2025 News

August

• PharmedOut sent out a letter on August 4th signed by over 75 clinicians, researchers, and scientists demanding that no label changes be made to estrogen products unless the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) holds an advisory committee meeting with unconflicted experts and an opportunity for public comment. You can find our signed letter here.

• PharmedOut was highlighted on August 5th in “Pharmaceutical marketing hurts patient care,” an article by Maisha Draves MD, MPH, Associate Executive Director for The Permanente Medical Group.

• PharmedOut’s advocacy efforts and letter to the FDA were covered by Ed Silverman on August 8th in STAT.

July

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in the article “Ozempic may not be the cure-all the world wants it to be” (7/9) in Scienceline. She said, “I think there needs to be more objective evaluation of the research [rather] than taking the conclusions of conflicted authors or sponsored studies at face value.”

• Dr. Fugh-Berman gave a presentation on “What Influences Drug Prescribing and Utilization?” at the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy Forum in Washington DC on July 15. You can watch the presentation here.

• Dr. Fugh-Berman and Dr. Barbara Mintzes published “Menopausal Hormone Therapy: Limited Benefits, Significant Harms” (7/16) in American Family Physician. In this editorial, they summarize the evidence on menopausal hormone therapy.

• PharmedOut attended the Food and Drug Administration’s Expert Panel on Menopause on July 17. Our “I ❤️ WHI” and “Let the public comment” buttons were featured in The New York Times (7/17) in “F.D.A. Panelists Call for Removal of Warnings on Menopause Treatments.”

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in STAT News on July 22nd about pharmaceutical drug reps and weight loss drugs in “Study of GLP-1 guidelines for teens points to potential for influence from drugmakers.” On industry-funded lunches, she said of physicians, “It doesn’t really fit with our self-esteem to think I can be bought by a Panera lunch.” She explained that “Physicians feel really overworked and under-appreciated, and drug reps are…nicely dressed appreciators who bring food. What’s not to like?”

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “FDA 'Expert Panels' Raise Concerns of Evading Regulations, Ethics” (7/24) in MedPage Today. Regarding the panel members she said, “There was no process for selection; they seem all to have been chosen by Makary…It was a parody." Her comments were also echoed by reporter Rachael Robertson on August 1st in this podcast episode on MedPod Today.

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted on George Tidmarsh, the new head of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. She told Bloomberg Law on July 25th that “Tidmarsh’s stances have mainly favored industry.”

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted about the FDA panel on menopause in many outlets, including NPR (7/25), which quoted her saying the panel “was theater. This was not scientific evaluation.” She told MedPage Today on July 18th that it was “totally one-sided” in “Remove Boxed Warning on Hormone Therapy for Menopause, FDA Panel Says.” Agence France-Presse also quoted her in the story on July 17th, “US may revise hormone replacement therapy warnings” saying that the panel was composed “of people who are all proponents of hormone therapy and who seem to have a very poor understanding of the evidence… While hormones can be a useful treatment for severe menopausal symptoms, they should not be used for chronic disease prevention.” Dr. Fugh-Berman and Dr. Mintzes’ American Family Physician editorial was also quoted in The Hill (7/22) in “FDA commissioner stirs debate over hormone therapy for menopause.” Dr. Fugh-Berman’s concerns were mentioned in Newsmax (7/21) in “FDA Panel: Remove Boxed Warning on Menopause HRT.”  In Axios’ coverage, “FDA panel backs menopausal hormone therapy,” (7/18) Dr. Fugh-Berman explained that hormones are “a reasonable treatment for severe menopausal symptoms ... as long as women are actually informed of possible harms.”

• Dr. Fugh-Berman’s July 31st presentation on “What Influences Drug Prescribing and Utilization?” from the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy Forum is available to view here on YouTube.  

• Click here to listen to our July 31st  Pharmanipulation Podcast episode with our guests Dr. Garnet Anderson and Cindy Pearson - we chat about menopause, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), symptom management and more.

June

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was an advisor for Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee’s investigative series; their recent article is “FDA Approved — And Ineffective: Database Explainer” (6/5) in The Lever.

• PharmedOut’s Associate Director, Caroline Renko, presented “Medicalizing Aging for Profit Through Medical ‘Education’” on June 16th at Harvard Law School’s annual Petrie-Flom Conference. You can watch her presentation here. 

• Judy Butler and Dr. Fugh-Berman published an op-ed, “A new Alzheimer's blood test is not good for patients,” (6/16) in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. They explain that diagnosing Alzheimer’s is more complex than simply screening for unvalidated biomarkers.

• Click here to listen to our June 16th  Pharmanipulation Podcast episode with guest Dr. Paul Offit - we chat about measles vaccines, the medical freedom movement, and more.

May

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in the article “In the war for GLP-1 patients, Novo Nordisk leans on telehealth” (5/23) in STAT. She said “If telehealth companies are advertising specific drugs, they should have to include risk information in those advertisements,” and continued “We should be regulating these in the same way that they regulate drug ads… “But what does that mean when they’ve just gutted that office?”

April

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in The New York Times in “F.D.A. Layoffs Could Raise Drug Costs and Erode Food Safety” on April 3. She said, “Drug companies must love the defanging of the F.D.A. … The Trump administration is destroying an agency crucial to public health.”

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “Concerns Raised Over Lilly-Affiliated Direct-to-Consumer Telehealth Platform for Alzheimer’s Diagnosis” in Medscape on April 9. While telehealth visits can be helpful in some instances, Dr. Fugh-Berman explained that it can also be “a tool for drug companies to essentially sell their drugs directly to consumers.” On telehealth visits to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Fugh-Berman asks, “but what is the end result, and is that good for patients… How much of this is really making people who are normally functional into dementia patients?”

March

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in a STAT article, “As GLP-1 compounding stares down a wall, telehealth companies pivot to hormones” on March 11. Of marketing estrogen and testosterone for anti-aging she said, “We’re seeing those claims — you can just make your whole life better, you can be young again, everything’s better on testosterone — coming back.”

• Judy Butler and Dr. Fugh-Berman published an op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman, “Tariffs won’t decrease fentanyl deaths. Treatment and prevention efforts will” on March 12. They emphasize how medication assisted treatment and preventing unnecessary prescribing of opioids will go much further than tariffs in preventing fentanyl deaths.

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was featured on the Her Turn radio show on Sunday, March 16, on Madison, Wisconsin’s WORT 89.9FM. The timestamp for her segment is ~19:53. She shared her concerns about RFK Jr.’s role as the Secretary for Health and Human Services. Dr. Fugh-Berman also emphasized the importance of the public staying engaged in this issue: “It’s really important to stay in this battle. …We need communities of people who will actually stand together and fight the worst things that are being promoted by the Trump administration in a variety of areas.”

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “Disease-mongering in pharma obesity event” in Gary Schwitzer’s Health News Review on March 24. She highlighted how the event was an example of disease mongering and said “You can't treat obesity like it's some cancer that if you catch early won't kill you. No one for whom "Everything’s normal; everything looks good" should be treated. There are healthy fat people and unhealthy thin people, and a healthy fat person should be left alone.”

February

• Judy Butler and Dr. Fugh-Berman published an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun (2/2), “Fighting addiction means taking a hard look at opioid prescribing,” where they analyze a recent study showing that patients taking opioids as prescribed are just as likely to become addicted as those who misuse opioids. 

• Dr. Fugh-Berman published an op-ed, “RFK Jr.'s immunity to scientific evidence is dangerous,” in TribLive on February 10. She outlines how RFK Jr. consistently advocates against science and evidence-based medicine.

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was also quoted in “How new direct-to-consumer platforms are changing pharma’s relationships with patients” in Medical Marketing and Media on February 12. She explained, that it’s advantageous for pharma companies “to cut out the middleman and market directly to patients… But this is pharma usurping the role of healthcare providers.”

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “Billions in drug and medical device company payments to medical specialists may compromise patient care, reports show” in U.S. Right to Know on February 27. She said, “Commercially-supplied information is always designed to advance commercial goals… It’s not objective, and the best chance that physicians have of avoiding biased commercial information is avoiding contact with industry and industry-provided information.”

January

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in the Washington Post (1/13) and the Boston Globe (1/30) cautioning against celebrating suzetrigine — a recently approved non-opioid analgesic — as posing no addiction risk. Pointing to gabapentin as an example, “We said for decades that it [gabapentin] wasn’t addictive…” she recalled, “and now it is considered a drug of abuse.”