by Alison Bass | Dec 28, 2009 | Uncategorized
As we start the countdown to a new decade, I have a question for you: why doesn’t the US media run comprehensive stories like this piece in The Guardian about our youth’s dangerous dependence on prescription drugs? Sure, there were a few short news stories...
by Alison Bass | Dec 21, 2009 | Uncategorized
GlaxoSmithKline became the third pharmaceutical giant to start disclosing all the speaking and consulting payments it makes to US doctors, and its list is an eye-popping illustration of the rampant corruption that runs through our current system of medical research....
by Alison Bass | Dec 14, 2009 | Uncategorized
In Chelsea (a stone’s throw from Boston Harbor), there lives a nine-year-old boy with curly black hair whose eyes are dead because he is on drugs, the legal kind. His single mother, who is on welfare and long-term disability (she has serious health problems)...
by Alison Bass | Dec 9, 2009 | Uncategorized
Mere days after several bloggers (including myself) spotlighted the conflicts of interest among medical societies criticizing the new mammography guidelines, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has asked these groups (and quite a few others) for information about the...
by Alison Bass | Nov 30, 2009 | Uncategorized
This Wednesday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce will hold a hearing on the new breast cancer screening recommendations, in response no doubt to the storm of criticism that greeted the recent guidelines issued by the US Preventative Services Task Force. I...
by Alison Bass | Nov 23, 2009 | Uncategorized
We’ve got family coming in for Thanksgiving and I have much to do. So this week, I’d just like to point my faithful readers to three items of interest:1. Gary Schwitzer’s great blog, which goes a long way to explaining why there was such an unholy...
by Alison Bass | Nov 16, 2009 | Uncategorized
Talk about synergy. Just a few days ago, my health and science journalism class at Brandeis was discussing ethics in science, using as a template an old case example involving scientific fraud in the University of Michigan laboratory then headed by Dr. Francis...
by Alison Bass | Nov 9, 2009 | Uncategorized
In the days since the Fort Hood shooting, I have wondered whether the gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was taking antidepressants in the weeks or months before he sprayed a medical clinic with bullets, killing 13 people. I hesitated to raise that question since there...
by Alison Bass | Nov 2, 2009 | Uncategorized
Just in case you didn’t read the Saturday papers, let me call your attention to this article in The Boston Globe about the chickens coming home to roost for Amgen, the California biotech that makes Aranesp, an anti-anemia drug for people with cancer and kidney...
by Alison Bass | Oct 26, 2009 | Uncategorized
The recent murder suicide of an elderly couple in Newton, Massachusetts brought to mind a horrific story I heard while attending the ICSSP conference in Syracuse a few weeks ago. In 2006, David Crespi, a former banking executive with no criminal record or history of...
