In 2012, I coauthored a case report about the successful use of dietary supplements in treating a case of male infertility in the American Family Physician. Before it was published, I was surprised to receive a communication asking me to disclose the fact that I had written a textbook on dietary supp...

Addyi, a drug that made a splash when it was approved in the summer of 2015 as the first “female Viagra,” is back. Its rise, fall, and rise again is an example of shrewd pharmaceutical marketing and the potential dangers it can pose to patients.

In February, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) published a report that revealed the unsettling relationship between opioid manufacturers and pain advocacy groups. Focusing on five opioid manufacturers, Purdue, Janssen, Depomed, Insys, and Mylan, the report found that manufacturers contributed $9 ...

In 1971, the United Nations passed a resolution prohibiting its member nations from advertising psychotropic drugs to the general public. More than 40 years later, this resolution has done little to halt pharmaceutical companies from marketing stimulants as treatments for attention deficit-hyperactiv...

Three years ago, a small pharmaceutical company with a big agenda created a fake feminist group so that they could get a bad drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The story of how this happened is a case study in how industry affects medical discourse, the subject of a PharmedOut confere...

After much anticipation, on April 22, HBO debuted The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a film based on Rebecca Skloot’s bestselling book, starring Oprah Winfrey. Lacks’s cells provided the foundation for the now infamous HeLa cell line, the first set of human cells able to reproduce outside the ...

On December 13th, President Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan, multidimensional health research and development bill.  The act allocates $4.8 billion to the National Institutes of Health and $500 million to the Food and Drug Administration over the next 10 years for research and ...

Academic bioethics has never been popular with Republicans. Libertarians dislike academic bioethics because it seems too elitist and anti-free market.  Religious thinkers worry it is technocratic, soulless and crassly utilitarian. Now with Trumpism add a populist disdain for expertise, experts a...

Telemedicine is becoming more widespread. This is care at a distance, where patient and clinician are connected by information technology that may include video, audio, and monitoring equipment linked by computer. Telemedicine has many advantages. It can bring expert care and support to people in rem...

On September 21, Heather Bresch, CEO of Mylan, took heat at a Congressional hearing about high EpiPen prices. EpiPens are definitely overpriced – but they are also overprescribed.