For at least several decades, telling the elderly to get an annual flu shot seemed like a no brainer. After all, seniors are often in more fragile health, and a bout of influenza can be debilitating. Moreover, it can lead to pneumonia and other serious conditions.
But new data suggests that the flu shot doesn’t actually reduce deaths among the elderly. This contradicts a study published in 2007 that suggested that influenza immunization can actually reduce deaths in community dwelling elders. If the flu shot doesn’t save lives, is it still “worth it” to spend on promotion and delivery of the …read more

The NYT reported this weekend on something that’s been bugging all of us in the oncology world for quite some time. How much should we pay for drugs that seem to slow down cancer’s advance, but that don’t prolong the life of a patient? Some of these drugs lengthen “progression free survival” or other markers (tumors may shrink, quality of life may be slightly better), but they do not eliminate the cancer, cure the patient, or add more time.
The article reports on bevacizumab (trade name Avastin), a drug used for metastatic colon, lung, and breast cancer that cuts back on …read more