by Alison Bass | Apr 12, 2012 | antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, clinical trials, drug marketing, FDA, health care costs, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, scientific misconduct
I’ve been reading Dr. David Healy’s new book, Pharmageddon, and while some of it may seem like old news, I was struck by his fresh analysis of how the pharmaceutical industry has turned the original purpose of clinical trials inside out. As Healy, a noted...
by Alison Bass | Feb 20, 2012 | antidepressants, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, health care costs, pharmaceutical industry
When Dr. Irving Kirsch published his meta-analysis in PLoS Medicine in February 2008 showing that antidepressants were no more effective than a placebo in treating mild or moderate depression, the national news media ignored his explosive findings, for the most part....
by Alison Bass | Jan 26, 2012 | antidepressants, conflicts of interest, continuing medical education, drug marketing, ghostwriting, pharmaceutical industry, university industry collaboration
The Obama administration recently made it clear that it will require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment under the new health care law — see the New York Times. Large numbers...
by Alison Bass | Jan 18, 2012 | antipsychotic drugs, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, expert testimony, media coverage, pharmaceutical industry, whistleblowing
Allen Jones, the whistleblower in an ongoing landmark trial against the pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, was very much on my mind this past weekend. I was participating in a workshop to develop curriculum to teach college students about the importance of...
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...
