“Ever wonder how much of a role politics might play in medicine? If you consider an event that took place this summer, you might start to think it’s rather significant. Patients with diabetes have telephoned and visited my office in droves during the past few months. All had been rattled by the news they’d heard in the mainstream media about Avandia, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, being linked to increased risk of heart attacks. This was all triggered by a New England Journal of Medicine paper by Steven Nissen, M.D. and Kathy Wolski, M.P.H. — respectively, the chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine and a statistician at the Cleveland Clinic — and an almost simultaneous congressional hearing that used the paper as a springboard for examining the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) drug safety practices. Why has this article had such a profound impact?” (12/01/07)