Prescriptions And Profit_CBS News 60 Minutes Tue, 16 Mar 2004 “Americans pay far more for their prescription drugs than citizens of any place on Earth.” That’s because “The United States is the only industrialized country without some form of control on the prices of drugs.” No wonder the U.S. accounts…
Research dispute prompts patient-trials debate_Seattle Times Mon, 19 May 2003 Newhouse News Service reports that the continuing dispute about the ethics and design of a multi-site lung ventilation experiment sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and conducted by the ARDSNetwork on 861 critically ill patients with…
ADHD drug – Cylert withdrawn from market due to Liver Toxicity, a Major Risk of Psychotropic Drugs Tue, October 25, 2005 The FDA announced that another drug prescribed for ADHD–Cylert–was removed from the US market for safety reasons. On September 25, 2005, the Associated Press reported: “Eli Lilly said it…
Randomized Controlled Trials: Evidence Biased Psychiatry By David Healy, MD MRCPsych Introduction A new drug gets introduced to the market. It has been approved after stringent scrutiny by the FDA, which requires ever more convincing evidence that it works and that its safe. The new treatment will always cost more…
How Did the Vioxx Debacle Happen? USA Today / Lancet Tue, 12 Oct 2004 Dr. Eric Topol of the Cleveland Clinic: “The senior executives at Merck and the leadership at the FDA share responsibility for not having taken appropriate action and not recognizing that they are accountable for the public…
Harvard Study: Multivitamins Effective in Thwarting AIDS progress Thu, 1 Jul 2004 A report in the New England Journal of Medicine may be the first serious challenge to the current accepted treatment of people infected with the HIV-virus. Those expensive and toxic cocktails of AIDS drugs may not be the…
Ethical Violations / Investigations Today Congressional Investigations Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) Letters of Determination: http://ohrp.osophs.dhhs.gov/detrm_letrs/lindex.htm Office of Protection from Research Risks* (OPRR) List of Compliance Oversight Investigations Resulting in Restrictions or Actions to federally licensed Institutions between 1990 – 2000. *Reorganized in 2000 as OHRP Mar 30: AHRP…
When Doctors Go to Class, Industry Often Foots the Bill – WSJ Fri, 6 Dec 2002 A front page article in The Wall Street Journal by Scott Hensley sheds further light on the corruption of medical ethics by focusing on a drug marketing ploy that is promoted as “continuing medical…
Statin-Cholesterol Guidelines–Industry influenced? Wed, 14 Jul 2004 Scientific journal editors are scrambling about how to react to bad publicity emanating from public disclosure that the scientific reports they have published are likely to be biased because the authors’ had financial ties to the companies whose drugs / devices they report…
Incentives to Pharma Companies but Health Care Leaders Voice Doubts on Smallpox Inoculations Thu, 30 Jan 2003 The New York Times reports (below) that serious doubts about the president’s smallpox vaccination plan emerged at a Senate hearing Wednesday. The Washington Post reports (below) that "The hearing illustrated the growing tensions…
Tonight PBS Is Science for Sale? Fri, 22 Nov 2002 Bill Moyers Now, a PBS program will discuss the influence of the pharmaceutical industry and its PR companies on science. The discussion explores how the scientific literature and the process of reporting the scientific findings of research have been rendered…
Psychopharmacology in Turmoil: David Healy, MD Presentation Columbia + Debate Dr. Joseph Coyne, Ph.D Fri, 9 Dec 2005 Recent reports describing a determined effort to pathologize US infants and toddlers who are being declared to suffer from “severe mental disorders”–the latest, most aggressively marketed diagnosis for children is Bipolar disorder,…
