Pharmaceutical Industry

Shannon Brownlee on WSCH6-TV Portland | 'Book Discussion: 'Overtreated''

Communications — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:34:00 -0400

New America in the News:
Shannon Brownlee discusses her new book Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker And Poorer on NBC affiliate WSCH6. LINK to video

Naming Names: Is There an (Unbiased) Doctor in the House?

Articles — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:29:00 -0400

Journalists often forget that conflicts of interest may bias the opinions of their expert sources. Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee explain how, in an attempt to disentangle commercial messages from science, they have compiled a list of nearly 100 independent medical experts to whom reporters can turn.

Ho hum, another medical scandal in the news. Earlier this month US Senator Chuck Grassley announced his intention to investigate Alan Schatzberg, chairman of the psychiatry department at Stanford University and the incoming president of the American Psychiatric Association, about his multimillion dollar interest in Corcept Therapeutics, a company that is seeking to market a drug that Dr Schatzberg is researching with federal… more

Shannon Brownlee in the Indianapolis Star | 'One Drug, Many Uses. Good idea?'

Communications — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:34:00 -0400

New America in the News:

..."I think the question is, should one drug compound do so much?" said Shannon Brownlee, author of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer.

"This is a drug that may have a really serious side effect called suicide," Brownlee said. "Don't we have other drugs available that are safer and just as effective for such things as the management of chronic knee and low back pain?"... LINK

Stealth Marketers

Ron Tang — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:11:00 -0400

A few weeks ago, devoted listeners of National Public Radio were treated to an episode of the award-winning radio series The Infinite Mind called "Prozac Nation: Revisited." The segment featured four prestigious medical experts discussing the controversial link between antidepressants and suicide. In their considered opinions, all four said that worries about the drugs have been overblown.

The radio show, which was broadcast nationwide and paid for in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, had the air of quiet, authoritative credibility. Host Dr. Fred Goodwin, a former director of the National Institute of… more

Knowing Me, Knowing You

Ron Tang — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 02:09:00 -0400

Do you want to Google your genes or peer into your future risks of heart disease or cancer? Now you can, according to direct to consumer testing companies. Gone are the days when genetic testing was limited to doctors ordering tests for rare, but prognostically potent, single gene disorders such as Huntington’s disease, Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, or cystic fibrosis. Thanks to an explosion of newly discovered single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced snips), companies are marketing genetic tests for traits ranging from the mundane -- eye colour and wet ear wax -- to serious conditions such as Crohn’s disease and… more

Big Pharma's Golden Eggs

Ron Tang — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 05:25:00 -0400

Once upon a time there was an industry called pharma that was interested in doing well and doing good. Run by doctors and chemists, drug companies employed battalions of researchers whose scientific efforts resulted by mid-century in a flood of life-saving drugs, including antibiotics, vaccines, tranquilizers, antihistamines and steroids. As George Merck, president of the company founded by his father, put it in 1950, "We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow... "

And how. Today, of course, drug companies are hugely profitable enterprises and the darlings of both… more

Let's Stop Running Scared

Ron Tang — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 06:49:00 -0400

Felt a little short of breath the other day, walking up a hill. Uh-oh. A nugget of worry lodged for a moment in my mind. At 50-something, I'm in decent enough shape. I don't smoke. I walk several miles most days, and I can still beat my 40-something friend at tennis. Not exactly a candidate for a heart attack. But still. I've read all those stories about women like me, the ones with no risk factors for cardiac disease who were suddenly hit with an attack.

Maybe you've had the same worries -- wondered whether some sharp little twinge was heartburn… more

An Untold Story?

Ron Tang — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

New generation antidepressants aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. That seems to be the central message in the meta-analysis published this week by Irving Kirsch and colleagues in PLoS Medicine,[1] and it was this message that made the headlines. Kirsch’s conclusion follows on the heels of similar studies showing that statins are useful in only a small subset of patients taking the drugs[2] and earlier studies finding that the safety and performance of cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX 2) inhibitors were worse than they first seemed.[3] All of which further reinforces previous criticisms that regulators in the United Kingdom and the United… more

Newtered

Articles — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:36:00 -0400

If you’ve never suffered the agony of low back pain, don’t worry -- chances are you will. About two-thirds of adults are hit with low back pain at some time in their lives, and for many the pain is sufficiently unbearable to send them hobbling into the doctor’s office. Yet although back pain is one of the most common conditions around, and although it costs billions of dollars each year in lost productivity, doctors still disagree over everything from how to diagnose the cause to what to do about it. The vast majority of low back pain -- even the… more

Overtreated

adminn — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:00:00 -0400

Is a CT scan always necessary after your child suffers a bump on the head? Should you think twice before undergoing surgery for lower back pain? Are your elderly parents going to be allowed to die at home, or will they spend their last few weeks in a hospital, hooked up to machines and tubes, subjected to painful, unnecessary procedures?

These are the kinds of questions you may find yourself asking once you’ve read Overtreated. Each year, our medical system delivers an enormous amount of care that does nothing… more