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ATLANTA, GA (WABE) – In recent years, doctors have come under increased scrutiny about the money they receive from drug companies.

Medical schools across the state are now taking steps to better police these relationships in order to [...]]]> Story from PBA originally posted today here where you can also listen to the radio interview.

ATLANTA, GA (WABE) – In recent years, doctors have come under increased scrutiny about the money they receive from drug companies.

Medical schools across the state are now taking steps to better police these relationships in order to avoid the appearance of biased research.

The Medical College of Georgia in Augusta has recently limited the gift amount doctors can receive from drugmakers to $25.

“Essentially you’re not to accept a gift in any dollar amount that directly influences your work or improperly influences it,” said Lee Little, a spokeswoman for the school. “We’re actually looking to adopt an electronic system for conflicts of interest reporting.”

It’s part of growing trend to limit the influence of pharmaceutical money and protect the integrity of academic research. Studies have found that when doctors receive gifts or fees from a drug company, those doctors are more likely to prescribe that company’s products.

In a high profile case from 2008, a congressional investigation revealed that the head of Emory’s psychiatry department failed to report more than a million dollars of consulting fees from companies whose drugs he was evaluating in academic journals.

That doctor was forced to resign from his chairmanship and later left the school.

Emory has since adopted a strict disclosure policy and a preapproval process for any payments taken from drugmakers.

Kathy Kinlaw of the Emory Center for Ethics helped develop the policy.

“We basically have eliminated all contact for our medical students and our faculty as much as possible,” said Kinlaw.

However, with the arrival of these restrictions, some physicians are quietly complaining. They say the relationship exists in order for doctors to meet peers and learn about new research and drugs.

“The increase in requirements in disclosure and the requirements for preapproval that’s more coming from administration,” said Emory psychiatry professor Dr. Douglas Bremner. “I think the academic physicians are just watching their outside consulting income melt away and grumbling about it behind close doors.”

In any event, drugmakers are still spending big money. The investigative news website ProPublica says in the last three years, $20 million has been spent on Georgia’s medical practitioners, in and outside of medical school.

Donald Palmisano of the Medical Association of Georgia says these are important relationships, but doctors should disclose them if the patient has concerns.

“As long as the physician is disclosing and answering questions honestly about what their relationship is to a pharmaceutical company, I think it’s something if the patient has concerns about, then they should ask those questions,” said Palmisano.

Patients will have more information to go by in March when a new federal sunshine law will force drug companies to publicly disclose all payments made to doctors and other health professionals. © Copyright 2012, WABE

I guess it was the year of attractive young women on trial for murder.

At least one of the most popular posts was about… umm… psychiatry.

Amanda Knox Blog Wars Update for the Week
These are the top blog posts from Before You Take That Pill based on the number of comments generated.

I guess it was the year of attractive young women on trial for murder.

At least one of the most popular posts was about… umm… psychiatry.

Amanda Knox Blog Wars Update for the Week
The Rise of the Guilter Monster
Rebuttal to “Angel Face” the Book about Amanda Knox
English Tabloids Say That Amanda Knox Should Wear Black, Stay at Home, and Pray
Nancy Grace is Completely Wrong About the Amanda Knox Case
Why It Isn’t Physically Possible For Amanda Knox to have Killed Meredith Kercher
Amanda Knox and the Coercive Interrogation Tactics of the Polizia di Stato in Perugia
Tot Mom: Case of Missing in Action Mother
Whoa! Tot Mom Was Abused!
New Questionable Diagnoses on the Horizon from the DSM-5 Committee

Con Berlusconi Non C’e Liberta’ di Parola in Italia 7

Did you know that Vitamin A, taken in excess, is believed to cause depression? Accutane, that remarkably popular drug once prescribed to teens and still available in generic [...]]]> A review of Goose That Laid the Golden Egg by freelance writer Bob Etier, follow her on twitter @katelier, and read the full review here.

Did you know that Vitamin A, taken in excess, is believed to cause depression? Accutane, that remarkably popular drug once prescribed to teens and still available in generic form, is a “molecular cousin” of Vitamin A.

Accutane was prescribed for people suffering from “extreme scarring acne,” but in 2001, Dr. Doug Bremner began research that indicated a very different, extreme effect of Accutane. He found a causal relationship between Accutane and depression—a relationship believed to have resulted in hundreds of teen suicides and homicides.

Manufacturer Hoffman-LaRoche did not welcome Bremner’s findings. In fact, according to Bremner, the drug giant launched a campaign to discredit him that was “designed to suppress his findings and destroy his career and livelihood.” Written in a tremendously informal, nearly stream-of-consciousness style [...]

The Beauregarde Affair is great narrative nonfiction about the author’s time in the 1970s living with his sex drug and rock and roll friends in a house on North Morningside Drive in Atlanta, GA. The author and his friends lived in a stately older home in the Morningside neighborhood of [...]]]>

The Beauregarde Affair is great narrative nonfiction about the author’s time in the 1970s living with his sex drug and rock and roll friends in a house on North Morningside Drive in Atlanta, GA. The author and his friends lived in a stately older home in the Morningside neighborhood of Atlanta while they carried on with wild times. The book is an interesting snapshot of an earlier time in Atlanta by an author who is now an American ex-patriate living in Oslo, Norway. He is also a great illustrator and adds his artwork to the book.

You can access The Beauregarde Affair on Amazon Kindle for $2.99 here or in paperback.

I was attracted to The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg by Doug Bremner because it is the story of the psychiatrist who took down Accutane. You know, that [...]]]> Book Review reposted from Sassy Peach Book Reviewer. Read more book reviews here and follow her blog here and twitter @niccilor here.

I was attracted to The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg by Doug Bremner because it is the story of the psychiatrist who took down Accutane. You know, that drug that the pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to believe changes brain composition and causes depression? Doug Bremner was that very psychiatrist and faced demons of his own, both professionally and personally.

You may remember the whole, “No one really knows…” news segments about this drug. However, reading this book confirmed my suspicions that what you see released to news sources is exactly what they with the most money want you to hear, see, and believe–the spin. You may or may not believe it…

[read more]

The National Hockey League (NHL) continues to put making money over player safety in stonewalling over the growing number [...]]]>

Effects of CTE on the brain

Normal brain on the left, brain of NFL player John Grimsley in the middle, and a boxer on the right. The two right images show the dark tau staining brain matter seen in CTE.

The National Hockey League (NHL) continues to put making money over player safety in stonewalling over the growing number of cases of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in NHL hockey players related to blows to the head with sticks or bare knuckle fist-fights amongst the players. In some sort of barbaric ritual, “enforcers” shed their gloves and have at it on the ice, delivering pounding blows to the head, which over the course of a career contribute to multiple concussions and the development of CTE, a brain disorder characterized by multiple small lesions on autopsy that stain positive for tau protein, with chronic headache, mental depression, and neurocognitive abnormalities, that can progress even after the end of an athletic career. I have previously written about the tragic cases of Wade Belak and Derek Boogard, two Canadian hockey players who succumbed to suicide and drug overdose last year, in the context of CTE.

Wade Belak

The NFL had to come to grips with CTE in its retired players, with multiple cases of chronic depression and some suicides, but the NHL head Gary Bettman continues to put his head in the sand. The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University has demonstrated CTE related to sports injuries and has recently published and reviewed a total of 48 cases (you can read their scientific publication here). Bettman and his poodle dog Ruben Echemendia, PhD, a neuropsychologist and advisor to the NHL, continue to say more research is needed and there isn’t enough evidence to provide a link between fighting in hockey. This is all BS of course, just throwing out the “more research is needed” mantra when the overwhelming number of experts in the field, who actually do research in the field, like those at Boston University, unlike Echemendia, who is not an active researcher in the area and is not even affiliated with a university, have already said there is ample evidence that hits to the head cause brain damage in hockey players. This is especially the case when such a dire outcome as tossing the lives away of the players is at stake. Bettman and Echemendia should hang their heads in shame at their behavior of putting profits over health, and the poor example they set for all of the junior hockey players who are risking their brain health by engaging in violent contact.