The court documents provide a detailed paper trail showing how Wyeth contracted with a medical communications company to outline articles, draft them and then solicit top physicians to sign their names, even though many of the doctors contributed little or no writing. The documents suggest the practice went well beyond the case of Wyeth and hormone therapy, involving numerous drugs from other pharmaceutical companies.

As the New York Times reports, phamaceutical companies paid ghostwriters to compile review papers touting the benefits of new drugs, with doctors then signing on as authors. But it would be a shame if we did anything to reform the healthcare industry, thus stifling their innovation.

Are you kidding???? Give me a break Aren’t you people in the world sick of all the whining??? When was the last time an ” african american” got in trouble for calling a white man a cracker, whiteboy or whatever. What more do the “black” communities want?? White people don’t have a united ” white” college fund or WET tv program, or “white” history month ect…… If they got everything and more they would still be whining about RACE. Get over it

Sadly No proves racism is dead by compiling comments supporting a Boston cop who called Henry Louis Gates Jr. “a jungle monkey.

I’m fully aware of what the Washington conventions are that lead to rampant lawlessness and corruption, and have become aware of media conventions that enable such behavior.  I don’t criticize standard Washington behavior because — as Massing put it — I’m “oblivious” to those conventions.  It’s that I think those conventions are radically flawed and twisted and ought to be smashed.

Blogger Glenn Greenwald throws down the thunder on media coverage of law and politics.

Always one of my favorites: graphic designer Jess Bachman has come out with the 2010 installment of “Death and Taxes,” a visual representation of the federal budget.

But suppose it’s not you with the cancer but a stranger covered by your health-insurance fund. If the insurer provides this man — and everyone else like him — with Sutent, your premiums will increase. Do you still think the drug is a good value? Suppose the treatment cost a million dollars. Would it be worth it then? Ten million? Is there any limit to how much you would want your insurer to pay for a drug that adds six months to someone’s life? If there is any point at which you say, “No, an extra six months isn’t worth that much,” then you think that health care should be rationed.

Ethicist Peter Singer has a detailed argument for the necessity of health-care rationing in the New York Times.