Walter Jackson Freeman (1895 – 1972)

Tom Waits famously said that he’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. Many of us like to give a piece of our mind but not in the way the latest practitioner of quackery to come under our microscope, Walter Jackson Freeman, intended.

A prominent neurologist and psychiatrist, Freeman popularised the lobotomy by making it easy and convenient. During his long career he performed 3,439 lobotomies. He was encouraged to embark upon a career performing these brutal surgical procedures when he discovered that chimpanzees became subdued when their frontal lobes were damaged, with a colleague, James Watts, he started experimenting on brains supplied by the local morgue. Freeman believed that a lobotomy was effective because it severed the connections between the frontal lobes and the thalamus of which the mentally ill were over endowed and which was thought to…

Physician Suicide and the Elephant in the Room

Michael Langan, M.D.

Although no reliable statistics exist, anecdotal reports suggest an alarming upsurge in physician suicide. This necessitates a reappraisal of known predisposing risk factors such as substance abuse and depression but also requires a critical examination of what external forces or vulnerabilities might be unique to doctors and how they might be involved in the descent from suicidal ideation to suicidal planning to completed suicide.

Depression and Substance Abuse Comparable to General Population

Depression and substance abuse are the two biggest risk factors for suicide. The prevalence of depression in physicians is close to that of the general population ^1,2 and, if one looks critically at the evidence based literature, substance abuse in medical professionals approximates that of the general population.  Controlled studies using DSM diagnostic criteria suggest that physicians have the same rates (8-14%) of substance abuse…

Disrupted Physician 101.2: “Addiction Medicine” is a Self-Designated Practice Specialty Unrecognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties–(An AMA Census Term Indicating Neither Training nor Competence)The fraudulent Addiction Medicine drug-testing, assessment and treatment complex is a  charade of prohibitionists and profiteers.  It is time that this be identified and addressed. Addiction Medicine has evolved in a Lord-of-the-Flies manner without regulatory scrutiny or oversight and an absence of the need to guard. They are the Robber barons of Science and Medicine who have bought and boondoggled their way into the Medical Profession and Society  and are poised to ruin both. It is time to take aim at these unsupervised pundits of authoritative opinion with facts, evidence base, and the scientific method. The immense and unconscionable conflicts of interest  must also be addressed. And the blinkered apathy of the masses and willful ignorance of organized medicine needs to end now!   If not the

Three shells and a pea–ASAM, FSPHP, and LMD.

“PHP-Approved” Assessment and Treatment Centers

On the above list  can be found the Medical Directors of a number of drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities.

Talbott, Marworth, Hazelden, Promises, and another two-dozen or so “PHP-approved”  assessment and treatment centers are represented on this list.    State Physician Health Programs (PHPs) refer doctors to these facilities for evaluations.  PHPs are non-profit tax-exempt organizations.  They do not evaluate or treat patients.   If a physician is referred to a PHP for a suspected problem the assessment must be done at an outside facility which will invariably be linked to a name on the list of Like-Minded Docs.

What most people do not know, however, is that this is an exclusive arrangement.    Evaluations are constrained to one of these facilities.   It is mandated.   No bargaining.  No compromises. No choice.  In other words it is a coercion.

“What’s…

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/coveredentities/

The HIPAA Rules apply to covered entities and business associates. A Covered Entity is one of the following:

1. A Health Care Provider

This includes providers such as:

Doctors
Clinics
Psychologists
Dentists
Chiropractors
Nursing Homes
Pharmacies

…but only if they transmit any information in an electronic form in connection with a transaction for which HHS has adopted a standard.

2. A Health Plan

This includes:

Health insurance companies
HMOs
Company health plans
Government programs that pay for health care, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the military and veterans health care programs

3. A Health Care Clearinghouse

This includes entities that process nonstandard health information they receive from another entity into a standard (i.e., standard electronic format or data content), or vice versa.

On Junk-Science in the Medical Profession

A SPECIAL ME-P REPORT

By Michael Lawrence Langan MD

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If you are ever asked to take a polygraph test–don’t do it. Those involved in the criminal justice system, including lawyers, are largely uneducated in the realm of scientific scrutiny and experimental methodology.

They may not separate science and pseudo-science, and erroneously believe that the polygraph is an accurate scientific instrument. Their interactions are with polygraph examiners who proselytize its use, and they have little or no interaction with scientists, psychologists, and physicians who refute its use.

Refuse to take the test and educate them. Cite the Frye Doctrine, go to the medical library, copy the scientific articles which belie its validity, and present them to whomever requested you to take the test. State that the principles and assumptions underlying polygraphy are not supported by our understanding of psychology, neurology, and physiology.

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A Framework to Identify the influence of Special Interest Groups and “Bent” Science

A SPECIAL ME-P REPORT

By Michael Lawrence Langan MD

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Policy and Regulatory Decision Making in the Medical Profession: A Framework to Identify the influence of Special Interest Groups and “Bent” Science.

Channel Surfing the ME-P

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In  Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research ¹  Thomas McGarity and Wendy Wagner describe how special interest groups scheme to advance their own economic or ideological goals by using distorted or “bent” science to influence legal, regulatory and public health policy.

Conclusion

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