PsychNet

If you want to see what "thought leader" management looks like from the inside, have a look at this document from GlaxoSmithKline, courtesy of Senator Grassley. It concerns PsychNet, the GSK speaker's program that trained Paxil champions.

Love and serotonin

"There's every reason to think SSRIs blunt your ability to fall and stay in love," said Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University biological anthropologist who has pioneered the modern science of love." A reason, maybe, but is there any evidence? Read more in Wired.

More Seroquel secrets

Astra Zeneca buried unfavorable studies about Seroquel, according to internal emails uncovered in litigation. Bloomberg.com reports. And the WSJ Health Blog says, "Court documents suggest AstraZeneca told U.S. sales reps to say the antipsychotic drug didn’t cause diabetes, even though a company doctor had previously said that the drug could be linked to the disease in some patients."

A new kind of drug ad?

"What if consumers could calculate the benefits and risks of taking a prescription drug as easily as they can gauge the carbs and calories of an Oreo cookie?" Dartmouth researchers say the FDA could make this happen, in the New York Times.

Should I fake or should I faux ...

In a Ted lecture entitled "What Consumers Really Want" Joseph Pine offers a provocative argument for a marketing movement he sees as 'rendering authenticity'. Viewed through the lens of medical enhancement technology one can't help but wonder about the 'pharmaceutical experience' and the quest for the real self.

Sex and Seroquel

The Seroquel litigation gets stranger and stranger. The complaint is posted on the Furious Seasons blog.

Are violent video games adequately preparing children for the apocalypse?

The Onion News Network reports.

The philosophy experiments

"A dynamic new school of thought is emerging that wants to kick down the walls of recent philosophy and place experimentation back at its centre. It has a name to delight an advertising executive: x-phi. It has blogs and books devoted to it, and boasts an expanding body of researchers in elite universities. It even has an icon: an armchair in flames. If philosophy ever can be, x-phi is trendy. But, increasingly, it is also attracting hostility." Dave Edmonds and Nigel Warburton examine experimental philosophy in The Prospect.

Surgeons successfully reconstruct man's face using leftover fingers

Doyle Redland reports for the Onion Radio News.

Illegal marketing by Forest?

"A Complaint was unsealed today in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts against a New York pharmaceutical company for alleged False Claims Act violations arising from the company’s marketing the drugs Celexa and Lexapro for unapproved pediatric use and for paying kickbacks to induce physicians to prescribe the drugs." Read the Department of Justice press release here.
The New York Times reports here.

Seroquel secrets

"A showdown is looming in a Florida courtroom over an issue that has long bedeviled business: How much internal information can a company be forced to make public simply because it has become a defendant in a lawsuit?" Read more in BusinessWeek about Astra Zeneca's Seroquel.

Everything Conceivable

Liza Mundy talks about the fertility business on "Fresh Air."

Medtronic discloses

"Following years of pressure, medical device maker Medtronic Inc. will begin disclosing how much money it gives physicians in various consulting and other payments, though the reporting threshold is far less than currently proposed legislation." MPR reports.

The "other" other white meat

Because that's where the money is

The highest paid employee at Columbia University? A dermatologist, at $4,332,759 a year. At Cornell? A fertility specialist, at $3,149,376. Maybe this is why doctors are getting out of the disease business and into the enhancement business. Read more in the Times.

Minnesota Daily editors refuse to yield

The Minnesota Daily, responding to Frank Cerra's editorial, stands by its call for Dean Powell to recuse herself from the conflict-of-interest task force, pointing out that her relationship with PepsiAmericas gives her a financial stake in the outcome. Read more here.

Pfizer will disclose payments

Pfizer, like Eli Lilly, will begin disclosing the payments it makes to physicians. Read more here.

Art imitating life?

Was John Le Carre's book, The Constant Gardener, based on Pfizer's Trovan clinical trial in Nigeria? Jim Edwards looks at the evidence.

Pay for Performance

Critiquing the  'business of medicine' seems part history, comedy and tragedy, with the latter drama usually involving some compromise in the doctor-patient relationship. The latest attempt to encourage 'pay-for performance' as a potential antidote for the ills wrought by 'fee-for-service' seems like a tragedy waiting to happen.

Since when do doctors need incentives? Isn't the term 'patient advocate' a redundancy? Is the gerbil wheel an apt metaphor or is this more of a convoluted habitrail for patients and doctors to lose each other in?

Guinea pigs up north

Anne Silversides reports on the Canadian guinea-pigging scene in the CMAJ.