by Alison Bass | Dec 2, 2011 | antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, FDA, ghostwriting, pharmaceutical industry
A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability office confirms something that Rose Firestein, the eponymous prosecutor in the title of Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower and Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial noticed way back in the ’90s: that...
by Alison Bass | Nov 18, 2011 | antidepressants, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, ghostwriting, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct
The international research organization Healthy Skepticism has called on Brown University to help convince a psychiatric journal to retract the controversial Paxil trial that I wrote about in Side Effects, according to the Brown Daily Herald. The principal...
by Alison Bass | Nov 17, 2011 | biotech industry, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, Uncategorized, university industry collaboration
We’ve all signed those vague privacy statements when visiting our local hospital for medical care. But how many of us have actually read the fine print and understand that the most sensitive details of our medical lives may be shared with drug companies for...
by Alison Bass | Nov 2, 2011 | antipsychotic drugs, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, ghostwriting, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, scientific misconduct, Uncategorized
On November 28, the Texas Attorney General is expected to begin a landmark trial against Johnson & Johnson on charges that the pharmaceutical giant “subverted scientific integrity” by paying off academic psychiatrists and state officials to boost the...
by Alison Bass | Oct 28, 2011 | antidepressants, conflicts of interest, FDA, medical devices, suicide rates
With the Obama administration hobbled by a Republican-led Congress, the pharmaceutical and medical device industry seems to have launched a concerted push to roll back regulatory initiatives designed to protect consumers from unproven or unsafe drugs and medical...
by Alison Bass | Sep 23, 2011 | conflicts of interest, health care costs
At a Harvard event last night honoring the former Grassley investigator Paul Thacker, someone in the audience wanted to know how the topic of Thacker’s talk — Dollars for Doctors: Who owns your physician? — was related to the soaring cost of medical...