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This is the second in the Dance series tackling the crisis in healthcare. Part one was Dancing as fast as we can. Every product is built from a raw material. The raw material puts constraints on a product developer. There may be difficulties fashioning the product from the material, or the material may be costly or scarce. There is the delicate matter of how the mark-up from … [Read more...] about Dance to the Music of Time: How clinical trials help pharma invent data

This is the first of 6 Dance posts that cover the role of pharmaceuticals in the current healthcare crisis. It is based on Pharmageddon. In succeeding posts the role of clinical trials, patents, and prescription only status will be covered. The first five posts have been renamed from BarMittzva Romba; this combination of Bar(ack) and Mitt seems to have been too clever for its … [Read more...] about Dancing as fast as we can: The crisis in healthcare

This post was written by Dr Irene Campbell-Taylor, a former Clinical Neuroscientist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. This phrase means, of course, to allow the little children but today I want to write about children who are suffering in the other sense. The word “patient” comes from the Latin patire, to suffer or to endure. The children I … [Read more...] about Suffer The Little Children

A paper looking at antidepressants and birth defects in Denmark has just appeared. Anyone can download it and read for themselves (Jimenez-Solem et al 2012). It's worth reading. The published data demonstrate an increased rate of major birth defects on SSRIs which fits what almost all other studies have found. But this study also finds that women who have stopped their SSRI … [Read more...] about There’s Something About Mary

Since 2005, Paroxetine, first marketed by GlaxoSmithKline as Seroxat/Paxil, has carried warnings of birth defect risks. These risks led to litigation in the US – but not elsewhere. In the first case that went to court in the US in 2009, the Kilker case, the lawyers for Lyam Kilker argued that, even before Paxil was launched, there was good laboratory evidence that the … [Read more...] about Herding Women

This post is by Dr Adam Urato, a Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Tuft's University. Imagine for a moment that a virus started affecting about 5% of all pregnant women—200,000 US pregnancies per year. Imagine that it caused significant pregnancy complications--more than 10% of those infected with the virus would have miscarriage, up to 20% or more would have preterm … [Read more...] about A New Epidemic: Antidepressants During Pregnancy

Johanna Ryan in her post Dependence Day points to serious problems linked to psychotropic drug use in the military and what seem to be recent alarming developments, but there is a 60 year history here. In the 1950s, the VA hospital system commissioned Norman Farberow to look at rising rates of suicides among veterans. He studied veterans hospitalized for either medical or … [Read more...] about What Would Batman Do Now?

Author: Johanna Ryan, Labor Activist with Illinois Workers Compensation Lawyers (Chicago) Last month I watched as forty Iraq and Afghanistan vets led an antiwar march to the gates of the NATO summit in Chicago, and handed back their medals. At the rally, they described the toll the wars had taken on the troops as well as the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and demanded their … [Read more...] about Dependence Day

Syphilis appeared in Italy in 1498 just after Columbus had returned from the New World. This later led to suggestions that it had been brought back from the New World, in exchange for the many European illnesses that decimated the populations of North American Indians. Exposed to a virgin population new infections can be particularly virulent and during the subsequent … [Read more...] about Pharmacosis: The day the music died