by Alison Bass | Sep 23, 2011 | conflicts of interest, health care costs
At a Harvard event last night honoring the former Grassley investigator Paul Thacker, someone in the audience wanted to know how the topic of Thacker’s talk — Dollars for Doctors: Who owns your physician? — was related to the soaring cost of medical...
by Alison Bass | Sep 14, 2011 | health care costs, media coverage, pharmaceutical industry
Recent media coverage of the heated debate over Texas Governor Rick Perry’s endorsement of mandatory HPV vaccinations for school-age girls in his state seems to be missing a few crucial points. First, many of the medical groups who strongly endorsed the vaccine...
by Alison Bass | Sep 8, 2011 | conflicts of interest, FDA, health insurers, National Institutes of Health, university industry collaboration
At a time when our own government has stepped back from requiring true transparency about conflicts of interest in medicine, French lawmakers seem to be heading in a much bolder direction. According to Nature Medicine, the French national assembly is considering a...
by Alison Bass | Aug 24, 2011 | conflicts of interest, National Institutes of Health, university industry collaboration
The newly announced rules on financial conflicts of interest among federally funded researchers are certainly an improvement on the existing regulations issued by the National Institutes of Health in 1995 (which were never enforced anyway). But as ethicists and...
by Alison Bass | Aug 10, 2011 | drug marketing, ghostwriting, medical devices, scientific journal retractions, university industry collaboration
The retraction of studies in medical and scientific journals has surged in the last decade, according to separate analyses done by the Wall Street Journal and Retraction Watch. In its page-one article today, the Journal noted that while just 22 retraction notices...
by Alison Bass | Aug 3, 2011 | antipsychotic drugs, conflicts of interest, health care costs, university industry collaboration
Medicare and social services for vulnerable Americans are not the only programs on the chopping block with Washington’s deal to raise the debt ceiling and cut trillions of dollars in government spending. Looming ahead may be deep cuts in funding for medical and...
by Alison Bass | Jul 20, 2011 | conflicts of interest, drug marketing, National Institutes of Health, university industry collaboration
I realize this is the dead of summer and every journalist who isn’t on vacation is captivated by the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal. But while everyone is looking the other way, the National Institute of Health’s proposed new rules about the disclosure of...
by Alison Bass | Jul 11, 2011 | antidepressants, conflicts of interest, ghostwriting, scientific misconduct, university industry collaboration
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has called on President Obama to remove Amy Gutmann, University of Pennsylvania’s president, as chair of his presidential commission for the study of bioethical issues. The reason: Gutmann did nothing to sanction the...
by Alison Bass | Jul 5, 2011 | antipsychotic drugs, conflicts of interest, pharmaceutical industry, university industry collaboration
Harvard Medical School finally wrapped up its three-year-old investigation of Dr. Joseph Biederman and two colleagues accused of failing to disclose extensive financial conflicts of interest, with essentially a slap on the wrist. In 2008, Congressional investigators...
by Alison Bass | Jun 28, 2011 | conflicts of interest, pharmaceutical industry
Two quick notes: the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has posted a helpful FAQ on corporate-funded medical ghostwriting. As POGO investigator Paul Thacker writes: “We hope this [FAQ] will answer any questions you might have on this very disturbing practice...
