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“Desperate to sell drugs, psychiatrists use their ’scientific’ manual…an ever-broadening panoply of absurd new syndromes”

cchrint — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:56:49 +0000

Boston Globe
By Alex Beam
March 16, 2010

The irresistible, plus-size piñata for on-the-case journalists is the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, now undergoing revision. The DSM famously includes snoring and jet lag as mental disorders. I took a whack last year, calling the 880-page doorstop “a naked land grab by a profession threatened with marginalization by biomedical research.’’

Last month historian Edward Shorter accused the DSM of accelerating “the trend of making variants on the spectrum of everyday behavior into diseases: turning grief into depression, apprehension into anxiety, and boyishness into hyperactivity.’’ Just a week ago in The New Yorker, Harvard professor Louis Menand called out the shrinks for the “blatant pathologization of a common personality trait’’ — shyness — “for the financial benefit of the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical industry.’’

We all agree on one thing: Desperate to sell drugs, psychiatrists use their “scientific’’ manual to identify an ever-broadening panoply of absurd new syndromes amenable to pharmaceutical cure. But what if we are all wrong? Suppose the opposite is true? Perhaps the psychiatric profession has been far too conservative about proclaiming new, treatable disorders. Here is my own modest list of psychological problems that I hope to see addressed when the new DSM-V is published, three years from now:

Dysphoric iPhobia, or single cell anomia: the counterintuitive feeling that somehow I can survive in the 21st century without owning an iPhone, and its impossible-to-resist “apps.’’ Or the forthcoming iPad, another, pointless $500 geegaw. My junky Verizon cellphone serves me fine.

Read entire article: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2010/03/16/alex_beam_a_new_diagnostic_psych_manual_calls_for_some_new_disorders/

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Ireland: Psychiatry has “too much power” to electroshock patients against their will causing memory loss/brain damage

cchrint — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:41:13 +0000

Irish Times
By Carl O’Brien
March 16, 2010

A CONSULTANT psychiatrist employed by the HSE has warned that psychiatrists have “too much power” and that rules on the use of electro-shock therapy need to be changed to protect patients.

Dr Pat Bracken, clinical director for the West Cork mental health service, was speaking at a private briefing for members of the Oireachtas on whether changes are needed to laws governing use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). These rules state that ECT can be used where a patient is “unable or unwilling” to give consent once it has been approved by two consultant psychiatrists.

Dr Bracken said this law meant there was no legal comeback for a patient who felt they had been harmed.

“In any other branch of medicine it would be unconscionable to allow a procedure to go ahead, except in the most dire emergency, without procuring consent, if not from the patient then from a next-of-kin,” he said.

He said ECT was the “most invasive procedure” currently used by psychiatrists and that research showed that at least a third of recipients had suffered substantial memory loss after treatment.

Read entire article: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2010/0316/1224266346885.html

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One Million UK Patients Addicted to Prescription Drugs

cchrint — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:23:31 +0000

Natural News
By David Gutierrez
March 15, 2010

Approximately 1.5 million people in the United Kingdom are addicted to prescription or over-the-counter drugs, many of which were legally acquired.

In July, the Department of Health launched a review of the problem, after the House of Commons All-Party Group on Drug Misuse called for greater awareness, better doctor training and more treatment options.

Although medical guidelines discourage doctors from prescribing benzodiazepine tranquilizers such as Valium for more than four weeks at a time, many patients still become addicted.

“There are still lots and lots of patients being put on these drugs and kept on them for a long time,” said Pam Armstrong of the Council for Information on Tranquillizers and Antidepressants. “I have some sympathy with [doctors] — they get a lot of pressure from patients who want these drugs. But the problem has been ignored.”

Other highly addictive drugs include sleeping pills and narcotic painkillers. A recent study found that painkillers containing codeine can be addictive within as little as three days.

Read entire article: http://www.naturalnews.com/028375_painkillers_addiction.html

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Pharma Backed Australian of the Year Psychiatrist Wants Millions in Government Funding for Brave New World of “Pre-Drugging” Kids

cchrint — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:27:02 +0000

By CCHR Int
March 15, 2010

Who is Patrick McGorry and what does he promote? He’s a psychiatrist just named Australian of the Year for his work in “youth mental health reform.” What does that reform consist of? What he calls a “new form of climate change.” It sure is.

[See TIME Magazine Article "Drugs Before Diagnosis?"]

He not only promotes youths being put on antipsychotics and antidepressants, cited by international drug regulatory agencies as causing hallucinations, hostility, personality change, life-threatening diabetes, strokes, suicide and death, McGorry goes a giant step further—drug them before they’ve even developed a “psychiatric” disorder.

The Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AHRPP) likens such concepts to “performing mastectomies on women who are at risk of—but do not have—breast cancer.”[i]

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has expressed “serious concerns” about child drugging and Senate investigations in the United States have found high profile psychiatrists who were pharmaceutically funded and using fraudulent research being among the heaviest promoters of psychiatric drug use on children. While the rest of the world is experiencing serious alarm at the rampant use of deadly psychiatric drugs on children, McGorry pushes full steam ahead to increase the amount of children being needlessly subjected to psychiatry’s most powerful drugs—antidepressants and antipsychotics.

His theory and practices are so controversial that even his colleagues in the United States have backed away from it. And a parallel study done in the United States based on the same theory that McGorry uses was considered an abject failure—even by the investigators themselves. Other psychiatrists have criticized McGorry’s pre-drugging practice as unethical and harmful to adolescents. More on that later.

This is especially so as the “symptoms” McGorry and cohorts invented to “pre-label” youths as potential candidates for psychosis and “schizophrenia” (to start with) are, according to one U.S. psychiatrist, “remarkably common…adolescence is a period of life that is normally marked by tumultuous changes in personality.”

And what was the first thing he did to capitalize on his winning his “Australian of the Year” award? He demanded the Australian government hand over another $200 million to fund more of his centers where he can drug more children. Worse, the government is entertaining the idea.

Yet, for who ever nominated him—apparently an “anonymous supporter”—due diligence wasn’t done on what McGorry advocates.

A cursory look at his research shows that while behavioral symptoms are evaluated and, on a hunch, drugged to see if they “prevent” the onset of a “mental” disorder, there’s no mention of the teens being given full and searching physical exams to first rule out undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions that may be causing it. Yet dozens of physical conditions can manifest as behavioral problems.

Australia, like the U.S., has recently seen major media and legislative exposure of the conflicts of interest between psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry. McGorry has received unrestricted researchgrant support from Eli Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Bristol Myer Squibb,AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Novartis.

He is also a paid consultantfor, and has received speaker’s fees from all or most of these companies.[ii] His recent report on “early intervention” for young people acknowledges AstraZeneca, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Sanofi, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer.[iii] [Since 2001, the U.S. Federal and state governments have recovered more than $4 billion from many of these companies that settled criminal or civil charges of fraud and misleading advertising filed against them.]

Even Big Pharma is bowing out of psychiatric drug research. In February, the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline said it was dumping antidepressant research because it is too hard to prove that antidepressants work because “patient improvement is measured by subjective mood surveys” and not by any blood or biological test used to confirm medical diseases. AstraZeneca followed with the head of development, Anders Ekblom, announcing it would no longer research and develop drugs for depression, bipolar, anxiety and schizophrenia, saying the decision reflects the unpredictable and risky nature of clinical trials to assess medicine working on the brain. [emphasis added]

Yet, despite the unpredictability and risk of these drugs, McGorry wants to go full steam ahead, increasing the funding to increase the number of children being placed on them.

A Closer Look at McGorry’s Brave New World

In 1996, Patrick McGorry and fellow pharmaceutical company-funded researcher Alison Yung set up a clinic in Australia to monitor young people considered at a “high risk” for developing psychosis. They invented a subjective method for assessing symptoms that, while not based on science—claimed to predict early onset of psychosis or schizophrenia called prodromal (early symptoms), and drugged the teens and young adults. In other words, gave them toxic chemicals for a mental disorder they did not have.[iv]

The theory wasn’t McGorry’s alone, but he decided to test it in a world-first trial that had psychiatry’s skeptics and even psychiatrists themselves aghast. The Australian program inspired the development of similar programs worldwide.[v]

A follow up study was conducted in 2002, funded with an unrestricted grant from Janssen-Cilag pharmaceuticals, and supported by psychiatric-pharmaceutical front groups NARSAD and Stanley Foundation, as well as several Australian agencies. McGorry and colleagues said that risperidone (Risperdal)—made by Janssen—reduced the risk of “transition to psychosis” in young people.[vi]

Risperdal has been linked to diabetes and, more specifically, Type 2 diabetes. Other serious side effects include Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome (NMS), a potentially fatal syndrome involving muscle rigidity, and irregular blood pressure and pulse.[vii]

McGorry’s friend and colleague, Yale University professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Thomas McGlashan, conducted a parallel study (1997-2003), the results of which were published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Eli Lilly funded the experiment. Sixty adolescents, who did not meet any criteria for a diagnosis of mental illness, were prescribed Lilly’s antipsychotic Zyprexa (olanzapine).[viii]

The experiment failed to demonstrate any significant benefit of Zyprexa, and 54.8% of adolescents prescribed the drug compared to 34.5% on placebo refused to complete the study (the 20% difference indicating substantial intolerable safety problems with the drug).[ix]

Even McGlashan later admitted to The New York Times in May 2006 that, “the drugs were more likely to induce weight gain than to produce a significant, measurable benefit….” Those on medication gained an average of about 20 pounds. The entire process changed Dr. McGlashan’s thinking.[x]

In fact he distanced himself from McGorry in a TIME Magazine article the same year on McGorry titled, “Drug Before Disorder?” “There may be gold in the early-intervention hills,” McGlashan conceded, “but the data are not plentiful enough and the findings not replicated enough for us to recommend anything more than further research at this point.”[xi]

Undeterred, and buoyed by an Australian government $A54 million funding of a National Youth Mental Health Foundation, McGorry plowed on to expand his unproven and potentially risky methods to the early diagnosis and treatment for “a range of mental health problems in young people: substance abuse, personality disorders, bipolar—the whole lot, really.”[xii]

Richard Warner, MB, DPM, director of Colorado Recovery in Boulder, Colorado, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, completely debunks McGorry’s theory, writing: “Medicating at the earliest appearance of symptoms, without thought for the natural history of the condition, may lock the person experiencing a brief psychosis into a long-term career as a psychiatric patient.”[xiii]

Further refuting McGorry’s theory, Honorary Professor Anthony Pelosi from the Department of Psychiatry, Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, wrote, “So far,evidence from randomized trials does not support the use ofpsychological therapies or drugs as preventive interventions.”[xiv]

No Science to “Pre-Disorder” Screening

Dr. Warner counters any idea that science drives McGorry’s pre-disorder assessment: “As for the claim that we can prevent psychosis by intervening before the illness has become fully evident, this effort requires effective screening to detect those at risk.” Something that McGorry clearly doesn’t have.

“Patrick McGorry and colleagues at the PACE clinic in Melbourne…report that their screening instrument is capable of 80 per cent accuracy in their clinic. But the instrument is not that accurate in routine use. In the PACE sample, 35 per cent developed psychosis within one year. Probability theory tells us that if the same instrument were used to screen a general population sample…it would be correct only seven per cent of the time.”

“In fact, in another Australian clinic, the PACE instrument only achieved nine per cent accuracy. False-positive rates of the order of 70 to 90 per cent are clearly unrealistic for intervening with medication or other forms of treatment.”

Harmful Drug Outcomes

Further, the antipsychotic drug interventions McGorry suggests as one intervention approach are dangerous. “Given the expected number of false positives, the potential for harm is significant,” Dr. Warner stated.[xv]

Dr. Pelosi concurs: “[M]ost patients who enter these specialistprograms will unnecessarily receive potentially dangeroustreatments. Data are emerging from the clinics of early interventionenthusiasts that illustrate nicely what they have been warnedabout for years. When psychiatrists referred selected patientsto a schizophrenia prodrome clinic, about half went on to developa psychosis. After teachers, college counselors, and familieswere encouraged to refer young people with possibly prodromalsymptoms directly to the same clinic for the same care plans…almost 90% were receiving unnecessary ‘preventive’ interventions.”[xvi]

Dr. Jerald J. Block, a U.S. psychiatrist, writing in Bioethics Forum, says that “preventive pharmacology” (what McGorry is practicing) is “ethically questionable territory” because the treatments given “frequently have side effects and complications” and you are potentially harming people. Further, the symptoms used to identify them as at risk of schizophrenia are “also remarkably common…adolescence is a period of life that is normally marked by tumultuous changes in personality.”[xvii]

He says, “[I]t is unclear how the quality of one’s life will be affected during and after one year of getting daily neuroleptic,” especially for a condition you haven’t even developed. “Forming and solidifying new relationships occupies much of the time in adolescence and young adulthood. As neuroleptics affect cognition and emotionality, we might expect [an antipsychotic] to influence one’s ability to build relationships, for better or worse.”[xviii]

Moreover, Dr. Warner points out, if left untreated, the person exhibiting so-called “prodromal” symptoms is likely to recover without drug treatment. “The Soteria projects in California and Berne, Switzerland, and a multi-center study in Finland demonstrated that medication is not essential for good outcome.”[xix]

Despite the Failure, Keep Lobbying for the $

Dr. Pelosi points out that when the leaders of the early intervention movement are pinneddown, while they accept the criticisms against them, “thishas not stopped their skilful lobbying of politicians, journalists,patients, and carers with upbeat messages about the preventionand attenuation of schizophrenia.”

Which is precisely what McGorry is doing now—using his award and unquestionably unscientific theories to advocate for more funds.[xx]

Australia’s Joseph Biederman?

McGorry has been equated with America’s Dr. Joseph Biederman, the psychiatrist who came under U.S. Senate Finance Committee investigation for failing to disclose more than $1.6 million he’d earned in consulting fees from drug makers while conducting research for universities. Biederman was on the Advisory Board of Eli Lilly, which manufactures antipsychotics and antidepressants. The New York Times said that Biederman helped to fuel a 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric “bipolar disorder” and corresponding increase in children taking antipsychotics.

How much McGorry may have impacted on pediatric and youth prescriptions of antipsychotics and antidepressants in Australia is unknown, but certainly warrants a closer look. As do the outcomes of his studies and what, if any, influence the drug companies that funded him may have had.

Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has received reports of 26,506 adverse reactions linked to antipsychotics, including 477 deaths. That’s since they were introduced over many years. By January 2009 there were 36,804 adverse reactions reported to the TGA linked to antidepressants, including 217 deaths, of which 4 were from the 10 to 19 age group.

But add to that the Food and Drug Administration’s adverse drug reaction reports (ADRs) during a five-year period alone (2004-2008) and the magnitude of where the potential risk of this “Drugs before Disorder” practice is heading. For antipsychotics, there were 91 deaths for those under 18. For antidepressants, there were 321 deaths, of which 251 were suicides. As these reports represent between one and ten percent of the ADRs, that figure could be as high as 3,210 deaths, and for antipsychotics, nearly 1,000.

Australia’s health care system ranks well internationally, and preventative measures may seem the way to enhancing it; however, the last thing the country needs, then, is a psychiatrist banner heading the idea that children and youths should be gotten to early and drugged on the precept that they might become mentally ill. Rather, they need proper medical—not psychiatric—care and educational solutions. The last thing they need is $200 million of taxpayers’ dollars funding what could be a lifetime sentence to taking mind-altering drugs.

Someone needs to care for Australia’s children and youth, but it’s definitely not Patrick McGorry.

[i] http://www.ministryoflies.com/pdf-articles/Yale-Lilly.pdf.

[ii] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a695.

[iii] http://www.mhanet.ca/documents/2008/Research-Colloquium/0920%20-%20Keynote%20MCGORRY.pdf.

[iv] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2632176/.

[v] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2632176/.

[vi] Arch Gen Psychiatry, Vol 59, Oct. 2002, http://www.meb.uni-bonn.de/psychiatrie/zebb/literatur/mcgorry.pdf.

[vii] http://www.coreynahman.com/atypical-antipsychotic-lawsuits.html.

[viii] http://www.ministryoflies.com/pdf-articles/Yale-Lilly.pdf.

[ix] http://www.ministryoflies.com/pdf-articles/Yale-Lilly.pdf.

[x] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/health/psychology/23prof.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1.

[xi] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1205408,00.html#ixzz0i0DykBNV.

[xii] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1205408,00.html#ixzz0i0NMJQyd.

[xiii] http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Winter_2007-08/futureorfad_crcuwinter0708.html.

[xiv] Anthony Pelosi, “Head to Head, Is early intervention in the major psychiatric disorders justified? No,” BMJ 2008;337:a710, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a710.

[xv] http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Winter_2007-08/futureorfad_crcuwinter0708.html.

[xvi] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a710.

[xvii] http://www.ahrp.org/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=386; http://www.bioethicsforum.org/ethics-of-preventive-psychopharmacologic-treatments.asp.

[xviii] http://www.ahrp.org/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=386; http://www.bioethicsforum.org/ethics-of-preventive-psychopharmacologic-treatments.asp.

[xix] http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Winter_2007-08/futureorfad_crcuwinter0708.html.

[xx] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a710.

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UK Professor of Psychology “Psychiatry – The Nightmare of the People”

cchrint — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:15:01 +0000

Psychology Articles
By Stephen Myler
March 2010

In this paper I want to review the investigations from the Citizens Committee for Human Rights in Mental Health. It is this organisation in the United States and other countries that have consistently brought the dangers of psychiatry to the attention of the general public who by and large are the victims of a marriage between pharmaceutical companies and their paid distributors of lethal drugs, psychiatrists. This alliance has been based on the greed for money, profits and kudos all in the name of a science that as one leading authority called – “hokum”

Introduction: A Short History

The history of psychiatry is strewn with the deaths; torture and misadventure that would make any sane person wonder why it has been allowed to continue to practice this black art for so long. Of course the anti-psychiatry movement has been around for almost as long as the profession itself. How did this all begin? You have to go back to the days of the asylums that grew up in the early part of the 1800’s particularly in England and the USA. These places were no more than prisons for the mad, those souls that could not function within the societies norms that dictated how one should act and behave. The head of the asylums was a medical doctor, the first psychiatrist. This man caged the mentally ill in cells, with no heating, little food but rotten scraps and in order to cure them of their madness the inmates were tortured by flogging, burning, immersion in water and many other inhumane acts called treatment. The down fall of the asylums started in England with the York Retreat a Quaker run institute for the mentally ill run on very different lines from the asylums that were government institutions. In the York retreat the inmates were given jobs to perform, were helped by keeping simple rules and rewarded for following them.

Read entire article: http://www.freepsychologyarticles.com/psychiatry-the-nightmare-of-the-people.html

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Johnson & Johnson Internal Documents Reveal Unsavory & Potentially Illegal Marketing of Antipsychotic drug Risperdal

cchrint — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:30:55 +0000

InjuryBoard.com
By Jim Lewis
March 12, 2010

The multi-billion dollar drug company, Johnson & Johnson (J&J), has come under fire for allegedly violating the rules in their marketing of Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug. Back in 1999, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told J&J that their marketing materials for geriatric patients overstated Risperdals benefits and minimized risks, according to Bloomberg.com. In 2000, an internal business plan strategized a way to increase Risperdals market share by marketing the benefits for elderly dementia, an unapproved use.

This was described as one of the more egregious examples of marketing drugs to vulnerable patients by Jerry Avorn, who works at the Harvard Medical School. He went on to say, seeing such clear evidence in black and white of the details of a campaign like this is still pretty upsetting.

J&Js marketing of Risperdal could be illegal since current law states that drug companies cannot promote a drug for uses other than those approved by the FDA. At the time this marketing and business plan was crafted, Risperdal was only approved for psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, not for dementia.

Read entire article: http://virginiabeach.injuryboard.com/fda-and-prescription-drugs/johnson-johnson-internal-documents-reveal-unsavory-and-potentially-illegal-marketing-of-risperdal.aspx?googleid=279316

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UK: Pregnant women warned about antidepressants

cchrint — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:25:16 +0000

Bounty
March 12, 2010

Women expecting a baby have been warned over taking Prozac while they are pregnant, after a new study found it could be harmful to an unborn child.

According to a study from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency there is a “small risk” of babies developing heart problems should their mother take the drug early on in their pregnancy.

The researchers behind the study said that pregnant mothers who use Prozac could be twice as likely to have children with a congenital heart problem, such as a murmur, or a hole in the heart.

Read entire article: http://www.bounty.com/node/2191

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Massachusetts joins federal lawsuit accusing Johnson & Johnson of paying kickbacks to push their antipsychotic drug

cchrint — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:42:35 +0000

Fierce Pharma
By Tracy Staton
March 11, 2010

The Massachusetts attorney general joined that federal lawsuit accusing Johnson & Johnson of paying kickbacks to push the antipsychotic Risperdal and other drugs into nursing homes. AG Martha Coakley didn’t stop there; however, her office is also investigating other companies that market antipsychotics to nursing homes in the state.

At issue is whether drug companies are touting antipsychotic drugs for unapproved uses, such as dementia. The FDA has warned that use of the atypical antipsychotics in elderly dementia patients can increase the risk of death. “The inappropriate off-label marketing of antipsychotic drugs to nursing homes is a significant health and safety issue for our seniors,” Coakley says in a statement released by her office (as quoted by the Boston Globe). “We have taken strong action on this issue in the past and are continuing to monitor it very closely moving forward.”

Read entire article: http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/massachusetts-joins-kickback-suit-against-j-j/2010-03-11

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“ADHD Is Not a Disease”

cchrint — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:20:01 +0000

Total Health Breakthroughs
By Jon Herring
March 10, 2010

“Hey, Phillip… do you mind if I sit here and eat with you?” I asked.

“Sure, whatever…”

“How’s school going? Are you doing well?”

“Not really. I just want it to be summer.”

“Yeah, I remember how that used to feel,” I told him.

Phillip is eleven years old. He’s the son of some family friends and I was at a small party when I saw him sitting by himself. I hadn’t seen him for a few years, so I wanted to remind him who I was and get to know him a little better.

As he became comfortable, he opened up a bit more. He told me his plans for the summer. He told me about his friends and the girl he likes at school. And he also told me that he didn’t care for school all that much.

“It’s hard,” he said. “Plus, I have ADHD, so I don’t pay attention very well.”

“Really? How do you know you have ADHD?” I asked.

“That’s what my doctor said. He said I’ve had it since I was born. That’s why I have to take medicine.”

“Well, I think you’re just fine. How does that medicine make you feel?”

“It used to make me kinda nervous,” he said. “And I couldn’t go to sleep when I took it. Now, it just makes me not want to eat.”

After complimenting Phillip on his manners and intelligence, I changed the subject back to his plans for the summer. But what he said bothered me. Here was a bright young boy who was bored and frustrated in school… who probably had a few behavioral problems… and who had now been labeled as having a “disease” and put on medication.

And, unfortunately, Phillip is just one of millions…

Read entire article: http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com/2010/03/adhd-is-not-a-disease/

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Internal documents show drug company marketed their antipsychotic Risperdal for unapproved usage on elderly & kids

cchrint — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:58:46 +0000

Bloomberg.com
By Margaret Cronin Fisk, Jef Feeley and David Voreacos
March 10, 2010

Johnson & Johnson made plans to reach $302 million in geriatric sales for its antipsychotic Risperdal just months after federal regulators said the company falsely claimed the drug was safe and effective with the elderly, according to internal documents.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration told J&J in 1999 that its marketing materials for geriatric patients overstated Risperdal’s benefits and minimized risks. A J&J business plan for the next year called for increasing the drug’s market share for elderly dementia sales, an unapproved use, according to newly unsealed documents in a lawsuit by the state of Louisiana.

“The geriatric market represents Risperdal’s second wave of growth,” J&J officials wrote in the business plan. “The aging population will continue to drive market growth well into the next century.”

Louisiana officials cited the document and dozens of other internal J&J files in its lawsuit claiming the company marketed Risperdal to the elderly and children for unapproved uses. Professor Jerry Avorn of Harvard Medical School, who isn’t involved in the case, called the papers “one of the more egregious examples” of marketing drugs to vulnerable patients.

“By 2010, most grownups in medicine know that drug companies resort to unsavory practices to promote drugs, but seeing such clear evidence in black and white of the details of a campaign like this is still pretty upsetting,” Avorn said.

Read entire article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ag4Ya8UOIob0&pos=13

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CCHR International » News

“Desperate to sell drugs, psychiatrists use their ’scientific’ manual…an ever-broadening panoply of absurd new syndromes”

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