The NYT is live blogging the debate on whether to pull the diabetes drug Avandia from the shelves. A federal advisory panel is hearing testimoney about how safe it is, how safe it isn’t, what the problems may be… when did science becaome so much about opinion? When did clinical trials have so much wiggle room? Makes one wonder. But, enough, now to the blogging …

… this trend where patients increasingly drive the focus of research and the availability of unproven treatments is absurd, insane, and potentially life-threatening … No matter how heart wrenching these personal stories, anecdote and desperation should neer be a significant factor in conducting effective clinical trials. It makes for bad research and produces bad medicine.

This would allow a doctor to “ask the patient if he or she was interested in participating” in the trial. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that if your doctor “asks” you to take part in a trial it’s tantamount, for many patients, to the doctor suggesting or recommending that you take part or that you at least seriously consider it.

Fascinating story in NYT… “Chaim Grade was the other great postwar Yiddish writer, the one few people outside of scholarly circles have ever heard of. And for that, some people blame his widow.”

Kids often don’t understand enough about clinical trials and that can impact how many kids take part in trials.

Are we only a nation of money givers or are we a nation of people who care so much that we will extend ourselves to the point of inconvenience to help others

The paperback of Chasing Medical Miracles is due out on May 25. There is a newly written foreword about swine flu and the clinical trials process for that. I will excerpt that foreword on this site this week and in the days leading up to the release of the paperback.

Also in August my first novel, Bad Day for the Home Team, will be released by Zumaya Books. The book is about how a very average man in Sierra Vista, Arizona walks into a pizza place, shoots and kills 30 people, then kills himself. He comes back as a ghost and tries to figure out why he did what he did while a cop, his brother, and a reporter try to also unravel the mystery of “Why he done it?”

Clinical trial offers hope for diabetics… (from NYT): “The drug Lucentis can improve eyesight being lost to diabetes, researchers reported on Tuesday, a finding they hailed as a major advance in combating a common cause of blindness.

The finding comes from a large government-sponsored clinical trial that tested the drug, which is made by Genentech, as a treatment for the condition known as diabetic macular edema…”

Check this out: Video is discussion of impact of privacy rules on research from ACRO

Interesting, disturbing story…: “…researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have gathered evidence indicating that some trials explicitly exclude individuals based on their sexual orientation.”