Uncategorized

Ed 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 decisions are being made with no regard for the lives that are … [Read more...] about Pharmaceutical Rape: Cast of Characters

Ed 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 by 5000% recently on the back of claims that profit was necessary for research … [Read more...] about Pharmaceutical Rape is not a Metaphor

Several 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 website, as noted … [Read more...] about Antidepressants & The Undead

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. Are we anecdotes? On this first slide (1) you can see a recent article … [Read more...] about Motivation Is Worth More Than Expertise?

Editorial 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 show that clinical research in 2015 is even more ghost-written, and more … [Read more...] about The Ghost of Research Future

Editorial Note: This post interrupts the Crusoe series. The comments from Deirdre Oliver and “Truth” posted below assume Crusoe and I are one and in attacking me they risk derailing a position being laid out by Dr Crusoe. Dr Crusoe and I share some views or her posts would not feature here but while the issues about ECT have some relationship with the position she was staking … [Read more...] about Shock, Mutilate and Poison: The Medical Mission

Editorial Note: This follows Restoring Health part 1 and What's Poisoning Health part 2 of the Crusoe Report in response to the Witty Magna Carta posts. A medicine is a mix of a chemical that pharmaceutical companies produce and knowledge about how to use the chemical – that we produce. Making even basic chemicals was beyond us for millennia. But once the process was … [Read more...] about Lost in Medication: The Crusoe Report 3

How did we get to the point where healthcare itself is sick – where we have as Annemarie Mol brings out become consumers of healthcare products rather than people whom doctors and nurses care for when we are at our most vulnerable? The breach of trust in modern healthcare comes close to a mother poisoning her babies in their infancy. From luxury to basic Back in the 1950s … [Read more...] about What’s Poisoning Health: The Crusoe Report 2

The diplomatic thing would be to say there is some agreement between the Witty Report and this one. There is certainly some overlap in suggested solutions. We could perhaps even agree that the real problem is the failure of medicine rather than pharma malfeasance. But the fault-line runs deeper. There are two or maybe three forces, depending on the way you look at it, … [Read more...] about Restoring Health: The Crusoe Report 1

This post is designed to be read with the Drugs and Smell post on RxISK. Into the Matrixx The second drug in the Anosmia Table in the Drugs and Smell post is Zinc Gluconate which was traded under the name Zicam. For anyone concerned about adverse events this is one of the most important drugs in History. Zicam was marketed by Matrixx Pharmaceuticals. The company's … [Read more...] about Magna What? The Embarassing Side Effects of Drugs