Director’s Blog: Mapping the Risk Architecture of Mental Disorders NIMH By Thomas Insel July 22, 2014 It’s difficult to overstate the impact that genomic medicine is having on biomedical research and practice. For cancer diagnostics, rare disease therapeutics, and fields like microbiomics and infectious diseases, the advent of cheap, fast, precise genomic sequencing has been […]
Will $650 Million Solve the Mystery of Mental Illness? Chasing the genetics holy grail neglects current patient need Psychology Today by Allen J. Frances, M.D. July 24, 2014 I am a great supporter of mental health research, but worry that it has lost its sense of proportion and is chasing the wrong priorities. The really […]
Back in February when I first read about Pradaxa® [how many examples?…, foot-in-mouth disease…], I couldn’t help but comment even though it had nothing to do with psychiatry. Without even reading the articles, just the basic premise was suspicious – that Boehringer Ingelheim had introduced a "blood thinner" [anticoagulant] that didn’t have to be monitored […]
“He who knows syphilis knows medicine” Sir William Osler, the Father of Modern Medicine Some years back, I saw a play, Miss Evers’ Boys, about the Tuskegee syphilis study. In 1932. 600 black men were recruited into a Public Healtrh Service study that went on for forty years. In return for participating, they were given […]
Emil Kraepelin Alois Alzheimer Auguste Deter In 1907, Alois Alzheimer working in the lab of Emil Kraepelin, presented the brain findings on his patient, Auguste Deter, a woman who had died after developing dementia at age 51. Besides general brain shrinkage, there were characteristic microscopic findings: plagues in the extracellular spaces and neurons with neuro·fibrillary tangles in […]
At NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Its Ex-C.E.O. Finds Lucrative Work New York Times By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS July 15, 2014 [full article available online] For Hospital CEOs, Retirement May Mean Never Having to Lose Your Paycheck Healthcare Renewal by Roy Poses July 17, 2014 [full article available online] Dr Herbert Pardes was once one of the best paid […]
In the first post about the Lu et al study, I mentioned the CDC 1979-2007 suicide data [see a madness to our method…]. But in its origin…, my post had a broken link to the CDC YRBS [Youth Risk Behavior Study] in the Rapid Response by Barber et al. That was an unfortunate omission as […]
I will admit that it’s hard for me to write about this particular recurrent topic without sarcasm [I’ll give it a shot, but will likely fail]. The topic is an NIMH Study called EMBARC [Establishing Moderators and Biosignatures of Antidepressant Response for Clinical Care for Depression] being conducted by Madhukar Trivedi [NIMH Project Number: 1U01MH092221-01] […]
I woke up Thursday morning to an email alerting me to the fact that my blog had disappeared. I tried it and saw: Was it something I said? The nice technician in Utah [who knew it was in Utah?] said not-to-worry. It had been moved to a new server [?] and the domain pointer hadn’t […]