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Etopia Media Medical News Network #22:

Harvard Medical School clinical instructor John Abramson discusses his Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine and its relevance to current medical issues

Cambridge, Massachusetts
October 5, 2004

By Marc Strassman
Reporter
Etopia Media Medical News Network
Etopia Media News Networks

John Abramson, family doc, lecturer, and author of Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine

John Abramson is a clinical lecturer in primary care at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. He's formerly a family doctor in Appalachia and in the Bay State. He's the author of Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine.

He's also the author of the recent (September 18, 2004) New York Times op-ed piece called "Information Is the Best Medicine".

He spoke today with Etopia Media Medical News Network about his book and how it applies to a number of current news stories involving the overdosing of the American public.

In Overdosed America, and in the interview, Dr. Abramson criticizes the takeover of medical practice by "commercial interests" whose "primary purpose is to increase corporate profits rather than to best improve my patients' health."

He discusses the increased risk and dubious effectiveness of the latest generation of anti-depressants, such as Zoloft, Prozac, and Paxil.

He argues against the over-prescription of drugs in place of a serious consideration of what is going on in people's lives and in the world around them. "Most of our sadness," he says, "comes from the way we're living our lives, and if we're going to improve, it usually requires a change in the way we are living our lives."

"People need to understand," he says, "that most of their health is determined by the way they live their life." Living right can reduce one's risk, for example, of heart disease, by as much as five-sixths. And that approach doesn't have the side effects of the statin drugs.

Dr. Abramson says we need a non-profit, public sector body to collect and sift drug trial results and information about the best health practices and communicate the results to the public.

He says it's not enough to keep putting more and more money into the health care system, without re-considering the way information is processed and decisions are made within that system.

Citing statistics showing the U.S. has the highest health industry costs and (within the 22 developed countries) the lowest level of overall health, he says that the U.S. medical system is the 72nd most cost effective one in the world.

Calling his reforms a "populist" issue, Dr. Abramson called on politicians and drug companies alike to move in a new direction for the sake of the country's health.

You can hear that interview by clicking here.

You can order a copy of Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine by clicking here.

Etopia Media Voting News #9:

Congresses passes the DOD Internet voting buck to the Election Assistance Commission; no comment yet from EAC

Washington, D.C.
October 8, 2004

By Marc Strassman
Reporter
Etopia Media Voting News
Etopia Media Political News Networks
Etopia Media News Networks

Commissioners of the United States Election Assistance Commission

As previously reported on Etopia Media Voting News, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to kill the SERVE Internet voting program for military and overseas voters and the U.S. Senate voted to delay but continue the program.

Now, as is customary, a House-Senate conference committee, this one assigned the task of reconciling the House- and Senate-passed versions of the 2005 Defense Authorization Bill, which contained the two different versions of what to do about military Internet voting, has issued its final report, which contains the House-Senate consensus on what to do about letting soldiers and ex-pats vote remotely over the Internet.

As can be seen by looking at Section 567 of the conference report, the U.S. Congress has opted neither to kill remote Internet voting (as called for in the House version) nor to delay and continue the program (as specified in the Senate version).

Instead, the Congress has chosen to allow remote military Internet voting only after "the Election Assistance Commission notifies the Secretary [of Defense] that the Commission has established electronic absentee voting guidelines and certifies that it will assistant the Secretary in carrying out the project."

A call from Etopia Media Voting News to the Election Assistance Commission for comment on their role in assigning themselves this crucial position in the process of creating an Internet voting platform and on their plans (if any) to develop "electronic absentee voting guidelines" or to assist the Department of Defense in carrying out remote, Internet, voting projects had not been returned as this report was posted on Friday, October 8th.

As long ago as 1997, requests had been made to the federal elections agency then responsible for developing voluntary voting standards, the Federal Elections Commission, asking it to create "electronic absentee voting guidelines," according to which potentially viable remote Internet voting systems could be certified for use by states.

This was never done, up until the time when responsibility for developing voluntary voting system standards was transferred from the FEC to the EAC, where now, apparently, it includes, as it always may have included, the option of developing "electronic absentee voting guidelines" for military, expatriate, and (possibly) domestic civilian remote Internet voting.

That's seven years, now, and counting, on adapting the American voting enterprise to take advantage of the latest in electronic technology.