The Bias Towards Drugs in Psychiatry

Two days ago I posted about the bias towards drugs in treating depressed older patients. The next day the New York Times published a heartb...

Ignoring Families Can be Fatal

Yesterday in Heathrow Airport on my way home from Singapore  I wrote a post about how US medical ethics ignores families and overemphasizes...

Sex isn't the only lust that physicians succumb to

Money and power can also lead to ethical collapse. A sad story today's New York Times tells how Dr. Sidney Gilman, a respected teacher ...

Allowing import of needed drugs from Canada

Last year I wrote about a well-intended FDA policy about colchicine, a drug used since ancient times for gout, and now for other serious con...

Bereavement, Depression and DSM-V

In January I criticized the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for planning to drop the "bereavement exclusion" from the defi...

Industry, Medicine and Medical Ethics

This morning I co-chaired a meeting of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans (MAHP) Ethics Forum that used the Massachusetts Gift B...

Kristin Barker, a sociologist at Oregon State University, has a fascinating, fun to read article in a recent issue of Social Science & M...

Union Health Plans and Health System Ethics

On November 1 I blogged about how much I looked forward to meeting the next day with union leaders responsible for overseeing union health ...

Can We Afford High Cost Pharmaceuticals?

I'm in New Orleans, to meet tomorrow with a group of union leaders who oversee union health plans. They will have read, or at least - I ...

How a Well-Intended FDA Policy on Colchicine is Harming Patients

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The FDA has reaffirmed the truth of this aphorism with its policy about Colchicine. Here...

Should Researchers Criticize their Peers in Public?

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported that University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Jay Amsterdam has accused his department c...

Marcia Angell on the Corruption of American Psychiatry

Dr. Marcia Angell, perhaps the leading critic of the pharmaceutical industry, has written a powerful two-part critique of American psychiatr...

Pain Control, Hypnosis, and Medical Ethics

Two years ago I wrote about self-directed hypnosis as a effective and ethically admirable clinical intervention. A recent New York times ar...

Psychiatric Ethics in Boston

While reading yesterday's Boston Globe over coffee I encountered two stories about courtroom trials that raise central issues in psychia...

Splitting Pills and Promoting Good Ethics

A recent article from Minnesota describes the pill-splitting program at HealthPartners , a 52 year old not-for-profit HMO serving 635,000 m...

Walmart, Caterpillar and Medical Ethics

When I think about patient-centered collaboration in medicine I picture teams of physicians, nurses and social workers or primary care physi...

Riegel v Medtronic - a Clash Between Ethics and Law

A year ago today, on February 20, 2008, the Supreme Court decided Riegel v Medtronic by an 8-1 decision, with Judge Ginsburg as the sole di...

Drug Trials in India - a Video Interview with Amar Jesani

Anyone interested in the ethics of clinical trials in developing countries should look at this five minute video of an interview with Amar ...

The Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Disgraces Itself

The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI) has cancelled plans to hold its 2015 meeting in Boston because of a new Massa...

A Mild Wrist Slap for Pharma in India

Last month, before coming to India (where I am now) I wrote about the drug marketing scene. The posting gave a link to an article in the Ti...