AHCJ has strengthened its ethical standards on funding for the annual conference, enhancing the ethics code established at our inception 20 years ago to guard against undue influence by outside groups or the perception of such influence.
You can find evidence of the recent changes in the conference program and registration form: Continue reading
Photo: Gideon Gil/StatDr. Oscar J. Benavidez (left), Dr. Allan M. Goldstein and other doctors at MassGeneral Hospital for Children used a 3-D model of the twins’ anatomy during surgery to separate them.
The twin girls were joined at the abdomen and pelvis. They had two heads and four arms, but three legs. They had two hearts, but shared a liver, a bladder, and other organs. One was active, the other subdued and growing weaker.
Some 20 hospitals had said they couldn’t help the girls, who had been born nearly two years earlier in a village in Africa. But Dr. Allan M. Goldstein, surgeon-in-chief at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, said yes, they would consider operating to separate the twins. Continue reading
A few months ago, two of our Politico health reporters Dan Diamond and Rachana Pradhan, told me they had heard that Tom Price, then the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, had been traveling on chartered aircraft.
But they had to prove it. And they had to prove it meticulously, in a way that HHS could not dispute. Continue reading
Photo: Sanofi Pasteur via Flickr
The May 2 special issue of JAMA is one to bookmark, because its theme is integral to the work of all journalists: reporting on conflicts of interest (COI). And the best part? The whole thing is free to the public — no paywalls.
As much as covering medical research is making sense of the numbers — statistics, p values, absolute risk, the number needed to treat and the rest — it’s also about good, old-fashioned journalism when it looking at all angles of a story. Continue reading
AHCJ’s board of directors has voted unanimously to add a new item to its Statement of Principles, the association’s compendium of professional and ethical guidelines.
These principles lie at the core of AHCJ’s mission to promote the highest standards of health care journalism, and have been little changed since the organization was founded.
Adding a new principle is a significant move that may prove especially relevant in the years ahead. Continue reading