Pharmaceutical Industry

Conflicts of interest may be endemic to American medical research, but better policy could improve the chances that we draw the right conclusions about which drugs are best for which conditions and for whom.  The New America Foundation invited Ross McKinney, M.D., Vice Dean of Research at Duke’s Medical School, and Jerry Hoffman, M.D., emergency department physician and professor of clinical epidemiology at UCLA, to join Schwartz Senior Fellow Shannon Brownlee to discuss the realities, incentives, and policy options before us. … more

Most of us place enormous faith in our universities. We trust that they are autonomous, independent institutions committed to education, scholarship, academic freedom and the production of knowledge free from the influence of special interest groups. Right?

Wrong. In the last 25 years, the United States has given birth to a market-model university, one where professors increasingly work "for hire." Just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that a major academic study -- which found that antidepressants were safe… more

One Pill to Heal Them All. Those words -- apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien's "one ring to rule them all" -- kept going through my mind as I attended Wednesday's press conference spearheaded by acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, at which the federal government announced its approval of Atripla, a new three-in-one AIDS medicine.

Gilead Sciences and Bristol-Myers Squibb have worked together to combine three medicines (Sustiva, Emtriva, and Viread) into one single pill.… more

Only 9% of American adults think the pharmaceutical industry is trustworthy, according to a recent Harris poll. That means that the makers of lifesaving and life-enhancing drugs rank just above tobacco companies in the public's esteem.

How could this happen? Easily. Despite efforts to reform the Food and Drug Administration after its scandalous failures to police drug-safety standards in the cases of Vioxx and other dangerous drugs, the FDA still does not have clear safety policies and can be… more

Shannon Brownlee is a nationally known writer and essayist whose book, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer was named the best economics book of 2007 byNew York Times economics correspondent, David Leonhardt, and is being used by legislators and policy makers to craft health care… more

As medication becomes a way of life for more and more Americans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been remodeled to fit the times. Of the 296 drugs the FDA has approved in the last decade, most have been lifestyle drugs, or copycats of already existing medicines, or both. There have been multiple obesity treatments, allergy medicines, hair-loss cures, impotence pills, and drugs for the newest "disease," irritable bowel syndrome. Despite offering consumers few additional health… more

The big news on AIDS is that there is no news. After 20 million deaths over 25 years, there should be some news -- of a vaccine, of a cure -- but there's nothing on the horizon. And in no small part, it's because politics has squeezed out science.

Last month I traveled to Bangkok to cover the 15th World AIDS Conference. Many luminaries -- Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, CEOs of various… more

With financial ties to nearly two dozen drug and biotech companies, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff may hold some sort of record among academic clinicians for the most conflicts of interest. A psychiatrist, a prominent researcher, and chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral science at Emory University in Atlanta, Nemeroff receives funding for his academic research from Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Wyeth-Ayerst--indeed from virtually every pharmaceutical house that manufactures a drug to treat mental illness. He also serves as… more

Tracy Patton had just arrived at a community theater rehearsal in August 2000 when she felt such a searing explosion in the back of her head that it knocked her to her knees.

At the hospital in Louisville, Ky., doctors said Patton, then 37, had suffered a catastrophic stroke, and they predicted she wouldn't survive the night.

Patton defied the odds. But nearly four years later, she is so overwhelmed by simple tasks that she must post a… more

I have only two regrets over the life I led in my twenties. I should have gone on that sailing trip to the South Pacific with a group of entomologists seeking to study the insects on the exotic Marquesas Islands, instead of rushing back to college after my year off. My other regret is once back at school, I failed to heed the advice of the fellow graduate student who told all of us in the biology department at the… more