The American Society of Anesthesiologists wants to change the way people think about pain medicine, both to promote the idea that anesthesiologists are not just experts in the surgical suite and also to prevent addictions and deaths.
Medical malpractice cases can live or die on the testimony of an expert witness. Defense
attorneys will go after the expert's credentials with every tool in their kit.
One would think that plaintiff's attorneys suing the federal government on behalf of a
patient would make sure they had a doctor with impeccable experience ready to take the stand and bolster the patient's case.
Instead, they hired Dr. Alex T. Zakharia.
Dr. Sidney Wolfe, the acting president of Public Citizen and the head of its Health Research Group, is a guy you don't want to have as an opponent. He has an encyclopedic command of the facts and a delivery that manages to be both gracious and a little intimidating.
Robert M. Veatch, Ph.D., is Professor of Medical Ethics and the former Director of the Kennedy Institue of Ethics at Georgetown University. He also holds appointments as Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical Center. He is the Senior Editor of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal and a former member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. Murray B. Stein is a professor of psychiatry and family and preventive medicine at UCSD and director of the Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders Research Program at UCSD and at the VA San Diego Healthcare System. His research interests include the neurobiology, epidemiology and treatment of anxiety disorders including social phobia, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Dr. Laurene Mascola is chief of the Acute Communicable Disease Control (ACD) unit for the Los Angeles County Department of Health's Public Health Programs & Services, which performs disease surveillance and epidemic control activities for more than 60 diseases. Mascola oversees the County's programs for immunization, food and water safety epidemiology, vectorborne (insect) disease, hospital outbreaks and bloodborne diseases. Mascola has extensive experience in epidemiology and disease prevention, publishing more than 100 articles and abstracts in numerous medical and public health journals.
John P. Pierce is associate director of cancer prevention and control at the Rebecca and John Moores UCSD Cancer Center. An award-winning researcher, Pierce defined U.S. smoking trends in a 1989 series of papers in the Journal of the American Medical Association, forming the basis for the year 2000 goals for the nation for tobacco. He is recognized for evaluating the effectiveness of the California Tobacco Control Program, for linking tobacco advertising to adolescent smoking, and for using telephone counseling methodology to help smokers quit.
Dr. Douglas D. Richman is director of UCSD's Center for AIDS Research and director of the Research Center for AIDS and HIV Infection at VA San Diego Healthcare System. He is also a professor of pathology and medicine at UCSD and the Florence Seeley Riford Chair in AIDS Research. A virologist, Richman was among the early AIDS investigators who led several of the original drug treatment studies of HIV infection. His lab first identified HIV drug resistance and was one of the original labs to describe latent infection of blood lymphocytes by HIV.
Journalists have to ask hard questions about where sources get their money – and about the science they are promoting. Following the money trail can be daunting. But journalists and whistleblowers are doing just that and uncovering important connections. Here's what to look for.
