For 10 years, Dr. Farrago, a family doctor here, has been the majordomo of said publication: an irreverent, intentionally sophomoric, sometimes scatological medical magazine called Placebo Journal. And though he is not a "House" fan, the product placement was just one example of Dr. Farrago's enterprising streak.
Doctoring is "an algorithmic job," said Dr. Farrago, 45. "You can't just make up things in medicine: 'Let's just try Jell-O.' So I want to do something creative."
There was the time at a medical conference he posted an advertisement for "Oxycotton Candy," parodying the frequently abused drug Oxycontin. Conference organizers "got so mad," he recalled, that "security said, 'You have to take it down.' "
And there were the bumper sticker slogans in Placebo Journal: "My other car was lost in a malpractice suit" and "Maybe Hippocrates was wrong?" Not to mention the magazine's selection ofsexually transmitted disease greeting cards: "Maybe we will date some more, get married and have babies, but until then I think you should know that I have a roaring case of scabies."
"I pride myself on a lot of the lowbrow stuff," Dr. Farrago said.
Ten thousand subscribers, he says, pay $28 a year for Placebo Journal, which is published every two months and skewers the health care system's half-baked mistakes, pokes fun at doctors, patients, insurers and drug companies, or just goes for the gross-out.
"My audiences are physicians," Dr. Farrago said. "They see all this stuff. They don't want to do differential diagnosis and read through complex cases. They just want to take this on the toilet bowl and laugh."
But if Dr. Farrago and two television producers succeed with their latest project, people could be seeing a different side of him. The producers are pitching a reality show in which Dr. Farrago would parachute into communities around the country and help overstretched family doctors care for patients for several days: sort of a medical "Supernanny."
"The goal is to take viewers into both of Doug's lives: the hard-working family practice physician who does everything he can to help his patients get well and stay that way, and the self-described 'King of Medicine' who uses his satirical skills to take on a health care system," according to Bruce Halford, a co-producer with Jeff Mackler.
Dr. Farrago (pronounced fa-RAY-go, like the word meaning hodgepodge) dreamed of being a professional boxer like his brother Matt until, he said, "I realized I wasn't that good."
He became a sports medicine trainer working with boxers, but after one of his boxers got pelted with urine-filled bottles while fighting in Mexico, "I kind of knew it was not my thing," he said, although he has remained close friends with the boxer Lou Savarese.
Then, before medical school, Dr. Farrago squatted to work on an electrical outlet, and to ease pain from a blown-out knee, "I put some towels behind my leg," he said. Voilà, a gizmo was born: the Knee Saver, a foam wedge to cushion one's crouch.
Thinking it would help baseball catchers, Dr. Farrago obsessively hawked it at spring training and to trainers, many of whom "were really rude," he said. (One said he would use it to defecate in the woods.) Then he read about the knee surgery of the Cleveland Indians catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. Dr. Farrago sent a Knee Saver to Mr. Alomar's orthopedic surgeon, and after first being told "he doesn't like it," he noticed Mr. Alomar using it during a division series game. It caught on, and was accepted in 2001 into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Dr. Farrago went on to create a short-lived Web venture to stream university medical talks to doctors, and then, 10 years ago, he started Placebo Journal.
"I guess I was burning out in this job," he said. "Everybody's got a monkey on their back, and they want to give you their monkey. They'd leave and feel good, but I'd go home with 25 monkeys."
Fancying itself the Mad magazine of the medical world, Placebo Journal features "True Stories of Medicine" and odd-looking X-rays submitted by doctors, as well as sections like "My Favorite Munchausen," about patients who invent or exaggerate medical problems. It loves jabbing Big Pharma and insurers; in 2005 Cigna HealthCare complained to Dr. Farrago's then-employer, a health system, when he printed a physician survey from the fictitious SickNa HealthCare, its logo like Cigna's tree, but full of dead leaves.
Doctors and patients are fair game, too. A full-page movie ad reads: "He smokes. He drinks too much. He never stops eating. He rarely gets off the couch. He is The American Patient."
A doctor's want ad seeks "a corrupt pharmacologist," able to "create and mass-produce tablets made of useless and harmless compounds, and be willing to sell them labeled as narcotics and/orfibromyalgia treatments."
And in a parody of opponents of Gardasil, the vaccine given to girls to prevent the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, Placebo Journal advertises "Godasil — the first and only faith-based vaccine," which "uses a higher power to bring about immunity for your little girl."
"It's sophomoric, it's black, it's dark," said Dr. Marc Grobman, an internist in Wilmington, Del., who displays the fake ads in his drug sample cabinet. One favorite: an ad for Sexapro, which erases sex drive. He has submitted several anecdotes of "silly things patients say," including the woman "who thought she had gotten diverticulitis after being stuck by the needles of a Christmas tree."
Dr. Theresa Langdon, a family practitioner in Portland, Ore., collects every installment, calling it an "adult medicine comic book" (her husband tracked down the debut issue for her birthday). "I balance it out by reading The New England Journal compulsively," she said.
More ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/health/21placebo.html?ref=arts
