Week-ending roundup of health care news gems you may have missed

• Flu Follies:  CNN’s Piers Morgan Falls Ill Days After Getting Flu Shot On The Air From Dr. Oz.

• Should Journalists Cite Material from Predatory Journals? – Scholarly Open Access blog.

• Eve Harris, who recently took a fulltime job as a patient navigator at UCSF,  published her “coming out” piece, as she calls it -  “Skin in the game.”  She writes that she intends to use her blog to build on some of the themes foreshadowed in this piece:  “cancer-related lifestyle consequences, screening harms and benefits, shared decision making, treatment of DCIS, health literacy, patient experience and more.”

• An interesting point-counterpoint on the website of the American College of Surgeons, “Are there significant advantages for robotic vs. laparoscopic surgery for abdominal procedures?” In reaction, the surgeon known as the Skeptical Scalpel tweeted, “Note absence of data by robot proponent.”

• “A Check on Physicals,” by Jane Brody of the New York Times, including an examination of the “sales pitch for the Princeton Longevity Center’s “comprehensive exam” promises, for $5,300, to take “your health beyond the annual physical.”

• When the Cancer Research UK charity posted this photo on its Facebook page, it caused quite a kerfuffle in some circles.

The Facebook page itself lit up with comments, some calling it “insulting…naive…arrogant…ignorant…terrible…at best badly expressed and at worst dangerous” and much more.  Others wrote their support.  Science writer Ed Yong, a former public information officer for Cancer Research UK, tweeted that it was “Just *astonishing* arrogance in the face of complex biology.”  Other science journalists tweeted that it was “actually cruel…astonishing but unsurprising.”  The charity later blogged an apology of sorts – “A Future Free From the Fear of Cancer? Yes, But…“- which didn’t satisfy many observers.

And, after all that, we end with some humor:

• The Daily Show’s “medical correspondent, Dr. Aasif Mandvi” on the “lie-enhancing drugs – Fibodrine, Deceptafran, Fraudulax, Perjursil, Defamatol… ” that might explain Lance Armstrong’s behavior.

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