Supreme Court Blocks Generic Drug Liability Lawsuits
In a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that drug makers cannot be sued under state law for adverse reactions to...
PA Court Affirms Dismissal of Paxil Wrongful Death Suit
A Pennsylvania Superior Court has affirmed a lower court's ruling that GlaxoSmithKline is not responsible for the congenital heart defect that lead Joanne Thomas...
Military Court Hears Arguments Re: Chantix-Related Murder Defense
Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces heard arguments on Tuesday for the defense of former Army paratrooper George D.B....
University of Minnesota Leadership “Can’t Regain Trust”
The University of Minnesota's psychiatry department continues its scandal-plagued run at making national news...
Psychotic Experiences Are Not Strongly Associated With Schizophrenia
Although psychotic experiences (PEs) and schizophrenia are thought to share similar etiological risk factors, PEs also co-exist with depression and, according to research from...
Abbott to Pay $700 Million for Off-Label Marketing of Depakote
Pleading guilty to marketing Depakote for behavioral problems in dementia patients, a purpose for which the drug was not approved, a federal judge has...
Corrupted Drug Trials Frequently Found, But Facts Hidden from Journals, Public
The US Food and Drug Administration frequently uncovers evidence of improper conduct in drug trials, but they are almost never mentioned in the medical journals that subsequently publish the findings.
Antipsychotics do not Result in Neurocognitive Improvement
Researchers in London and Spain, in a prospective, randomized, study of long-term (3 year) effects of first- and second-generation antipsychotics on neurocognition in 79...
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Will Stop Paying Doctors to Promote Drugs
In a first for a major drug company, GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharma that was fined $3 billion for illegal marketing of Paxil and Wellbutrin,...
Why Journals Resist Drug Trial Registration
Although publication bias is known to be a serious problem that public drug trial registration is meant to address, only a fraction of journals...
“Justina’s Law” seeks to curb experimentation on foster children
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers have introduced a bill called "Justina's Law" to limit federal funding for medical research involving foster children, according...
Autism Linked to Antidepressants During Pregancy
A study of the Swedish medical birth registry, conducted by researchers from Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.A., found a 3.3X greater risk of...
In Ireland, Antipsychotic Drugs Used Extensively On People With Learning Disabilities
Over half of people with learning disabilities living in residential centers in Ireland are being prescribed antipsychotics.
NE Journal of Medicine Backs Congressional Call for Research Transparency
Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced the Trial and Experimental Studies Transparency (TEST) Act into congress on August 2, 2012; a bill aimed at closing...
Appeals Court States Psychiatrists May Commit Medicaid Fraud by Prescribing Drugs Off-Label
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday rejected a lower court's dismissal of Watson v. King-Vassel, saying that a jury is in fact sufficiently able...
Hospital Website Health Care Information May Not Be Reliable
An investigation found that many US hospital websites were more like advertising outlets than educational portals.
One Million in U.K. Addicted to Prescribed Benzos
The Times of London reports today that more than a million people in the U.K. are addicted to benzodiazepines prescribed to them by their...
ADHD Prescribing Differs Substantially in UK vs. US
An article in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry finds that the UK's new guidelines for treating attention and depression problems in children recommend a...
Robert Reich Blogs on the Glaxo Penalty
Robert Reich, professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, analyzes the impact of the $3 billion...
Director Tony Scott had Antidepressant – Not Cancer – at Time of Suicide
The Los Angeles County coroner's department reported yesterday that Tony Scott, the director of films such as "Top Gun" and "Beverly Hills Cop II,"...
J&J Whistleblowers to Collect Record $168 million
The whistleblowers who helped to build the case for prosecuting Johnson & Johnson for illegal marketing of Risperdal will take home nearly $168 million...
The Economist Unwraps the DSM
The Economist, in its upcoming edition, says of the DSM "No other major branch of medicine has such a single text, with so much...
Retraction Watch and HealthNewsReview.org Get Large Grants to Expand
Early in December, HealthNewsReview.org announced receipt of a $1.3 million grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to re-start and significantly expand its operations. And in late December Retraction Watch announced that it had received $400,000 from the MacArthur Foundation. Both websites specialize in monitoring and reporting on poor practices in science, medicine and psychiatry.
Loss of a Parent in Childhood Raises Psychosis Risk
Children who lose a parent before the age of 3 are 84% more likely to experience psychosis as adults, according to research published in...
Risk of Bone Fractures With SSRIs Greater Than Thought
Researchers from McMaster University's Department of Medicine, presenting at this year's American Society for Bone and Mineral Research's annual meeting, found that the magnitude...
