Pelzman’s Picks: Medicine in the Age of ‘Fake News’

• “Being met with genuine surprise when walking into a patient room is nothing new for me. Race has been at the center of many of my experiences during medical school and residency training,” writes Ofole Mgbako, MD, reflecting on the challenges of feeling like a “unicorn” in medicine ~ The Unicorn (JAMA)
• Jay Hancock and Sydney Lupkin explore a practice drug companies use that essentially prevents patients from accessing lower cost generics ~ Secretive ‘Rebate Trap’ Keeps Generic Drugs for Diabetes and Other Ills Out of Reach (Kaiser Health News)
• Is a 2012 government program intended to reduce readmissions for Medicare recipients harming these patients instead? Paula Span discusses recent evidence on the program’s unintended consequences ~ Older Patients Are Not Returning as Often to Hospitals. Is That a Good Thing? (New York Times)
• Banning research on embryo editing without considering more responsible ways to use the technology “would be unwise,” write George Q. Daley, MD, PhD, Robin Lovell-Badge, PhD, and Julie Steffann, MD, PhD ~ After the Storm — A Responsible Path for Genome Editing (New England Journal of Medicine)
• Raina M. Merchant, MD, MSHP, and David A. Asch, MD, MBA, explore the challenges of separating fact from fiction in the world of “fake news” ~ Protecting the Value of Medical Science in the Age of Social Media and “Fake News” (JAMA)
• A recent analysis found an association between gifts opioid manufacturers made to doctors and opioid-related overdose deaths, writes Abby Goodnough ~ Study Links Drug Maker Gifts for Doctors to More Overdose Deaths (New York Times)
• Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, PhD, MPH, April Oh, PhD, and William M. P. Klein, PhD, examine how the field of medicine is handling the spread of false or inaccurate health information ~ Addressing Health-Related Misinformation on Social Media (JAMA)

Fred N. Pelzman, MD, of Weill Cornell Internal Medicine Associates and weekly blogger for MedPage Today, follows what’s going on in the world of primary care medicine. Pelzman’s Picks is a compilation of links to blogs, articles, tweets, journal studies, opinion pieces, and news briefs related to primary care that caught his eye.