David’s blog
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Go Figure on PerversityIn 1936, three workers at the Halowax Corporation in New York State, who had been working with chlorinated naphthalenes, developed chloracne – a skin condition that Viktor Yushenko’s face brought dramatically to world attention in 2004, when he was standing as the pro-Western candidate for the presidency of Ukraine. Chloracne can be caused by many […]
Go Figure: Digging for the Truth of InjuriesEditorial Note: In her comment, reproduced below, Sally was the person who best got to grips with what I was struggling with in last week’s post and this week’s and for the next few weeks. Drug induced injury is one sphere in which we get injured. Turning to other spheres may give us some ideas […]
Go Figure: The Silver Lining Clouds the ViewEditorial Note: Sally’s first Go Figure post with its 100 comments outlines the basic dilemma facing RxISK – how can anyone who has been injured by treatment get people who have not yet been injured to wake up. The next 5 – 10 posts will pick up various ways this dilemma has been answered over […]
Go Figure: Sally’s Problem with Whinging about MedicinesTwo weeks ago in response to the last post in the Study 329 series, Sally MacGregor added the comment – that features as a post below. It’s spot on. The problem is how to avoid being marginalized, becoming part of a 1%. How to capture the attention of the 99% for whom the meds work […]
Why Do People Sing?In 1989, BBC ran a program Under African Skies covering the music of the continent. The program and music from it captured on Cassette and later Record became widely known. On Side 2 of 4 sides of cassette, there is a brief snippet of 4 children at St Joseph’s Music School in Harare answering their […]
Club 329: Part 4Editorial Note: This post perhaps should be called: There’s Something about Leonie. The image above is of a Rapid Response she submitted to a BMJ editorial by Richard Smith and Fiona Godlee that BMJ published and unpublished and republished and re-unpublished. The full story is here. It again hinges around Study 329. The full transcript […]
Club 329: Part 3Editorial Note: This post by Leonie Fennel carries on from parts 1 and 2 in this series. There will be one more post. I dreamt I met my son Shane last night – in a jewelry shop, of all places. I was admiring the beautiful costume jewelry, when I overturned the dainty display and went […]
Club 329: Part 2Following last week’s post, Club 329: Part 1, Ben Goldacre went into orbit claiming his views on medicalization and Study 329 had been misrepresented. He offered a SoundCloud as evidence. The link can be found in the comments after the last post. Seems to me Leonie got the content of the Q & A right. […]
Club 329: Part 1Editorial Note: This post is by Leonie Fennel. It’s one of two involving Leonie. Last week, Dr Ben Goldacre gave a public lecture in the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin (organised by the 3U Partnership and the very lovely Dr Ruth Davis). Dr Goldacre is a doctor, academic, campaigner and writer; he is also […]
The Pill That Steals LivesKatinka Blackford Newman talks about her new book Its now nearly three years ago since I woke up and found myself in a mental hospital in North West London. I looked down and saw wealds on my arms where I had torn my skin apart. There was a mirror in the tiny room where I’d […]
Restoring Study 329: Letter to BMJ Jan 2016Editorial Note: This was our final letter in the correspondence that began here and ran through here. There has been no response from Dr Godlee. 28 January 2016 Dr Fiona Godlee Editor, BMJ Re: BMJ handling of conflict of interest Dear Dr Godlee Thank you for your email response of January 11 2016 to our […]
Restoring Study 329: Letter to BMJEditorial Note: The posts have gotten slightly out of sequence. This post should have preceded the responses from BMJ. It is the letter to which they were responding. This and other letters are on Study329.org. 8 July 2015 Dr Fiona Godlee Editor BMJ Dear Dr Godlee Re: “Restoring Study 329: A randomised, controlled trial of […]
Restoring Study 329: Correspondence with BMJ Jul 15 to Jan 16Editorial Note: The letter from the Study 329 team to BMJ re Dr Loder featured in 50 Shades of Gray and in Conflicts of Interest. The actual letter and related correspondence is all on Study329.org. The emails below and in the next post tell you what happened next. From: Jureidini, Jon (Health) Sent: Wednesday, 8 July 2015 […]
The Archers: Rob and HelenEditorial Note: There is no-one I know who admits to listening to The Archers. But everyone in Britain knows of it – the longest running British radio soap. It begins with a horrible theme tune that has me hitting off instantly. But all changed in the last week or two. The Archers is now featuring […]
Study 329: Response to Keller & ColleaguesEditorial Note: This post offers our response to the Keller letter. It was published in BMJ in early February. Again all material is available on Study329.org. The response does not make much of the fact that not all of the Als in Keller et al have lined up to sign their letter. One of the […]
Study 329: Nobody Pinned Anything on UsEditorial Note: Following the publication of Study 329 Restored, Martin Keller and his co-authors gave an initial response in which they said Nobody Pinned Anything on Us and also that they would respond in more detail later. It took four months for this response to appear. Our Response will follow in the next post and […]
Study 329: Republic to EmpireEditorial Note: This post is from Sally MacGregor. In depositions and lectures I commonly state that I have had more support and information from colleagues working for industry than from clinical colleagues. I loved the analysis of the derailment of medicine and research through the comparison between a Republican and Empire structure, and the take-over […]
Pharmaceutical Rape: Ending our ToleranceEditorial Note: This is the final part of Laurie Oakley’s series on Pharmaceutical Rape. All six parts with better imagery (no-one is enthusiastic about the Martin Shkreli images) and extra text are available here as a PDF Download. Pharmaceutical violence Pharmaceutical violence is a social issue as well as medical problem that demands a social response and […]
Pharmaceutical Rape: DiscriminationEd Note: This is the fifth and penultimate post in Laurie Oakley’s Pharmaceutical Rape series. Pharmaceutical violence is a social injustice that can intersect with every other type of oppression and form of discrimination. Dehumanizing in its own right, pharmaceutical rape (and the cultural/medical denial of it) compounds the distress already experienced by persons in socially […]
Pharmaceutical Rape: Doctors still know bestEditorial Note: This is part 4 of Laurie Oakley’s series on Pharmaceutical Rape. Many who experience life-altering, adverse outcomes after taking their medicines as prescribed do not receive acknowledgment of what they have experienced, let alone the medical care they need. Medical systems do not recognize many treatment related outcomes and patients are therefore denied […]
Pharmaceutical Rape: The Good PatientThis is part 3 of Laurie Oakley’s series on Pharmaceutical Rape. In our society We learn a social script in which a “good patient” obeys the orders of doctors as authority figures. The ideal patient is a passive patient, subordinate to the physician. We are expected to relate to doctors as experts whose judgment we […]
Pharmaceutical Rape: Cast of CharactersEd Note: This is part two in Laurie Oakley’s Pharmaceutical Rape series. WHEN IT COMES to pharmaceutical rape, it is no simple task to determine just who the “rapists” are (or to determine the safety or lack of safety of the treatments that they promote), but we are certain that the behavior exists, and that […]
Pharmaceutical Rape is not a MetaphorEd Note: This is the first of a 5 part series on Pharmaceutical Rape by Laurie Oakley. We are looking for images to illustrate the series and would welcome any cartoons or other images that are germane to themes below. The first image here is Martin Shkreli, the man who raised the price of Daraprim […]
Little Red StethoscopeTo be read in conjunction with Little Red Riding Hood. Once a newly qualified doctor, wearing her red stethoscope, set out to treat an older woman, bringing medicines and the milk of human kindness. As the doctor was walking through the hospital, the medical director came up to her and asked where she was going. […]
Little Red Riding HoodThis is the first of a two part piece. Little Red Stethoscope follows. More on the current post can be found in Images of Trauma. A grimm tale The development of psychoanalysis depended heavily on Freud’s approach to the interpretation of dreams and myths. Key to these interpretations were his claims about the symbolic nature […]
Antidepressants & The UndeadSeveral of us involved in RxISK.org monitor other groups setting up to offer information on medicines. Some of these, like eHealthMe, offer useful information sometimes with innovations we wish we had thought of first. The general sales pitch is under the umbrella of Personalized Medicine. As ever, pharmaceutical companies are in there early. The Brintellix […]
Motivation Is Worth More Than Expertise?Editorial: I was asked to MHRA (Britain’s FDA) to give a 20 minute presentation on Spontaneous Reporting Systems to a group looking at a birth defect related issue. This is close to what was said – minor items like the HRT trials got lost in delivery. The Slides numbered in the text are attached Here. […]
The Ghost of Research FutureEditorial Note: This post is by Johanna Ryan. As with all posts by Jo, it unearths angles on current stories that everyone else seems to have missed. A column here last month followed the legacy of Study 329 into the present. By taking apart one 2015 study of Vraylar, a new antipsychotic, I tried to […]
Study 329: Big RiskEditorial Note: This is the Fourth Crusoe Report. “Death waits for these things like a cement floor waits for a dropping light bulb” Big pharma Study 329 seems to fit the classic picture. It has Big Pharma ghostwriting articles, hiding data, corrupting the scientific process and leaving a trail of death, disability and grieving relatives […]
Study 329: BMJ TransparencyTwo weeks ago The BMJ ran an editorial by Richard Smith (former editor) and Fiona Godlee (current editor) on the retraction of a 1989 article by R K Chandra under the heading of A Major Failure of Scientific Governance. While making money from the publication of pharmaceutical company trials, and in the face of a […]
Copyright © Data Based Medicine Americas Ltd.