Susan Gilbert

We know that pharmaceutical companies helped bring about the painkiller epidemic with deceptive marketing. But less talked about is the fact that medical writers were cogs in the machinery.

News outlets sometimes confuse physician aid in dying with euthanasia, as happened last week in coverage of the California legislation that would allow physicians to prescribe a lethal dose of medication for terminally ill patients. Here's a primer on getting the terms straight.

Last week, ProPublica and Yelp announced a partnership in which they will provide health care statistics and patient survey results on the Yelp pages of more than 25,000 health care facilities. More information to help journalists write about health is a good thing — especially right now.

Next month, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to decide whether to approve the first drug for women who lack sexual desire. An FDA panel recommended approval of a drug that the agency has rejected twice. How can reporters separate the science from the marketing?

Patients and health care journalists have long called for greater transparency in the prices of health care, and several companies now provide that information for free. Two recent surveys asked whether the public is using this it.

Last week, BuzzFeed, Mic, and a few other news outlets reported on a new genetics study involving Facebook: Genes for Good. That’s the name of the study, which is being conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan, and the name of a Facebook app that they are using to recruit tens of thousa

On January 2, ProPublica and The New York Times co-published “When a Patient’s Death is Broadcast Without Permission,” a powerful article that explored legal and ethical questions posed by ABC’s “NY Med” and similar TV documentaries about actual medical dramas taking place in hospitals....

Press coverage and outrage has followed news of new research in Wisconsin that involves separating newborn monkeys from their mothers a day after they’re born, frightening them, and then regularly scanning their brains to compare them with the brains of baby monkeys not subject to such traumas.

While most of America was occupied with July 4th weekend festivities, bioethicists across the country were online discussing the possible research ethics transgressions committed by the Facebook study of "emotional contagion" through social networks.

This month, after the National Institute of Health announced that it was seeking $4.5 billion for its work on President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released its recommendation that the research explicitly include ethical perspectives.