From the monthly archives: February 2009

Republicans Try to Block Audacious Move to Inform Healthcare Treatments Based on the Evidence

By On February 16, 2009 · 11 Comments

In a sign of their undying loyalty to drug and device makers the Republicans have declared their opposition to a plan to add a billion dollars to the stimulus package to study the relative cost and effectiveness of different treatments for chronic conditions, a plan which President Obama is expected to sign tomorrow. I simply had to [...]

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Bogus Pimping for Flu Shots

By On February 15, 2009 · 3 Comments

In this week’s bmj there is an article by Thomas Jefferson of the Cochrane Vaccine Institute (“Relation of study quality, concordance, take home message, funding, and impact in studies of influenza vaccines: systematic review“) whom I have often quoted before (“Flu Shots are for Idiots“) regarding the dubious evidence behind policy recommendations [...]

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Multivitamins Useless for Postmenopausal Women, Surprise, Surprise

By On February 11, 2009 · 26 Comments

This article just in from the Women’s Health Initiative Study, published in this month’s edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine, on the utility of taking multivitamins for postmenopausal women. Now since the marketing staff of the Drug Safety and Health News Blog have been conducting focus groups amongst the readers of the [...]

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Goodbye to You Too Yaz: That Birth Control Pill is Driving Me Bananas

By On February 11, 2009 · 11 Comments

Bayer announced today that it is going to spend $20 million for an advertising campaign to reverse the effects of its ad campaign promoting the oral birth control pill, Yaz, as effective for the ups and downs of daily life as well as zits and other skin blemishes. This ad campaign was launched [...]

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Purim CPR, by Barry Zaret MD

By On February 10, 2009 · Leave a Comment

From our former colleague at Yale, cardiologist Barry Zaret MD, in the January 2009 edition of Psychosomatic Medicine, reads like a medical thriller:

In February 1997, I began a 4-month sabbatical leave from Yale School of Medicine where I had been a faculty member since 1973 and Chief of Cardiology since [...]

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Two Readers Escape from the Osteoporosis Drug Rat Maze

By On February 10, 2009 · 20 Comments

Remember this woman?

Well they pay her to be a fake, so I guess we can’t get worked up about it. But before you take this woman’s advice and go out and make yourself toxic on bisphonate drugs for the “prevention” of osteoporosis like Fosamax (alendronate), Actonel (risedronate), and Boniva (ibandronate), read some of the comments from readers, [...]

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This Just In: Breast Cancer Screening Essentially Useless

By On February 9, 2009 · 20 Comments

A certain SOMEONE that I know who is a healthy middle aged woman had to undergo a colonoscopy cuz her gynecologist came up with a positive guaiac test (screening for internal bleeding). Only AFTER the scope did I start to wonder about if there could be false positives, and me ‘n goolgle learned that if [...]

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I Don’t Like Foxes, They Make Me Nervous: Doctors and the Pharmaceutical Industry

By On February 5, 2009 · 7 Comments

In this week’s edition of the British Medical Journal BMJ there are some articles on “Doctors, patients, and the drug industry” which include some typical “fair and balanced” he said-she said articles in which avators like Marcia Angell (doctors should cut ties with drug industry) and our old friend from Yale Harlan Krumholz [...]

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How Much You Gonna Pay Me For Those Medical Guidelines?

By On February 3, 2009 · 10 Comments

There is an editorial in this weeks issue of JAMA by Drs. Sniderman and Furberg on the issue of medical guidelines, something that I have written about before, for example about how the National Cholesterol Education Panel (NCEP) came up with guidelines that would put 25% of the American population on statins, even [...]

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Introducing Dr. B.’s Chamber of Horrors!

By On February 2, 2009 · 3 Comments

I made up a little website of the who’s who list of drug disasters while researching my book on drug safety as a way to entertain myself.

At the time I thought it might offend some people, so I posted it on the internet, but without [...]

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