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About Me
Alison Bass is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and author of Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial, which won the NASW Science in Society Award. She was a longtime medical and science writer for The Boston Globe and has also written for The Miami Herald, Psychology Today and MIT's Technology Review, among other publications. A series she wrote for The Boston Globe on psychiatry was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and she has received many other journalism awards. In 2007, she won a prestigious Alicia Patterson Fellowship to write Side Effects. Bass teaches journalism at Mount Holyoke College and Brandeis University.
Category Archives: antidepressants
Plot twists in Soderbergh’s new movie Side Effects strain belief
Share I went to see Steven Soderbergh’s new film, Side Effects, with anticipation and dread. The movie, after all, carries the same name as my 2008 book, Side Effects and from what I could tell of the trailers, its plot … Continue reading
Why West Virginia has second highest rate of prescription drug overdoses in the nation
Share Did you know that West Virginia has the second highest rate of deaths from prescription drug overdoses in the country? I didn’t, until I moved to the Mountain State to live and work and became curious as to what … Continue reading
Posted in antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, drug marketing, health care costs, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug overdoes, public health
Tagged CDC, Charleston Gazette, drug commercials, Massachusetts, Oxycontin, prescription drug overdoses, universal health care, West Virginia, West Virginia University
5 Comments
Martin Keller, principal investigator of Paxil study 329, retires from Brown University
Share I just learned that Dr. Martin Keller, principal investigator of the controversial Paxil study 329, has retired from his position as a professor of psychiatry at Brown University — see here. As Pharmalot notes, Keller quietly retired June 30 in … Continue reading
Calls for action against authors of controversial Paxil study are getting louder
Share In the wake of GlaxoSmithKline’s record-breaking $3 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, a number of psychiatrists and researchers have redoubled their efforts to get Paxil study 329 retracted. As mentioned here and in other news accounts, the … Continue reading
Posted in antidepressants, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, ghostwriting, National Institutes of Health, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct, university industry collaboration
Tagged antidepressants, Brown University, Department of Justice, GlaxoSmithKline, Health Care Renewal, Martin Keller, oneboringoldman, Paxil
2 Comments
Why academic researchers involved in fraudulent Paxil study escape scrutiny
Share The Chronicle of Higher Education this week ponders why various universities have taken no action against the academic researchers who co-authored the notorious Paxil study that formed the crux of GlaxoSmithKline’s recent $3 billion settlement with the Department of … Continue reading
Posted in antidepressants, clinical trials, National Institutes of Health, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct, university industry collaboration
Tagged Brown University, Chronicle of Higher Education, Department of Justice, GlaxoSmithKline, Martin Keller, Paxil
3 Comments
New York AG’s office should take a bow for GlaxoSmithKline’s record-breaking fine
Share I was glad to see that the New York Times‘ reporters covering GlaxoSmithKline’s $3 billion settlement tipped their hat to former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. After all, it was his crew and specifically a pioneering attorney by … Continue reading
Posted in antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, clinical trials, drug marketing, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct, suicide rates, whistleblowing
Tagged clinical trial, Eliot Spitzer, fraud, GlaxoSmithKline, New York Attorney General's office, New York Times, Paxil, whistleblowing
4 Comments
Institute of Medicine report concludes that the FDA is not doing adequate job of assessing drug benefits and risks
Share Two weeks ago, I headlined my blog with this question: Is the FDA violating its own mandate to approve safe drugs? Four days later, the national Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a 233-page report concluding that FDA’s current approach … Continue reading
Posted in antidepressants, clinical trials, drug marketing, FDA, media coverage, National Institutes of Health, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, Uncategorized
Tagged British Medical Journal, FDA, Institute of Medicine, Nature, NIH, noncompliance with 2007 law, postmarketing studies, safety of drugs
1 Comment
Is the FDA violating its own mandate to approve safe drugs?
Share Is the Food and Drug Administration violating its own mandate to approve safe drugs? That was the question that Donald Light, co-author of The Risk for Prescription Drugs and a long-time medical sociologist, posed at a talk yesterday at … Continue reading
Posted in antidepressants, biotech industry, clinical trials, continuing medical education, drug marketing, FDA, health care costs, medical devices, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, scientific misconduct, suicide rates, Uncategorized
Tagged antidepressants, clinical trials, Congress, Donald Light, FDA, Massachusetts Legislature, me-too drugs, off-label use, pipeline, safety and effectiveness of drugs
2 Comments
How drug companies continue to hide the true story of Tamiflu and other drugs from the American public
Share I’ve been reading Dr. David Healy’s new book, Pharmageddon, and while some of it may seem like old news, I was struck by his fresh analysis of how the pharmaceutical industry has turned the original purpose of clinical trials … Continue reading
Why 60 Minutes suddenly discovered the placebo effect in treating depression
Share When Dr. Irving Kirsch published his meta-analysis in PLoS Medicine in February 2008 showing that antidepressants were no more effective than a placebo in treating mild or moderate depression, the national news media ignored his explosive findings, for the … Continue reading