Vitamin Water, for your unhealth

Mmmm, colored water with sugar. The marketing tactics of Vitamin Water are discussed here.

[Don’t] Choke on this

The American Academy of Pediatrics is calling for the FDA to require warning labels on food items that may pose a choking hazard to children. Some (including food manufacturers) are not convinced labeling food will do anything to stop the hundreds of choking deaths that occur in US children each year. Click here to read more.

Rent-a-child part II

Coyle and Sharpe weigh in. To listen, click here.

The Medicated Soldier

At least one in six members of the military is taking a psychiatric drug, says The Military Times, often in cocktails of antipsychotics, antidepressants and stimulants. Is this really such a good idea?

Disclosure

Researchers will be required to disclose payments from drug companies that are greater than $5000, according to new proposed regulations. Click here to read more.

Rent-a-child comes to Australia

GlaxoSmithKline is paying Australians to sign up their kids for clinical trials of its H1N1 flu vaccine. "You just get parents pimping out their children for a quick buck," a whistleblower told The Sunday Telegraph. The story is here.

Universal coverage

Helping Haiti?

Pouring money into post-Earthquake Haiti may not bring about the results donors are hoping for. This American Life examines what is happening in Haiti given the efforts to bring some level of normalcy and productivity to the devastated island nation.

Lucky Sperm

A tale of three women seeking to have a baby, and the sappy chick flick-ish book that became the final product. Click here to read more.

The FDA Launches Program "Bad Ad"

According to the BMJ, the FDA is enlisting the help of doctors to spot misleading drug ads. The article (or at least a snippet of it) can be found here.

GlaxoSmithKline is testing Paxil in children, despite risk of suicide

Why is GSK testing Paxil in Japanese children? The drug has a black box warning for suicide risk in children, yet GSK is testing the drug in kids as young as seven. Read more here.

Journal of Urology Fail

Diet soda to prevent kidney stones. Yeah....right. Check out this MediaFail/Reuters snippet.

Guinea-pigging for dollars

Roberto Lorenzo Abadie has produced the first full-fledged ethnography of the world of professional guinea pigs, who sign up for drug studies in exchange for money. He has done an outstanding job. The book is being published by Duke University Press, and it is called The Professional Guinea Pig. Read more here.

NIH gets tougher

The NIH is beefing up its conflict of interest policy, but still leaves most of the policing to universities. Read it in the Chronicle.

Floyd Landis admits doping

Big surprise: cyclist Floyd Landis admits using performance-enhancing drugs for most of his career. (He says he has seen Lance Armstrong use them as well.) More here.

Elderly? We have a pill for that.

According to the article found here, the devastating event of natural aging should be recognized as a disease - and treated accordingly. Apparently, "chronological aging -- is relentless and unstoppable. But experts studying the science of aging say it's time for a fresh look at the biological process -- one which recognizes it as a condition that can be manipulated, treated and delayed." Great - living may one day be considered a disease. I can't imagine how painful it would be to be diagnosed as old.

How to medicalize bad sex

Ask Boehringer-Ingelheim. Its new drug for women, flibanserin, will be considered for FDA approval next month. Read more here.

Do You Want Fries With That?

I wasn't aware of this, but I guess plastic surgeries like botox are now termed "drive thru cosmetic procedures"...because they are minimally invasive. I don't know about you, but I'd hardly call some of the times I've worked in the McDonald's drive thru window in high school as "minimally invasive." Check out this LiveScience article on "drive thru cosmetic procedures."

Does Human Growth Hormone Actually Improve Athletic Performance?

Maybe so. But not much. Read it here.

The bourbon gene

Berkeley wants gene testing for freshmen to see how well they can hold their liquor. Read it here.

"I will take the, umm, Deluxe Triple Extra Large size, please"

Tiny pills are great, and so are small phones, dogs and waistlines. But, when it comes to marketing condoms in size S, things are a little trickier. Click here to read more in The Atlantic.

Dr. Nancy

NBC’s medical correspondent, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, continues her reign of terror with a new book, Diet Myths that Keep Us Fat. Click here to learn more about what she is condescendingly preaching to Americans.

Whisper in their ear, "Neurontin for everything"

Pfizer has agreed to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit alleging that Neurontin caused a retired minister to commit suicide two months after he started taking the drug. Read more here.

Gorilla taught that it will die

Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday

Duke researchers develop Super-Bladder

Today in the Past

"Baby's Little Helper" was invented. Listen here.

Dogs on Viagra?

A New York animal shelter is seeking donations of Viagra to treat a pit bull with a heart condition...Check it out.

Meet The Facts

Why not fact-check the Sunday morning political talk shows? On the Media reports.

The alcoholic philosopher's lament

On 200 mg a day of baclofen, in an important meeting with several associate deans of my college and three new department chairs (I was made chair of my philosophy department just a few weeks before I tried to commit suicide), I fell asleep with my head on the conference room table and, for 40 minutes, everyone was too embarrassed to wake me. Somnolence is the most obvious and inconvenient side effect of baclofen. I reduced my dosage to 100 mg a day, and started taking it only at bedtime. A few days later, a colleague asked if I had changed my medicine. ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘Why do you ask?’ She is German, an analytic philosopher, and therefore very direct: ‘You are drooling less than you were.’

From Clancy Martin's essay on baclofen in The London Review of Books. He is also the author of How to Sell: A Novel and a brilliant essay on jewelry sales scams in this month's Harper's.

Unfortunate Social Networking

A case involving a Minnesota man who encouraged people to commit suicide will be moving forward later this month, and no one is quite sure how the existing body of law will handle this case. Click here to read more.

Tree nuts lower cholesterol

So says a new study funded by the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation, a trade group representing the tree nut industry. (I'm not joking.)

The Lexapro Tax Dodge

How does Forest Laboratories dodge $60 billion in taxes every year? Read more here.

Huskie Misconduct

A case regarding academic misconduct at the University of Washington School of Medicine continues on after seven years. Click here to read more.

Cargill settles

"Cargill Inc. publicly acknowledged responsibility Wednesday for life-shattering injuries suffered by a young Minnesota dance instructor after she ate a contaminated hamburger, a case that has drawn national attention and helped shape the U.S. food safety debate." The Strib reports.

Go Woodbury!

Apparently, some residents of Woodbury fear the elderly. Click here to read more.

Investigative Journalism and Bioethics

Attention, medical muckrakers. Starting in Fall 2010, the Center for Bioethics and the School of Journalism and Mass Communications will be offering a new course, "Investigative Journalism and Bioethics." (It is listed as a 5000-level BTHX "Topics in Bioethics" course here and as JOURN 5990 here.) Amy Landa and I will be teaching it. It will be a hands-on, talk-intensive seminar, with lots of scandals and outrages.

The official course description reads: "This seminar will explore the links between bioethics and journalism, examining classic and contemporary works of investigative health journalism, works of literary non-fiction related to medicine, memoirs by doctors and medical students, and investigative work by bioethicists and ethnographers. It will also examine citizen muckraking, non-profit investigative journalism, the public relations industry, the decline of print journalism and the rise of digital media, and how these developments are shaping the relationship between bioethicists and the press."

Public Citizen calls for halt to Avandia trial

Read more here.

Genes R Us

Starting Friday: gene testing kits at the drugstore. You can trace your ancestry or check your health or both. Are the tests legit? Read more in the Washington Post.

Addicted to Proton Pump Inhibitors

Unsurprisingly, "Proton Pump Inhibitors" is not the name of a band. Rather, an increasingly large number of Americans have become dependent on heartburn medicine to combat a problem that is almost always attributed to diet and lifestyle choices. Check out the article on CNN.

How your ADHD drugs help you lose weight

"This is what successful ADHD management could look like." Read more here.

The largest, but less talked about, pharma company

Click here to read a piece on Teva, the generic pharmaceutical giant, and how it has become the largest prescription drug supplier in the U.S.

A needle a day, but you'll have to pay

Acupuncture has grown rapidly in popularity, and has even received some oversight by the FDA, but don’t count on insurance covering your treatments anytime soon. Click here to read more.

Anniversary of Dan Markingson's death in a University of Minnesota clinical trial

Today marks the 6th anniversary of the death of Dan Markingson, who committed suicide in a AstraZeneca-sponsored clinical trial at the University of Minnesota. The story was reported in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 2008; the university continues to deny responsibility. Pharmalot summarizes the story here.

Overenthusiastic fertility doctor goes unpunished in Connecticut

A doctor who inseminated a fertility patient with his own sperm continues to practice in Connecticut. William Heisel wonders how long before the doctor's face begins to show up in kindergartens all over the state.

The Clinical Trials Guru on academic vs for-profit trial sites

Najarian on Almanac

When the University of Minnesota was placed on probation by the NIH in 1996, John Najarian was the man at the center of the scandal. He is interviewed here about his recently published memoir.

Another great TED lecture

This is another great lecture from TED, given by Elizabeth Pisani. She is the author of The Wisdom of Whores, and maintains a website by the same name. She has a "keeping it real" approach to studying the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS and STDs.

Using Econ for Good

This is a great lecture by Esther Duflo, an economist at MIT, given at the TED Conference in 2010. Dr. Duflo recently won the John Bates Clark Medal, and last year was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant for her work on using control trials to find solutions for reducing poverty in the developing world. She is considered by many to be a future nominee for the Nobel Prize in Economics

(For those of you unaware of TED, it is the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference Series, which has become the latest hot spot for geek sheek scientists, politicians and celebrities.)

Big Pharma, Bad Medicine

"How corporate dollars corrupt research and education" article by Marcia Angell in Boston Review

Eyelash Enhancements

Latisse, the eyelash elongation drug, has - big surprise - side effects. For instance, purple discolorations on your eyelids, or your blue eyes turning brown. Saves you time putting makeup on, right? Check out the NY Times for this news item. There is a Minnesotan they mention in there.

Five days on the road with David Foster Wallace

"Wallace tapped into what Lipsky nicely calls the 'brain voice'—placing on the page in all its absurd detail what it feels like to live, to observe, to experience. In his most famous essay, 'A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,' which first appeared in Harper’s in 1995, Wallace chronicles his time aboard a seven-day Caribbean cruise, beginning with 'the shattering, flatulence-of-the-gods sound' of the ship’s horn. Staff decline his morbid inquiries about his cabin’s superefficient vacuum toilet, which produces "a concussive suction so awesomely powerful that it’s both scary and strangely comforting—your waste seems less removed than hurled from you." He details the skilled, unobtrusive professionalism and extreme coolness of his Hungarian waiter, Tibor—'the Tibster'—and confesses, 'I sort of love him.' His elderly tablemates at tea dislike Wallace’s tuxedo T-shirt; formal attire is expected. The average young punk would smirk with self-satisfaction at such a gag, but what makes Wallace so loveable is that he is mortified to have given offense. He probably broke out sweating."

Michael O'Donnell reviews Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.

No need to eat Stouffers and then take your life

You may no longer need to depend on antidepressants as Stouffers microwaveable meals now come with tips on how to prevent suicide. To learn more about this Onion exclusive, click here.

South Carolinians say: "Thank God for Minnesota"

Once again, Minnesota ranks last in the country in disciplining bad doctors, according to Public Citizen, narrowly beating out South Carolina.

Jesus Loves Salt

So says Stephen Colbert. For a debate between the food police and the Salt Institute (yes, there is a Salt Institute), watch here.

The hidden danger of psychiatric drugs

Are kids who take stimulants at greater risk of having a psychotic episode? Do schizophrenic patients do better without taking neuroleptic drugs? According to Robert Whitaker, the answer to both questions may well be yes -- and he has published scientific data to back him up. Salon interviews Whitaker about his alarming new book, Anatomy of an Epidemic.

Have you had your barbecue supplements today?

Lisa Bero on Bias in Drug Trials

Presumed Consent in NY

A New York assemblyman has introduced a bill to initiate a presumed consent organ donation law in the Empire State. Is this a good idea? The Times has wrangled up the opinions of a few scholars. Click here to read more.

Past News Makers...

I didn’t know we were allowed to post items from The Onion?! Here are a few of my favorite news clips that have a connection to Medical Consumerism:

Gay Gene Discovered, Beaten Senseless

Baby Won’t Stop Crying? Shake Things Up!

Exciting and New "No Food Diet"

Sensitivity is not on the Y chromosome

Oxytocin sprays to make men "more sensitive..."

South Coast Clinical Trials: Would You Enroll in a Study with these Two?

For the entire clip, go here.

Breakthrough Drug Eliminates Crying from Infants

Stalking for pharma

If you want confirmation of your paranoid fantasies of the pharmaceutical industry, have a look at this piece by Jim Edwards at BNET Pharma. A PR company named V-Fluence is being employed by AstraZeneca to track and report on their online critics. The tracking was discovered by a mental health blogger who inadvertently gained access to their website.

Pepsi CEO blames obesity on lack of exercise

Wrongly, of course, but predictably. Read more at the WSJ Health Blog.

"Graduating From Lip Smackers"

Much to their mothers’ dismay, an increasing number of girls under the age of 12 have ditched lip gloss and other innocent fashion accessories in favor of more adult makeup. The New York Times reports, "...parents have been fighting a losing battle with the beauty industry, which now markets to children so aggressively that it invites a comparison to Big Tobacco’s efforts..."

Cancer-treatment Vaccine

The biotech, Dendreon (based in my lovely town of Seattle), has just received approval from the FDA to produce the first cancer-treatment vaccine in the U.S. Click here to read more about this ridiculously expensive drug that will be used to treat prostate cancer.

Doctor-for-a-day must Pay

Two subsidiaries of Johnson & Johnson have been ordered to pay more than $81 million for illegally promoting an epilepsy drug for psychiatric purposes. Click here to read more.

U dentist abuses inmates but keeps his faculty position

“He was screaming in pain the entire time,” says a dental assistant at Stillwater Correctional Facility, describing a patient subjected to Dr. Norman Eid, a faculty member in the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry. “A great deal of his jaw came out along with part of the tooth.”

Eid worked in an unsterile office, humiliated his patients, failed to properly manage their pain, and was recently disciplined by the Minnesota Board of Dentistry for unprofessional conduct. Yet the University of Minnesota sees no reason not to renew his contract. “We didn’t feel it would be an inappropriate rehire,” says the Dean. "[Eid] was teaching with us for 20 years without incidents."

Read the whole story in the Minnesota Daily. (And see Mischke's brutal comments here.)

The First Time...Again

For 2,000 Euros, you can restore your V-card. An article in the BBC talks about the "virginity industry" that is thriving in Europe, particularly among Asian and Arab communities.

"You wouldn't want your boyfriend/future husband feel ashamed because your hymen no longer existed..." - Revirgination.net, a site that specializes in information regarding this procedure.

Eco-friendly after death

"The desire to be green has expanded to California's funeral industry, which is pushing for a change in state law to allow for an eco-friendlier alternative to cremation and burial: water resolution." Water resolution is chemical process that turns body into "environmentally safe solution that can be safely washed down the drain or even used to water plants." Read more here and full article here.

AstraZeneca settles lawsuit over illegal marketing

"AstraZeneca has completed a deal to pay $520 million to settle federal investigations into marketing practices for its blockbuster schizophrenia drug, Seroquel, the Attorney General, Eric Holder, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon."

That half-billion dollar fine amounts to about a tenth of the nearly $5 billion AZ earned from Seroquel last year alone. "AstraZeneca agreed to sign a corporate integrity agreement with the federal government over its marketing of Seroquel for unapproved uses" -- take THAT Astra! -- "but will not face criminal charges, company and federal officials said."

The New York Times (yes, it's the only paper I read) reports here.

The latest learning disability

"Parents and teachers often tell children to pay attention — to be a 'good listener.' But what if your child’s brain doesn’t know how to listen?

That’s the challenge for children with auditory processing disorder, a poorly understood syndrome that interferes with the brain’s ability to recognize and interpret sounds. It’s been estimated that 2 to 5 percent of children..." The New York Time reports here.

The diabetes game

Bayer has introduced a blood sugar monitor for diabetic kids that interfaces with handheld Nintendo consoles. "The program rewards players for performing a prescribed number of tests each day by bestowing points that speed the player through the game. Additional points are earned for staying within target blood-sugar ranges, which parents can program in. 'There used to be days when I didn't want to test,' says George Dove, 12, of Nottingham, U.K., who must use the meter as many as eight times a day. 'Now, it's fun.'" Businessweek reports here.

Virtually Brainless and Mindless?

"Psychiatry, for me and many of my colleagues, had become a process of corralling patients’ symptoms into labels and finding a drug to match." - Check it out, "Mind Over Meds" in the NY Times.

Brits, Bodies and Bioethics

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an influential research group in the UK, is gearing up to address the question on how to increase organ donation. Click here and here to read more.

Boosting Brain Power

See the 60 Minutes report on Adderall and other stimulants.

Interactive Liquor Bottles

Now you can drunkenly text your friends...through a vodka bottle. They say it's all about unleashing your "inner philosopher, poet, and flirt." Thanks, Medea Spirits!

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Robert Whitaker's disturbing new book is out: Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. I recommend it highly. You can read more here.

New doctor code curbs industry sway and swag

"No more letting industry help pay for developing medical guidelines. Restrictions on consulting deals. And no more pens with drug company names or other swag at conferences. These are part of a new ethics code that dozens of leading medical groups announced Wednesday, aimed at limiting the influence that drug and device makers have over patient care." MSNBC reports here.

50th Anniversary of the Pill

"There's no such thing as the Car or the Shoe or the Laundry Soap. But everyone knows the Pill, whose FDA approval 50 years ago rearranged the furniture of human relations in ways that we've argued about ever since." Read about birth control history here

Misuse of DNA by ASU

A case has been settled regarding the misuse of Havasupai tribe DNA by researchers at Arizona State University. Click here to read more.

Hospital Equality

With President Obama’s recent memorandum to Kathleen Sebelius, there is greater progress in the fight to allow same-sex couples hospital visitation rights and authority in making medical decisions for ailing partners. Read more here.

Whistle-blowing Minneapolis cardiologists step up again

Unlike doctors at the University of Minnesota, who appear to be either working for industry or afraid of it, two cardiologists at the Minneapolis Heart Institute blew the whistle five years ago on a potentially lethal defect in a heart defibrillator made by Guidant. One of their patients, a 21 year-old man, had died unexpectedly as a result of the defect. Yesterday, those two cardiologists, Barry Maron and Robert Hauser, again spoke out publicly to oppose a plea agreement, urging U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank to reject the proposed plea "on behalf of the patients who died or suffered pain and mental anguish as the direct result of Guidant's illegal and unethical behavior."

Read more in the Strib.

Hallelujah! Another Diet!

It's called the "Hallelujah Diet" and it enlists the help of God to help you shed your pounds.

NewsFlash: Viagra Can Ruin Your Sex Life

That's what the "Viagra Brigade" reports in The Daily Beast. Yikes!

Listening to Bourbon

Nicotine in a Tic Tac

RJ Reynolds is selling nicotine pellets that look like candy and dissolve like breath mints in your mouth. Critics say kids will see their parents enjoying them and will be tempted to try the pellets themselves. R.J. Reynolds says no. “Virtually every household has products that could be hazardous to children, like cleaning supplies, medicines, health and beauty products," said a spokesman for the company. A Harvard professor disagrees. “The difference here is that kids potentially will be watching grown-ups ingesting these products,” he said. “The last time I checked, we don’t have adults drinking toilet bowl cleanser in front of their kids.” Read more in the Times.

Sorry, we're out of your life-saving drug. Try back next year.

Genzyme, the only manufacturer of two spectacularly expensive life-saving drugs for rare diseases, has stopped making them because of a manufacturing problem, says the New York Times.

Insurance companies hold billions in fast food stock

"According to Harvard Medical School researchers, 11 large companies that offer life, disability, or health insurance owned about $1.9 billion in stock in the five largest fast-food companies as of June 2009." Read here

The Lost Cause

It's not medical, but it's from a native son of SC. Watch it here.

Psychedelics are back to ease the pain

Hallucinogenic drugs are back understudy to help alleviate the problems associated with illnesses such as cancer and depression. Click here to read more.

Expensive Spinal Surgery

Why go in for simple low cost back procedure, when you can get a ridiculously expensive spinal fusion?

Pfizer payments

If you want to check to see whether your doctor is getting paid by Pfizer, you can look at their disclosure list here.

I Feel Fantastic

Here is the Jonathan Coulton video Krystal mentioned.

Feeling Fantastic, Thanks to JoCo.

Recently, I spoke with a friend of mine that is a DJ for a rock station in Champaign, IL. He mentioned that he was hooked on this artist he discovered not too long ago by the name of Jonathan Coulton, a former programmer turned musician. Most of his songs are on the geeky side, related to the internet, gaming, and technology in general. In any case, I thought his song “I Feel Fantastic” is rather amusing and quite germane to medical consumerism. Apparently the 2005 Popular Science article "Will Drugs Make Us Smarter and Happier?" inspired Coulton, also known as "JoCo," to write that song, which is kind of ironic. The narrator is depicted as being quite dependent on meds to get through his day. Click here to see one of the many music videos for this song. There is also this article in Popular Science from 2005, called “The Future of the Body: The Soundtrack," which talks about Coulton's other songs related to medical consumerism culture.

Who Needs Vitamin C...

...when you can just look at sick people to stay healthy? Psychology Today explains.

Secret Sunshine

Attached to Obama's health care form bill was a little-known rider that Sen. Charles Grassley has been working on for years: the Physician Payment Sunshine Act. Starting in 2012, the provision will force drugmakers to report all gifts and payments to doctors and teaching hospitals. Ed Silverman interviews The Prescription Project's Allan Coukell on the bill at Pharmalot.

Artificial joint implants with no warranties

"The million or so artificial hips and knees implanted each year in the United States are normally not guaranteed. Instead, the costs of replacing implants that fail early because of design or mechanical problems — devices that sell for as much as $15,000 each — are largely paid by Medicare, insurance companies and patients." Read in NY Times

Drugs ASAP

San Francisco public health doctors have taken up a new policy of advising persons recently infected with HIV to start taking antiretroviral medications immediately. Will this be a sound policy to follow? Click here to read more.

"Feds found Pfizer too big to nail"

"Imagine being charged with a crime, but an imaginary friend takes the rap for you. That is essentially what happened when Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, was charged with illegally marketing Bextra, a painkiller that was taken off the market in 2005 because of safety concerns." Read at CNN