A fascinating article in The Atlantic, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science" by David Freedman, profiles Dr. John Ioannidis, who says that as much as 90% of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed.
Why the tragic case of Dna Markingson and the culpability of the University of Minnesota won’t go away…
“To ghostwrite an entire textbook is a new level of chutzpah,” said Dr. David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, after reviewing the documents. “I’ve never heard of that before. It takes your breath away.”
We are no longer "blowin’ in the wind." A growing number of prominent physician-scientists, including several former journal editors, and New York Times columnists, have written sobering critiques about the corrupting impact pharmaceutical industry influence has had on medicine.
"The risk was greater for individuals prescribed atypical rather than conventional drugs."
Antipsychotic Drugs and Risk of Venous Thromboembolism: Nested Case-Control Study BMJ
The catalyst for Dr. Elliott’s article was the tragic case of Dan Markingson, a 26-year old who committed suicide in May 2004, while enrolled in the CAFE trial, prescribed Seroquel. This case encapsulates the tragic consequences of a broken system which is not designed to detect the hazards for human subjects posed by market-driven research.
A stunning admission of failure by major drug manufacturers who market drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s. "We really believe drugs are failing because we honestly don’t understand the disease."
"The resulting frenzy of psychiatric diagnoses has damaged the credibility of everyone in the field."
In response to yesterday’s AHRP Infomail (March 5) in which we informed readers that Dr. Gilbert Ross, the Medical Director of the American Council on Science and Helath (ACSH), the author of a WT OpEd (March 4, 2010), is a convicted felon, whose medical license was revoked after serving two years in prison for healthcare fraud:
Given multiple prior investigations of Dr. Wakefied’s 1998 paper, why did it take the Lancet editors 12 years to discover a lack of proper IRB approval?
"Does this appointment signify that Harvard Medical School intends to even further strengthen its research ties to the pharmaceutical industry?"
This month PLoS editors called for a zero tolerance policy: calling upon journals to identify and retract ghostwritten articles and banish their authors from publishing in their journal.
