Paul Thacker, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), writes: The blogosphere lit up with several posts on the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) refusal to print a letter critical of a medical textbook they published with help from the ghostwriting company Scientific Therapeutics Information. We covered it at POGO here ,and Dr. Bernard [...]
John Fauber and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel continue their long-running “Side Effects” series – the longest-running journalism series on health care/medical research conflicts of interest. In the latest story, Fauber reports on a University of Wisconsin pain research group that he says has “cozy personal financial relationships with drug makers,” receiving millions, while helping to [...]
It’s not a new phenomenon. In fact, it’s troubling how old and widespread it is. But when TV “news” departments partner with, and sell news time to local medical centers, you can take the Radio-Television Digital News Association’s code of ethics and throw it out the window. Blythe Bernhard reports in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: [...]
In an analysis published in the journal PLoS Medicine, Adriane Fugh-Berman and colleagues reflect on the facts that: “Even after the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) found that the risks of menopausal hormone therapy (hormone therapy) outweighed benefit for asymptomatic women, about half of gynecologists in the United States continued to believe that hormones benefited women’s [...]
The journal of the Canadian Medical Association – CMAJ – published an editorial this week, “Partnerships between health organizations and the food industry risk derailing public health nutrition” (link takes you to pdf file). It was written by an Ottawa obesity expert and by the editor-in-chief of the journal. Excerpt: “Highly processed, nutritionally deprived and [...]
A study in the American Journal of Public Health looks at drug industry contributions to non-profit health advocacy groups. The authors report: “We used Eli Lilly and Company’s grant registry to examine its grant-giving policies. We also examined (health advocacy organization) Web sites to determine their grant disclosure patterns. Only 25% of (health advocacy organizations) [...]
See: Med Schools Flunk at Keeping Faculty Off Pharma Speaking Circuit and Drug Companies Retain Tight Control of Physicians’ Presentations
That’s what former FDA commissioner Dr. David Kessler said about the book, “Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care,” which listed as co-authors Drs. Charles B. Nemeroff and Alan F. Schatzberg. But, as the New York Times reports, the “authors” acknowledged in the preface of the book they had received [...]
Journalist Keith Goetzman asks this question on the Utne Reader site. Excerpts: “Are our institutions of higher learning becoming dens of corporate complicity? That’s the thread running through a spate of recent stories that reveal how a trio of heavies–Big Oil, Big Agriculture, and Big Pharma–are pulling strings at U.S. universities. Each tale, on its [...]
An historic piece of journalism was published today. Six news organizations partnered on the “Dollars for Docs” project – ProPublica, NPR, PBS’s Nightly Business Report, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and Consumer Reports. They examined $258 million in payments by seven drug companies in 2009 and 2010 to about 18,000 health care practitioners nationwide for [...]
This story focuses on a family that may have a rare genetic mutation that increases their risk of heart disease. Unfortunately, the “rare” part wasn’t mentioned until 1,600 words into this 2,100 word story.
While this story adequately addressed 7 of our 10 criteria, the 3 on which it missed were significant omissions, yet could have been easily addressed.
Solid medical conference reporting, with many expert interviews and good context provided. Goes far beyond the conference presentation itself.
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