Placing a vaccine order with crooks and liars
Ten days ago Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced that the US government was allocating $1 billion to help companies with production costs for a swine flu vaccine. Among...
View ArticleSen. Grassley Pops Yet Another Psych Researcher Over Pharma Money
Yes, it's happened yet again, as the Wall Street Journal's Health blog reported yesterday, Sen. Charles Grassley has uncovered yet another psych researcher who was getting oodles of money from pharma...
View ArticleNew Zyprexa Documents Show Lilly Ghostwrote Zyprexa Studies
A new batch of Zyprexa documents was unsealed in US District Court in New York last month, something that escaped my notice due to all the Seroquel documents being released elsewhere. Bloomberg got the...
View ArticleAntidepressant use soars as the recession bites
This from Jamie Doward at The Observer: Fears the recession is affecting the mental health of the nation appear to be borne out by new figures that show prescriptions of antidepressants are soaring....
View ArticlePsychiatrists Attacking Psychiatrists For Blogging On Disclosure Controversies
There are a few bits of news in this post but they are tough to organize: suffice to say that the politics around the forthcoming DSM-V are becoming very intense and nasty and, slightly connected,...
View ArticleGoodbye, Anti-Sacred and Profane Writing Machine
After a long battle with cancer, PW staff writer, Guardian columnist, punk-rock novelist, NME gadfly, gender-twisting rebel comedian and poet Steven Wells has gone on to other things. Well, not really....
View ArticleZoloft Made Me Do It: Try to Kill Myself and Murder My Girlfriend
Despite the glib title of this ongoing TTWS feature (Blank Made Me Do It), there are some cases that are quite serious and upsetting. The one of Randall Robbins II is that kind of case, if only because...
View ArticleChantix, Zyban, Wellbutrin To Get Black Box Warning On Behavior Changes,...
This should come as no surprise to anyone, but today the FDA announced that it would require a new black box warning on certain smoking-cessation drugs, namely Chantix and Zyban, and would extend the...
View ArticleFDA Panel Votes To Ban Percocet, Vicodin
An FDA advisory panel yesterday voted to recommend a ban on the widely-prescribed painkillers Percocet and Vicodin. Percocet (and its kissing cousin Endocet) is actually a combination of Oxycodone, an...
View ArticleSuperb Advice
Thanks to advocate Fran Hazam for forwarding Dr. Lloyd I. Sederer’s article “Can You Trust Your Psychiatrist” from HuffPost. Citing influence from Big Pharma — and basically explaining the way the...
View ArticleWyeth Again Fails To Detail Pristiq Sales
Wyeth yesterday announced its second quarter results and once again failed to detail sales of its new and heavily-advertised anti-depressant Pristiq. The company only noted in its announcement that the...
View ArticleFDA Reviewer Calls About-To-Be-Approved Antipsychotic Unsafe
There was a flurry of attention yesterday in the business press around the still-awaiting-approval drug Saphris (asenapine), an atypical antipsychotic made by Schering-Plough. In briefing documents,...
View ArticleLilly Details $22 Million In Payouts To Doctor Consultants
Via the Wall Street Journal's Health blog comes word that Eli Lilly has just released a list of payouts to doctors acting as consultants for the company and likely speaking on behalf of their drugs to...
View ArticleHow Asleep Is The NY Times?
I ask this question in all seriousness in connection with an article in the paper today about "revelations" that pharma giant Wyeth paid ghostwriters to compose "scientific" papers, later published,...
View ArticleDrug Approved for Illness That Responds Better to Older Drugs
One of the apparent contradictions inherent in medicine: Just when you think you’ve discovered something new and helpful, research comes out to suggest that it may be counterproductive. Invega has now...
View ArticleGlaxo Had Ghostwriting Program To Promote Paxil
The AP is out with a report that GlaxoSmithKline had a major ghostwriting program in place to help promote its anti-depressant Paxil. "An internal company memo instructs salespeople to approach...
View ArticleBig Pharma Thanks Sen. Patty Murray
Some of you may have seen television ads along the lines of one running in the Seattle area. It's underwritten by PhRMA, the trade group for Big Pharma formally known as Pharmaceutical Research and...
View ArticleFlorida Neurologist Earns Tens Of Thousands Speaking For Eli Lilly
Remember that list Eli Lilly recently released detailing what doctors it's paying $22 million in consulting fees to? Well, the St. Petersburg Times had a great piece the other day on one of Lilly's top...
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