In response to my article about commercial funding of nonprofit organizations from the manufacturers of the PCSK9 inhibitors, Joshua Knowles wrote an eloquent and heartfelt defense of the FH Foundation, which receives some funding from industry. But I think he fails to address the fundamental underlying issues I wrote about in my piece. Knowles writes that “FH is a…
What If The Media Covered The World Series The Same Way It Covers Science?
October 16, 2015 by 1 Comment
Note: This is a slightly updated version of an old post. I think it is especially relevant at this time of year. October brings the Nobel Prize announcements and the World Series. No one will mistake media coverage of one for the other. Each Nobel Prize will get one article and 10 seconds on the…
Desperately Seeking Patients: New Cholesterol Drug Makers Fuel Research To Find Customers
October 15, 2015 by 3 Comments
Everyone expects that the makers of the new PCSK9 inhibitor cholesterol lowering drugs are going to make billions and billions of dollars from these innovative new drugs. But before that can happen the companies that make the drugs will need to find the patients who will take the drug. To help find these patients a central strategy…
A Premature SPRINT To The Finish Line
September 14, 2015 by 1 Comment
On Friday the NHLBI declared victory in the SPRINT trial. As was widely reported here and elsewhere, the NHLBI announced that the trial had been stopped early after significant reductions in cardiovascular events and mortality had occurred in the group of hypertensive patients randomized to a more aggressive blood pressure target than is currently recommended today. But there was a…
IMPROVE-IT Substudy: Ezetimibe Benefit Restricted To Diabetics
August 31, 2015 by 1 Comment
The beneficial effects of ezetimibe are found almost exclusively in patients with diabetes, according to an update of the influential IMPROVE-IT trial presented on Sunday at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in London. The new finding may lead to questions about the widely accepted interpretation of the main finding of the trial, which is that it provided strong support for…
All The Woo That’s Fit To Print: An Open Letter To The New York Times Public Editor
August 21, 2015 by 2 Comments
Dear Public Editor, Why does the New York Times continue to allow fashion and style reporters to write stories that contain preposterous scientific and medical statements without providing any outside perspective from, say, real scientists or doctors? A recent and egregious case is “Sound Baths Move From Metaphysical to Mainstream” by Sophia Kercher (August 15, 2015), which repeats a string of…
The Amarin Decision: Free Speech Or Truthiness?
August 11, 2015 by 7 Comments
Amarin, which makes the prescription fish oil product Vascepa, won a big victory last Friday in its ongoing battle against the FDA. The bottom line: a federal judge ruled that the FDA can’t restrict Amarin’s first amendment right to disseminate off-label information about Vascepa providing it is neither false nor misleading. (You can read a detailed description…
$300 Million Dollars Of Cardiology Sunshine
July 23, 2015 by 1 Comment
$300 million dollars. That’s how much industry paid to cardiologists and other related healthcare professionals between August 2013 and December 2014… … Click here to read my entire story on MedPage Today….
No, Pharmascolds Are Not Worse Than The Pervasive Conflicts Of Interest They Criticize
May 21, 2015 by 1 Comment
Let’s start with a quick poll: Which is worse? A. The pervasive influence of industry on medicine, which has undermined the independence and altruism of physicians. B. The critics of industry influence, who have created a paranoid culture of distrust which has undermined the partnership of industry and physicians that has brought medicine to its current heights. If you chose B then you are…
Inside The Scandal: Profit And Greed At An Embattled Laboratory Company
April 21, 2015 by Leave a Comment
How does a clinical laboratory company grow in a few short years from nothing to more than $400 million in revenue and over $100 million in profit? Since the same company just settled with the DOJ for as much as $100 million, it’s reasonable to suspect that growth was probably not entirely legitimate. Now new information,…
Two Dirty Little Secrets About Electronic Health Records
April 12, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Here are two dirty little secrets about electronic health records (EHR). Just about everyone in the field already knows these secrets, and many are quietly horrified, but few want to discuss them since there are no obvious or easy solutions.EHRs Are a Threat to Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom … Electronic Health Records Are Not…
No, You Probably Won’t Drop Dead While Exercising
April 6, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Dropping dead while exercising is a common fear, especially among middle-aged men. Unfortunately there have been limited data on the precise rate of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in middle-aged people and little understanding about the medical history of the victims of SCA. Now a new study fills in some important gaps in knowledge and shows that this fear…
Mark Cuban Should Take The Cigar Out Of His Mouth And Stop Giving Health Advice
April 2, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Last night the celebrity billionaire Mark Cuban ignited a firestorm on Twitter with the following recommendation to his 2.7 million followers: 1)If you can afford to have your blood tested for everything available, do it quarterly so you have a baseline of your own personal health 2) create your own personal health profile and history.It will…
Orexigen Released Interim Data Without Approval Of Trial Leaders
March 3, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Earlier today Orexigen Therapeutics disclosed positive results from a clinical trial of Contrave, its weight loss pill (a combination of naltrexone and bupropion) that it markets with Takeda. (You can read a good summary of the findings by Adam Feuerstein on TheStreet.) The surprising thing about the Orexigen disclosure, which was contained in a Form…
No, Drinking Coffee Won’t Save Your Life Or Prevent Heart Attacks
March 3, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Once again the media has swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker. Following the publication of a a new study in the journal Heart last night, hundreds of news reports have now appeared extolling the miraculous benefits of coffee. Here’s just one typical headline from the Los Angeles Times: “Another reason to drink coffee: It’s good for your heart, study…
No, Too Much Jogging Probably Won’t Kill You
February 3, 2015 by 1 Comment
One again lazy health journalists have fallen down on the job and performed a disservice to the public. The new outrage: a multitude of media reports about a small study on the effect of jogging on mortality. Here are just a few headlines, published minutes after the study was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology:…
Salt, Science, And The American Heart Association’s Double Standard
January 23, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Once again the American Heart Association is sticking by its recommendation that pretty much everyone should consume no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium each day. This is dramatically lower than the 3,500 mg/d the average American now consumes. In a blog post reprinted on MedPage Today the president of the American Heart Association, Elliott Antman, assails a study published earlier this week which found no…
Why Doctors, Like Airline Pilots, Should Not Be Completely Trusted.
January 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I would never get on an airplane if I didn’t feel highly confident that the pilot was fully competent. In order to fly a commercial airplane a pilot has to undergo rigorous and continuous training and testing. I’d walk before flying with a pilot whose only credential was his assurance that he’d been diligently “keeping up…
Three Reasons Why You Don’t Need To Feel Sorry For Doctors
January 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I’m not a doctor and I don’t have strong opinions about how doctors should be certified or, more to the point right now, what they should have to do to maintain their certification over the course of their careers. But recently this last topic– called maintenance of certification, or MOC– has become the subject of a…
Doctor: You’re Going To Have A Heart Attack! Patient: Your Tests Results Are Giving Me A Heart Attack!
October 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Last month I wrote a series of articles (starting here) about HDL, a laboratory company under investigation by the DOJ for giving kickbacks to physicians who use their tests. I reported additional allegations of serious misconduct based on questionable sales, marketing, and billing practices involving unnecessary testing. In response to those articles I’ve received emails from several individuals,…
Why Bad Doctors Are Like Bad Writers: The Curse Of Knowledge
September 27, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist and best-selling author, has a wonderful essay in the Wall Street Journal about why smart people are so often bad writers. Although the essay doesn’t touch on the subject of doctor-patient communication, every single word applies to doctors and the way they communicate (or fail to communicate) with their patients. Here’s the core…
New England Journal Of Medicine Declines To Retract Papers From Disgraced Research Group
September 26, 2014 by 2 Comments
Like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the two New England Journal of Medicine papers by disgraced Dutch researcher Don Poldermans will never stand straight. But like the famous Tower they are also unlikely to topple anytime soon. Without attracting a lot of attention, back in August the NEJM editors decided not to retract the papers or publish an expression…
A ‘Disappeared’ Article, Finally Published, Finds A Desultory Response To Scientific Misconduct
September 23, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Back in January an article in the European Heart Journal raising the disturbing possibility that guidelines based on fraudulent research may have been responsible for as many as 800,000 deaths was “disappeared” from the journal’s website only minutes after being published. The journal’s editor claimed the article had not been properly peer reviewed. In its place the editors published an editorial refuting…
Way Beyond Kickbacks: More Serious Misconduct Alleged Against Medical Testing Company
September 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The problems go way beyond kickbacks. As previously reported (here and in the Wall Street Journal) the US government is conducting an investigation into Health Diagnostic Laboratory, a medical laboratory testing company that has enjoyed explosive growth since its founding in 2008. Previous reports centered on kickbacks given to physicians by the company to encourage greater use of the company’s…
Beyond Kickbacks: More Questions About Unnecessary Cardiovascular Tests
September 8, 2014 by Leave a Comment
On the front page of the Wall Street Journal today is an important story about a fast-growing company accused of giving kickbacks to physicians who order the company’s tests measuring a wide variety of cardiovascular biomarker tests. But the article leaves one major question unasked: even if the company played fully by the rules, are most of the tests medically…
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