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 | 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 | Oct 8, 2012 | coal mining industry, disability, opiods, overdoses, prescription drug abuse, public health
Ever heard of the term “culture of disability?” It was first coined by Judith Greenwood, who published a paper in the ’80s about how the coal mining industry in West Virginia, because the jobs were so difficult and dangerous, had created a culture...
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...
