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Archive for the 'politics' Category

the right thing to do…

( politics )

There’s a discussion going on in the comments of Dr. David Healy’s blog about the goings on with the EMA U-Turn on data transparency [a decision to reconsider…] between good guys who have their differences – Ben Goldacre and David Healy. It’s around the issue of the place of the Pharmaceutical industry in the negotiations […]

a further comment…

( politics )

Long ago [in the late 1970s or early 1980s sometime], a friend invited a psychiatrist who was in town to come to a journal club he chaired. The visitor was a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst who had retired from an interesting career. For years, he’d directed a public mental health center in the mornings, and then gone to […]

on IRT, some comments…

( politics )

I recognize that in the last post [another IRT prequel…], I’ve stepped out of the general frame of Evidence-Based Medicine in that it’s the experience of a single clinician with a small number of cases. While it’s reinforced by my own teachers and patients, and from reading the writings of a lot of clinicians [Eugene […]

another IRT prequel…

( politics )

re·cov·er·y    [] n. pl. re·cov·er·ies The act, process, duration, or an instance of recovering. A return to a normal condition. Something gained or restored in recovering. The act of obtaining usable substances from unusable sources. In its effectiveness… I was fretting about the Individual Resiliency Training [IRT] that is part of the RAISE ETP Project. It’s […]

a decision to reconsider…

( politics )

Reading and rereading the response of the European Medicines Agency to the European Ombudsman posted in to be continued…, I can only conclude that someone has done a powerful sales job about what they call the view-on-screen-only system [a self contained "remote desktop"] – selling it as something it neither is nor can become. As […]

without warning…

( politics )

During my working years, I never watched much serialized television drama – those things like The West Wing that captivated the interest of so many. I preferred my entertainment as films or stage productions. There was an exception, three years in the 70s in a tiny rural village in England where those things just weren’t […]

to be continued…

( politics )

Well, life is never simple. Here’s an extract from the European Medicines Agency’s reply yesterday to the European Ombudsman’s letter [see the end game…]: …As we discussed in our videoconference some months ago, I would like to dispel any doubt about the strong commitment of EMA to pursue the objective of increasing transparency with regard […]

the end game…

( politics )

No matter how often I’ve thought about the analogy between the board game of chess and the world of politics and business where the moves people behind the scenes make have an enormous impact on the lives of real people, it’s never hit home so poignantly as when it’s something that affects me personally. The […]

whew!…

( politics )

I lay down for a nap this afternoon, but was jerked awake in a cold sweat by a nightmare. I dreamed I was captured in the PhRMA [Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America] web-site being forced to read an article entitled Mental Health Medicines in Development Report, 2014 that said: "Biopharmaceutical research companies are currently […]

its effectiveness…

( politics )

The signature novel of the Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage, was written by a young man who wasn’t even born when it was fought and had never seen combat. It’s the story of a young recruit who was marching into his first battle obsessed that he would run – would be a coward. […]