The vaccine for the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, Gardasil, was mandated for all young girls in Texas in 2006 and there were proposals for mandated vaccination in a growing number of other states. But a flurry of publicity about conflicts of interests by those who were pushing it in...

I was sitting in my car dealership today waiting to get service on my car and working on my laptop while the television was droning on in front of me. I mean this is one of the rare times when I watch TV without the benefit of TiVo to pause...

I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach.

You may have read that heart disease is under diagnosed in women, and that they are missing potential treatments that could save their lives. For instance, a couple of years ago Newsweek reported that heart...

Pharmaceutical companies are great about turning out prescription medications with hip designer colors like deep blue, lavender, brightly colored red, and let's not forget 'the purple pill' (Nexium, for those of you without a TV). Those lovely colors make us say 'Yummy!' and increase our desire to wolf them down...

Remember that commercial where the graceful but aging woman is talking about how she got shorter? And that if you had the same problem you should 'talk to your doctor'? What she wants you to tell your doctor is that you want a prescription for Fosamax, the bisphosphonate medication for...

I was watching public TV with my wife a couple of years ago when a researcher was being interviewed about the Beta Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial (CARET), in which 18,314 smokers took either beta carotene and Vitamin A or a placebo. He embarrassedly stated that the beta carotene...

I was sitting in my daughter's orientation for a year overseas with the AFS Program listening to this over-protective mother keep babbling on about how her daughter hadn't been assigned to a program yet, didn't have a visa, blah blah blah. When she started to fret about what would happen...

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about pine straw and the division in the state of Georgia between what I call the red counties (that gather up pine straw in the forests of South Georgia) and the blue counties (that dutifully spread the pine straw in their gardens, although...

I had a wonderful day today with attorneys representing Hoffmann-La Roche in litigation related to the psychiatric effects of their acne drug Accutane. Seven hours in fact! (Just in case Roche doesn't believe the billing records they get from their counsel!). These attorneys were kind enough to fly down from...

Half of all Americans take prescription medications. Eighty one percent take some type of pill. 100,000 die every year from a prescription med that they either didn't need or that was not properly prescribed. What is going on here?

While it's true that many drugs help people live longer and...

A collective howl is going up amongst women over at medications.com over the birth control pill, Yasmin. These women are complaining of depression, anxiety, loss of sex drive, headaches, and dizziness, and most of them didn't feel like they were adequately informed about these potential side effects. In fact,...

I have a secret (?) interest in drug news and the pharmaceutical industry but it seems like the only place I can get a fix for my jones outside of pharmalot.com or the pharma marketing blog is the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) or the New York Times Business Section. But...

I was spreading pine straw around the bushes in my yard in Atlanta, Georgia, when I started thinking about... you guessed it! The goofy names that drug companies come up with for their prescription drugs.

Folks in the blue states are often interested in the customs of us red...

Last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association an article came out about how drug companies pay "ghost writers" to write favorable articles about their drugs and then pay doctors and researchers with established reputations in their field to be listed as the author of the paper....

I had a stomach ache coming home on the plane this weekend from vacation in Costa Rica and I couldn't tell if it was from coming back online (literally as well as figuratively) to America's prescription drug woes and our crappy healthcare system (of which I am a part), the...

It's bad enough that it can drive you crazy trying to get your prescription medications filled, remembering to take them, and figuring out how to pay for them, but now it looks like sometimes your prescription meds themselves can make you, well... nuts.

Hoffmann La-Roche has specialized for years in...

Well it's been almost a month since I wrote about the governor of my home state of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, leading the state legislature in a prayer for rain, and after that I actually got my pants wet driving around Atlanta in my convertible with a leaky roof. Guess...

Well between Mitt Romney's speech on his Mormon faith in College Park, Texas, yesterday, and TV shows like Big Love it seems like the Mormons are coming out of nowhere. Fact is that the Mormons have been around for a while; and they haven't just been hiding their heads...

Last year Bush and his pack of weasels scared the living daylights out of you all by making an announcement that Bird Flu was on the way and you better get ready for it. Wadya know as soon as they starting chirping about that the sales of Tamiflu shot through...

A report by the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) outside advisory panel released last Friday stated that the FDA is putting American lives at risk. Not only has there been a shrinking of the budget (after adjusting for inflation) of 15% over the past 15 years, the poor morale...