A follow-up to an earlier post. Jonathan Giftos, a resident phsyician in primary care and social medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, and his colleague Dr. Sam Cohen attended this session:
Lenox Hill Hospital, part of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, is offering a free informative evening on Thursday, January 8th from 6-7:30 p.m. with David Samadi, MD, chair of urology and chief of robotic surgery, about what women can do to help keep the men in their lives healthy and happy.
I include excerpts of Jonathan's report on Facebook without further comment:
Drinking a beer with Dr Sam Cohen after going toe-to-toe with David Samadi at his shameless, chauvinistic, pandering and misleading talk promoting en masse PSA screening in an unselected patient population, described famously by Shannon Brownlee as "the loss-leader for robotic surgery."
Unsurprisingly, there was no conflict of interest disclosure. Gross deception as he described "screening" as a uniformly good thing that the government is trying to take away in order to save money. Characterizing women as emotional, shop-a-holics and then exploiting their worries over their husbands' health to promote evidence-less medicine for profit was also a highlight. That an academic medical center like North Shore-LIJ Health System allowed this to happen is deeply problematic.
Sam and I got the mic for about 5 minutes. Challenged his blatant disregard for USPSTF recommendations. Challenged his conclusion that because there isn't a better test out there we might as well continue using one that is known to cause more harm than good. He dodged the conflict of interest question and essentially told us to go back to Brooklyn.
There were no other dissenting views in the room. He ignored my question as to whether someone who earns close to $8 million dollars a year off this test should disclose their conflict of interest when promoting a test so indiscriminately. He responded to Sam's question re: the data that shows en masse the PSA to be more harmful than good by bringing up the wife of a former patient who was diagnosed with early prostate cancer to go on record and "teach us" why the PSA saved her husband's life. The audience clapped. The intellectual dishonesty was tough to watch. He concluded by saying that Elizabeth Hasselbeck is on board with his approach, as we should be.
All in all, an enormously frustrating event to attend. But glad to stand up against the shameless exploitation of our patients and our healthcare system for financial gain.
Now, what to do with this lousy t-shirt.
Lenox Hill Hospital, part of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, is offering a free informative evening on Thursday, January 8th from 6-7:30 p.m. with David Samadi, MD, chair of urology and chief of robotic surgery, about what women can do to help keep the men in their lives healthy and happy.
I include excerpts of Jonathan's report on Facebook without further comment:
Unsurprisingly, there was no conflict of interest disclosure. Gross deception as he described "screening" as a uniformly good thing that the government is trying to take away in order to save money. Characterizing women as emotional, shop-a-holics and then exploiting their worries over their husbands' health to promote evidence-less medicine for profit was also a highlight. That an academic medical center like North Shore-LIJ Health System allowed this to happen is deeply problematic.
There were no other dissenting views in the room. He ignored my question as to whether someone who earns close to $8 million dollars a year off this test should disclose their conflict of interest when promoting a test so indiscriminately. He responded to Sam's question re: the data that shows en masse the PSA to be more harmful than good by bringing up the wife of a former patient who was diagnosed with early prostate cancer to go on record and "teach us" why the PSA saved her husband's life. The audience clapped. The intellectual dishonesty was tough to watch. He concluded by saying that Elizabeth Hasselbeck is on board with his approach, as we should be.
All in all, an enormously frustrating event to attend. But glad to stand up against the shameless exploitation of our patients and our healthcare system for financial gain.
Now, what to do with this lousy t-shirt.