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...
by Alison Bass | Jan 21, 2011 | Uncategorized
The retraction of questionable scientific papers seems to be on the rise, due in large part to increased media scrutiny of scientific misconduct and conflicts of interest among researchers who fail to disclose they have skin in the game, i.e. lucrative financial ties...
by Alison Bass | Jan 18, 2011 | Uncategorized
On Wednesday, Jan. 19, I’m moderating a panel on blogging about health and science, sponsored by the New England Science Writers. We are fortunate to have attracted some top-notch bloggers, including Gary Schwitzer, whose HealthNewsReview blog was named the best...
