A New Editor for Worst Pills, Best Pills News

This is my first issue as editor of Worst Pills, Best Pills News. In May 2023, I succeeded Dr. Michael Carome as the Health Research Group Director at Public Citizen. Serving as editor of Worst Pills, Best Pills News is one of the most important aspects of the job, and I wish to introduce myself.

Worst Pills, Best Pills News aims to provide you, the reader, with an “expert, independent second opinion for prescription drug information.” I approach that responsibility as an internal medicine physician, a medical journal editor with expertise in drug and medical-device safety and an author of many articles in professional journals and the news media. Among prior positions, I have been editor-at-large and online editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine, deputy editor and national correspondent at the New England Journal of Medicine, a contributing writer at JAMA and a medical writer at the Los Angeles Times. I am also professor adjunct of internal medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.

Throughout my career, the work of the Health Research Group — and the people who do that work — have been very important. I met Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, the Health Research Group founder and senior adviser, in 1985, when I reported for the Los Angeles Times on safety problems with a mechanical heart valve made by Shiley Inc., of Irvine, Calif.[1] About 150 times, a small metal strut in the valve had cracked or broken, and in about two-thirds of the cases when this happened, the patient had died. At the time, no other heart valve marketed in the United States had a comparable problem with mechanical failures, and Dr. Wolfe and the Health Research Group had played a central role in sounding the alarm. In 1986, all the mechanical heart valves of that type were finally withdrawn from the market; nearly 86,000 valves had been implanted before their withdrawal.[2]

In 2001, as a national correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine, I met Dr. Michael Carome. A healthy volunteer in an asthma study at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions had died. The Office for Human Research Protections, where he worked at the time, had identified additional safety problems and suspended all federally supported research projects at Johns Hopkins.[3] The extraordinary actions of the Office for Human Research Protections, in which Dr. Carome played a key role, led to substantive corrective actions to protect research subjects at Johns Hopkins and offered a road map for reform at other institutions.

As the Health Research Group at Public Citizen enters its 52nd year, I look forward to continuing to provide readers of Worst Pills, Best Pills News with authoritative and timely information about prescription drugs. I welcome your comments and suggestions.
 

References

[1] Steinbrook R. Heart valve failures prompt concerns. Los Angeles Times. December 1, 1985. A1

[2] Blot WJ, Ibrahim, MA, Ivey TD, et al. Twenty-five-year experience with the Bjork-Shiley convexoconcave heart valve. Circulation 2005;111:2850-2857.

[3] 3. Steinbrook R. Protecting research subjects — the crisis at Johns Hopkins. N Engl J Med 2002;346:716-720.