Trusting pharmaceutical-backed studies
Word on how Merck marketed Vioxx throught clinical "studies". Lost of chatter on this topic recently. Roy Poses provides a good place to start:
This article appears to be the first to provide evidence that pharmaceutical companies may deliberately disguise marketing efforts as clinical research. This is a real achievement, since obviously the companies involved make every effort to hide what they are doing, and it only through discovery during litigation did the facts come out.

MedBlog Power 8
Due to traveling and intermittent blogging, the Power 8 will return in September.

Doctors are not barbers
Here's why.

Do surgeons intimidate nurses?
A commenter at Maggie Mahar's blog recounts a story about how nurses were hesitant to speak up after a sponge count. The surgeons were civil, but the observer noted a climate of fear.
Change needs to start at the academic medical centers, where the majority of surgeons are trained. In these institutions, top surgeons are generally revered, and this fosters a hierarchical climate.
Residents and rotating medical students pick up on that. If institutions want to seriously empower support staff to speak up, it needs to start in academia.

Never events
Buckeye Surgeon points to a naively written column supporting not paying for hospital "never" events.
There is plenty of nuance that is missing from article, and I'd like to refer you to WhiteCoat's excellent Reader Take on the issue a few months ago.

Interview with Dr. Robert M. Bernstein on hair transplantation
This is the debut of the HairLossFight.com Hair Loss Information Audio Show, featuring the esteemed Dr. Robert M. Bernstein. Dr. Bernstein goes into considerable detail when answering our questions on hair restoration surgery, follicular unit extraction, follicular unit transplantation, important considerations when deciding to have a transplant, hair cloning, female hair loss and much more.