From the Never Thought You'd See This Department comes the one-person play Big Pharma, in which writer-director-actor Jennifer Berry apparently skewers said industry. How many plays get reviewed by both the LA Weekly and PLOS Biology? At least one. As the PLOS Biology review notes, Anyone who has experienced the assault of the pharmaceutical industry's marketing campaigns would appreciate Jennifer Berry's one-person play Big Pharma: The Rise of the Anti-Depressant Drug Industry and the Loss of a Generation. Since the mid-1990s, spending on drug promotion has grown steadily, reaching $21 billion in 2002. Berry explores the fallout of this expanded...
Posted on April 17, 2007 11:21 AM • •
Mind Matters, the "blog seminar" I edit at sciam.com, this week hosts
a debate (which readers can join) about a) how best to estimate the prevalence of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) in Vietnam veterans and b) ultimately, how to calculate the cost-benefit ratio of war. ...
Check it out at Mind Matters. And feel free to chime in with comments or questions via the usual link at the bottom of the column there.
Posted on February 1, 2007 10:40 AM • •
There's more news -- unflattering to the company -- about Eli Lilly's, um, selective release of data about its antipsychotic drug: Lilly is trying to squash the full release (aka "the leak" or "unauthorized publication") of some internal memos that allegedly document its attempt to cover up Zyprexa's. dangerous side effects. But as Jake at Pure Pedantry outlines, the attempt -- which itself hardly looks good -- will likely fail, partly because many of of the documents have already been posted on web servers outside the U.S. and thus out of reach of U.S. courts.
This is the latest of several horrifically damning scandals in the drug industry, and it seems to embody and dramatize almost every flaw, foible, folly, and fuck-up that is costing the drug industry its credibility, and quite a few patients their lives.
Read on »
Posted on January 18, 2007 10:42 AM • •
Even among the other scandals the drug industry has produced lately, the behavior
described in the latest New England Journal of Medicine stands out as particularly stunning.
Posted on October 20, 2006 9:15 PM • 2 Comments •
My previous post drew notice to Malcolm Gladwell's recent article and blog posts about the competitive disadvantage our employer-based health-insurance system (and retirement system) inflicts on many American industries. Only hours passed before a commenter offered the (well-worn) argument that providing the obvious solution to this problem -- a national single-payer system providing universal health care -- "would be disastrous ...[if done] before tackling the cost issue."
This "but what about the costs?" argument against single-payer is a canard, and ignores that our system is already a disaster when it comes to costs
Posted on August 29, 2006 11:05 AM • 8 Comments •
Author and journalist 
