Lawmakers Seek Drug Safety Reform at FDA

It's coming closer to the day when the practices of the pharma industry on postmarketing surveillance and advertising are going to be mo...

SEC Warns Tenet and Former Executives of Possible Lawsuit

The Los Angeles Times reported today that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has warned that it may sue Tenet Healthcare six fo...

DTC Ads for Antidepressants

Interesting report in this week's JAMA [ Volume 293, page 1995-2002 ] on the effect of patients' asking for specific antidepressant ...

Ghosts Busted: Another Update

New World Association of Medical Editors Policy The World Association of Medical Editors issued a new policy statement on ghostwriting . Its...

Former Fletcher Allen Health Care CEO Sentenced for Conspiracy

As reported in the Rutland Herald and the Burlington Free Press .... William Boettcher, the former CEO of Fletcher Allen Health Care , an ac...

"Passionate CEO" Who "Fights the Dragons"

The Philadelphia Inquirer for Sunday 04-24-2005, features an interesting piece by Thomas Ginsberg on the CEO, Sir Tom McKillop , at AstraZe...

NIH Dissidents Keep Fighting Conflict of Interest Rules

The LA Times reported that over at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the dissident Assembly of Scientists is ramping up its fight to ...

Some Evidence of the Rising Tide of Health Care Malfeasance

In the Boston Globe is a story about lawsuits filed under the US False Claims Act, which allows people to sue goverment contractors for &qu...

Ghosts Busted: Some Additional Sources

Here is some additional background on the Journal of General Internal Mediciine / RcComms /AstraZeneca ghost writing story. The World Associ...

More evidence of ghostwriting

Yet more on ghost writing of scientific papers as posted here and here : Quoting a New York Times article, Evidence in Vioxx Suits Shows In...

Additional ghostbusting thoughts

The revelation about "ghost writing" and false accreditation in the Journal of General Internal Medicine , a practice apparently...

Ghosts Busted

The Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM) has released early a very important article about how pharmaceutical companies infiltrate th...

State Senator Indicted for "Influence Peddling" to Health Care Organizations

A follow-up of a complex local story in the Providence Journal : John Celona, a former Rhode Island State Senator, was just indicted by a st...

"Crackdowns Can't Keep Pace as Scams Grow More Cunning"

The San Francisco Examiner has published an investigative series on Medicare fraud. (The two articles are here and here .) The second sum...

26-digit patient ID codes and other dumb ideas

In the "awards for information technology that actually hinders patient care" category, this story takes strong honors. My automob...

"This Pricing is a Joke:" The $1275 Physical Therapy Session

A bizarre story about health care costs from the Miami Herald : A patient required hand physical therapy after a motor vehicle accident. She...

The Collapse of Reciprocal of America

From the New York Times : the story of the decline and fall of Reciprocal of America, a malpractice insurer based in Richmond, VA, which sol...

FDA Orders "My Man" Off the Air

See the Washington Post for the story that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ordered Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline to stop broadcast...

Medical Instamatics Phenomenon Exposed

I've often wondered how people with seemingly-serious credentials could publish arcane, cryptic, and sometimes nonsensical pieces on com...

A Growing Proliferation of Managers

A while back, we had a dialog with EconBlog about the myth of US health care waste. One issue I had discussed was adminstrative overhead. (...

Former Serono Executives Indicted for Bribery

The Boston Globe reported that four former executives of Serono Inc, a US unit of Serono SA, were indicted by the US justice department for ...

The Unsung Vaccinologist

A Slate article " The Unsung Vaccinologist " by author Arthur Allen, who is writing a history of vaccination, captures the essence...

King/Drew, Again: Putting Symbols Ahead of Patient Care?

The Martin Luther King Jr/ Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles is back in the news again, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. The Los An...

AARP: Wholesale Drug Prices Rise Faster Than Inflation

The AARP has just published its annual survey of the wholesale prices of brand-name drugs commonly taken by older Americans. In short, price...

Matthew Herper: "If the Cash Were Handed Out in Broad Daylight, It Would Be a Lot Less Likely to Look Like a Bribe"

Forbes published a proposal by Matthew Herper for better disclosure of conflicts of interest affecting US Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) ...

Some FDA History, with "Safety ... at the Back of the Bus."

The Boston Globe provided some historical context for how the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) got into its current troubles. Here are ...

The End of an Era: Maurice Hilleman, Ph.D.

The obituary of a pioneer in vaccine development, Maurice Hilleman, Ph.D. , appeared today. Dr. Hilleman worked since 1957 at Merck & C...

"Climate of Alarm Described at NIH"

And here is yet another story about problems at the NIH, this time allegations about intimidation of whistle-blowers. The Associated Press o...

"The Price of NIH Credibility"

An excellent editorial in the Los Angeles Times . Let me just provide some quotes. "Protesting NIH staff scientists and members of Cong...

Allegations of Professional Misconduct

The Washington Post reported that Dr. Sean R. Tunis, a physician licensed in Maryland, was accused by the State Medical Board of unprofessio...

Another Historic Case of Health Care Mismanagement

To toot my own horn a bit, the next in my series of historic cases of health care mismanagement has appeared in our local (RI) American Coll...

The Primary Care Squeeze: Who Will Be Part of the Solution?

In stark contrast to stories of ever more expensive drugs for ever more expansively defined ills , government research leaders getting six f...

More Downsides of a "Pill for Every Ill"

Two recent stories from the NY Times also accent the possible unintended effects of pharmaceutical companies' efforts to market "a ...