Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it. – Thomas Jefferson “Even in one of the places where violence is worst … El Diario was still doing a lot of good reporting on crime,” said Carlos Lauria, a CPJ senior coordinator. “The [...]
… A couple of US senators have introduced legislation to eliminate the federal tax deduction on advertising for prescription-drugs. This could affect marketing budgets and the bottom line of many BDA’s to the tune of millions, and as I say in the chapter devoted to health care advertising in my latest opus… The Ubiquitous Persuaders, [...]
With uncanny echoes of modern interest in ‘cognitive enhancers’, a 1958 edition of Popular Science hails a new drug that “tunes up the brain” allowing us “to perform at peak efficiency all the time”. The drug is iproniazid, marketed then as Marsilid. It was the first ever antidepressant, but the concept of an ‘antidepressant’ had [...]
Use soap bubbles to distract babies and younger children. Parents can hold a plastic bubble-making wand in front of their child’s mouth and let them “blow away the hurt.” For crying babies, making a bubble will give them something to focus on besides the pain. Try relaxation exercises. Tell older kids and teens to breathe [...]
Announcing the settlement Wednesday, the Justice Department said that it included the largest criminal fine in U.S. history — $1.2 billion. The agreement also included a criminal forfeiture of $105 million. Authorities called Pfizer a repeat offender, noting it is the fourth such settlement of government charges in the last decade. They said the government [...]
Dr. Robert Goodman, an internist in New York City, says the real force behind skyrocketing antidepressant prescription rates is pharmaceutical marketing to doctors and to consumers. “You put those two together and you get a lot of prescriptions for antidepressants,” he said. – CDC: Antidepressants most prescribed drugs in U.S.by Elizabeth Cohen for CNN Health [...]
Leave it to Canadian reporting to sum up the entirety of an exasperating issue fraught with futile appeals to logic in a single expository sentence: In 1976, then U.S. president Gerald Ford ordered a national vaccination campaign in response to an outbreak of swine flu at a military base in New Jersey. In the end, [...]
After spending an astounding $100 million to win friends and influence doctors, the drug producers withheld study results—for 21 months—that showed the drug did not work as claimed. Meanwhile, the two companies pulled in a whopping $5.2 billion in sales in 2007 alone. Later, three studies indicated that people who take Vytorin may be more [...]
A group of the nation’s top scientists sent a letter on Wednesday, January 7, to the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama in which they urge a restructure of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because it has become “fundamentally broken.” Of particular concern is the way the agency intimidates and coerces its scientists [...]
A new drug from China appears to be effective in getting rid of a number of intestinal worms, a problem that plagues more than a billion people around the world. Worms cause anemia, weight loss among infants and malnutrition, and they can retard mental and physical growth. As a result, they can exact a huge [...]
