From the monthly archives: July 2009

A Nickel for My Thoughts?

By On July 11, 2009 · 8 Comments

Yep! For a nickel you can now get several years of research and the contents of hundreds of research articles read by someone who is not on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies. That would be in the form of a used copy of my book Before You Take That Pill, purchased on amazon.com. Or if [...]

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DSM-5 Internet Addiction Disorder? Armageddon and Keeping the Troops in Line

By On July 10, 2009 · 31 Comments

We have been following the process of writing the DSM, which will establish the new diagnostic criteria for psychiatric disorders, through the DSM-5 Shadow Team. One of the diagnoses that has been proposed is internet addiction disorder. This is apparently an addition to disorders for addictions to sex, food, gambling, whatever you name it, but we don’t have time to cover everything. Fact is it is pretty hard to know what they are doing as the head of DSM-5, David Kupfer MD, has required all members to sign a nondisclosure agreement and not take any notes. He runs a pretty tight ship.

The behavior of the committee members has gotten pretty mean and nasty, and the DSM Anxiety Disorders, OCD, PTSD and Dissociative Disorders committee retaliated against me for writing about the DSM here. I mean, those dudes are pretty thin skinned. And what would you think about a bunch of guys that signs a confidentiality agreement before they even know what they are getting into?

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More Than Meets The Eye on Most Recent Analysis of Statins for Primary Prevention

By On July 9, 2009 · 7 Comments

A recent meta-analysis in bmj of the treatment of people with multiple risk factors for heart disease but without a history of heart attacks looked at 70,388 people. They reported a 12% reduction in overall mortality which was statistically significant.

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Obama Caves in on Healthcare Reform

By On July 9, 2009 · 12 Comments

President Barack Obama basically gave away the farm today when he indicated that he was open to giving up the public option for healthcare insurance, saying that he would not “draw a line in the sand” over the issue. Rahm Emanuel was quoted as saying:

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University Tosses Professor Under the Bus to Satisfy Their Pharma Ties

By On July 8, 2009 · 11 Comments

Well it has been an interesting week. After word go out that I had been banned by my university from listing their name on my blog, which was covered almost immediately by Inside Higher Education, there were quite a few comments on the internet. There were a number of comments about a double standard where others had used letterhead from the university to promote medications on behalf of drug companies,

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Before You Take That Pill

By On July 7, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health, is available on Amazon last time we checked for $2.84.

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In Praise of Intellectualism, Or Notes on the Corpademy

By On July 7, 2009 · 2 Comments

Ok, if I had just left the first part of the title of this post in, you wouldn’t have read it, right? I mean, noone likes “intellectualism”, it sounds so, well, intellectual. We think professors are boring, and never take risks. We say things are “academic”, meaning that they don’t really matter. “It’s academic”. Being too smart or too well read is actually seen as a liability. Our heroes in America at least are not those who write a great research report, but people who bust down doors. Without asking first.

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The Missing Press Release that Was Never… Released

By On July 6, 2009 · 14 Comments

Last week’s decision by my university to instruct me to remove the name of my university from this blog (which was done a formal letter hand delivered by a courier) was actually the last in a string of events that to the uncritical eye might be seen as connected.

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Academic Freedom, and Things Just Got Really Weird Around Here

By On July 1, 2009 · 25 Comments

Last week I posted some musings on among other topics academic freedom and I got quite a response to this topic. The question arises how much am I allowed to talk about and what can my university do to control what I write (last week my university announced that they don’t want me to [...]

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Cancer Drugs Found to Not Be Worth Expense

By On July 1, 2009 · 13 Comments

A recent study from the National Cancer Institute has found that most cancer drugs are not worth the money.

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