Dean Edell

Doctor Dean Edell (born 1942) is an American physician and broadcaster in the United States who hosts the Dr. Dean Edell radio program, a syndicated radio talk show which is on the air daily on weekday afternoons.

Private life
Born in New York state in 1942 to a Jewish family, Edell studied zoology at Cornell University and earned his M.D. from Cornell University Medical School in 1967. He later opened a private ophthalmology practice in San Diego, California and acted as an instructor of Anatomy and a clinical instructor at the University of California, San Diego. Edell soon left private practice. He later said that he "... didn't like medicine originally...I kind of found the thing I love the most, which is really the information and communicating the information". 

He spent the next several years experimenting with lifestyles that included buying and selling antiques, acting as a silversmith and goldsmith, organic farming, painting, living in a '50s-vintage bus and engaging in a self-described hand-to-mouth existence that included scavenging for food thrown out by grocery stores. During this period he describes himself as a hippie.

In the mid 1970s, Edell served as medical director of the County Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation Center in Sacramento, California. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1980, and currently lives in a rural area in Marin County.

Edell's sister is a Hollywood costume designer.

Edell maintains collections of Chinese art, Chinese snuff bottles, and rare books on anatomy.

On October 5 2007, Christie's held an auction of Edell's anatomy art collection. 

The Dr. Dean Edell Radio Program
In 1978, Edell began broadcasting regularly on KGO AM 810 radio in San Francisco. The Dr. Dean Edell radio program has been in continuous production since then, and is currently (2005) syndicated to 90 markets by Premiere Radio Networks, and airs weekend mornings on Extreme XM on XM Radio.

The program's format includes commentary from Edell and medical-related calls from listeners. He reports recent developments in medical science and exposes fraud whenever he sees it, which is often, particularly in the area of food supplements and holistic healing. He frequently summarizes complicated medical material into language that is easily understood by laymen, and is fond of tackling controversial concepts from a viewpoint based on the scientific method.

During most of the program, Edell takes medical questions from callers and provides answers as capable. Edell is extremely critical of drugs such as Ritalin and the increasing number of diagnoses for attention deficit disorder (ADD) among children, based partially on Edell's own experience as someone who if younger might have been diagnosed with ADD. He also is very outspoken in his criticism of routine circumcision.

Edell's positions on social and political issues tend to be liberal or libertarian. He is critical of religion in general.

Other radio and television broadcasts
Edell also anchors Medical Minutes, a series of ten weekly radio medical reports. He also hosts a quarterly series of TV specials called "Medical Breakthroughs presented by HealthCentral," which are syndicated to local stations via The HealthCentral Network. Up until March 2007, Dr. Dean did nightly health reports for KGO-TV (San Francisco Bay Area) newscasts. He has now retired from these regular television reports.

Periodicals
Dr. Edell was the author of the "Edell Health Letter", published from 1982 until 1994. He also contributes articles to HealthCentral.com, a prominent online health news organization.

Books

 * The Brush & The Stone, Art Media Resources, 1999
 * Eat, Drink, & Be Merry, Harper, 2000
 * Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Healthiness, Harper, 2005

Websites
In 1999, Edell launched the aforementioned HealthCentral, a website featuring both personally authored content and general health-related information with the mission of "becoming your favorite consumer health information service." Edell lost his ownership position in this company when it filed for bankruptcy in 2001. The site is now owned and operated by Washington, D.C.-based The HealthCentral Network. The site no longer publishes new content by Edell, though his advice column and articles which predate the bankruptcy are featured prominently.

Dr. Dean Edell Reading Glasses
Edell has endorsed and lent his name to a line of reading glasses sold in the United States since the mid-1980s.

Awards
Edell has won media awards for his work, including the C. Everett Koop Media Award competition, the Edward R. Murrow Award, a national Emmy, the American Cancer Society recognition award, and the American Heart Association award.