by Alison Bass | Apr 13, 2016 | antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, FDA, pharmaceutical industry, prostitution, sex work
After my first nonfiction book, Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial, was published, a number of readers told me that the book would make a great movie. (It’s written as a narrative and tells the true story of two...
by Alison Bass | Jun 10, 2013 | antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, FDA, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug abuse, scientific misconduct
I reviewed two books now circulating about the DSM and the current controversy over the DSM-5 for The American Scholar — see review here. The two books are The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry by Gary Greenberg, and Saving Normal: An Insider’s...
by Alison Bass | Feb 13, 2013 | antidepressants, drug marketing, FDA, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug abuse, university industry collaboration
I went to see Steven Soderbergh’s new film, Side Effects, with anticipation and dread. The movie, after all, carries the same name as my 2008 book, Side Effects and from what I could tell of the trailers, its plot seemed loosely based on the issue I explore in my...
by Alison Bass | Sep 10, 2012 | antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, drug marketing, health care costs, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug overdoes, public health
Did you know that West Virginia has the second highest rate of deaths from prescription drug overdoses in the country? I didn’t, until I moved to the Mountain State to live and work and became curious as to what was behind this tragic statistic. According to a...
by Alison Bass | Sep 5, 2012 | antidepressants, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, ghostwriting, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct
I just learned that Dr. Martin Keller, principal investigator of the controversial Paxil study 329, has retired from his position as a professor of psychiatry at Brown University — see here. As Pharmalot notes, Keller quietly retired June 30 in the midst of an...
by Alison Bass | Sep 4, 2012 | antidepressants, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, ghostwriting, National Institutes of Health, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct, university industry collaboration
In the wake of GlaxoSmithKline’s record-breaking $3 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, a number of psychiatrists and researchers have redoubled their efforts to get Paxil study 329 retracted. As mentioned here and in other news accounts, the...
