Daily Rounds: Surgery Screwups; Santa Tripping; HIV Tests For All; Body Googling

Beth Israel Deaconess admits mishandling three spine operations - The Boston Globe "In all three cases, the surgeons apparently miscounted the patient’s vertebrae and operated on a vertebra directly above or below the diseased segment, said Dr. Kenneth Sands, senior vice president of health care quality at the Boston hospital." (Boston Globe)

Did 'Shrooms Send Santa And His Reindeer Flying? : NPR "Harvard biologist Donald Pfister claims that both people and reindeer ate the [hallucinogenic] mushrooms. "Reindeers flying — are they flying, or are your senses telling you they're flying because you're hallucinating?" he says." (npr.org) Study Fuels Debate Over Widespread HIV Testing And Its Cost - Kaiser Health News "The study is part of a growing body of evidence that HIV advocates say should buttress national guidelines recommending that doctors screen all adults for the incurable virus. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention backed that position. But, another panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a behind-the-scenes government panel that evaluates medical evidence and has a knack for arousing public outrage (see, mammography), hasn't come around to that view, advising doctors only to screen 'at-risk' people." (kaiserhealthnews.org)

New From Google: The Body Browser - NYTimes.com "Google’s Body Browser, a new, free 3-D tool that lets users rotate the body, peel back layers of it, and zoom in and zoom out, all from within an Internet browser window. It’s like a Gray’s Anatomy coloring book, come to life." (ell.blogs.nytimes.com)