Having become preoccupied with the newer antidepressant, Vortioxetine, I was going to talk some about the KOL’s [Key Opinion Leader] place in psychiatry using Michael Thase, one of the main such figures in the Vortioxetine story, as an example. But then I received a copy of an older article I’ve heard about but never seen. […]
I recognize when I get on a topic and beat it in the ground, I’m living up to my 1BORINGoldman moniker. And right now, I’m doing that with Vortioxetine [Brintellix® AKA Trintellix®]. But I’ve got my reasons [actually two of them]. But neither reason is to prove to you that this latecomer is a particularly […]
When I began to look at Clinical Trial reports a few years back, I had to relearn how to approach our literature. The studies are now industry funded, and that turned out to mean that the pharmaceutical companies control every step of the process, resulting in distorted and unreliable efficacy and side effect profiles. One […]
My good friend Andy died a couple of years back. By education, he was a minister, but he did other things instead, mostly good. Maybe he’d left the pulpit, but his way of saying things betrayed his history, so when he ran across something that really mattered or was unusually right, he’d smile and say […]
David Healy‘s blog has a guest post called The Pill That Steals Lives: One woman’s terrifying journey to discover the truth about antidepressants by Katinka Blackford Newman – an introduction to a book about her experiences with psychiatric medications due out in early July. It’s one of those all too familiar stories where a negative […]
Reading through Sergio Sismondo’s Ghosts in the Machine was confirming, validating my own impression that there is a secretive commercially driven enterprise manipulating the processes by which we know about medications. I knew it was there, but I really didn’t know it was so ubiquitous, nor did I know it was a profession. But there […]
"In the ghost management of medical research by pharmaceutical companies, we have a novel model of science. This is corporate science, done by many hidden workers, performed for marketing purposes, and drawing its authority from traditional academic science. The high commercial stakes mean that all of the parties connected with this new science can find […]
Wading around in the meta-analyses comparing antidepressant efficacy and safety among them can be like Kafka’s The Trial or McCarthy’s The Road. You’re never sure where you are or if you’ve arrived anywhere. One of the most quoted versions is Cipriani et al’s Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 12 new-generation antidepressants: a multiple-treatments meta-analysis that […]
I doubt that my discussion of the difficulty getting contrarian studies published would stand up in Evidence-Based Medicine court – too few examples to be called anything but anecdotes. But if you asked the few investigators who’ve given it a shot, I’d bet p would approach (1 ÷ ∞). Consider, for example, this contentious [and […]