Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Why Should We Swallow What These Studies Say?
Opinion piece in the Washington Post by Jerome Kassirer, editor in chief emeritus of the New England Journal of Medicine and a professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine - "In a society rife with conflicts of interest, disclosure of such conflicts is usually a good tonic. In finance, we can read the fine print and decide whether to invest or seek other advice. We can hedge our bets. But in medicine, where decisions on treatment can have lasting effects, mere disclosure isn't enough. Patients need advice they can act on without having to calibrate how likely it is to be biased. Physicians and scientists with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry should not just have to disclose conflicts -- they shouldn't be permitted to issue guidelines at all. But they are permitted, and they do so routinely..."  
  

Influenza in Early Pregnancy Linked to Schizophrenia
Medscape Medical News story - "Influenza in early pregnancy may be associated with schizophrenia, according to the results of a nested case-control study published in the August issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. The investigators suggest that an antibody response, rather than infection, may explain this association."