|
|
|
|
Happy 2009! As promised, I’ll start adding photos to brighten up the page, and maybe illustrate a point at times. This one is a mid-winter tribute to spring. As you might surmise from past posts, I have long-standing concerns about commercial influence on the practice of medicine generally, and psychiatry in particular. I have two […] Stanley Fish has an interesting opinion piece in today’s New York Times. In September the American Psychological Association (APA) reversed its position and now bans its members from participating in some military interrogations and all torture, a stance taken earlier by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association. (The psychiatrists’ group is also […] Lately I’ve been pondering one of my professional roles, that of gatekeeper. Among my other duties, I help patients access things they already know they want, but cannot get without my help. Often this boils down to writing a “doctor’s note”: documentation to excuse a work or school absence, qualify for a discount transit pass, […] In my last post, I wrote about how the pharmaceutical industry funds half of the continuing medical education (CME) of doctors, and the risk this may pose for bias in what doctors learn. The influence of industry money on health education goes far beyond this, though. In 2004 I learned first-hand how insidious this influence […] On October 3rd the New York Times reported that several prominent research psychiatrists are under Congressional investigation for failing to report income derived from consulting and speaking for pharmaceutical companies. One of the field’s most renowned and prolific researchers, Charles B. Nemeroff MD of Emory University, stands accused of concealing over $1 million since 2000, […] Yesterday I was called by a psychotherapist who had referred a few of her clients to me in the past (she provided the therapy while I prescribed medication for the same people). This call was not about a typical referral, though. The therapist sought a medication evaluation for herself. Most of the medical field accepts […] |
 |