There’s obviously more to say about Wunderink, but I wanted to stick in a few front burner items first: Marketing the myth of serotonin, the ‘happy chemical’ The Globe and Mail by ADRIANA BARTON May. 17 2015 If serotonin is the “happy chemical,” then boosting our serotonin levels should keep depression at bay. After all, […]
I was gone all day Saturday. I’m the BAR-B-Qist for our community, and it was a beautiful day for it. When I got up Sunday, there was an email from a Statistician with a ton of work for me to do. And then I read the comments and the emails about the comments, and my […]
"Over the past two decades, largely because of a few widely publicized episodes of unacceptable behavior by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, many medical journal editors [including me] have made it harder and harder for people who have received industry payments or items of financial value to write editorials or review articles. The concern has […]
In a recent discussion about the origin of the chemical imbalance notion of depression [see guilding the lily…], I mentioned a BMJ Editorial by David Healy [available online]… Serotonin and depression: The marketing of a myth British Medical Journal; by David Healy; April 21, 2015. … that ends with "so long, and thanks for all […]
A commenter mentioned some studies, Harrow and Wunderink, and I was snappy. I have acquired snappiness writing this blog from instances where some piece of what I said is questioned and I answer only to find myself being asked to defend forced drugging, commitment laws, ECT, biomedicine, corporate greed, and any number of things that […]
Recently, when I was reviewing two RCTs for Brexpiprazole, a derivative of Abilify®, I found that each study had only one academic author for each. The rest were pharmaceutical company employees. Both articles had "editorial assistance" [AKA ghost-writers] from the same firm and both were funded and administrated by the drug’s sponsor – Otsuka. Looking […]
Back in the 1970s, the depot injectable antipsychotics were around and much discussed as a solution to non-compliance in patients who had frequent relapses because as soon as they left the hospital, they stopped taking medications. There were Prolixin Clinics, and visiting nurses who took the medication to the patients. It seemed to me that […]
It’s not easy to talk about the condition we call Schizophrenia these days. Much of the controversy is about long the term management, giving antipsychotic medication not to treat an existing problem, but rather to prevent relapses – the chronic treatment of the chronic patient. Our existing antipsychotic medications aren’t much fun to take – […]
The BMJ requires data sharing on request for all trials by Elizabeth Loder and Trish Groves British Medical Journal. 2015 350:h2373 Heeding calls from the Institute of Medicine, WHO, and the Nordic Trial Alliance, we are extending our policy. The movement to make data from clinical trials widely accessible has achieved enormous success, and it […]