Take a ride on the love train

Saturday Night Live says: Come on, old people, get on board right here.

Pressure rising

"Three pharmaceutical companies donated $700,000 to a medical society that used most of the money on a series of dinner lectures last year to brief doctors on the latest news about high blood pressure." Read more in the New York Times.

Oprah pimps cosmetic medicine

See "The Oprah Treatment" in The New York Times.

Script-tracking backlash

The AMA makes $40 million a year peddling information about doctors to pharma without their consent. In the face of legislation to prohibit the practice, the AMA now says that it will allow doctors to opt out. Only the procedure for opting out doesn't really mean doctors can opt out. See "Doctors Object to Gathering of Drug Data" in The New York Times.

Pre-diagnosis drugs for Schizophrenia

Mixed Result in Treating Schizophrenia Pre-Diagnosis

"In recent years, psychiatric researchers have been experimenting with a bold and controversial treatment strategy: they are prescribing drugs to young people at risk for schizophrenia who have not yet developed the full-blown disorder."

"Daily doses of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, from Eli Lilly, blunted symptoms in many patients and lowered their risk of experiencing a psychotic episode in the first year of treatment, the study found. But the drug also caused significant weight gain, and so many participants dropped out of the study that investigators could not draw firm conclusions about drug benefits, if any.

The long-awaited study, which was financed by Eli Lilly and the National Institute of Mental Health, raised more questions than it answered, experts said."