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For more than a hundred years, National Geographic has brought the world's furthest flung corners into American living rooms. Offering glimpses of such wonders as Neanderthal language patters, Cambodian Buddhist temples, and caterpillars that fire feces at a velocity of 4.3 feet per second, the magazine has fueled the imaginations of countless armchair explorers. Brooke speaks with Robert Poole, who chronicled the magazine's history in a new book.
Medical reporters play a vital role in documenting hospital practices, but the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA is making it increasingly difficult for them to do so. Andrew Holtz is a freelance medical reporter based in Portland, Oregon and was the former head of the Association of Health Care Journalists. He tells Brooke how HIPAA is giving hospitals the power to shut out journalists.
We’ve all heard alarming stories about the extent to which pharmaceutical companies have their hands in what appear to be objective studies on their products. So it comes as a great relief to many patients and physicians alike that there are medical journals to sniff out the real breakthroughs from the steaming piles of marketing hype. But can the peer-reviewed paragons of probity really escape the conflicts of interest that plague medical research in general? Bob takes a look at the story that’s not so evident in the pages of medical journals.
The hydrogen economy that President Bush has embraced is getting mixed reviews from both industry groups and environmentalists, making it very difficult for energy consumers to get the straight story. But it may be discrepancies between the science and the policy that are polluting the reporting. Brooke speaks to Dr. Daniel Kamman about energizing the coverage of the hydrogen debate.
