Bernadine Healy, MD, a cardiologist, was the first woman Director of the National Institutes of Health (1991–1993); Dean of Ohio State University College of Medicine (1995–1999); President of the American Heart Association (1998–1999); Deputy Director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Techonology; Chair of the Research Institute at the…
“Prescription drug therapy stands as one of the most significant perils to health resulting from human activity.” What’s the FDA doing to stem the tide of this preventable epidemic?
Topical tacrolimus and pimecrolimus: cancer, infections—"a clearly unfavorable benefit-risk ratio"— Prescrire International 2010 ; 19 (110) : 257 English edition.
In 2008, 6,485 trials were conducted off shore with almost no FDA oversight. Seventy-eight percent of all human test subjects were enrolled at foreign sites.
The system has provided companies an opportunity to make spectacular profits from the widespread use of defective drugs and vaccines that have caused irreversible harm.
What possible risk/ benefit standard can justify giving an inadequately studied vaccine whose risks include serious, permanent adverse effects–including death– to millions of girls and women–who will likely never get cervical cancer?
Today’s New York Times reports (below) that "court documents provide a paper trail showing that Wyeth contracted with a medical communications company to outline articles, draft them and then solicit top physicians to sign their names, even though many of the doctors contributed little or no writing."
Two major cases of medical fraud have undermined patient safety and the integrity of the medico-scientific literature: But how each specialty responded is a study in contrast.
The WSJ confirms that Merck is "desperate" for funding streams and "vaccination across the U.S. would make Gardasil an automatic blockbuster."
Documents uncovered during the course of litigation shed light on real risks of drug-induced harm that would not otherwise be known.
An eye opening article by Jeanne Lenzer, “NIH Secrets,” in The New Republic (below), should make the new Congress sit up and take notice!
Business Week reports: "From 1986 to 2003 the number of nonsurgical cardiac procedures, such as propping open arteries with wire-mesh stents, rose twelve fold, according to the American Heart Association.
