The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity weighed in publicly for the first time yesterday about research on mammalian-adapted H5N1 influenza, and the Board’s verdict was that the research is important and needs to go forward, but must be done very carefully, with oversight, and without releasing potentially dangerous details to the... »

Government officials have stood before doctors many times and talked about the need to change the perverse incentives that pay them more for caring for sick patients than for keeping people healthy to start. Dr. Richard Gilfillan, who runs the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, had a similar pitch when he talked to more than 1,000 people... »

Republicans on the House Energy & Commerce Committee took President Obama to task on Tuesday in a short video that accused him of doing nothing to fulfill a promise made in last year’s State of the Union address to address medical liability reform.

    Courtesy Wikimedia Commons/johnfekner/GNU Free Documentation License

With its... »

Does the simple act of inserting a central venous catheter induce a hypercoagulable state in patients?

Research presented at the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma shows that central venous line insertion significantly decreases clotting time and initial clot formation time and accelerates fibrin cross-linking in both healthy swine and... »

Doctors must play an integral role in reducing health care costs, health policy experts say. At the annual conference of consumer group Families USA, Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel said that doctors participating in reducing costs will have a greater effect than the health care law itself.

"Washington will not be able to save the costs.... »

Nowhere in the thousands of pages of the Affordable Care Act does it give the federal government the power to stop insurance companies from charging excessive premiums. But the controversial health reform law does grant the Department of the Health and Human Services the right review some large rate increases and to tell consumers when they think... »

It seems easier to explain to patients why they "don’t really need that antibiotic," thanks to the public health campaign on potential harm from, and the lack of efficacy of, antibiotics in certain situations such as viral infections. Yet, in the midst of this apparent meeting of the minds between doctors and patients, another superbug has emerged... »