Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Authors Warn of Inaccuracies and Explore Thorny Issues Concerning the Use and Measurement of Race in Health and Social Science Research... APA press release - "New and sophisticated methods for studying the relationship between human genetic differences, the environment, health and behavior, all made possible by the completion of the Human Genome Project, have made traditional race-based measurements of human differences obsolete, according to numerous authors writing in a special issue of the
American Psychologist devoted to Genes, Race, and Psychology in the Genome Era (January, 2005).
American Psychologist is the journal of the American Psychological Association (APA). In a series of articles, leading researchers discuss racial health disparities and the controversial area of intelligence, while also carefully outlining specific instances and ways in which researchers should measure or use race." See the lead article in the journal,
Genes, Race and Psycholgy in the Genome Era (Adobe Acrobat format
), which is available at no charge online.
Dispute Puts a Medical Journal Under Fire New York Times story - "On New Year's Day, the British medical journal BMJ published a news article suggesting that "missing" documents from a decade-old lawsuit indicated that Eli Lilly & Company, the maker of Prozac, had minimized data about the drug's risks of causing suicidal or violent behavior. Within days, the article was cited in hundreds of television and newspaper reports. An outraged Washington lawmaker demanded to know if Lilly had hidden the information from the Food and Drug Administration. While company officials refuted the article's assertions, it was still repeatedly cited. And last Thursday, Lilly spent about $800,000 to run full-page advertisements in 15 major publications to dispute the article. The incident may prove to be a messy one for the BMJ, which is based in London and owned by the British Medical Association, a professional group..." [Viewing
New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].
NIH Revises Plan for Quick, Free Access to Study Results Washington Post story - "An ambitious proposal to make the results of federally funded medical research available to the public quickly and for free has been scaled back by the National Institutes of Health under pressure from scientific publishers, who argued that the plan would eat into their profits and harm the scientific enterprise they support. The initial plan, encouraged by Congress and hailed by patient advocacy groups, called for the results of NIH-funded research to be posted on a publicly accessible Web site within six months after they are published in a scientific journal. ... In the final version of the plan, however, the recommended six-month deadline for posting results has been stretched to a year. That change has angered many advocates of public access, who have argued it isn't fair that taxpayers must either wait or ante up to see the results of research they have already paid for..." [Viewing
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Program Effective at Reducing Depression in Teens Story at
Medical News Today - "An intervention for adolescents aimed at improving the quality of treatment for depression is effective at reducing depression, according to a study in the January 19 issue of JAMA. Lifetime prevalence for major depression in adolescence is estimated at 15 percent to 20 percent, current prevalence is estimated as high as 6 percent, and 28.3 percent of adolescents report periods during the past year of depressive symptoms leading to impairment, according to background information in the article. Untreated depression is associated with suicide, a leading cause of death for youth aged 15 to 24 years, and with other negative outcomes including school dropout, pregnancy, substance abuse, and adult depression. Few depressed adolescents receive effective treatment for depression in primary care settings." See also the
abstract of the study in JAMA.
