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 | Jul 3, 2012 | antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, clinical trials, drug marketing, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, scientific journal retractions, scientific misconduct, suicide rates, whistleblowing
I was glad to see that the New York Times’ reporters covering GlaxoSmithKline’s $3 billion settlement tipped their hat to former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. After all, it was his crew and specifically a pioneering attorney by the name of Rose...
by Alison Bass | May 8, 2012 | antidepressants, clinical trials, drug marketing, FDA, media coverage, National Institutes of Health, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, Uncategorized
Two weeks ago, I headlined my blog with this question: Is the FDA violating its own mandate to approve safe drugs? Four days later, the national Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a 233-page report concluding that FDA’s current approach to drug oversight “is...
by Alison Bass | Apr 27, 2012 | antidepressants, biotech industry, clinical trials, continuing medical education, drug marketing, FDA, health care costs, medical devices, patient care, pharmaceutical industry, scientific misconduct, suicide rates, Uncategorized
Is the Food and Drug Administration violating its own mandate to approve safe drugs? That was the question that Donald Light, co-author of The Risk for Prescription Drugs and a long-time medical sociologist, posed at a talk yesterday at Brandeis University. The...
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 | 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...
