by Alison Bass | Oct 6, 2014 | prostitution, sex trafficking, sex work, Uncategorized
For the past four years, I have been working on a new book that is a departure from my previous book, Side Effects. Tentatively titled Getting Screwed: Sex Work and the Law, the new book weaves the true stories of sex workers (past and present) together with the...
by Alison Bass | Jun 10, 2013 | antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, FDA, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug abuse, scientific misconduct
I reviewed two books now circulating about the DSM and the current controversy over the DSM-5 for The American Scholar — see review here. The two books are The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry by Gary Greenberg, and Saving Normal: An Insider’s...
by Alison Bass | Feb 13, 2013 | antidepressants, drug marketing, FDA, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug abuse, university industry collaboration
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 seemed loosely based on the issue I explore in my...
by Alison Bass | Nov 26, 2012 | biotech industry, drug marketing, medical devices, opiods, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug abuse, public health, Uncategorized
In my previous blogs about West Virginia’s shockingly high rate of prescription drug overdoses — the Mountain State has the second highest rate of overdoses in the nation — I focused on “the culture of disability” that created this...
by Alison Bass | Oct 8, 2012 | coal mining industry, disability, opiods, overdoses, prescription drug abuse, public health
Ever heard of the term “culture of disability?” It was first coined by Judith Greenwood, who published a paper in the ’80s about how the coal mining industry in West Virginia, because the jobs were so difficult and dangerous, had created a culture...
by Alison Bass | Sep 24, 2012 | prostitution, public health, Uncategorized
Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes? I thought of his famous quote when my husband passed along a link he had received (from a social work listserv he subscribes to) to a...
by Alison Bass | Sep 10, 2012 | antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, drug marketing, health care costs, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug overdoes, public health
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 was behind this tragic statistic. According to a...
by Alison Bass | Sep 5, 2012 | antidepressants, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, ghostwriting, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct
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 the midst of an...
by Alison Bass | Sep 4, 2012 | antidepressants, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, ghostwriting, National Institutes of Health, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct, university industry collaboration
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...
by Alison Bass | Aug 7, 2012 | antidepressants, clinical trials, National Institutes of Health, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct, university industry collaboration
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...
