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Archive for July, 2014

the illusion of evidence…

One could see Matter‘s pairing of The Best-Selling, Billion-Dollar Pills Tested on Homeless People and Why Are Dope-addicted, Disgraced Doctors Running Our Drug Trials? mentioned in my last post [some system…] and by others [like Dr. Howard Brody’s More on Guinea Pigging–The Quality of Pharmaceutical Research] as a walk on the wild side – disgraced […]

some system…

The Best-Selling, Billion-Dollar Pills Tested on Homeless People How the destitute and the mentally ill are being used as human lab rats Matter By Carl Elliott June 29, 2014 Why Are Dope-addicted, Disgraced Doctors Running Our Drug Trials? Matter By Peter Aldhous June 29, 2014 I don’t know Peter Aldhous, but most of us do […]

the $1000 pill…

Sovaldi Wins Round Two in the Battle to be the Best-Selling Drug Sovaldi, a Quantum Leap… Backwards to the Days Before Randomized Controlled Trials? Speaking of my last post and capitalism…

enough is long past enough…

Glaxo is Probed by the FBI and the SEC Over China Bribery Scandal Pharmalot: WSJ By Ed Silverman July 28, 2014 The scandal over bribery allegations in China has taken another discouraging turn for GlaxoSmithKline with the news that both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Securities and Exchange Commission are conducting probes of the […]

florida…

Court Says Florida’s Ban on Physicians Discussing Gun Ownership Is Legal PsychiatricNews July 29, 2014 A federal appeals court has reversed a lower court’s ruling that Florida’s law limiting what physicians can discuss with their patients regarding gun ownership violates physicians’ First Amendment right to free speech. The lower court had issued an injunction in […]

end of story..

The only "author’s response" I’ve ever seen where the author of a medical paper admitted culpability in response to criticism was when Dr. Gibbons, Dr. Kupfer, et al apologized for lying about COI after being exposed. And in that apology, they didn’t get around to apologizing to Dr. Carroll for their initial nastygram in response […]

in their lifetimes…

Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian Monk in Moravia whose studies of plant inheritance brought such things into the realm of science. My sister’s blue eyes meant that both of our brown-eyed parents carried recessive blue-eye genes. The postman was out of the picture. Mendel’s schemes of inheritance were like that – very precise statistical predictions […]

so are they…

Director’s Blog: Mapping the Risk Architecture of Mental Disorders NIMH By Thomas Insel July 22, 2014 It’s difficult to overstate the impact that genomic medicine is having on biomedical research and practice. For cancer diagnostics, rare disease therapeutics, and fields like microbiomics and infectious diseases, the advent of cheap, fast, precise genomic sequencing has been […]

join the cry…

Will $650 Million Solve the Mystery of Mental Illness? Chasing the genetics holy grail neglects current patient need Psychology Today by Allen J. Frances, M.D. July 24, 2014 I am a great supporter of mental health research, but worry that it has lost its sense of proportion and is chasing the wrong priorities. The really […]

miles to go…

Back in February when I first read about Pradaxa® [how many examples?…, foot-in-mouth disease…], I couldn’t help but comment even though it had nothing to do with psychiatry. Without even reading the articles, just the basic premise was suspicious – that Boehringer Ingelheim had introduced a "blood thinner" [anticoagulant] that didn’t have to be monitored […]