tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262Sun, 19 May 2013 17:25:20 +0000This blog is an ongoing discussion about the serious flaws in our current health care system and the need for reform.http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)Blogger139125http/alison-basscomfeedburnercomhttp://feedburner.google.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-5631300034949279266Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:01:00 +00002011-09-23T09:20:13.608-07:00I have moved my blog to this Wordpress site here. You'll also be able to access the new blog via my website. Although I will no longer posting here, I look forward to hearing from you at my new location. Thanks for your continued interest and support!http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-blog-has-moved-to-new-wordpress-site.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-3383171100246562088Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:57:00 +00002011-09-14T11:27:54.610-07:00Recent media coverage of the heated debate over Texas Governor Rick Perry's endorsement of mandatory HPV vaccinations for school-age girls in his state seems to be missing a few crucial points. First, many of the medical groups who strongly endorsed the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer received funding from Merck, the maker of the vaccine in question, Gardasil. And two, Merck's aggressive http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/09/coverage-of-rick-perrys-vaccine.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-5599607874264011201Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:52:00 +00002011-09-08T07:45:51.990-07:00At a time when our own government has stepped back from requiring true transparency about conflicts of interest in medicine, French lawmakers seem to be heading in a much bolder direction. According to Nature Medicine, the French national assembly is considering a bill that would require that conflicts are publicly disclosed by the country's regulatory agencies and made available to consumers. Inhttp://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/09/french-lawmakers-may-mandate-conflict.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-1532720995689616378Wed, 24 Aug 2011 13:58:00 +00002011-08-24T08:22:55.837-07:00The newly announced rules on financial conflicts of interest among federally funded researchers are certainly an improvement on the existing regulations issued by the National Institutes of Health in 1995 (which were never enforced anyway). But as ethicists and consumer advocates note -- see here and here -- they fall short of true reform largely because they continue to leave the reporting and http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-nih-rules-about-conflicts-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-7155977497939665901Wed, 10 Aug 2011 17:51:00 +00002011-08-10T11:44:47.541-07:00The retraction of studies in medical and scientific journals has surged in the last decade, according to separate analyses done by the Wall Street Journal and Retraction Watch. In its page-one article today, the Journal noted that while just 22 retraction notices appeared in 2001, there were 139 in 2006, 339 last year and 210 so far this year. Retraction Watch, in a blog celebrating its http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/08/whats-behind-growing-rate-of-scientific.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-31178616439197208Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:35:00 +00002011-08-05T06:40:19.241-07:00Medicare and social services for vulnerable Americans are not the only programs on the chopping block with Washington's deal to raise the debt ceiling and cut trillions of dollars in government spending. Looming ahead may be deep cuts in funding for medical and science research, and that raises the specter of growing collaboration between academic centers and industry, including pharmaceutical http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/08/with-big-pharma-on-campus-who-is.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-1504108470114051765Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:28:00 +00002011-07-21T06:43:51.245-07:00I realize this is the dead of summer and every journalist who isn't on vacation is captivated by the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal. But while everyone is looking the other way, the National Institute of Health's proposed new rules about the disclosure of financial conflicts of interest may be watered down.The sticking point, according to the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), is a proposed http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/07/tougher-nih-rules-about-financial.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-4035892087512074450Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:19:00 +00002011-07-12T09:28:23.505-07:00The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has called on President Obama to remove Amy Gutmann, University of Pennsylvania's president, as chair of his presidential commission for the study of bioethical issues. The reason: Gutmann did nothing to sanction the chairman of UPenn's psychiatry department for publishing an editorial under his name that was ghost-written by a medical company that http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/07/upenn-president-is-urged-to-resign-as.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-2058487607870667750Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:52:00 +00002011-07-05T08:22:15.396-07:00Harvard Medical School finally wrapped up its three-year-old investigation of Dr. Joseph Biederman and two colleagues accused of failing to disclose extensive financial conflicts of interest, with essentially a slap on the wrist. In 2008, Congressional investigators accused the three psychiatrists -- Biederman, Thomas Spencer and Timothy Wilens -- of failing to disclose more than $1 million each http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/07/biederman-and-colleagues-at-harvard-get.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-4563170837941922809Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:07:00 +00002011-06-28T07:18:12.475-07:00Two quick notes: the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has posted a helpful FAQ on corporate-funded medical ghostwriting. As POGO investigator Paul Thacker writes: "We hope this [FAQ] will answer any questions you might have on this very disturbing practice that corrupts the medical literature, drives up healthcare costs, and puts patient safety at risk."Also, my blog was recently listed on http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/06/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-8618822000785357188Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:54:00 +00002011-06-27T10:21:26.462-07:00A page-one story in The Boston Globe today spotlights the Massachusetts biotech industry's effort to block a key piece of President Obama's health care overhaul: the creation of an independent payment advisory board (IPAB) that would make recommendations on how to trim wasteful and counterproductive Medicare spending. The presidentially appointed board, to be comprised of representatives from http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/06/real-reason-biotech-industry-opposes.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-5191778893378638914Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:16:00 +00002011-06-30T13:23:52.381-07:00I was planning to blog about Pfizer's new $100 million partnership with several Boston-area medical centers and its potential downsides. But before I could get around to doing that, I was invited to talk about the deal on WGBH-TV's Greater Boston show yesterday. If you're interested in what I have to say, you can watch here.http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-pfizer-deal-with-boston-area.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-3616481804421437340Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:45:00 +00002011-07-11T06:58:11.775-07:00A few weeks ago, I blogged about the strange case of Dr. Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at Emory University who has testified in more death penalty cases in recent years than almost any other doctor in the country. I highlighted Mayberg's lucrative and lethal (she always testifies for the prosecution who are pushing for the death penalty) sideline as an example of why the National Institutes of http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-credibility-of-emory-neurologist.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-6715125251125842060Tue, 17 May 2011 18:30:00 +00002011-05-19T07:45:07.985-07:00A year ago, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed new rules governing the disclosure and handling of financial conflicts of interest by medical researchers who receive federal funding. The more stringent rules were prompted by Congressional findings that prominent NIH-funded researchers had failed to disclose significant consulting and other income, violating the agency's own http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/05/helen-mayberg-case-study-in-why-we-need.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-7618038405824468499Fri, 13 May 2011 18:39:00 +00002011-05-13T13:08:16.891-07:00In his latest blog, Paul Thacker, an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and former aide to Senator Charles Grassley, struggles to understand how Dr. Stan Kutcher, a psychiatrist turned politician in Canada, could possibly say that Paxil study 329, which Kutcher co-authored in 2001, hasn’t caused any particular controversy. Thacker was at a conference in Toronto the night http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/05/lesson-in-how-not-to-run-for-public.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-2397747108752345605Tue, 03 May 2011 14:40:00 +00002011-05-03T07:49:16.087-07:00Stan Kutcher, the psychiatrist turned politician who threatened to sue The Coast newspaper in Halifax unless it issued a retraction on a story it did about Kutcher's involvement with Paxil study 329 (see retracted story here) and my blog about it), lost yesterday's election, along with the rest of his Liberal Party. See story here.http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/05/paxil-study-author-and-psychiatrist.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-9062524434749865789Sun, 01 May 2011 13:47:00 +00002011-05-13T12:18:21.170-07:00In recent years, experts (like Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel) have warned that press freedoms are under increasing threat from economic pressures. As advertising and readers flee to the Web, they say, news outlets are more likely to cave in to pressure from corporate and political interests. Here's a disturbing example of this trend.A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by a reporter for The Coast http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/05/halifax-newspaper-buckles-under-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-5261411394217758287Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:26:00 +00002011-04-25T12:15:36.538-07:00In 2006, researchers first published results from a $35 million NIMH-funded study of antidepressants known as STAR*D, claiming it proved the effectiveness of second-generation antidepressants used alone and in combination with each other. The NIMH chimed in with press releases extolling "new strategies" that help depressed patients become symptom-free, and the findings became the basis for http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/04/serious-flaws-and-conflicts-skewed.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-4106676673056417566Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:56:00 +00002011-04-18T08:36:30.548-07:00Medicaid and Medicare are in the news of late, as Congressional Republicans spar with President Obama and the Democrats on how best to rein in the ballooning costs of these entitlement programs, which make up a growing share of federal and state budgets. But what few policy makers seem to be talking about -- at least in public -- are the perverse financial incentives built into the system that http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/04/lets-fix-perverse-financial-incentives.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-4840643642695162367Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:52:00 +00002011-04-05T08:25:13.609-07:00Psychiatry is supposed to be all about disclosure, disclosing the dark secrets of one's past to a professional in an effort to heal or, at the very least, figure out why one is in such psychic pain. But given the recent actions of the American Psychiatric Association, the largest trade group for psychiatrists in the U.S., one might get the impression that the profession is really all about http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/04/tale-of-censorship-and-secrecy-starring.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-1207953713317543824Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:24:00 +00002011-03-29T14:01:07.554-07:00In a finding that may stun heart patients but surprise few others, researchers have found that more than half of the doctors who wrote key clinical practice guidelines in cardiology had financial ties to medical device and drug companies that stood to benefit from those guidelines. The study, published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine, raises serious questions about the reliability of http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-study-finds-corrosive-influence-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-7767208570438466948Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:38:00 +00002011-03-14T10:57:28.901-07:00Here is a link to the newly posted video of a blogging panel sponsored earlier this winter by the New England Science Writers, a local chapter of NASW. I moderated the panel, which featured a stellar group of health and science bloggers: Gary Schwitzer, who writes the Healthnewsreview blog, Daniel Carlat, of the Carlat Psychiatry Blog, Rachel Zimmerman, who curates WBUR's Commonhealth blog, and http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/03/nesw-posts-video-of-informative.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-3584904543128163115Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:54:00 +00002011-03-07T12:24:17.507-08:00The same drug giants paying millions of dollars to settle claims that they engaged in illegal and improper marketing of anti-psychotic drugs in the U.S. are even now looking for new worlds to conquer. Consider the study published today in the Archives of General Psychiatry. It surveyed more than 60,000 adults in 11 countries in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America and concludes that the http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/03/drug-companies-and-psychiatry.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-3559928241242572961Mon, 21 Feb 2011 14:56:00 +00002011-02-21T08:38:03.404-08:00I'm embarrassed to admit that when I was a medical reporter for The Boston Globe in the '90s, I (along with many other journalists) would unthinkingly use the $800 million that the pharmaceutical industry said it cost to develop a new drug product. Industry apologists routinely threw out that exorbitant figure whenever anyone complained about high drug prices, and they made sure to note that it http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/02/dismantling-myth-of-high-drug.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-653895891370775262.post-3352086556475735899Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:39:00 +00002011-02-10T12:35:01.917-08:00There must be something in the air. Either that, or the drug and medical device industry has embarked on a concerted campaign to improve its tattered public image and bully the FDA into backing down from recent efforts to ensure that unsafe drugs and medical devices are kept from the market. First appeared an op-ed piece in The Boston Globe early this week complaining that the average number of http://alison-bass.blogspot.com/2011/02/are-we-seeing-concerted-industry.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Alison Bass)12