Ghostbusting: Exposing Drug Company-Hired Ghostwriters in Medical Journals

Doctors rely on scientific papers for accurate information on which drugs and treatments are best for their patients, but are all these papers trustworthy? Often times, industry-paid “ghostwriters” author these papers, leading to biased articles that mislead doctors into prescribing medication that may not work or could be harmful to their patients.

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Scleroderma: What Is It and How Is It Treated?

Scleroderma means hardening of the skin. It is not a single disease but a group of diseases. What all forms of the disease have in common is abnormal connective tissue leading to skin tightening. There are two types of scleroderma: “localized scleroderma” and the more severe, “systemic scleroderma.” No one understands yet what causes either.

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Heart CT Scans: New Heart Disease Test May Cause Cancer

Heart disease is the leading cause of death among adults in the U.S., so some doctors have recently started using a “CAT scan” (or CT scan) to detect blockages in the heart’s arteries. Unfortunately, a CT scan uses relatively large doses of radiation, which could ultimately lead to many new cases of cancer from increased exposure to radiation. Although heart CT scanning may be a useful tool in detecting blockages in heart arteries, there is not enough evidence to show that this test is worth the risks and is therefore not recommended for screening for heart disease at this time.

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