The Accad and Koka Report

Latest Episodes:

Ep. 106 Geoffrey Rose’s Untenable Theory of Population Health Jan 28, 2020

Show notes

Geoffrey Rose published The Strategy of Preventive Medicine in 1992 and thus gave birth to the "Population Health" movement. This podcast episode critically examines Rose's influential ideas.

LINKS:

Geoffrey Rose The Strategy of Preventive Medicine (Amazon)

Geoffrey Rose. Sick Individuals and Sick Population. Reprinted in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (open access)

Michel Accad Moving Mountains: A Socratic Challenge to the Theory and Practice of Population Medicine(Book website)

Slide deck for the talk presented at the 2018 AAPS meeting. The talk is available on YouTube here.

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Make a small donation on our Patreon page on and join our discussion group or receive a free book.

Ep. 105 Privatizing the NHS: Who Profits? Jan 10, 2020

Show notes

Our guest is Dr. Bob Gill, producer of the documentary The Great NHS Heist. We discuss what life in the NHS is like, how it differs from practice in the United States, and most importantly, Dr. Gill's fears of what is undermining the mission of the NHS - a hostile takeover by American corporate interests.

GUEST:

Dr. Bob Gill: Twitter

LINKS:

WATCH ON Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thegreatnhsheist

SUPPORT THE SHOW:

Make a small donation on our Patreon page on and join our discussion group or receive a free book.

Ep. 104 Physician-Assisted Suicide: Why and Why Not Jan 01, 2020

Show notes

Many physicians feel ambivalent about assisted suicide and neither endorse the practice nor outright condemn it. As a result, they also avoid discussing the topic altogether. Our guest is Dr. Adam Cifu, who kindly agreed to engage in a conversation on this difficult question.

GUEST:

Adam Cifu, MD: University of Chicago website and Twitter

Books by Adam Cifu: Ending Medical Reversaland Symptom to Diagnosis

LINKS:

FREE e-Book: "A Deadly Choice for the Medical Profession"

WATCH ON YOUTUBE:

Watch the episode on our YouTube channel.

SUPPORT THE SHOW:

Make a small donation on our Patreon page on and join our discussion group or receive a free book.

Ep. 103 Ok, dinosaur: Skeptical Scalpel on the State of Surgical Education Dec 25, 2019

Show notes

Our guest is the highly successful and widely respected blogger who writes anonymously under the pen name “Skeptical Scalpel.” He is a former Chairman of Surgery at an academic institution and we conversed about the state of surgical education and its present-day challenges.

GUEST:

Twitter, blog, and author page at Physician's Weekly

LINKS:

SUPPORT THE SHOW:

Make a small donation on our Patreon page on and join our discussion group or receive a free

Ep. 102 Curriculum Subverted: An Academic Leader Pushes Back Against ‘Woke’ Medical Education Dec 12, 2019

Show notes

Should the medical school curriculum include health inequity, climate change, and gun control? Our guest is Professor Stanley Goldfarb, author of a recent and controversial op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the politicization of medical education.

GUEST:

Stanley Goldfarb, MD: Professional website

LINKS:

"Take Two Aspirins and Call Me by My Pronouns" (WSJ, Sep 12, 2019)

"An Open Letter to Our Former Dean, Stanley Goldfarb" (Medscape, Sep 20, 2019)

"Social Justice and Educating Our Physicians" (WSJ, Editorial Board, Sep 19, 2019)

RELATED EPISODES:

Ep. 43 Doctors and Guns: Where Is the Lane? (with guest Pradheep Shanker, MD)

Ep. 75 Bridging Health and Community (with guest Pritpal Tamber, MBChB)

Ep. 58 The Rise and Fall of the American Medical School (with guest Milton Packer, MD)

Ep. 46 Reforming Medical Education: Beyond the Usual Platitudes (with guest Adam Cifu, MD)

SUPPORT THE SHOW:

Make a small donation on our Patreon page on and join our discussion group or receive a free

WATCH ON YOUTUBE:

Watch the episode on our YouTube channel

Ep. 100 Can We Trust Generic Drugs? The Ranbaxy Whistleblower Narrates the Pharma Scandal of the Century Nov 20, 2019

Show notes

Dinesh Thakur

Generic drugs represent 90% of the pharmaceutical market. Their use has been encouraged through decades of favorable legislation and subsidies, with authorities claiming they are as safe and effective as brand name drugs. Yet generic preparations tainted with impurities are being reported with increasing frequency. What should doctors and the public know about generic drug manufacture? Our guest is the chemist who was at the center of the most important scandal to rock the global pharmaceutical industry in decades.

GUEST:

Dinesh Thakur Twitter and Website

LINKS:

Bottles of Lies by Katherine Eban

RELATED EPISODES:

Ep. 15 Lethal Regulation: The 1962 FDA Amendments (with guest Mary Ruwart)

SUPPORT THE SHOW:

Make a small donation on our Patreon page on and join our discussion group or receive a free book.

WATCH THE SHOW:

Watch the episode on our YouTube channel

Ep. 99 Health Policy Should Focus on Choice Nov 15, 2019

Show notes

David Balat

A health policy of choice—not of constraints—is what we need, says our guest David Balat. He is currently the Director of the Right on Healthcare initiative with Texas Public Policy Foundation. He has a broad base of experience throughout the healthcare spectrum with special expertise in healthcare finance. He is a former Congressional candidate in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District and a seasoned hospital executive with more than 20 years of healthcare industry leadership and executive management experience.

David is focused on education and advocacy in an effort to simplify coverage that is too expensive, complicated, and untrustworthy. He is an ardent advocate of Physicians and believes the restoration of the Physician/Patient relationship is critical to fixing our dysfunctional system. He often volunteers of his time to help families navigate their bills and how to understand their benefits.

GUEST:

David Balat: Twitter and Webpage at the Texas Public Policy Foundation

LINKS:

“Uninsured by Choice or by Circumstances?” (from The Hill, September 2019)

Free to Care Coalition

SUPPORT THE SHOW:

Make a small donation on our Patreon page and join our discussion group or receive a free book.

WATCH THE SHOW:

Watch the episode on our YouTube Channel

Ep. 98 Psychiatry v. Antipsychiatry Nov 09, 2019

Show notes

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

As a medical discipline, psychiatry has often been the target of severe criticism, particularly in the last 50 to 60 years. Is the criticism valid or not? What is the outlook for the science of mental illness and the practice of psychiatry? Our guest today defends his chosen medical specialty.

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA, is a Staff Psychiatrist at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and an Adjunct Professor at the Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School of Addiction Studies. His clinical interests have been in acute care, geriatric psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, and addiction psychiatry. He currently practices addiction psychiatry, providing psychiatric consultation on patient care to the professional staff, and lectures on the neurobiology, epidemiology, and the clinical aspects of addiction psychiatry.

Dr. Dawson completed his training in psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin where he was a research fellow. Scholarly interests include biological psychiatry, consciousness studies, and the medical, philosophical, and political aspects of psychiatry. In his spare time, he writes a blog about some of these topics called Real Psychiatry.

GUEST:

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA: Twitter and website “Real Psychiatry”

LINKS:

Selected blog posts by Dr. Dawson:

RELATED EPISODE:

Ep. 71 Psychiatry: Past, Present, and Future (with guest Paul McHugh, MD)

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Make a small donation on our Patreon page and join our discussion group or receive a free book.

Ep. 97 Evidence-Based Economics: What the Doctor Ordered? Nov 06, 2019

Show notes

Peter G. Klein, PhD

Will the randomized control trial bring more clarity and certainty to economic science? Is “evidence-based economics” something to be hailed as a welcome innovation or should it be appraised with a more sober attitude? To examine this topic and discuss the relative place of randomized trials in economics and medicine we have as our guest Peter G. Klein, W. W. Caruth Chair and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. Professor Klein is also the Carl Menger Research Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He obtained his PhD in Economics from the University of California Berkeley, and his BA from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

His field of interest is in the area of the economics of entrepreneurship and business organization. He taught previously at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Georgia, the Copenhagen Business School, and the University of Missouri, and served as a Senior Economist with the Council of Economic Advisers. He is the author of 5 books and numerous peer-reviewed articles.

GUEST:

Peter G. Klein: Twitter and academic web page

LINKS:

Klein, P. “New Nobel Winners Are Latest Bad Science for Economic Theory” (Article on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website).

SUPPORT THE SHOW:

Make a small donation on our Patreon page and join our discussion group or receive a free book.

WATCH THE SHOW:

View the episode on our YouTube Channel