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Archive for October, 2016

who’d have thought…

( OPINION )

Nobel Prize Literature 2016 50th Anniversary

rct, ebm, and archie cochrane…

( OPINION )

I’ve run out of ways to say how far away from mainstream medicine I drifted for the last 20 years of my medical career, or how much coming back to it felt like waking up 25 years later in a strange land. Every time I say that, it sounds melodramatic and exaggerated – but that’s […]

devolution II…

( OPINION )

In the days before television and other devices, some satirists used the comic strip for their commentaries – none more effectively than Walt Kelly who drew Pogo. Pogo possum and Kelly’s other anthropomorphized denizens of the Okefenokee Swamp delighted us with political satire and commentary on the human condition for a quarter century. There was […]

devolution I…

( OPINION )

In his recent BMJ article [30 August 2016 – Ghostwriting: the importance of definition and its place in contemporary drug marketing], Alastair Matheson describes how industry is trying to claim that a hired medical writer isn’t a "ghostwriter" if they’re named in the small print of the Acknowledgements section of an article [see rebranding…]. He […]

a non-distraction…

( OPINION )

So I was nosing around looking for something to keep me from perseverating endlessly about the NIH/ClinicalTrials.gov/FDA business and our Petition, and in my twitter feed, Dinah [Shrink Rap] had tweeted a New York Times article about the political affiliations of different medical specialties [Your Surgeon Is Probably a Republican, Your Psychiatrist Probably a Democrat]. […]

what to do? sign the petition!!!…

( OPINION )

Perhaps, rather than talk about what the NIH and FDA propose doing about it, we should frame the problem that needs fixing. Because of the PHARMA Sponsors’ keeping clinical trial data secret [proprietary, intellectual property] and the FDA, the only entity with access, we are only privy to the published journal articles for our information […]

guantanamera

( OPINION )

what to do? the final rule?…

( OPINION )

Recently, FDA/NIH/clinicaltrials.gov issued their long awaited reforms with something of a media blitz: Toward a New Era of Trust and Transparency in Clinical Trials Trial Reporting in ClinicalTrials.gov — The Final Rule New federal rules target woeful public reporting of clinical trial results HHS Issues New Rules To Open Up Data From Clinical Trials I’m […]

matthew…

( OPINION )

Tracking Hurricanes is something of a spectator sport around here, even though we’re mostly bulletproof in North Georgia. But in a lifetime of Hurricane watching, I’ve never seen a prediction like this one – Here we go loop-de-loop…  

eva cassidy [~1996]…

( OPINION )