2026 Media Mentions

May 2026

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “The Campaign To Turn Healthy People Into Alzheimer’s Patients” by Jeanne Lenzer in The Lever on May 13.

• Patricia Bencivenga MS and Dr. Fugh-Berman were quoted in “How Perimenopause Became America’s New Health Scare” in The Free Press on May 3. 

March 2026

• PharmedOut led the charge to introduce two Maryland state bills that address transparency and pharmaceutical industry influence. If enacted, these bills will lead to improved health outcomes for all Marylanders. PharmedOut testified in support of HB1133 and HB1134, both sponsored by Delegate Deni Taveras, on March 12, 2026. STAT and Fierce Pharma covered HB1133, a bill targeting improved transparency in disease awareness campaigns.

February 2026

• The International Society of Drug Bulletins (ISDB) highlighted Dr. Fugh-Berman’s keynote presentation from their October General Assembly Meeting in their January 2026 Newsletter. It also highlighted Dr. Fugh-Berman’s presentation to the Congress of Clinical Pharmacologists in Kazakhstan on October 30, 2025.

January 2026

• Dr. Fugh-Berman’s 2017 study on gifts to physicians and prescriptions was featured in Indianapolis’ WRTV’s investigative series in the episode “Drug companies pay Indiana doctors to talk about GLP-1 drugs, records show.” Dr. Fugh-Berman commented, “The fact that these doctors who are taking any gifts, even just a meal from pharmaceutical companies, were prescribing more drugs per patient is extremely concerning.” Watch Dr. Fugh-Berman’s segment at the 3:15 mark of the video and read more of her comments here.

2025 Media Mentions

December 2025

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in the BMJ in “How a menopause campaign with industry ties became official US policy” (12/1). 

• Regarding hormone therapy for men, Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “There’s a testosterone crisis, the FDA says — for cisgender men” in The 19th (12/12). 

• Gary Schwitzer’s Health News Review mentioned our comment on testosterone in his coverage, “FDA's testosterone expert panel - same old, same old” (12/11). 

• STAT covered our testosterone comment in the article “In expert panel, FDA says ‘door is open’ for testosterone labeling revisions,” and MedPage Today also covered our comment in “Expand Labeling for Testosterone Replacement Therapy, FDA Panel Says.”

• PharmedOut’s statement on testosterone was covered in “FDA Seeks Feedback on Ways to Increase Testosterone Use” in Medscape (12/18). 

November 2025

• In The Lever, Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted on the FDA’s long downward slide in “Science For Sale: How Drugmakers Captured The FDA” (11/7).

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was also quoted in Jacobin in “How Big Pharma Turned FDA Approval Into a Rubber Stamp” (11/9). 

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “Estrogen is Back” in The Free Press (11/10). 

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “US to remove warnings from menopause hormone therapy” in AFP (Agence France Presse) (11/11). 

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “FDA To Proceed With ‘Expert Panels’ Amid HRT Conflict Concerns” in Inside Health Policy (11/10).

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in the Axios Future of Health Care newsletter (11/14). 

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in Medscape on GLP-1s in “Novo Nordisk Spent Millions Driving Searches to Ozempic Site” (11/24). 

October 2025

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted on menopausal hormone therapy in “The black box warning on menopause treatments could change. Here’s why” from The 19th News (10/7).

• On October 10, Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in “Ciattarelli will sue Sherrill for claiming he caused opioid deaths as N.J. governor race gets uglier” in NJ.com (10/10). 

• Dr. Fugh-Berman added to “Can ‘food noise’ be measured? Telehealth giant Ro rolls out a new scale for obesity care,” in STAT News (10/24). 

September 2025

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in STAT in “Let the rulemaking begin: Why direct-to-consumer drug ads deserve a closer look” (9/12).  

• Dr. Fugh-Berman also spoke with Straight Arrow News about consumer health data in “Your health care data is for sale. Here’s how Big Pharma is using it” (9/18). 

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was featured in Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson’s segment on pharma ads (9/28). She can be seen at minute-mark 3:16, and talks about the impact of direct-to-consumer advertisements on television.

August 2025

• PharmedOut was highlighted in “Pharmaceutical marketing hurts patient care,” an article by Maisha Draves MD, MPH, Associate Executive Director for The Permanente Medical Group (8/5).

• PharmedOut’s advocacy efforts and letter to the FDA were covered by Ed Silverman in STAT (8/8).

• PharmedOut’s petition requesting an official FDA advisory committee meeting be held on proposed label changes for menopausal hormone products was highlighted in the Associated Press in “FDA’s new expert panels are rife with financial conflicts and fringe views” (8/18).

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was quoted in The BMJ in “Conflicts of interest were at record low when RFK Jr dismissed “conflicted” vaccine panel” (8/19).

July 2025

• 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 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 (7/22) 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 (7/25) 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 (7/18) 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, “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 2025

• 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. 

May 2025

• 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 2025

• 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 2025

• 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.”

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was featured on the Her Turn radio show on Sunday, March 16, on Madison, Wisconsin’s WORT 89.9FM. 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 2025

• Dr. Fugh-Berman was 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 2025

• 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.”