Second Opinion

Standard medical practice isn't the same as proven medical practice — and the difference can be deadly.  

It’s the same medicine. So why does the convenient version cost so much more?

From a Pacific island overrun by rats to hospital wards battling superbugs, why our best intentions so often backfire.

Would you take $5,000 to be in a painful medical study? And should researchers even be allowed to ask?

We'd never ask a breast cancer patient what she did to deserve it. So why do we ask her?

Veterinarians in Central Africa are bracing for an Ebola outbreak among gorillas. It might sound remote. It's not.

I packed my bag, crossed the border, and eventually flew home to safety. The health care workers I left behind had no such option. 

From the Uganda-Congo border: a firsthand account of an Ebola outbreak, a failing response, and the political decisions that made it worse.

America built the global health system that protects us all — and then walked away from it.

What if one of the most common surgeries performed in the world turned out to be no better than a fake one — and we kept doing it anyway?

There's a vaccine for your dog. There isn't one for you. And that's not an accident — it's a scandal.

Millions of Americans need mental health care and can't get it — so should we lower the bar on who gets to provide it?

If AI can outperform two radiologists reading your mammogram, why is it still sitting on the sidelines?

We've spent decades arguing about whether government-run healthcare could ever work in America — but one system has been quietly proving it can. The answer might surprise you.

Our healthcare system often punishes behavior it doesn’t understand—and trauma is at the center of that misunderstanding.

If you've ever left a doctor's office nodding along and then lain awake at 3 am realizing you understood almost nothing — this might be for you.

The same children once labeled deficient are often highly capable adults — if they survive a system that misjudges them early. Dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence, but everything to do with how badly we teach reading and judge those who struggle.

“A built bed is a filled bed” – why in American healthcare, more supply doesn't lower costs, it raises them.

New research suggests that expanding nurses’ roles in our hospitals could be one of the smartest — and most urgent — steps we can take for the future of American healthcare.

The President says TrumpRx will give Americans the lowest drug prices in the world — but a closer look reveals a much more limited program that will leave most patients exactly where they started.

One in four Americans die before age 70 — not because we lack longevity supplements, but because we've abandoned the basic primary care that keeps people alive.

Medical Care is often not enough. Doulas are bringing an ancient practice back to modern dying—one family at a time.

Super Bowl medical ads use celebrity endorsements and fear tactics to promote disease screening - not primarily for public health, but to expand the patient pool for new, expensive treatments.

Most back pain doesn't require surgery—so why are we spending two billion dollars over a three-year period on it?

Every medical injection you've ever received was safety-tested using the blue blood of a 450-million-year-old creature — and we're finally questioning whether that's worth their survival.

My patient Paul has been trying to stop his antidepressants for months, and what's keeping him trapped reveals a truth the medical community has been slow to acknowledge.

The flu is surging, vaccine recommendations just got gutted, and somehow we're being told to trust butter over science—here's why you should be worried.

When two of my patients faced serious health crises, their unexpected response taught me something profound about the science and practice of gratitude—lessons worth carrying into the new year.

What one culture calls mental illness, others call a divine gift. 

The President's 'routine' MRI that cost $3,000 and no doctor recommends is a perfect example of how too much healthcare can be just as harmful as too little.

When veterinarians vaccinating goats in India discovered women were dying in childbirth along migration routes, the solution came from recognizing that herders already knew how to save lives—just not their own.

You're in the exam room.  The person in the white coat says they're a doctor.  But what kind of doctor?  A federal court just decided that training matters more than free speech.

The pap smear has saved countless lives, but it's also dreaded by millions of women. Now there's an alternative that's easier, more private, and just as accurate.

What happens when the world's richest country tells its most vulnerable newcomers they're on their own for food?

Medicare Advantage covers more than half of seniors, but is it costing taxpayers billions and offering little advantage?

How did a pain pill that is only moderately effective and has murky side effects become America's 5th most prescribed drug?

A shortsighted H-1B fee increase will eliminate the international doctors millions of underserved Americans depend on, deepening healthcare inequality.

When his daughter wanted a tattoo, this dad conducted a 3,000-person study instead—here's what they found.

Tuberculosis kills more people worldwide than AIDS or malaria, even though we've had a cure for 50 years. One doctor learned from village healers in Uganda that you can't cure TB unless you first understand poverty.

The dramatic rise in autism diagnoses over the past 25 years is primarily a result of changes in the definition of the condition and increased screening, rather than the causes claimed by politicians like Trump and RFK Jr.

As healthcare prioritizes profits over people, doctors are organizing to reclaim their profession and protect patients

Afghan medical refugees watch helplessly as their earthquake-devastated homeland suffers without adequate healthcare, while America wastes their desperately needed expertise due to credential barriers during our own provider shortage.

Publishers profit billions by charging scientists to publish publicly-funded research that volunteers review for free.

Too many medical treatment choices overwhelm both patients and doctors, leading to worse decisions and greater dissatisfaction.

Despite COVID-19 mRNA vaccines being a Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough that saved millions of lives, political interference by RFK Jr. is now undermining this medical achievement just as COVID cases are rising again.

Medical professionals have a unique responsibility to prevent nuclear war, the ultimate public health catastrophe.

Young people globally are having fewer babies and creating aging populations, while surprising shifts in gender preferences are beginning to favor daughters over sons.

Testosterone treatment, sought after as a “foundation of youth,” has become a lucrative industry, fueled by extensive marketing with limited medical evidence. 

Nearly 700 years ago the plague wiped out half of Europe. The genetic impacts are still present today.

What the White House failed to tell us