Nortin Hadler

Dr. Nortin Hadler
The Opposition Party

A rheumatologist and professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Nortin Hadler has been known to rigorously examine the statistics generated by his medical colleagues' practices for over three decades now. After which, he arrives at startling conclusions about their effectiveness.

Dr. Nortin Hadler is also credited by leading a complete re- thinking about the treatment of back pain, which he finds excessive. He then wrote an editorial accompanying a landmark study in The Journal of the American Medical Association two years ago. He suggested that the benefits of surgery for back pain are overrated.

In his book entitled The Last Well Person: How To Stay Well despite The Health- Care System, Dr. Nortin Hadler took his case about cardiac care and other health issues to the public. He has also taken on heart treatment, testifying before the Congress and the Social Security Advisory Board and publishing papers arguing the every little data back up on the value of modern treatments such as bypass surgery and angioplasty.

Aside from all of those belief in resistance, Dr. Nortin Hadler is also recognized as one of those who strongly oppose other doctors' claim that repetitive stress injuries are brought about by the use of computer keyboards. This is because, according to them, people spend many hours in the same position doing the same task without breaks or variation, giving no time for stressed tissues to recover. Over how many period, such behavior can induce crippling changes in the sensitive areas of both the wrist and hand.

New York Times have run several articles regarding the subject. There were high rates of injury reported among data of entry workers, telephone operators and media men who do a lot of tapping on the computer keyboard for many hours.

The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons estimated in 1984 that the problem cost the nation more than $27 billion a year in lost wages and medical care. It is an amount that could well have doubled at present since there has been more than a doubling in reported cases.

Repetitive stress injury has been dubbed by Dr. Marvin Dainoff, a psychologist of the Center for Ergonomic Research at Miami University in Ohio, as the "occupational disease of the 1990's." So it is with Dr. Laura Punnett, an ergonomist and epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts, said that "many workers did not realize that the problem as being job- related."

With all those words from fellow practitioners in the medical field, this urged Dr. Nortin Hadler to dispute whether the problem is real. He then found out that musculoskeletal activity that is ``reasonable, comfortable and customary and which can be repeated without undue distress,'' such as typing on a computer, is unlikely to result in tissue damage.