Hooked: Ethics, Medicine, and Pharma

(My source for this post is Elisabeth Rosenthal's article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple-breath.html?_r=0 --which has actually publishe...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-disapparenace-of-generic-drugs.html

According to ProPublica's Charles Ornstein-- http://www.propublica.org/article/what-to-be-wary-of-in-the-govts-new-site-detailing-industry-money-to-docs --as the Sunshine Act (of the 2010 Affo...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/09/sunshine-act-goes-live-sort-of.html

I have previously written about the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale Update Committee, or RUC: http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-conflicts-of-interest-at-high.html http://brodyhook...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-anechoic-ruc-some-small-efforts-at.html

Jack E. James, who appears to hail from either Reykjavik University in Iceland or the National University of Ireland in Galway, or both, kindly sent me a copy of a paper published in June in the ...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/08/not-so-personalized-medicine.html

The main thrust of this commentary comes from Dr. Roy Poses and: http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/08/desperate-vulnerable-research-subjects.html --which in turn draws on two prior posts: http...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/08/research-on-pharmaceuticals-from.html

Now I'm turning the blog over to Dr. Christopher M. Gregory, a fellow Texan who runs the DocOnomics blog (http://www.doconomics.com/blog/ ). He sent an e-mail recently which so nicely, and briefl...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/08/from-christopher-gregory-whats-wrong.html

Let's see what's going on over at the Health Care Renewal blog, courtesy Dr. Roy Poses. Dr. Poses has been noting that there are some pharmaceutical developments that could easily help us out ...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/08/from-health-care-renewal-free-market.html

Two longish articles by our old friend Dr. Carl Elliott and by Peter Aldhous: https://medium.com/matter/did-big-pharma-test-your-meds-on-homeless-people-a6d8d3fc7dfe https://medium.com/matter/wh...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/07/more-on-guinea-pigging-quality-of.html

There seem to be two problems with the newest drugs for hepatitis C,  simeprevir (Olysio) and sofosbuvir (Sovaldi). The problem most discussed these days is "miracle drugs cost too much." For e...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/07/rating-new-hepattits-drugs-what-standard.html

Every so often, it’s worth taking a look at how badly we’ve allowed ourselves to distort reality. We generally think that health care costs in the U.S. are about what they are in the rest of ...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/06/usa-worse-than-two-countries-in-health.html

Salon.com recently published a piece: http://www.salon.com/2014/01/25/5_evil_ways_the_multi_billion_dollar_drug_industry_is_in_bed_with_your_doctor_partner/ --that cuts to the chase in the ways...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-top-five-ways-that-pharma-affects.html

Back in 2011 I heard from Cutting Edge Information on the subject of key opinion leaders (KOLs): http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2011/06/keeping-kols-fat-and-sassy-these.html I figured that...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/05/are-kols-drying-up-praise-be.html

Those of you who are heartily sick of my talking about statins, please skip this post. By way of joining in on the controversial new statin guidelines: http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2013/11/n...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-ongoing-statin-debate-or-is-it.html

Once again I'll move over and give the floor to Dr. Roy Poses at Health Care Renewal: http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-pervasiveness-of-health-care.html In the past, also following Dr...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/05/yet-more-corruption-in-pharma.html

The Hastings Center Report, a prominent bioethics publication, published a special supplement (March/April 2014) on "Interpreting Neuroimaging," which contained an especially useful article by Dr...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-dead-salmon-are-thinking-and-how.html

According to the story in the L.A. Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ucla-doctor-conflicts-20140423,0,3924175.story#axzz2zwLITYhU --there are two versions of what happened; so to be ...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/04/ucla-whistle-blower-suit-does-industry.html

Earlier this week I posted about the current issue of the New England Journal, and mentioned in passing the appearance of antiviral drugs for hepatitis C that are being touted as new miracle cure...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/04/breakthrough-cures-reasons-for.html

One theme in HOOKED is the need to see today’s relationship between the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry in proper historical context. When HOOKED was written, I had to strugg...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-history-of-us-drug-policy-since.html

Not to make this blog the “Statins Blog” or anything, but since I have been on a tear regarding the unfortunate ACC/AHA guidelines on cholesterol: http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2013/12/more...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/04/yet-more-on-statins-and-recent.html

Three articles in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine all combine to illustrate “market failure” in the pharmaceutical industry. As you can guess, the editors of NEJM didn’t adopt...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/04/summarizing-market-failure-special.html

We’ve discussed the debate over oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and the problems in determining whether it offers advantages to flu patients, given how hard reviewers had to search to get all the data: ...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/04/more-on-flu-drugs-and-broken-drug.html

Dr. Roy Poses over at Health Care Renewal has for some time been speaking out about conflicts of interest posed by leaders of academic medicine and supposedly “not-for-profit” health systems ...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/04/amc-leaders-on-corporate-boardsa-modest.html

A group from the excellent Pharmacoepidemiology-Pharmacoeconomics center at Harvard, a.k.a. Dr. Jerry Avorn and friends, wrote this commentary in the current New England Journal: http://www.nejm....

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/03/pharma-lobbyists-have-their-way-fda.html

Every so often I comment on a research study that has nothing directly to do with pharmaceutical matters, but which illustrates some basic points about the medical literature and how apparently a...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/03/over-enthusiasm-in-research-results-how.html

The nice folks over at ProPublica: http://www.propublica.org/article/as-full-disclosure-nears-doctors-pay-for-drug-talks-plummets --who gave us their Dollars for Docs web tool to track drug com...

http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2014/03/pharma-slashes-budgets-for-physician.html