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Archive for April, 2011

personalized medicine: BRAINnet…

In the last post, I mentioned two distinct groups [BRAINnet and Brain Resources], but the distinction between them is not altogether clear. In this post, I’ll first simply try to clarify what BRAINnet actually is, not evaluate it. That’s for a later time: From the BRAINnet website: The goal of BRAINnet is to expand our […]

personalized medicine: the concept…

Personalized Medicine is certainly the phrase of the hour, originating in response to the mapping of the human genome. The idea of precise genetic typing opens the door to possibilities previously only dreamed of in medicine and has pulled research in that direction like a powerful electromagnet. It’s called Personalized Medicine because it opens up […]

personalized medicine: the preface…

al·go·rithm  ˈælɡəˌrɪðÉ™m –noun      a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps A few months back, I drew a picture to illustrate some articles I read: My picture started with a person who had presented complaining of mental discomfort of some kind. The proposed sequence was that the person then […]

a big responsibility…

This blog started its life as newsy stuff about old retired guys, but evolved down to one old guy [me] who needed to talk about politics after we invaded Iraq and made such a mess  of things. That wound down after Bush went back to Texas, and more recently I’ve been engaged in catching up […]

poking holes…

All of this talk of the STAR*D study and looking into the use of Atypical Antipsychotics as "augmentation" in the treatment of depression has confused my radar about depression in general. So I appreciated getting sent this article that looks at the natural history of depression from a population study in the Netherlands. I had […]

alogorithmic heaven [AKA son of STAR*D]…

Think I’d ever get off of STAR*D? I’m trying, but the next one I thought I’d take a look at, iSPOT, just "seems like old times." The whole gang is back. A. John Rush and Stephen R Wisniewski are there from STAR*D – with sidekick medical writer Jon Kilner in the acknowledgments for his editorial […]

what’s missing…

I feel like the guest who came to dinner. I was going to look at the STAR*D study as a counter-example of an NIMH  Clinical Trial to those sponsored by industry, and I can’t seem to move on to the next place – over a hundred articles "full of sound and fury…" In my wanderings, […]

infectious numerology..

Looking at all the STAR*D articles really gets one’s counting juices flowing. I wonder if any study has generated so many articles. I think I must’ve developed a case of number envy. There are 123 articles in PubMed with STAR*D in the title and  and 204 with STAR*D in any field. Anyone who has looked […]

a study in pollen…

When Doctor Francis Collins responded to POGO’s letter on ghost-writing in February, although I didn’t think he had gone far enough, I was impressed that he was at least taking the problem seriously.   As I’ve perused parts of the psychopharmacology literature, I’ve been aware that I read the acknowledgments before reading the articles themselves, […]

I see dead people…

John Romankiewicz, founder of Scientific Therapeutics Information [STI], isn’t having a very good week. His medical communications firm has been under the microscope in the matter of Charlie Nemeroff’s and Alan Shatzberg’s psychopharmacology textbook for Primary Care Physicians ever since POGO’s accusation that STI’s Sally Laden and Diane Coniglio ghost wrote the book. Monday, Phylis […]