Dr. Jamie Shandro

Stanford ER Doctor

Coming from the medical real, Jamie had some interesting insights into the negative effects of infectious action. First of all, she talked about medications that grew too quickly, most infamously Vioxx. Vioxx was very appealing to physicians because it in theory targetted only the areas that needed help. Even after research began showing that it raised the risk of a heart attack, it took several years for Merck to pull it. There are numerous other examples, including hydosteroids for spinal cord injuries, where new drugs were very aggresively promoted but ended up being only marginal better than previous ones, and sometimes had serious negative side effects. Yet Jamie didn’t solely blame pharmaceutical companies for this: according to her, the fact that people want things to work and think is new is better helped Vioxx go on for longer than it should have.

The second topic Jamie addressed was the role of media exposure in the medical world. First of all, celebrities often raise the profile disease. This is good in that it heightens awareness of a specific illness and might increase funding, but it also leads to a lot of unecessary testing and wasted resources (‘Doctor, are you sure it isn’t such and such illness?’). Second, medical shows such as ER and more recently Grey’s Anatomy give a heavily distorted view of what happens in an emergency room. This can lead to false expectations: rescussitation is successful 90% of time on TV, but only 5% in real life!

Finally, Jamie talked about some of the positive ways infectious action can contribute to the medical realm. A constant challenge is changing people’s behavior when it comes habits such as alcohol and drug abuse. Here infectious action might be effectively used to promote positive change. Obesity is another good example of an epidemic that could use some positive viral marketing!