behind the Medicare "doc fix" is a must-read.