by Alison Bass | Jun 27, 2011 | biotech industry, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, health care costs, medical devices, pharmaceutical industry
A page-one story in The Boston Globe today spotlights the Massachusetts biotech industry’s effort to block a key piece of President Obama’s health care overhaul: the creation of an independent payment advisory board (IPAB) that would make recommendations...
by Alison Bass | Jun 14, 2011 | pharmaceutical industry, Uncategorized, university industry collaboration
I was planning to blog about Pfizer’s new $100 million partnership with several Boston-area medical centers and its potential downsides. But before I could get around to doing that, I was invited to talk about the deal on WGBH-TV’s Greater Boston show...
by Alison Bass | Jun 8, 2011 | antidepressants, conflicts of interest, expert testimony, medical devices, National Institutes of Health
A few weeks ago, I blogged about the strange case of Dr. Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at Emory University who has testified in more death penalty cases in recent years than almost any other doctor in the country. I highlighted Mayberg’s lucrative and lethal (she...
by Alison Bass | May 17, 2011 | conflicts of interest, expert testimony, medical devices, National Institutes of Health, patient care
A year ago, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed new rules governing the disclosure and handling of financial conflicts of interest by medical researchers who receive federal funding. The more stringent rules were prompted by Congressional findings...
by Alison Bass | May 13, 2011 | antidepressants, ghostwriting, pharmaceutical industry
In his latest blog, Paul Thacker, an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and former aide to Senator Charles Grassley, struggles to understand how Dr. Stan Kutcher, a psychiatrist turned politician in Canada, could possibly say that Paxil study...
by Alison Bass | May 3, 2011 | Uncategorized
Stan Kutcher, the psychiatrist turned politician who threatened to sue The Coast newspaper in Halifax unless it issued a retraction on a story it did about Kutcher’s involvement with Paxil study 329 (see retracted story here) and my blog about it), lost...
by Alison Bass | May 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
In recent years, experts (like Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel) have warned that press freedoms are under increasing threat from economic pressures. As advertising and readers flee to the Web, they say, news outlets are more likely to cave in to pressure from corporate...
by Alison Bass | Apr 25, 2011 | Uncategorized
In 2006, researchers first published results from a $35 million NIMH-funded study of antidepressants known as STAR*D, claiming it proved the effectiveness of second-generation antidepressants used alone and in combination with each other. The NIMH chimed in with press...
by Alison Bass | Apr 15, 2011 | Uncategorized
Medicaid and Medicare are in the news of late, as Congressional Republicans spar with President Obama and the Democrats on how best to rein in the ballooning costs of these entitlement programs, which make up a growing share of federal and state budgets. But what few...
by Alison Bass | Apr 4, 2011 | Uncategorized
Psychiatry is supposed to be all about disclosure, disclosing the dark secrets of one’s past to a professional in an effort to heal or, at the very least, figure out why one is in such psychic pain. But given the recent actions of the American Psychiatric...
