Yesterday, I worked in the clinic, and I kept thinking about the old saying, "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted" [in East Tennessee it was "closing the barn door after the cows ran off" but the spirit’s the same]. In psychiatry, the pipeline’s empty, and we have about all the SSRIs/SNRIs and […]
Beware the fine print of Glaxo’s big drug-marketing announcement The Week by Peter Weber December 17, 2013 On Tuesday, British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline vowed to unilaterally disarm in the controversial marketing war that has helped fuel the pharmaceutical industry’s robust growth in the past 30 years. This is potentially a big step toward curbing conflicts of […]
GSK to stop paying doctors in overhaul of sales practices Reuters By Ben Hirschler Dec 17, 2013 GlaxoSmithKline will stop paying doctors for promoting its drugs and scrap prescription targets for its marketing staff – a first for an industry battling scandals over its sales practices, and a challenge for its peers to follow suit. […]
Money and Medical Journals PharmedOut Medical Behavior in a Commercial World: Who is Responsible? by Marcia Angell MD, Harvard University June 6-7, 2013 Most medical journals that publish reports of clinical research are owned by professional societies. Some are distributed to members for free; others are available by subscription. Some lose money for their owners; […]
Kaler on Faculty Senate resolution: "It’s not a review of the Markingson case" Fear and Loathing in Bioethics by Carl Elliot December 11, 2013 I think we’re getting a pretty good idea of where the University of Minnesota administration plans to take the "independent review" endorsed by the Faculty Senate last week. This interview with […]
BLOGSCAN – US Supreme Court Turns Down Pfizer Appeal of RICO Conviction Healthcare Renewal by Roy Poses December 13, 2013 Pfizer Inc, which boasts of being the world’s largest research based pharmaceutical company, also seems to be one of the world’s largest examples of health care corporations that have withstood an amazing number of settlements, […]
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years- Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres- Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one […]
The thing I’ve most enjoyed about later life and retirement is that I can think about whatever I want to think about, recall what I want to re-call. I wasn’t aware of it earlier, but in adulthood proper [the productive years], there was a gravitas, something about sticking to a topic or completing a thought, […]
If there were any heros in the CNS pharmaceutical industry during the quarter century between the approval of Prozac and the present, I don’t know who they were. In discussing his recent book, Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, Peter Gøtzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Group says, "I call psychiatry […]