Thought I had stopped thinking about that trial in Texas? Not hardly. These are the transcripts [including the video depositions]. Obviously, they don’t contain the exhibits, but most of the important parts of the email chains, the call-notes, the memos, etc. were read into the record. It’s an enormous amount of material and it reads […]
Grief Could Join List of Disorders New York Times By BENEDICT CAREY January 24, 2012 In a bitter skirmish over the definition of depression, a new report contends that a proposed change to the diagnosis would characterize grieving as a disorder and greatly increase the number of people treated for it. The criteria for depression […]
Previous posts [of sound and fury…, it’s about time…] have focused on Dr. Ian Hickie’s review article in the Lancet on Agomelatine, a Melatonin receptor agonist and Serotonin antagonist]. The notion is that the drug might correct circadian dysregulation and thereby be an antidepressant. Hickie’s review article [Novel melatonin-based therapies: potential advances in the treatment […]
Psychiatric Group Push to Redefine Mental Illness Sparks Revolt Bloomberg By Elizabeth Lopatto January 24, 2012 An effort that promises to broaden the definitions of mental illnesses is spurring a revolt among health-care professionals in the U.S. and the U.K. A panel appointed by the American Psychiatric Association is proposing changes to the industry’s guide […]
"Agomelatine is unique in that it is a selective agonist at MT1 and MT2 receptors and an antagonist at 5-HT2B and 5-HT." In these days of the empty pipeline for new CNS drugs, it’s not surprising that people are looking around for novel chemicals hoping for a new blockbuster drug for depression. The paper in […]
The chart on the right is a simplification of a large table in a recently published paper. The ordinate is the mean difference of the HAM-D scores between drug and placebo [except the ghost point which is a MADRS difference – included to show non-significance]. The abscissa is the daily drug dose. Each point is […]
In the spirit of retracting misinformation, I hereby retract the part of this post that has to do with Harvard – managing meds, living their lives…. I looked at the Harvard C.M.E. roster too soon. See Harvard Psychiatry Fails Again for the truth…
The first thing I ever read about Dr. David Healy was about his encounter with Dr. Charlie Nemeroff in 2001: MACINTYRE: Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Atlanta’s prestigious Emory University, Dr. Charles Nemeroff is a highly respected and influential scientist. And a paid consultant to a dozen drug companies. A leading psychiatric magazine […]
From the Pentagon Papers to Allen Jones: Why it’s so hard to be a whistleblower by Alison Bass January 18, 2012 Allen Jones, the whistleblower in an ongoing landmark trial against the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, was very much on my mind this past weekend. I was participating in a workshop to develop curriculum […]
…and then sometimes those pesky iPhones just take pictures all by themselves Think I’ll ever say Good·Bye To All That to the Texas courtroom? One thing that might help would be a change in the weather [Tornado Warnings from Louisiana to South Carolina]: I know there are reasons for me to remain stuck on this […]