I have reported on health for most of my career. My work as an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register exposed problems with the fertility industry, the trade in human body parts and the use of illegal drugs in sports. I helped create a first-of-its-kind report card judging hospitals on a wide array of measures for a story that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. I was one of the lead reporters on a series of stories about lead in candy, a series that also was a finalist for the Pulitzer.For the Center for Health Journalism (previously known as Reporting on Health), I have written about investigative health reporting and occasionally broke news on my column, Antidote. I also was the project editor on the Just One Breath collaborative reporting series.  These days, for the University of Washington, I now work as the Executive Director for Insitutue for Health Metrics and Evaluation's Client Services, a social enterprise. You can follow me on Twitter @wheisel.

Articles

Q&A with Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman: Marketing messages distort medical research

<p><a href="http://fugh-berman.com/">Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman</a> has become the go-to source for comments on how drug companies have been using ghostwriters to inject marketing messages into the medical literature, a controversy that prompted powerful Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to send <a href="http://www.npr.org/assets/blogs/health/images/2009/08/nihletter.pdf">a letter</a> on Aug. 11 to the National Institutes of Health asking, among other things, "What is the current NIH policy on ghostwriting with regards to NIH researchers?"</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: "Nothing dishonest" about ghostwriting, says professor caught with faked article

<p>If DesignWrite, the medical communications firm that has been ghostwriting articles on behalf of drug giant Wyeth, were an elementary school student, it would have a stack of papers heavy with gold stars.</p> <p><a href="http://bit.ly/info/PnKoC">Dr. Gloria Bachmann</a>, the associate dean for women's health at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., told the company it had written an "an A plus article" after it wrote a review article that Bachmann agreed to sign. The article appeared with hardly a word changed in <em>The Journal of Reproductive Medicine</em>.</p>

A Controversial Medical Education Program, With (Pharma) Strings Attached

<p>In December, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sent <a href="http://www.drugs.com/news/senator-grassley-8217-s-letter-designwrite-in… letter</a> to Mitchell A. Leon, the president of DesignWrite Inc., the company that has now become Exhibit A in the unfolding <a href="/blogs/exorcise-ghosts-have-been-haunting-research-journals">ghostwriting scandal</a> that has medical journal editors everywhere combing through their submissions looking for fakes. </p>

Q&A with Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman: Ghostwriting sneaks past most journal editors

<p><a href="http://fugh-berman.com/">Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman</a> is the principal investigator of <a href="http://pharmedout.org/">PharmedOut</a&gt;, an educational campaign aimed at showing physicians how marketing influences their prescribing decisions. Originally funded by the <a href="http://www.consumerprescribergrantprogram.org/index.htm">Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant</a>, PharmedOut, among other things, offers continuing medical education to doctors, allowing them to earn credits without taking courses funded by drug or device companies.</p>

Q&A with Dr. John Dombrowski, Part 2: Anesthetizing Michael Jackson "indefensible"

<p>This is the second part of my <a href="/blogs/qa-dr-john-dombrowski-michael-jacksons-bungled-pain-management-may-have-killed-him">conversation</a> with <a href="http://www.dcpaindoc.com/html/physician_profile.html">Dr. John Dombrowski</a>, a Washington D.C. anesthesiologist and pain management specialist who sits on the American Society of Anesthesiology's <a href="http://www.asahq.org/aboutAsa/asaCommitteeListing.htm#admin">administra… affairs</a> committee.</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: Dr. Peter Breen

<p>Anesthesiologists everywhere <a href="/blogs/qa-dr-john-dombrowski-michael-jacksons-bungled-pain-management-may-have-killed-him">cringed</a> when they heard the news that Michael Jackson was found dead with a bag of <a href="/blogs/see-michael-jackson-doctor%E2%80%99s-alleged-slipup-look-label">propofol</a> nearby.</p> <p>The drug is too strong to be used as a sleep aid and deceptively simple to administer. Anesthesia drugs like propofol require constant monitoring, and Jackson, apparently, was<br /> left unattended after receiving the drug.</p>

Public Citizen data on hospital laggards deserves second look

<p>Pia Christensen of the Association of Health Care Journalists responded to an <a href="http://bit.ly/VQ4KV">earlier blog post</a> that I had essentially ignored some good reporting on the <a href="http://www.tradewatch.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7659&amp;secID=11… Citizen report</a> about how hospitals are failing in a very big way to report bad doctors to the National Practitioner Data Bank. She cited three stories, saying: </p>