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Archive for February, 2013

living history…

The ABPI’s first response was to reject the claims contained in Bad Pharma saying they were historical – a response widely seen as inadequate – but the industry organisation is now making moves to ensure pharma companies comply with existing pledges to publish data. Ben Goldacre versus Stephen Whitehead Debate There is little more infuriating […]

silliness…

Getting Past the Grief over Grief Scientific American By Sidney Zisook February 25, 2013 These days, I get a lot of grief about grief. I am part of the work group that changed some of the ways that grief and clinical depression are described and differentiated in the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental […]

tweet·tweet…

PharmaTimes head-to-head debate Whitehead vs Goldacre 26 February, 2013, 5.15pm The Royal Institution, Albemarle Street, London Does pharma put profits ahead of patients? Is the industry failing to live up to the legal and moral standards expected of it? Or do its criticisers continue to push historical examples of malpractice and fail to recognise the […]

good news…

While the details aren’t totally clear to me, Pharmalot is reporting a red letter day for the cause of Clinical Trial transparency. Tamiflu, a treatment to ameliorate the intensity of flu symptoms has been stockpiled to the tunes of billions of dollars in anticipation of a flu epidemic. When the Cochrane Group wanted to do […]

the future interrupted…

"Ten or 20 years from now, we will be sending our patients to the laboratory to characterize them in terms of genetic polymorphisms and/or to an imaging laboratory. Then based on those findings, and on the clinical presentation of the patient, we will be able to do what we can’t do right now, which is […]

well said…

[Dr. David Healy – Rxisk]

still my pick

for the best film…

better than a sudoku…

Sometimes a piece of data comes along that’s interesting no matter what it means – something to ponder. This is the US geographic distribution of psychotropic drug use: stimulants, antidepressants, and antipsychotics. It’s from a Yale study using a national prescription database by zip code showing wide geographic variations in the prescription rate of psychotropic […]

tweet?

Among the advantages of parenthood, one is having a techno-daughter who can bail you out when you are hopelessly stumped by the Twitter plug-in that Tweets when you post [whatever that means]… Update: By golly, it worked!

“underlying psychobiological dysfunction”…

Sessions Will Provide In-Depth Look at New DSM Psychiatric News by Kuhl Emily, Ph.D. February 15, 2013 … Beyond merely summarizing the most notable revisions, speakers will articulate the underlying rationales of the changes and how DSM-5 can be implemented in clinical practice and in research settings. Reviews of the final, approved criteria from specific […]