must go puke now.

from the NYT:

Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.

The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.

But the seeming consensus fell apart in 2002 when a huge federal study on hormone therapy was stopped after researchers found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. A later study found that hormones increased the risk of dementia in older patients.

The ghostwritten papers were typically review articles, in which an author weighs a large body of medical research and offers a bottom-line judgment about how to treat a particular ailment. The articles appeared in 18 medical journals, including The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and The International Journal of Cardiology.

The articles did not disclose Wyeth’s role in initiating and paying for the work. Elsevier, the publisher of some of the journals, said it was disturbed by the allegations of ghostwriting and would investigate.

The documents on ghostwriting were uncovered by lawyers suing Wyeth and were made public after a request in court from PLoS Medicine, a medical journal from the Public Library of Science, and The New York Times.

A spokesman for Wyeth said that the articles were scientifically accurate and that pharmaceutical companies routinely hired medical writing companies to assist authors in drafting manuscripts.

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... for the rest click on sig ...

All sides need to stop writing counter-productive bills and analyze the entire health care system in this country from birth to death. The Democrats need to get this one right --- not get it fast.

Richard Wolffe (who already parlayed favorable Newsweek coverage of Obama into great access that enabled him to write one Obama-adoring book about the campaign, and is now trying to sell that access to write a second worshipful book about the Obama

How extraordinary that the first book by Wolffe on Obama was called "Renegade."
Here is a definition of the word:

ren·e·gade

n.

1. One who rejects a religion, cause, allegiance, or group for another; a deserter.

2. An outlaw; a rebel

That certainly describes Obama all right.

Received this e-mail from my Rep. to Congress, AZ Democrat Giffords.

U.S. REP. GABRIELLE GIFFORDS TO HOST THREE TOWN HALLS ON HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM

TUCSON – U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords today announced that three town halls on health insurance reform will mark the end of a busy district work period.

"Health Insurance Reform", is the Administration's capitulation to the health care industry now openly admitted?

Glenn,

the idea occurs that a form of media monitoring mechanism is in order.

Something like a table that presents critical factors influencing policy initiatives and public relations. Included in this schema would be contributors.

Clearly, a pattern of compliance with administration directives by "independent" journos is taking place.

something along the lines of the following:

> bill, policy, issue / advanced by / contributors / news outlet, journalist / favorable - unfavorable / notes

I'll stop with this one, as it is making me crazy. This is also from the NYT:

New York Medicaid Fraud May Reach Into Billions

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New York State's Medicaid program has also become a $44.5 billion target for the unscrupulous and the opportunistic. It has drawn dentists like Dr. Dolly Rosen, who within 12 months somehow built the state's biggest Medicaid dental practice out of a Brooklyn storefront, where she claimed to have performed as many as 991 procedures a day in 2003.... School officials around the state have enrolled tens of thousands of low-income students in speech therapy without the required evaluation, garnering more than $1 billion in questionable Medicaid payments for their districts. One Buffalo school official sent 4,434 students into speech therapy in a single day without talking to them or reviewing their records, according to federal investigators.

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...for more click on sig

Some libertarians have asked if government provided health care for all will be any more efficient than Medicare. It is a fair question. The nation needs to get this one right.

... the problem with the health care debate is that those hardened Leftist ideologues cling childishly and petulantly to their little "public option" fetish and their refusal to give it up is jeopardizing enactment of a reform bill.

That's why there's such fervent demands for a "public option" -- because it's the only thing that can keep costs low and thus prevent this bill from being nothing more than a glorified bailout of the insurance and drug industries, which is exactly what will happen if 50 million people are forced by law to buy their products with no cost-control mechanism but ample government subsidies.

... if only the Leftist crazies would stay quiet and give up on their radical ideology, everything would go smoothly

watching (and participating in) the so called debates on healthcare reform this past year, it's impossible not to notice that the complaints now being made about public option advocates are some of the very same kind of complaints the public option advocates have spent the past year making about single payer advocates. just substitute "single payer" for "public option."

it would be funny if so many lives weren't at stake.

... health care reform with mandates, but no "public option" ...

Now, if they were consistent, that should be driving the limited government right into a frenzy.

Where are the firearm-wielding resisters, offering to put "two in the chest, one in the head" of any federal agent who comes to enforce this mandate?

Could it be that they only resist government intervention in the economy when their hidden puppeteers (their corporate masters) tell them to resist?