Hi, I'm Joe Graydon.

I'm Terry Graydon.

Welcome to this podcast of the People's Pharmacy, where we bring you the stories behind the health headlines.

This podcast is brought to you by Redux Industries, makers of utterly smooth body cream.

800-345-7339 on the web at utter cream.com.

The history of medicine is strewn with reversals, from hormone replacement therapy to whether you should eat eggs for breakfast.

This is the People's Pharmacy with Terry and Joe Graden.

How do we make sense of medical flip-flops?

In theory, doctors nowadays practice evidence-based medicine.

In practice, however, many treatments are still based on custom and belief, rather than solid scientific data.

Should doctors get excited about drugs that lower cholesterol or blood sugar unless they also reduce the risk of illness and death?

When does screening make sense? And when does it cause more harm than good?

Coming up on the People's Pharmacy, find out how to understand medical reversals.

First, this news.

In the People's pharmacy health headlines, patient safety experts from Johns Hopkins University

estimate that more than 250,000 Americans die each year because of medical mistakes.

That makes health care errors, the third leading

cause of death in the United States, right after heart attacks and cancer. The team of Hopkins

researchers points out that getting an accurate assessment of deaths due to medical mishaps is challenging.

That is in large measure because there is no system for collecting these data.

The CDC, which is responsible for gathering mortality statistics, does not count errors as a cause

of death, partly because death certificates don't have a code for diagnostic errors and medical

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