Legal Side of Medicine

Pharma Companies that Can’t Handle Comments Should Get Off Facebook, Good Riddance!

Jonathan at Dose of Digital talks about pharma’s fear of Facebook pages centering around 2 issues that pharma thinks require 24/7 monitoring: Adverse Events and negative publicity. I hear the same excuse on why pharma companies are so scared to look at patient comments on blogs: adverse events. I’m sorry, but adverse events are happening [...]

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Stop Pretending You Don’t Know, Pharma Companies!

I remembered years ago I was speaking to a Forest employee who told me how proud she was to be working at Forest because of how ethical the company and the CEO was. That same employee was critical of me for talking to the WSJ about some of the less ethical practices that pharma companies [...]

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Would You Cancel a Surgery if Your Surgeon is Getting a Kick-Back?

The specific question is about getting kickbacks as a surgeon using a medical device, and was originally asked on Quora. The explanation to the question (posted by the asker) said, “The department of justice has investigated conflicts of interest, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette has published on the topic. To quote from the gazette: Payments [...]

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FDA Has to Slow Down to Keep Up with Drug Companies

Steve Woodruff is hopping mad with the apparent gross inefficiency and indecision of the “guidance process” for pharma company promotional practices when it comes to social media, and I can’t blame him! But I’m on the FDA’s side this time. Let me say up front that I never liked how the FDA remains vague and [...]

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OIG’s Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives

John Walsh probably isn’t going to be featuring these on his “Most Wanted” show, but these criminals are on OIG’s Most Wanted for defrauding the government (and tax payers like you and me) out of millions of dollars by submitting false claims for services or goods (motorized wheelchairs seem to be a popular vehicle). These [...]

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