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...
by Alison Bass | May 7, 2009 | Uncategorized
As The Boston Globe’s unions vote on whether to bow to the inevitable and make the financial concessions demanded to keep their newspaper alive, it seems a sad but apropos time to bring attention to a new survey on the declining state of health care journalism....
by Alison Bass | Apr 30, 2009 | Uncategorized
For years, many scientists and doctors have argued that it was not necessary to police conflicts of interest and other irregularities in scientific research, Money, they argued, couldn’t possibly taint their scientific judgment. And even if it did, science was...
by Alison Bass | Apr 20, 2009 | Uncategorized
Anyone keeping up with the news knows that a number of prominent psychiatrists have been under seige of late after Congressional allegations that they failed to disclose lucrative payments from drug companies whose products they were studying and promoting on the...
by Alison Bass | Apr 16, 2009 | Uncategorized
Remember the flap a few weeks ago between researcher Jonathan Leo and the Journal of the American Medical Association, whereby JAMA’s editors got egg all over their face after trying to intimidate Leo? Leo, a professor of neuroanatomy at Lincoln Memorial...
by Alison Bass | Apr 9, 2009 | Uncategorized
Brown University’s student newspaper, The Daily Herald, reported this week that Martin Keller had announced his decision to step down as Brown’s chair of psychiatry in August 2007. In a letter he apparently sent to faculty in his department, Keller said he...
by Alison Bass | Apr 9, 2009 | Uncategorized
Earlier this week, Senator Charles Grassley announced a probe into the nation’s largest advocacy group for people with mental illness, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, asking the nonprofit group to disclose the funding it has received in recent years...
by Alison Bass | Apr 6, 2009 | Uncategorized
Martin Keller is finally stepping down as the long time chief of psychiatry at Brown University. Brown University officials made the announcement in a Dear Colleagues letter dated today from Edward J. Wing, Brown’s new Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences....
by Alison Bass | Apr 2, 2009 | Uncategorized
When people exhibit signs of psychosis – they hear voices, they think someone is out to get them – more often than not, they are referred to psychiatrists who immediately put them on powerful drugs like Haldol, Depakote, Abilify or Seroquel. These drugs sometimes tamp...
by Alison Bass | Mar 27, 2009 | Uncategorized
Thanks to unsealed documents from legal proceedings, we now know that many drug makers routinely hid negative findings about antidepressants and anti-psychotics (ranging from Paxil to Seroquel) from doctors and consumers. Now comes evidence that the researchers who...
