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...
by Alison Bass | Mar 28, 2011 | Uncategorized
In a finding that may stun heart patients but surprise few others, researchers have found that more than half of the doctors who wrote key clinical practice guidelines in cardiology had financial ties to medical device and drug companies that stood to benefit from...
by Alison Bass | Mar 14, 2011 | Uncategorized
Here is a link to the newly posted video of a blogging panel sponsored earlier this winter by the New England Science Writers, a local chapter of NASW. I moderated the panel, which featured a stellar group of health and science bloggers: Gary Schwitzer, who writes the...
by Alison Bass | Mar 7, 2011 | Uncategorized
The same drug giants paying millions of dollars to settle claims that they engaged in illegal and improper marketing of anti-psychotic drugs in the U.S. are even now looking for new worlds to conquer. Consider the study published today in the Archives of General...
by Alison Bass | Feb 21, 2011 | Uncategorized
I’m embarrassed to admit that when I was a medical reporter for The Boston Globe in the ’90s, I (along with many other journalists) would unthinkingly use the $800 million that the pharmaceutical industry said it cost to develop a new drug product....
by Alison Bass | Feb 10, 2011 | Uncategorized
There must be something in the air. Either that, or the drug and medical device industry has embarked on a concerted campaign to improve its tattered public image and bully the FDA into backing down from recent efforts to ensure that unsafe drugs and medical devices...
by Alison Bass | Feb 2, 2011 | Uncategorized
The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has refused to retract a study finding that the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective in adolescents despite evidence of fabrication, plagiarism and failure to disclose conflicts of interest...
