Thoughtful public discussion of the iatrogenic pandemic, beginning with an insistence upon demystification of all medical matters, will not be dangerous to the commonweal.  Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis Abstract: The incidence of malignant melanoma (MM) has risen sharply over the past few decades, while the melanoma death rate has barely budged.  This suggests that lesions not formerly called MM are now labeled as such.  The trend to reclassify benign lesions as malignant is called “diagnostic drift.”  The lowering threshold of dermatopathologists for diagnosing MM and aggressive screening of the populace are key factors in this spurious epidemic. About author: Mary Iaculli is a third-year medical student at the University of … Continue reading →