Robert McNutt has been an associate editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association for 12 years and before associate editor at the Journal of General Internal Medicine. He is a professor of Mmdicine at the University of Wisconsin and Rush University Medical Center. He is also the director of outcomes research and strategy for ICLOPS, a data-registry company for Accountable Care Organizations and is the inventor of a pain care simulation program for patients with acute pain being tested with a grant from the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality.
Nortin M. Hadler is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Medical School. He trained at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the National Institutes of Health, and the Clinical Research Centre in London. He was certified a diplomate of the American Boards of Internal Medicine, Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology and Geriatrics. He joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina in 1973 and was promoted to professor of medicine and microbiology/immunology in 1985. For 30 years he has been a student of "the illness of work incapacity"; over 200 papers and 12 books bear witness to this interest. The third edition of Occupational Musculoskeletal Disorders (LW&W 2005) provides a ready resource as to his thinking on the regional musculoskeletal disorders. In the past decade, he turned his critical razor to much that is considered contemporary medicine at its finest. His assaults on medicalization and overtreatment appear in many editorials and commentaries and 5 recent monographs: The Last Well Person (MQUP 2004) and UNC Press' Worried Sick (2008), Stabbed in the Back (2009), Rethinking Aging (2011) and Citizen Patient (2013).
How Clinical Guidelines Can Fail Both Doctors and Patients
Any confusion over the recent news of cholesterol guidelines in the U.S. is perfectly understandable. On the one hand, the guidelines suggest that nearly half the population should use statins to stave off heart attacks and strokes.