Peter

Australian of the Year takes on Big Food, says our diet is ‘killing us’

The nation’s flawed dietary guidelines have much to answer for, with more than 5000 people losing their lives “unnecessarily” from Type 2 diabetes in the past three months. With evidence showing diet can improve underlying health conditions, in a time of rising COVID-19 infections it is more important than ever to revise the dietary guidelines, […]

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Rushing a coronavirus vaccine might undermine proven vaccines

Rushing a coronavirus vaccine As we’ve seen in Australia already, compliance with childhood immunisation schedules has been linked to pre-school admission (No jab, no play) and to family assistance payments (No jab, no pay) … some are warning that linking vaccination to access to services will only invigorate the anti-vaccination movement …

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The review on antidepressant withdrawal that Cochrane won’t publish

Peter Gøtzsche and Anders Sørensen on trying to get a review of methods for safe antidepressant withdrawal published in Cochrane: “They sent us on a mission that was impossible to accomplish” to “protect the psychiatric guild.” About half of the patients on depression pills, or over 50 million people worldwide, will experience withdrawal symptoms when

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The mantra of evidence-based medicine stifles important psychiatric research

“We live in the era of evidenced-based practice. If an approach is not funded, then it will never acquire the kind of data that would allow it to be considered evidence-based. This creates a closed loop: only research that is hypothesized to be of value is funded; understudied approaches that might be of value are

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More drug deaths: Merck and PTC Therapeutics want clinical study reports to be secret

Yet again, two US drug companies are trying to reintroduce secrecy. Merck and PTC Therapeutics have appealed an initial ruling that clinical study reports should not be considered confidential. On 11 September, Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, Gerard Hogan, found that disclosure of the documents would harm the companies’ commercial interests. The

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Science and censorship — my story

By Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D. August 19, 2019. Science is facing a crisis of democracy. Now more than ever, vitriolic attacks are being leveled at people who debate opposing scientific views. Asking questions that challenge the establishment may be unsettling, but silencing debate and proclaiming that the “science is settled” is not the solution. Belgian physician

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