In a previous post, The Politics of Measurement: Miscalculating Public Health , I wrote of the risk that drug companies will convince us that we are at risk for everything, so that we take many expensive meds to ward off disease. The money that is spent on drugs might do more for our health, I argued, if spent [...]

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Here’s an update in the value of doubt from veteran health journalist and muckraker (the word is a medal of honor) Shannon Brownlee, writing in the Washington Post: Striking fear… serves pharmaceutical companies, which want you to worry about diseases, because people who worry are more likely to go to their doctors and ask for [...]

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