Insights

<p>Within hours of the news breaking about Michael Jackson's death, attention started to turn toward one of the only eyewitnesses to the event: his personal physician.</p>

<p>A new Institute of Medicine <a href="http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12648#toc">report</a&gt; offers some excellent fodder for stories on "comparative effectiveness research," which examines whether and why some medical treatments are more effective than others. </p>

<p>You'll be hearing a lot about the comparative effectiveness buzzword as the national health reform debate unfolds, because it's seen as crucial in in lowering health costs. Why spend money on drug-eluting stents for heart disease, for example, if plain old stents might just keep people alive longer? </p>

<p>New York state has an interesting job that is foreign to
most other states, the office of the <a href="http://www.omig.state.ny.us/data/">Medicaid Inspector General</a>. Lucky for health writers, the Inspector General there, <a href="http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?category=state&amp;story… G. Sheehan</a>, believes not only in rooting out people who are ripping off taxpayers, but in sharing his techniques and tactics with reporters. </p>

<p>Just when you thought it was <a href="http://southwestfarmpress.com/peanuts/peanut-butter-sales-0624/">safe</…; to make that triple-decker peanut butter and banana sandwich, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has slapped another big peanut processor with a warning letter.</p><p>I wrote about the salmonella outbreak at a <a href="/blogs/making-peanuts-pay-rochester-reporter%E2%80%99s-work-shows-how-go-deep-and-go-local-national-food-safe">Peanut Corporation of America</a> plant in March and offered some advice on how to investigate our national food safety system. </p>

<p>Robin Lowe went to the Sano Medical Clinic in Costa Mesa one June with what appeared to be an obvious and urgent problem. She had felt a lump in her left breast. </p><p>At 29, she was young to develop breast cancer. Making matters worse, she was pregnant.</p><p><a href="http://www2.dca.ca.gov/pls/wllpub/WLLQRYNA$LCEV2.QueryView?P_LICENSE_NU…. James Stirbl</a>, the doctor who ran the clinic, examined Lowe but did not recommend she undergo a mammogram or a biopsy, according to the Medical Board of California.</p>

<p>Walt Bogdanich, three-time <a href="http://www.pulitzer.org/faceted_search/results/bogdanich">Pulitzer</a>-… New York Times reporter, has written a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/21radiation.html">phenomenal story</a> about cancer care at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Philadelphia and tapped into a rich source of material for medical writers: the <a href="http://www.nrc.gov">Nuclear Regulatory Commission</a>.</p>

<p>My fellow contributing editor here at ReportingonHealth, Barbara Feder Ostrov, suggested I might be beating up unnecessarily on Stanford neurosurgeon <a href="/blogs/contraindications-dr-doyle-john-borchers">Dr. Doyle John Borchers III</a> in my post Wednesday.</p><p>After all, the poor guy did crash his plane and die. Why go over his alleged drug history? </p><p>Here's why. One of my main goals in this blog is to explore all the different places you can find information for health stories. </p>

<p>When Stanford University neurosurgeon and amateur pilot <a href="http://www2.dca.ca.gov/pls/wllpub/WLLQRYNA$LCEV2.QueryView?P_LICENSE_NU… John Borchers III</a> (California License No. 64879) crashed his plane near Lake Tahoe last August, investigators wondered what the hell he was doing flying a plane at night in a mountainous area in the first place.</p><p>Borchers, who died in the crash, had been flying sporadically for less than a year and had only flown at night once before - the night before the crash.</p>

<p>Devoted fans of Antidote no doubt read my interview with <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="/blogs/qa-mark-katches-editor-breaks-reporting-down-chemical-level">Mark Katches</a> a few weeks ago. Katches was just named the editorial director for the Center for Investigative Reporting's new <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org/blogs#4109">reporting project</a> in California. </p>