by Alison Bass | Jul 13, 2009 | Uncategorized
When the news broke last week that President Obama had selected Francis Collins to be the new director of the National Institutes of Health, I didn’t immediately think of this noted geneticist in connection with a case study in ethics that a visiting scientist...
by Alison Bass | Jul 8, 2009 | Uncategorized
Just yesterday, Senators Charles Grassley and Herbert Kohl announced that language requiring the public disclosure of payments to doctors from drug and medical device companies has been included in the draft bills for health care reform now being debated in the House...
by Alison Bass | Jun 29, 2009 | Uncategorized
With the Congressional debate over health care reaching a crescendo, I find myself particularly baffled by the behavior of two influential Senators. Why, I wonder, would Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, and Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa,...
by Alison Bass | Jun 19, 2009 | Uncategorized
We’re taking advantage of the end of school to do some traveling to Philadelphia and Washington to scout out colleges for our son. And speaking of the nation’s capital, it was good to see that a robust majority of Americans support a government-run health...
by Alison Bass | Jun 17, 2009 | Uncategorized
Caty Simon was 15 when she tried to kill herself by swallowing some pills. A smart, precocious student at an Orthodox Jewish day school in the Boston area, Simon says the pressures on her — to succeed academically and fit into a culture where women were not...
by Alison Bass | Jun 11, 2009 | Uncategorized
As Congress steps up its efforts to craft a comprehensive health care reform bill, Senator Edward Kennedy (in absentia) is leading the charge for a public health insurance option that can compete with private insurers. As far as I can tell, this would not only involve...
by Alison Bass | Jun 1, 2009 | Uncategorized
Much has been written about prominent doctors who fail to disclose their lucrative financial ties with pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Yet there has been less focus on hospitals and other leading institutions who have similar conflicts of interest —...
by Alison Bass | May 28, 2009 | Uncategorized
In order to truly stabilize the economy and rescue Medicare from financial collapse, the Obama administration knows it has to do something about the elephant in the room: ever-rising health care costs. In this week’s New Yorker, surgeon-writer Atul Gawande...
by Alison Bass | May 20, 2009 | Uncategorized
On his Pharma Marketing blog today, John Mack recaps the controversy over the patient who was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Bristol Myers Squibb to promote Abilify and then changed his tune. (Andy Behrman, aka “Electroboy,” began talking out...
by Alison Bass | May 14, 2009 | Uncategorized
I had the pleasure of speaking to a large group of senior citizens yesterday at a Jewish community center in the Boston area. I had been invited there to talk about Side Effects, and while the focus of my talk (like my book) was how drug companies deceived the...
