Dr. Robert Wachter, author of The Truth Behind America’s Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes, provides an incisive blueprint for changing the culture in medicine. His starting point is the unexplained death of children following surgery at Stony Brook University Hospital, L.I.
An editorial in today's New York Times is a follow-up to its riveting report by Ian Urbina on the recommendation by an Institute of Medicine panel to
lift 1978 federal restrictions on medical experiments on prisoners. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/us/13inmates.html?
Stanford University researchers used 61 inmates ranging in age from 14 to 18 at a California Youth Authority (CYA) correctional center in an experiment testing the psychotropic drug, Depakote.
Tune in tonight–Monday– to Court TV: the subject is medical experimentation on prisoners–What does this say about our moral climate?
Informed Consent: The Subject’s Right to Know Here’s what you should ask before you decide to give your informed consent to research. A 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), “To Err is Human,” brought to light the magnitude of preventable deaths resulting from medical errors The IOM report…
“The sale of the master file to drug companies hands the weapon to the drug company that the A.M.A. is saying is an illicit weapon."
“More than a year after the Food and Drug Administration announced it had strengthened its drug safety system, the agency still lacks a reliable system for keeping track of emerging problems, congressional investigators concluded in a report to be released today.” [Los Angeles Times, below]
Three reports illustrate the wide and deepening disconnect between medicine under the influence of pharmaceutical industry marketing goals and scientific evidence that contradicts current practice and public health policies:
"Top Republicans — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill– recently sold the future of our children to Big Pharma for a paltry $4 bucks a pop."
IOM committee members were highly critical of FDA’s advisory panels that regularly “recommend” approval without analyzing the safety data.
“Science has become so severely politicized that one has to be skeptical of nearly every research result that is reported.”
"32% of the advertisements [in peer reviewed journals] misled readers regarding efficacy, 40% did not provide balanced descriptions of the side effects, and 44% could lead to improper prescribing if the physician did not use other sources of information regarding the drug."
