This Day in Blogging History: Pharma companies lied to doctors about meds; Paulson's 419 letter; JetBlue won't help spy on customers — maybe

One year ago today

Pharmaceutical companies deliberately mislead doctors into prescribing useless and even harmful meds: Thanks to aggressive manipulation from the pharmaceutical companies and passivity from regulators, doctors often don't know that the drugs were ineffective (or harmful) in a majority of their clinical trials. That's because pharma companies set up their trials so that they the right to terminate ones that look unpromising (or stop them early if they look promising and report on the result partway through as though it reflected the whole trial), and to simply suppress the results of negative trials.

Five years ago today

Hank Paulson's bailout 419 letter: I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

Ten years ago today
JetBlue won't help out with CAPPS II — anymore. Unless they have to: JetBlue, having been caught lying about its voluntary involvement with the testbed programs for CAPPS II (turning over 1,000,000+ customers' personal data over to a defense contractor in violation of its privacy policy), has had enough of playing ball with the unpatriotic feds who think the Constitution is less important than "fighting terrorists."