1-1banner
 
medpundit
 

 
Commentary on medical news by a practicing physician.
 

 
Google
  • Epocrates MedSearch Drug Lookup




  • MASTER BLOGS





    "When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov




    ''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.''
    -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.




    "Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel



    email: medpundit-at-ameritech.net

    or if that doesn't work try:

    medpundit-at-en.com



    Medpundit RSS


    Quirky Museums and Fun Stuff


    Who is medpundit?


    Tech Central Station Columns



    Book Reviews:
    Read the Review

    Read the Review

    Read the Review

    More Reviews

    Second Hand Book Reviews

    Review


    Medical Blogs

    rangelMD

    DB's Medical Rants

    Family Medicine Notes

    Grunt Doc

    richard[WINTERS]

    code:theWebSocket

    Psychscape

    Code Blog: Tales of a Nurse

    Feet First

    Tales of Hoffman

    The Eyes Have It

    medmusings

    SOAP Notes

    Obels

    Cut-to -Cure

    Black Triangle

    CodeBlueBlog

    Medlogs

    Kevin, M.D

    The Lingual Nerve

    Galen's Log

    EchoJournal

    Shrinkette

    Doctor Mental

    Blogborygmi

    JournalClub

    Finestkind Clinic and Fish Market

    The Examining Room of Dr. Charles

    Chronicles of a Medical Mad House

    .PARALLEL UNIVERSES.

    SoundPractice

    Medgadget
    Health Facts and Fears

    Health Policy Blogs

    The Health Care Blog

    HealthLawProf Blog

    Facts & Fears

    Personal Favorites

    The Glittering Eye

    Day by Day

    BioEdge

    The Business Word Inc.

    Point of Law

    In the Pipeline

    Cronaca

    Tim Blair

    Jane Galt

    The Truth Laid Bear

    Jim Miller

    No Watermelons Allowed

    Winds of Change

    Science Blog

    A Chequer-Board of Night and Days

    Arts & Letters Daily

    Tech Central Station

    Blogcritics

    Overlawyered.com

    Quackwatch

    Junkscience

    The Skeptic's Dictionary



    Recommended Reading

    The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams


    Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 by Elizabeth Fenn


    Intoxicated by My Illness by Anatole Broyard


    Raising the Dead by Richard Selzer


    Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy


    The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks


    The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo


    A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich




    MEDICAL LINKS

    familydoctor.org

    American Academy of Pediatrics

    General Health Info

    Travel Advice from the CDC

    NIH Medical Library Info

     



    button

    Wednesday, December 11, 2002

    Celebrity Medical Watch: Courtney Love is upset that she’s mentioned in the California Medical Board’s report on cosmetic specialist Dr. Jules Lusman. Lusman had a habit of charging patients $1,000 for visits without documenting why he was seeing them and giving them prescriptions for various narcotics and sedatives, often along with prescriptions for syringes and needles. (This is not common medical practice.)

    I don’t blame Love for being upset. The Medical Board should have done more to protect the identity of the patients it mentions in the investigation. It should have been enough to identify her as “C.L.” rather than “a fairly well-known musician, age thirty-six when she first saw Lussman on June 25, 2001,” and then go on to mention that she’s also known as “Ms. C.-L.C., as she had at one point been married to Mr. C., who passed away,” and that the year of her birth was 1965. Then, too, it appears that someone at the Medical Board leaked her identity to the media:

    While a spokesperson for the board could not reveal the identity of "C.L.," two sources familiar with the investigation told the Los Angeles Times it was Love.

    They could have used more discretion in the report. It’s a very detailed rundown of the various maladies C.L. claimed to have when she saw Lusman. No one deserves to have their medical records hung out in public like that. Medical board reports are public documents, and they should be. But a case could have been made against Lusman without revealing so much about his famous client.

    Speaking of Celebrities: Courtney Love’s troubles began because her friend, Winona Ryder, used the same doctor to get drugs. The whole thing came to light during Ryder’s trial for shoplifting. When arrested, Ryder was found to have not only store merchandise in her purse, but a virtual pharmacopeia:

    On the day of her December 2001 arrest, officials say Ryder (or, Emily Thompson, as she was known around Rite-Aid) was found in possession of a syringe, a bottle of Aleve filled with Vicoprofen, Vicodin, morphine sulphate and Percodan (but, alas, no Aleve) and a yellow plastic pillbox containing Valium and Percocet.

    Her lawyers say she has a “pain management problem,” but it looks like her problem isn’t managing pain so much as managing to fit all of her drugs into her purse and to find ways to pay for them that can’t be traced.

    Courtney Love is also on record using a popular (and often overused) medical diagnosis to excuse Ryder’s behavior:

    In November, Courtney Love, a famous female rocker herself, told the New York Daily News that Ryder didn't deserve jail time for shoplifting because "she's got [attention deficit disorder] almost as bad as me." Love spoke of previous shopping trips when the two lost track of what had been purchased and what hadn't.

    Please.
     

    posted by Sydney on 12/11/2002 06:30:00 AM 0 comments

    0 Comments:

    Post a Comment

    This page is powered by Blogger, the easy way to update your web site.

    Main Page

    Ads

    Home   |   Archives

    Copyright 2006