October 30th, 2010 by GarySchwitzer in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: AAAnswers, Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm, Aneurysm Screenings, Blue Light Special, CardioBrief, Gary Schwitzer, HealthNewsReview.org, Kmart, Larry Husten, Medtronic, Public Health, Screening, Screening Tests
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Kmart, Medtronic, and a bunch of specialty medical groups are sponsoring a campaign called “Find the AAAnswers” — the “AAA” standing for abdominal aortic aneurysm.
It’s clever marketing for Kmart’s pharmacy business, since the screenings are being offered throughout the Fall at more than 900 Kmart pharmacies. And it’s not bad business for the specialty medical groups, either, as Larry Husten wrote on his Cardiobrief blog:
…the expenses of the program and the coalition are entirely underwritten by Medtronic, which sells abdominal stent grafts used to repair AAAs, and the members of the coalition include organizations like the Peripheral Vascular Surgical Society, the Society for Vascular Surgery, and the Society for Vascular Ultrasound, whose members may derive a significant portion of their income from performing AAA repairs and screening.
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*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
October 28th, 2010 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: Behavior of Pharmaceutical Companies, Dr. Steve Novella, Drug Prescribing By Physicians, Drug Rep Lunches, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, Ghostwriting Medical Articles, Ghostwriting White Papers, Overprescribing, Pharmaceutical Marketing, Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives, Pharmaceuticals, Physician Drug Prescribing Habits, SBM, Science Based Medicine, Underprescribing
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In my group practice, the Yale Medical Group, drug company-sponsored lunches and similar events have been banned. This is part of a trend, at least within academic medicine, to create some distance between physicians and pharmaceutical companies, or at least their marketing divisions. The justifications for this are several, and are all reasonable. One reason is the appearance of being too cozy, which compromises the role of academic physicians as independent experts.
But the primary reason is the belief that “detailing” by pharmaceutical sales representatives has a negative effect on the prescribing habits of physicians. There is reason to believe this may be the case because of cases of bad behavior on the part of pharmaceutical marketing divisions — ghost writing white papers, for example.
The concern, backed by evidence, is that pharmaceutical companies introduce spin and bias into the information they provide to physicians, whether though CME, detailing, literature, or sponsored lectures. Even when the information itself is not massaged, it is cherry picked, so in the end physicians are not getting a thorough and unbiased assessment of the facts. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
October 25th, 2010 by GarySchwitzer in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: Australia, Big Pharma Campaigns, Consumer Drug Marketing, Direct-To-Consumer Drug Advertising, Disease Mongering, Drug Hype, Femail Urogenital Problems, Gary Schwitzer, HealthNewsReview.org, Medical Advertising, Medical Marketing Language, Medicalization, Menopause, Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies, Postmenopausal Women, Public Relations, Sexual Dysfunction, Sexual Health, Signs of Aging, Vaginal Atrophy, Women's Health
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Just five days ago we wrote about an American journalist’s observations of medicalization of one problem sometimes observed after menopause: Vaginal atrophy.
Today we see that this disease-mongering trend has popped up in Australia as well. This should be no surprise. Such campaigns are usually led by multinational pharmaceutical companies and their advertising and public relations agencies.
What caught our eye was an article on a women’s health foundation website — a foundation that posts a pretty thin excuse for why it won’t tell you its source of funding. Its article on vaginal atrophy uses classic disease-mongering language:
“Ask a woman over the age of 50 about the ‘signs of ag[e]ing’ and she’ll most likely lament about grey hairs, wrinkles and certain body parts having lost their youthful perkiness. What she probably won’t mention is that is that things are ageing “downstairs” too; up to 40% of postmenopausal women show signs of vaginal atrophy.”
The silent epidemic that no one talks about. The huge prevalence estimate — where does that 40 percent figure come from? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
October 25th, 2010 by DavedeBronkart in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: British Medical Journal, Dave deBronkart, Dr. Marcia Angell, e-Patient Dave, e-Patients.net, Empowered Patients, General Medicine, Grant Funding, Inaccurate Studies, JoPM, Journal of Paticipatory Medicine, Lies, Medical Misinformation, Medical Publishing, Medical Research, Medical Science, Medical Studies, Misleading Scientific Conclusions, Peer-Reviewed Journals, Peter Frishauf, Research Grant, Research Studies, Richard Smith, Scientifically Weak, The Atlantic, Understanding Statistics
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There’s an extraordinary new article in The Atlantic entitled “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.” It echos an excellent article in our Journal of Participatory Medicine (JoPM) a year ago by Richard W. Smith, 25-year editor of the British Medical Journal, entitled “In Search Of an Optimal Peer Review System.”
JoPM, Oct 21, 2009: “….most of what appears in peer-reviewed journals is scientifically weak.”
The Atlantic, Oct. 16, 2010: “Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong.”
JoPM 2009: “Yet peer review remains sacred, worshiped by scientists and central to the processes of science — awarding grants, publishing, and dishing out prizes.”
The Atlantic 2010: “So why are doctors — to a striking extent — still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice?”
Dr. Marcia Angell said something just as damning in December 2008 in the New York Review of Books: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (Our post on Angell is here.)
What’s an e-patient to do? How are patients supposed to research if, as all three authorities say, much of what they read is scientifically weak? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*
October 22nd, 2010 by KevinMD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: Adequate Vaccine Training For Doctors, Anti-Vaccine Movement, Anti-Vaccine Quackery, Autism, Children's Vaccinations, Community Health, Dangers of Not Vaccinating, Dr. Kevin Pho, Dr. Rahul Parikh, Dr. Robert Sears, Family Medicine, General Medicine, immunizations, Immunology, Internal Medicine, Journal of Pediatrics, KevinMD, Misrepresentation of Vaccine Science, More Time With Patients, Overuse of Antibiotics, Patients' False Beliefs, Paul Offit, Pediatric Diseases, Pediatric Medicine, Pediatricians, Primary Care, Public Health Fears, The Vaccine Book, Unvaccinated Children, Vaccine Controversy, Vaccine Development, Vaccine Education, Vaccine-Averse Parents
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Dr. Robert Sears’ The Vaccine Book, is, as Dr. Rahul Parikh puts it, “a nightmare for pediatricians like me.”
In a piece from Salon, Dr. Parikh brings his issues to the author. The controversy of the book is the so-called “alternative vaccine schedule,” which, as vaccine developer Paul Offit puts it:
…is “misrepresentation of vaccine science” that “misinforms parents trying to make the right decision for their children” in the Journal of Pediatrics. And yet, as a pediatrician myself, I have seen an increasing number of caring, reasonable parents hold it up like a bible in my practice (and that of my colleagues).
This post, however, isn’t about the vaccine controversy — I’ll leave you to read Dr. Parikh’s excellent piece for yourself.
What I found interesting was a passage discussing the public health fears stemming from an increasing number of unvaccinated children. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
