Today's Times: warning systems, Kennedy's consults, glass, healthcare quality

Today's New York Times has a Boston flavor.

In a Page One story about artificial joint failures, Dr. Henrik Malchau of Massachusetts General Hospital says patients in the United States face double the risk of needing a replacement procedure for their artificial knees and hips compared to patients in countries with databases that can turn up flawed products or procedures. Malchau worked for a decade at a national registry in Sweden.

In the Science Times section, columnist Dr. Lawrence K. Altman relates how Senator Edward M. Kennedy convened experts from six medical centers across the country to advise him on treatment for his malignant brain tumor. (See extensive Globe coverage here.) The senator ultimately decided on surgery at Duke University, which "embarrassed the Massachusetts General Hospital," the Times story says.

Former Globe reporter Charles Kenney's book "The Best Practice: How the New Quality Movement Is Transforming Medicine" gets a critical look from Dr. Abigail Zuger, who says he is "trying to describe a target in motion, with roots almost as tangled as the chaos it seeks to eradicate." Kenney has consulted for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts on the insurer's quality and safety initiative.

And David A. Weitz, a Harvard physics professor, weighs in on the mysteries of glass and its transition for liquid to solid, joking that “there are more theories of the glass transition than there are theorists who propose them.”