Most of us are aware that a number of the articles in our peer-reviewed journals reporting industry-funded Clinical Trials of CNS drugs have been distorted to a greater or lesser degree. I think it’s important to look at how they’ve been "spun" to play up efficacy and downplay harms. The distortions were no accident, but […]
Long ago and far away in a galaxy called the 1970s, I was in a Psychiatry residency on a Child and Adolescent rotation – one of my favorites. It was a different time, and I learned a term that stayed with me to this day. An attending was explaining a difference between therapy with children […]
Early in October, I had a a touch of paralysis… I had read an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry… Ketamine and Other NMDA Antagonists: Early Clinical Trials and Possible Mechanisms in Depression by D. Jeffrey Newport, Linda L. Carpenter, William M. McDonald, James B. Potash, Mauricio Tohen, and Charles B. Nemeroff, The APA […]
Martin Shkreli may get competition for his pricey drug, after all Pharmalot by Ed Silverman October 22, 2015 Thanks to a compounding pharmacy, Martin Shkreli’s company may no longer have a lock on the market for its pricey anti-infective drug Daraprim. A little-known company called Imprimis Pharmaceuticals announced plans to make a combination medicine that […]
NOTE: I have a Conflict of Interest about this report. It’s from the NIMH funded RAISE Study [Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode]. My conflict is that I have two interests. First, I’m really interested in this particular study on the impact of psychosocial treatment on these First Episode Patients. But second, I’m exhausted with […]
I wish that what I write about could always be interesting, but I just can’t bring it off. Writing is my way of gathering my thoughts, and sometimes that’s pretty boring, even to me. My daughter who named this blog has apologized for her sarcasm, but to be honest, I’m very appreciative. The injunction to […]
Back in August, I sent this email out to a number of people I’m one of the authors of the RIAT article about Paxil® Study 329 due out soon in the BMJ. In the course of things, I have a question that I find hard to get a definitive consistent answer to, so I decided […]
APA Urges Creation of Payment Codes Specific to Collaborative Care Model PsychiatricNews by Mark Moran September 24, 2015 Separate codes should be created for the care-management and psychiatric-consultation components of the collaborative care model. Appropriate payment codes need to be developed to reflect the work of physicians — including psychiatrists — participating in collaborative care […]
The CNN Democratic debate transcript, annotated Washington Post October 13, 2015 COOPER: And welcome back to the final round of the CNN Democratic presidential debate. This is a question to each of you. Each of you, by the way, are going to have closing statements to make. Each of you will have 90 seconds. But […]
This is a very important story about Data Transparency and about the Pharmaceutical Industry’s attempts to derail it. In January 2012, the European Medicines Agency [the European version of the FDA] announced that it was going to release the raw data submitted for approval publicly and proceeded to do just that. Cheers were heard throughout […]