by Alison Bass | Nov 26, 2012 | biotech industry, drug marketing, medical devices, opiods, pharmaceutical industry, prescription drug abuse, public health, Uncategorized
In my previous blogs about West Virginia’s shockingly high rate of prescription drug overdoses — the Mountain State has the second highest rate of overdoses in the nation — I focused on “the culture of disability” that created this...
by Alison Bass | Sep 24, 2012 | prostitution, public health, Uncategorized
Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes? I thought of his famous quote when my husband passed along a link he had received (from a social work listserv he subscribes to) to a...
by Alison Bass | Jul 25, 2012 | Uncategorized
For those of you haven’t heard, I’ve accepted a tenure-track teaching position in the School of Journalism at West Virginia University and am moving to Morgantown — see WVU’s announcement here. With all the packing and unpacking the move...
by Alison Bass | Jun 15, 2012 | Uncategorized
Just as Canada has provided us with a model for affordable health care, our neighbors to the north may also be leading the way on another key issue: reducing the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitting diseases. A few months ago, a federal appeals court in...
by Alison Bass | Jun 7, 2012 | biotech industry, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, pharmaceutical industry, Uncategorized
Senator Charles Grassley is upping the ante on the controversy surrounding the Vertex pharmaceutical executives who cashed in on overstated clinical trial data — see my blog from last week. According to The Boston Globe, which broke the Vertex story, Grassley...
by Alison Bass | May 30, 2012 | biotech industry, clinical trials, conflicts of interest, drug marketing, pharmaceutical industry, Uncategorized
Senior executives at Vertex Pharmaceuticals made millions of dollars each by selling company stock in the days after the Cambridge-based pharmaceutical reported promising clinical trial data on an experimental drug for cystic fibrosis. And then weeks after they cashed...
