Home alone with a wakeful newborn, I could shower so quickly that the mirror didn't fog and the backs of my knees stayed dry. The one-minute hair conditioner was too slow for me.

Addiction might be redefined not as a character flaw but as a "biochemical deficit management." Our emotional habits will become an accepted factor of good health, along with slogans like "Heartache can be harmful to your unborn children."

Given the ... multidisciplinary philosophy, I was surprised by the absence of alternative pain approaches - the whole spectrum of cranial-sacral massage, healing-touch therapy, and other hands-on skills that are a lifeline to many people with chronic pain. Alternative therapie are hard to evaluate, but that's no reason not to explore them.

Home alone with a wakeful newborn, I could shower so quickly that the mirror didn't fog and the backs of my knees stayed dry. The one-minute hair conditioner was too slow for me.

Hasn't anyone thought to look at outcomes as a logical way to figure out what really works? Not until recently. That tells you how far out of the picture the patient has been.

Simple intervention - the time spent with a patient - is a very powerful ingredient of the patient-doctor contract. The evidence is against the traditions such as surgery for back pain being true - the evidence says it doesn't work.

This is a truism of child-raising, of course - whatever you give special time and attention to cooking, your children will despise and reject, with annoying gagging sounds.