What did the scientific literature learn from internal company documents in the pharmaceutical industry? A scoping review
drug trials
Most people on antidepressants don’t need them: time to wean them off
This leader-article comes from The Economist. It begins: “Almost 35 years ago American drug regulators approved Prozac, the first in a series of blockbuster antidepressants known as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Prozac and its cousins were lauded by patients and…
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The Emperor’s New Drugs : Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect
This free course (from Mad in America Continuing Education) includes a lecture video from Prof. Irving Kirsch (Associate Director of the Program in Placebo Studies and lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center), together with…
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Dr. Drug Rep
Interview: Researchers Deconstruct Ghostwritten Industry Trial for Antidepressant
“… articles go through a lot of drafts, maybe 10-15 drafts, that get passed around between the statisticians and the marketing people at the companies and then, after most of this has already been written, they go looking for the…
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Secrets of the drug trials
Panorama is a BBC TV programme that specialises in investigative journalism. In 2007 they broadcast “Secrets of the drug trials” (see video below), concerning which the BBC said: “Secret emails reveal that the UK’s biggest drug company distorted trial results…
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Results of World’s Largest Antidepressant Study Look Dismal
Dr. Joan Moncrieff, psychiatrist, writing for the Mad in America website, says: “A few months ago I was surprised to receive a request from an obscure journal of consciousness studies to review a paper. I was surprised because, although it was not immediately…
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Drug trials ‘skewed by the pharmaceutical industry,’ GPs say
A report by Laura Donnelly in The Telegraph (June 2017) notes that: “Four in five GPs believe drug trials are skewed by the pharmaceutical industry, amid widespread mistrust in medical research, polling shows. A report by the Academy of Medical Sciences is…
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