The Glamour of New
The Glamour of New
Joy Stepinski, MSN, RN-BC
January 3, 2026
Happy New Year! For most of 2025, we proceeded through the seven assumptions that drive excessive medical care, as described by Dr. H. Gilbert Welch in "Less Medicine, More Health." Considering these ideas can lead to empowerment when making informed medical decisions. There are just two more assumptions remaining!
The sixth assumption is that newer is always better [1]. One of the examples is the drug thalidomide. Created by a German pharmaceutical company in the 1950s, the drug was marketed as Contergan. Its function was to reduce anxiety and improve sleep. A few years later, an English company licensed the medication as Distaval, touting the drug’s safety and well-tolerance. Within ten years, babies were born to mothers who had ingested thalidomide. The most prominent finding was the missing limbs of these children, a devastating side effect of the drug.
A more recent example is the drug Vioxx. Prescribed to patients with arthritis, the drug was removed from the market within about five years because of the adverse effects of heart attacks and strokes.
There is always some glamour in new medications, new procedures, or new treatments. “New” may offer hope. “New” might just fix the problem. Yet as Welch highlights, the value of newness may not bring the best answer. Sometimes, waiting and seeing if the new treatment offers improvement may be better. For example, in the process of new drugs, only a small number of people are initially tested before the medication is approved by the FDA here in the United States. The full safety profile, including side effects and serious events, may not be known until thousands of people have taken the medication.
Most often, current illnesses are not life-threatening. With chronic diseases, there can be more time to decide on treatment and investigate its performance and success. New may be important to pursue, but sometimes it may not be so glamorous after all!
Reference:
1. Welch, H. G. (2015). Less medicine, more health: 7 assumptions that drive too much medical care. Beacon Press.