I am now re-reading this book. The writing is very magaziney and shallow. The descriptions of Cabllo Blanco and Jenn Shelton for example are intensely overwrought. However, the topic is fascinating, the insights unique, and information fantastic. For example, yesterday I made a pair of huraches and will go trail running in them today. (If you want info on how to make a pair, drop me a line.) This is a book that motivates action, causes me to rethink the basics of running, and is worth reading twice for the info.

If anyone is looking to buy the book for a class or symposium – or, of course, for themselves – the cost will be significantly less than the hardback version, narturally.

Please visit my friends at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble and other major online booksellers below or visit any other site or bookstore where you normally shop to reserve a copy or buy one in the future.

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?” I will excerpt Bad Day in the weeks before its release and will start visiting sites and groups to talk about the book and others like it. If you have any suggestions for sites that might be good, let me know.

I’ll be posting more about this book and other projects soon.

Impact of Privacy Rules on Research

From the Wall Street Journal (subscription):

FDA Warns Pfizer On Clinical Study Of Antipsychotic Geodo

From Bloomberg/Business Week:

Pfizer’s Geodon Trial Had ‘Significant Violations’ (Update2)

The Courier Post:

Pfizer not fixing test problems, FDA says

The presentation is Medicine: the Miracle of Science and the Science of Miracles on Saturday at 1:00 pm – 02:00 pm in the Koffler Builindg on the University of Arizona Campus, room 204.

I look forward to meeting you there or at the signing afterward!

The film is notable because of how the worlds of commerce and business are so closely coupled with medical research. There is a creeping acknowledgement that research is not pristine, nor purely about the discovery of medical breakthroughs; that it has a commercial side that can be viewed as less than savory. This is similar to how medicine overall  has been increasingly portrayed as a corporate enterprise more than as a life-saving endeavor.  Whether the movie’s views about research and money are wholly accurate is beside the point. It does signal that the clinical trials system is facing an image issue – one that  CROs as an industry and university researchers as a group might want to be aware of as the business of research continues to grow at an impressive rate while other sectors of the economy tank.

For  more reviews of Extraordinary Measures go to Rotten Tomatoes, which links to several reviews and provides a good oversight of the film – which has been compared to a glorified made for TV movie. But hey, those of us interested in trials will certainly get something out of the experience, if only a little more insight into how the general public views our endeavors.

In other clinical trials news…

Effort to Preregister Clinical Trials Shows Limited Gains for … Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) – And of the 20 top-ranked journals, only about four publish the results of clinical trials, and at least three of those four have adopted the policy … See all stories on this topic

Clinical trials for flu vaccine start – Korea Herald – Clinical trials for the H1N1 flu vaccine yesterday started on 470 adult volunteers, said local drug maker Green Cross. Aimed at confirming the effectiveness … See all stories on this topic

Clinical Trial Outsourcing in India to Post Double Digit Growth by … PRLog.Org (press release) – This has been led by outsourcing of clinical trials which share a major part of drug development costs. Our research study “Booming Clinical Trials Market … See all stories on this topic