Death in a White Coat
Two fourth-year Harvard Medical School students question the slow trickledown to medical schools from the 1999 Institute of Medicine report blaming medical errors for 98,000 deaths annually.
02 Mar
2010
23 Feb
2010
Is President Obama’s New Healthcare Proposal Better? No!
Why the current reform effort is destined to fail.
24 Nov
2009
Drug Companies’ Sponsorship of Continuing Medical Education a Scandal
Not surprisingly, the pharmaceutical industry is resisting legislation that would force drug manufacturers to disclose how much money they spend to provide continuing medical education (CME) to doctors. (The legislation passed in the House; Senate versions make no mention of disclosure.)
20 Oct
2009
Health Insurance Lobby Claims Legislation From Senate Democrats Would Raise Premiums
As the battle for healthcare reform heats up inside the beltway, the insurance industry has launched a blistering attack on legislation drafted by Senate Democrats. According to the New York Times, the health insurance lobby, America’s Health Insurance Plans, claims that the new Senate bill drafted by Democrats would significantly raise the cost of coverage. […]
04 Aug
2009
The Light of Day Shines on the Practice of Ghostwriting Articles in Medical Journals
Ghostwriting, defined as the practice of using a professional writing company to draft a manuscript, entered the American lexicon when the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported on the actions of Sen. Charles Grassley to conduct a congressional investigation into drug companies’ influence on doctors.
14 Jul
2009
Dr. Mark Hyman’s Nine-Point Plan for Real Healthcare Reform
Mark Hyman, MD—author, practitioner, and educator in functional medicine—has hit the pavement in Washington, DC, to educate lawmakers and policymakers that universal healthcare coverage based on an “outdated 19th- and 20th-century model of medicine will lead us into danger.” In his Huffington Post article, “How to Fix Obama’s Health Plan Before It’s Too Late,” Dr. […]
09 Jun
2009
Big Pharma and the FDA: Suppress the Science, Ban the Natural Substances, Sell the Drugs!
In 2005, an up-and-coming pharmaceutical company made a big mistake: they invested millions of dollars into developing a drug only to discover that the only active ingredient of the drug, pyridoxamine, was really a common, naturally occurring substance that has been sold for decades at low cost to consumers in the form of a dietary […]
26 May
2009
FDA to Receive More Money from Drug Manufacturers, But Denies “Undue Influence”
The proposed budget of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is worrying the Democrats. They are concerned that FDA’s annual increases in industry user fees—$828 million from manufacturers of medical and food products, including hundreds of millions drug manufacturers pay annually to help speed the review of new medicines—might compromise the agency’s independence.
12 May
2009
Swine Flu: Separating Fact from Hype
Our British colleagues at the Alliance for Natural Health offer the following savvy analysis of the swine flu pandemic.
28 Apr
2009
Ensnared by an Undercover Investigation, Drug Study Reviewer Halts Many of Its Review Operations
A previous Pulse of Health Freedom issue mentioned the uncover operations of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which ensnared Coast IRB, LLC, of Colorado Springs. The GAO created a fake medical study of a fake product to see whether for-profit review boards adequately supervised medical trials. Two firms turned it down but Coast IRB took […]