by Alison Bass | Jan 29, 2010 | Uncategorized
Those of you in the mood for a serious read might want to check out an article in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry about the way in which many drug companies use their marketing muscle to mislead physicians and consumers about the safety and effectiveness of their...
by Alison Bass | Jan 25, 2010 | Uncategorized
Remember Dr. Lawrence DuBuske, the Harvard Medical School allergist whom I outed as the highest paid doctor on GlaxoSmithKline’s payroll for the second quarter of last year? Rather than give up his lucrative speaking and consulting gigs for Glaxo and myriad...
by Alison Bass | Jan 19, 2010 | Uncategorized
It’s nice to see that Massachusetts anesthesiologist Scott Reuben has plead guilty to faking medical research and agreed to pay restitution fees for his fraud. But there is one aspect of his plea agreement with federal prosecutors (which he signed last week in...
by Alison Bass | Jan 11, 2010 | Uncategorized
As Congressional committees work to meld the House and Senate versions of the health bill and Republicans launch a last-minute effort to scuttle the entire enterprise, one unsavory element of the legislation seems to have escaped much public attention. That’s...
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...
