FDA nominee Robert Califf must prove his independence from industry Pharmalot By Ed Silverman November 16, 2015 As a US Senate committee meets on Tuesday to consider Dr. Robert Califf for the top job at the Food and Drug Administration, an open question remains whether he is biased toward industry. Califf is held in high […]
hat tip to the universe…
When it’s all said and done, I’m not impressed that our kvetching about the state of affairs with clinical trials, regulatory approval, pharmaceutical marketing, and the corruption and glitches along these processes will be particularly effective in the long run. We now know the problems, and we know they are sustained by a powerful set […]
In psychiatry, we’re rarely afforded the definitive data enjoyed in a lot of science. It’s just the way things are. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be glad when some definitive graphs come along – particularly when they support clinical experience. The data in this 2004 paper is an example. I received this link from […]
Later: At the end of a three year Air Force assignment to the USAFE hospital in Lakenheath England, it was about time to come home to our real lives. For our last trip to the Continent, we decided on camping through France. I had several weeks of leave and though we’d been to France often, we […]
While I was writing this earlier post [it just is what it is…] about a man who had had his Paxil dose inappropriately raised in response to withdrawal symptoms, I wondered why I was even writing it. Was I patting myself on the back for having developed a high level of suspicion about withdrawal symptoms? […]
I was reading along in Dr. Makari’s Opinion piece in the New York Times when I got to the final paragraphs where he artfully articulated something I’ve been trying to say for a very long time: Psychiatry’s Mind-Brain Problem New York Times – Opinion By GEORGE MAKARI NOV. 11, 2015 … Unfortunately, Dr. Kane’s study […]
An open letter to all US Presidential candidates Medical experiments on humans [clinical trials] are carried out in the hope of improving health and furthering science. By their very nature they entail uncertainty about potential harms and benefits of a treatment or a procedure. This is why following WWII, prior ethics review by an independent […]
It was towards the end today’s clinic. He was a big guy, friendly, seemed neither anxious nor depressed. He had come to have his meds refilled. He was on Paxil 60mg in the morning and Remeron 45mg at night. He launched right into his story: He had always worked Construction, but when the housing market […]
O! be some other name: What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. William Shakespeare It’s hard to imagine that the Journal of the American Medical Association […]