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4 Creepy Ways Big Pharma Peddles its Drugs

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Big Pharma uses ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and sell diseases to adults and their children.

Alternet
By Martha Rosenberg
January 9, 2012

It’s no secret that advertising works. Big Pharma wouldn’t spend over $4 billion a year on direct-to-consumer advertising if it didn’t mean massive profits.

What is more unknown is why drug ads that sow hypochondria, raise health fears and “sell” diseases are often the most common–and effective–even when the drugs themselves are of questionable safety.

The nation’s fourth most frequent drug ads in 2009 for were Cymbalta, making Eli Lilly $3.1 billion in one year, despite the antidepressant’s links to liver problems and suicide. Pfizer spent $157 million advertising Lyrica for fibromyalgia in 2009, despite the seizure pill’s links to life-threatening allergic reactions. The same year, it spent $107 million advertising the antidepressant Pristiq, even though it also had links to liver problems.

So, how does Pharma dupe us into using unsafe drugs? Today’s drug ads, targeted directly to consumers since 1999, seem like they sell diseases and often cast women, children, the elderly and mentally ill in a bad light. But a quick look at ads before direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC) in medical journals shows that drug ads have always done so. It’s just that patients didn’t used to see them.

Here are some of Pharma’s most offensive ad campaigns, then and now.

1. You’re Sicker Than You Think

When psychiatric drugs first became popular for use in the general population, in the late 1960s, everyday personality problems became imbued with psychiatric labels. “Lady, your anxiety is showing (over a coexisting depression),” says a 1970 ad, showing an older, wrinkly woman in a bouffant wig with gigantic sunglasses and garish jewelry. “On the visible level, this middle-aged patient dresses to look too young, exhibits a tense, continuous smile and may have bitten nails or overplucked eyebrows,” says the ad copy. “What doesn’t show as clearly is the coexisting depression.”

The ad, both sexist and ageist, suggests the woman needs the antidepressant and tranquillizer Triavil.

Another ad from 1968 shows a bored, upper-middle-class couple whose hauteur is also said to really be depression. “Do you have patients who try to hide frustration behind conformity?” says the ad for the antidepressant Aventyl HCl.

You’d think such demeaning ads would vanish with DTC advertising because people would be offended. But You’re Sicker-Than-You-Think ads are alive and well since DTC advertising and even flowering.

A three-page consumer ad in the late 2000s similarly conveys that everyday psychological traits could actually be dire mental problems that require medication. If you are “talking too fast,” “spending out of control,” “sleeping less,” “flying off the handle” and “buying things you don’t need,” you could be suffering from bipolar disorder said the ads, which appeared in magazines like People. And here you thought it was the coffee. Accompanying photos of a woman screaming into a phone and contorting her face are so extreme they could come out of the movie Halloween Part II, if the woman were holding a knife.

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Psychiatric drugs are not just advertised for everyday personality problems. Pharma is pushing them for everyday pain conditions. Eli Lilly’s original depression campaign for the antidepressant Cymbalta, “Depression Hurts,” seems to anticipate its subsequent approval for pain conditions including back problems. Now ads tout Cymbalta as a “non-narcotic, once daily analgesic FDA approved for three indications across four different chronic pain conditions,” as if it does not have severe controversial psychiatric risks including the suicide of volunteers who tested it.

And seizure and epilepsy drugs, known for major allergic and psychiatric reactions, are also becoming pain franchises. “What’s causing your chronic widespread muscle pain?” asks an ad for the seizure and epilepsy drug Lyrica. “The answer may be overactive nerves,” says the ad, even though “widespread muscle pain” and “over-active nerves,” are not mentioned in the approved labeling for Lyrica, says pharmaceutical reporter John Mack. The military spent $35 million on seizure and epilepsy drugs in 2009 alone, including for migraines, headaches and pain.

And speaking of overkill, ads for genetically engineered injected drugs like Humira, approved to treat serious diseases like Crohn’s disease, psoriatic arthritis and chronic plaque psoriasis look like they are designed to sell beer or beauty treatments, not immune suppressing drugs that invite cancers and lethal infections.

DTC ads don’t just escalate everyday problems into psychiatric problems, they also escalate real psychiatric problems into irresponsible, sensationalistic stereotypes. Ads for the best-selling antipsychotic Risperdal, widely used in children, and in soldiers with PTSD, suggest that people with mental illness have hallucinatory fears about “boiling rain” and “dog women.” The “dog woman” ad, showing a half-dog, half-woman crouched on her elbows, her eyes blackened, furthers the sensationalizing of mental illness with the tagline, “Because relapses are a living nightmare.”

2. Your Kid Is Sick 

DTC ads don’t just convince people they’re in need of new drugs, but also that their kids may be, too. And it’s been going on for decades.

Long before Pharma convinced parents, teachers and clinicians that millions of US kids had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), kids were said to suffer from “minimal brain dysfunction” (MBD) and “hyperkinesis,” two conditions that were essentially the same as ADHD. In fact, so many kids had MBD by 1976 that an ad for the drug Cylert hailed the “Importance of single daily dose to the child, the parents and the teacher,” because kids wouldn’t have to be singled out anymore at pill time at school. (ADHD has been so huckstered, a YMCA ad spoofs it with the headline, “Before video games, before Facebook, before Ritalin, there was basketball.”)

Yet neither Cylert–whose approval the FDA withdrew in 2005 because of liver failure and deaths–or the current ADHD drugs are safe. In 2009, researchers reported that kids are more likely to die sudden deaths while taking them and the American Heart Association recommends electrocardiograms (ECGs) before kids take them. And yet, combined sales of ADHD drugs continue to grow from $4.05 billion to $7.42 billion in 2010.

Thirty years ago, it certainly looked like kids were being overmedicated. They were given the antipsychotic Thorazine for their “hyperactivity,” “hostility,” sleep problems and even for vomiting. Picky eaters and kids who wet the bed were given tranquillizers. Kids with tics, stuttering and school phobia were given the tranquillizer Miltown.

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But today, ads promoting drugs for kids continue, and now they are aimed at parents. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between ads for drugs or ads for sugary cereals! Pharma tells moms to give their kids the bubble gum-flavored ADHD med, LiquADD and the grape-flavored ADHD med, Methylin. The latter campaign, to parents, is “Give ‘em the GRAPE!”

DTC advertising has also convinced parents their kids suffer from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) otherwise known as acid reflux disease, which was barely a disease in adults much less kids, before consumer advertising. “GERD Can Be a Big Problem for Little Kids,” say award-winning ads for Prevacid, which won a “RX Club” Silver award in 2004. In Europe, kids are treated for another “adult disease” and given chewable Liptitor to lower their cholesterol.

Some of Pharma’s most aggressive advertising has been designed to convince parents their children’s minor sniffles or wheezing are imminent asthma and require immediate and expensive drugs. To make the asthma drug Singulair (which also comes in a yummy chewable), the seventh most popular drug in 2010, Merck inked partnerships with the American Academy of Pediatrics and Scholastic, both of which parents consider neutral organizations and not Pharma mouthpieces. Merck also partnered with Olympic gold-medalist swimmer Peter Vanderkaay and NBA kid clubs to sell the asthma drug.

“A kid who’s got what your kid’s got is out doing what your kid’s not,” says one Singulair ad campaign. “Find out how you can help your child breathe a little easier.”

If Singulair were not harmful, the huckstering would simply be a case of wasting money and overmedicating kids. But Singulair has been linked to both pediatric suicide and to emotional, behavioral and ADHD-like symptoms in kids, the latter likely inspiring parents to give their kids “the grape.”

Of course, another kid-targeted campaign is for the vaccine against the sexually transmitted Papillomavirus or HPV, immortalized by Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann in hot exchanges this fall. Many object to the sexualizing of 9-year-olds, to government lining Pharma’s pockets by promoting the vaccine (including overseas) and to the risks of the vaccines themselves. But the ads for Gardasil and Cervarix are also offensive.

Last spring, poster-sized ads for Gardasil on Chicago’s commuter trains pretended to sell real estate in sought-after neighborhoods. A closer look revealed descriptions of women in those neighborhoods who thought they didn’t need the HPV vaccine but did, positioning HPV not only as a general risk to the population, like flu, rather than an STD but as “hip.”

HPV vaccine ads got even cooler when GSK rolled out Cervarix extravaganza TV ads and its “armed against cervical cancer” campaign with an Angelina Jolie-like model displaying a skinny arm with a Cervarix tattoo.

3. Be Like Me, and Can Your Beer Do This?

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Prescription drugs may affect health, but they are still consumer products sold with the same marketing principles as toothpaste or beer. In fact, the wacky, “Can Your Beer Do This?” Miller Lite campaign of the 1990s, came back to life to sell the antidepressant Wellbutrin XR. In a glossy, color magazine ad, a young man rows his girlfriend on a scenic lake and lists the benefits of his Wellbutrin XR. “Can your medicine do all that?” he asks.

What does it say about the success of DTC advertising that people are assumed to have an antidepressant?

Experiential ads also sell prescription drugs like vintage ads for the “Kodak Moment,” “Maalox Moment” and the old cigarette ads for the “L&M Moment” did. “Lunesta Sleep. Have You Tried it?” asks a 2007 ad in Parade magazine, elevating the experience to something akin to “designer sleep.”

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And just as celebrities move other consumer products, they have been deployed to sell prescription drugs. TV personality Joan Lunden and former baseball star Mike Piazza stumped for the allergy pill Claritin, ice skater Dorothy Hamill and track star Bruce Jenner for the pain pill Vioxx, and Sen. Bob Dole for Viagra. NASCAR figure Bobby Labonte also endorsed the antidepressant Wellbutrin XL in 2004. Yes, his medicine could “do all that.”

But there has been a problem with celebrity drug endorsements, unlike product endorsements in which a celebrity like Tiger Woods or Martha Stewart could taint a product, a prescription drug can taint a celebrity! Did Dorothy Hamill know that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks in users when she stumped for it? Did the model Lauren Hutton know that hormone replacement therapy causes a 26 percent higher incidence of breast cancer, a 29 percent increase in heart attacks, a 41 percent increase in strokes, and a doubling of the rate of blood clots when she shilled for it? Does actress Sally Field know that bone drugs like Boniva are linked to esophageal cancer, jaw bone death and the very fractures they are supposed to prevent as she pushes them?

Of course, good product marketing includes public relations. When Pharma sells a disease with no mention of the drug it is really selling, it’s called “unbranded” advertising. Since DTC advertising, Pharma has invaded public service announcements (PSAs) that TV and radio stations confer for free, pretending their take-a-drug messages serve the public good, like messages to change smoke detector batteries or put kids in car seats.

One such “educational” “awareness” campaign called “Depression Is Real” saturated the radio air waves in 2011, funded by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which was investigated by Congress for its Pharma funding from Wyeth, part of Pfizer, and other groups. The high-budget ads, running for free, compare depression to diabetes because it doesn’t go away and to cancer because it can be fatal.

4. One Kind of Ad You Won’t See Anymore

Animal research at drug companies and the National Institutes of Health is a great scientific iceberg of which people only see a tip. In drug development, millions of animals die to prove a drug’s “safety.” At academic and medical centers, animal study grants from NIH provide millions to researchers and labs.

As sentiment grows against animal experiments and the government’s gigantic National Primate Research Centers (new rules will limit the use of chimpanzees), the research is downplayed and even hidden. But there was a time when Pharma actually flaunted animal research.

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“More than a decade of animal research on various animal species has suggested that Librium (chlordiazepozxide HCI) exerts its principal effects on certain key areas of the limbic system,” says an ad from the 1970s, showing three monkeys crouching and dangling in cages as assorted experiments are conducted.

An ad for the diet pill Pre-Sate is even worse. It says, “one of the most sophisticated comparative animal studies ever conducted demonstrates direct action on the satiety centers,” and shows five photos of cats in experiments. One shows a life-size white cat looking at the camera with a chain around its neck and invasive instrumentation embedded in its skull.

Today’s consumers, it seems, wouldn’t tolerate ads like these. (Or the experiments behind them.) Why do they tolerate derisive ads about “dog women” and ploys to market pharmaceuticals to kids as if it were candy?

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/153677/4_creepy_ways_big_pharma_peddles_its_drugs?page=entire

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7 Reasons America’s Mental Health Industry Is a Threat to Our Sanity

Friday, January 6th, 2012

Drug industry corruption, scientifically unreliable diagnoses and pseudoscientific research have compromised the values of the psychiatric profession.

Alternet
By Bruce E. Levine
January 6, 2012

Why do some of us become dissident mental health professionals?

The majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals “go along to get along” and maintain a status quo that includes drug company corruption, pseudoscientific research and a “standard of care” that is routinely damaging and occasionally kills young children. If that sounds hyperbolic, then you probably have not heard of Rebecca Riley, and how the highest levels of psychiatry described her treatment as “appropriate and within responsible professional standards.”

When Rebecca Riley was 28 months old, based primarily on the complaints of her mother that she was “hyper” and had difficulty sleeping, psychiatrist Kayoko Kifuji, at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, diagnosed Rebecca with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Kifuji prescribed clonidine, a hypertensive drug with significant sedating properties, a drug Kifuji also prescribed to Rebecca’s older sister and brother. The goal of the Riley parents—obvious to many in their community and later to juries—was to attain psychiatric diagnoses for their children that would qualify them for disability payments and to sedate their children making them easy to manage.

By the time Rebecca was three years old, again based mainly on parental complaints, Kifuji had given Rebecca an additional diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescribed two additional heavily sedating drugs, the antipsychotic Seroquel and the anticonvulsant Depakote.

At the age of four, Rebecca was dead.

At the time of her death, Rebecca had a life-threatening amount of clonidine—enough to kill her—in her body, according to the former director of the Massachusetts toxicology lab and the medical director of a regional poison control center. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy concluded that Rebecca died from intoxication of clonidine, Depakote and two over-the-counter cold and cough medicines that led to heart failure, lungs filled with bloody fluid, coma, and then death. Rebecca’s abusive parents went to prison for the over-drugging that led to their daughter’s death.

Kifuji’s fate? The psychiatric establishment rallied around Kifuji, enabling her to return to Tufts Medical Center practicing child psychiatry without any restrictions, penalties or supervision. After Rebecca’s death, Tufts-New England Medical Center defended Kifuji. A Tufts spokesperson told “60 Minutes” in 2009, “The care we provided was appropriate and within responsible professional standards.”

Apparently, psychiatric care that is considered appropriate and within responsible professional standards includes diagnoses of ADHD for a two-year-old and bipolar disorder for a three-year-old when the symptoms of those disorders are normal behaviors for those ages; prescribing three heavily sedating drugs that have not been approved by the FDA for child psychiatric treatment; ignoring the warnings from a school nurse about over-dosages for Rebecca; and making diagnoses based almost entirely on the reports of Rebecca’s mother, who herself was diagnosed with mental illness and heavily medicated to the point of falling asleep in Kifuji’s office.

Long before the Rebecca Riley tragedy hit the headlines, I was embarrassed by the mental health profession for seven major reasons:

1. Corruption by Big Pharma

How did it become within responsible professional standards for a two-year-old to get an ADHD diagnosis, for a three-year-old to get a bipolar diagnosis, and for toddlers to be prescribed multiple heavily sedating drugs? The short answer is drug company corruption of the mental health profession.

Congressional hearings in 2008 revealed that psychiatry’s “thought leaders” and major institutions are on the take from drug companies.

On June 8, 2008, the New York Times reported about psychiatrist Joseph Biederman: “A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007.”

Due in large part to Biederman’s influence, the number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003. Pediatrician and author Lawrence Diller notes about Biederman, “He single-handedly put pediatric bipolar disorder on the map.” In addition to his popularization of bipolar disorder for children, Biederman is one of the most significant forces behind the expanding numbers diagnosed with ADHD; and congressional investigators also discovered that Biederman conducted studies of Eli Lilly’s ADHD drug Strattera that were funded by National Institute of Health at the same time he was receiving money from Lilly.

Not only does the drug industry have influential psychiatrists such as Biederman in their pocket, virtually every major mental health institution is financially interconnected with Big Pharma. Congressional hearings also exposed the American Psychiatric Association psychiatry’s premier professional organization, as being on the take from drug companies. In 2006, the drug industry accounted for about 30 percent of the APA’s $62.5 million in financing. Most relevant here, the APA is the publisher of the psychiatric diagnostic bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and thus the APA is the institution responsible for creating mental illnesses and disorders.

2. Invalid Illnesses and Disorders

Psychiatry’s first DSM (1952) and its DSM-II (1968) listed homosexuality as a mental illness. Only because of a fierce political fight waged in the 1970s by gay activists did the APA abolish homosexuality as an illness and eliminate it from its DSM-III (1980). Gay activists’ fight was not only a victory for themselves but a service for everyone else, as it made public the important scientific problem of psychiatric disorder invalidity. Specifically, are psychiatric disorders scientifically valid illnesses, or are they simply behaviors that create discomfort for some authorities at a given moment in time?

While psychiatry lost homosexuality as a mental illness in the 1980 DSM-III, the APA found other groups it could pathologize, groups that could not mobilize and resist, most notably children, who are now routinely given psychiatric diagnoses for behaviors that many of us view as normal for their ages.

Psychiatry sees it as within responsible professional standards to diagnose three-year-olds such as Rebecca Riley with bipolar disorder. The symptoms of bipolar disorder include irritable and rapidly changing moods, severe temper tantrums, defiance of authority, agitation and distractibility, sleeping too little or too much, poor judgment, impulsivity and grandiose beliefs.

Psychiatry also sees it as within responsible professional standards for Rebecca Riley to have been diagnosed at 28 months old with ADHD. The symptoms of ADHD are inattention (easily distracted and bored, difficulty organizing and completing tasks, losing things, not seeming to listen, not following instructions); hyperactivity (fidgeting, talking nonstop, having trouble sitting still, difficulty with quiet tasks), and impulsivity (impatience, blurting out inappropriate comments, interrupting conversations).

Today, children and teens are also diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), the symptoms of which include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules,” and “often argues with adults.”

The standard for a medical disorder should not be whether or not an individual causes friction.

3. Scientifically Unreliable Diagnoses

Even if you believe that bipolar disorder for three-year-olds, ADHD for two-year-olds, ODD for teenagers, and all the other DSM diagnoses are valid disorders, there is still the scientific issue of diagnostic unreliability—the lack of diagnostic agreement among professionals examining the same person.

A generation ago, psychiatrists admitted that their diagnoses were unreliable and agreed that this was a major scientific problem. So in 1980, in an attempt to eliminate this embarrassment, they created the DSM-III with concrete behavioral checklists and formal decision-making rules, but they failed to correct the problem. Psychiatric diagnoses remain unreliable, but now psychiatry no longer talks about the unreliability problem.

If a measurement is a reliable one, then clinicians trained with it should be in high agreement on the diagnosis. A major 1992 study, conducted at six sites with 600 prospective patients, was done to examine the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses. Experienced mental health professionals were given extensive training in how to make accurate DSM diagnoses. Because of the extensive training, one would expect that diagnostic agreement would be much higher than in typical clinical settings. Herb Kutchins and Stuart Kirk summarize the study in Making Us Crazy (1997):

What this study demonstrated was that even when experienced clinicians with special training and supervision are asked to use DSM and make a diagnosis, they frequently disagree, even though the standards for defining agreement are very generous. . . . [For example,] if one of the two therapists made a diagnosis of Schizoid Personality Disorder and the other therapist selected Avoidant Personality Disorder, the therapists were judged to be in complete agreement of the diagnosis because they both found a personality disorder—even though they disagreed completely on which one! So even with this liberal definition of agreement, reliability using DSM is not very good.

Kutchins and Kirk conclude: “Mental health clinicians independently interviewing the same person in the community are as likely to agree as disagree that the person has a mental disorder and are as likely to agree as disagree on which of the over 300 DSM disorders is present.”

4. Biochemical Imbalance Mumbo Jumbo

Just as nothing was more important in selling the Iraq war in 2003 than the Bush administration’s certainty that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, nothing has been more important in selling psychiatric drugs than psychiatry’s certainty of biochemical brain imbalances as the cause for mental illnesses.

Prior to psychiatry’s proclamation that depression was caused by too little of the neurotransmitter serotonin, few Americans were taking antidepressants. But by declaring that depression was caused by a serotonin imbalance analogous to diabetes and an insulin imbalance, depressed Americans became far more receptive to serotonin-enhancing drugs such as the “selective-serotonin-reuptake inhibitors” (SSRIs) Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft.

SSRIs can make some depressed people feel better; however, alcohol makes some shy people less shy, but that’s not enough evidence to say that shyness is caused by an alcohol imbalance. The truth is—and scientists have known this for quite some time—that serotonin levels are not associated with depression.

Researchers have used a variety of methods to test the serotonin imbalance theory of depression, including comparing serotonin metabolites in depressed and nondepressed people, and depleting serotonin levels through a variety of means and then observing whether this resulted in depression. Elliot Valenstein, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, reviewed the research in his book Blaming the Brain (1998) and reported that it is just as likely for people with normal serotonin levels to feel depressed as it is for people with abnormal serotonin levels, and that it is just as likely for people with abnormally high serotonin levels to feel depressed as it is for people with abnormally low serotonin levels. Valenstein concluded, “Furthermore, there is no convincing evidence that depressed people have a serotonin or norepinephrine deficiency.”

In 2002, the New York Times reported: “Researchers knew that antidepressants seemed to raise the brain’s levels of messenger chemicals called neurotransmitters, so they theorized that depression must result from a deficiency of these chemicals. Yet a multitude of studies failed to prove this precept.”

Yet even now, many psychiatrists and other mental health professionals continue to promulgate the serotonin imbalance theory of depression, and polls show that the majority of Americans continue to believe it.

5. Pseudoscientific Drug Effectiveness Research

There are multiple tricks that psychiatric drug manufacturers and their researcher psychiatrists and psychologists use to make their drugs look more effective than they really are. One of the most common depression measurements used by researchers paid by drug companies is the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. In the HRSD, researchers rate subjects, and the higher the point total, the more one is deemed to be suffering from depression. On the HRSD, there are three separate items about insomnia (early, middle and late) and one can receive up to six points for difficulty either falling or remaining asleep; however, there is only one suicide item, in which one is awarded only two points for wishing to be dead. The HRSD is heavily loaded with items that are most affected by drugs, and it is therefore especially damning for antidepressants that even with such measurement dice-loading, these drugs routinely fail to outperform placebos—even dice-loaded placebos.

Proper drug research requires that neither subject nor experimenter knows who is getting the drug and who is getting the placebo (a true double-blind control). Drug company antidepressant researchers use inactive placebos such as sugar pills (which don’t create side effects). Independent research on inactive placebos show that many subjects in antidepressant and other studies can guess if they are getting the actual drug or not, which changes their expectations and subverts the double-blind control. In order to make it more difficult to guess correctly, an active placebo (which creates side effects) should be used. In 2000, a Psychiatric Times article concluded: “In fact, when antidepressants are compared with active placebos, there appear to be no differences in clinical effectiveness.”

Dice-loading depression measurements and placebos are just two of many techniques drug company researchers use to make antidepressants look more effective than they really are. But even with such dice-loading, antidepressants have not fared well, at least when one examines all the studies.

Drug companies try to ensure that those studies showing antidepressants to be no more effective than placebos are not published; however, all studies must be submitted to the FDA. So independent researcher Irving Kirsch and his research team at the University of Connecticut used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to all data, and analyzed 47 studies that had been sponsored by drug companies on Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, and Serzone. Kirsch discovered that in the majority of the trials, the antidepressant failed to outperform a sugar pill placebo (and in the trials where the antidepressant did outperform the placebo, the advantage was slight).

6. Psychotropic Drug Hypocrisy

Chemists consider psychiatric prescription drugs and illegal mood-altering drugs all to be psychotropic or psychoactive drugs. Cocaine and ADHD drugs such as Adderall and other amphetamines affect the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine; and antidepressants used in combination also affect the same neurotransmitters. Not only are prescription psychotropics and illegal psychotropics chemically similar, they are used by people for similar reasons, including taking the edge off their discomfort so they can function. The hypocrisy surrounding illegal and prescription psychotropic drugs is harmful to society in at least two ways.

At one level, because people are being misinformed about the realities of prescription psychotropic drugs, they are more likely to gulp them down and to give them to their children. This has helped create a tragic phenomenon detailed by investigative reporter Robert Whitaker in his book Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010). Psychiatric drug use turning mild and episodic conditions into severe and chronic ones has helped create a huge increase of Americans with severe mental illness, especially among children.

At a second level, this psychiatric-illegal psychotropic drug hypocrisy allows for unfair criminalizing and incarceration of people using illegal psychotropics.

7. Diversion from Societal, Cultural and Political Sources of Misery

When we hear the words disorder, disease or illness, we think of an individual in need of treatment, not of a troubled society in need of transformation. Mental illness expansionism diverts us from examining a dehumanizing society.

In addition to pathologizing normal behavior, the mental health profession also diverts us from examining a society that creates the ingredients—helplessness, hopelessness, passivity, boredom, fear, and isolation—that cause emotional difficulties. We are diverted from the reality that many emotional problems are natural human reactions to loss in our society of autonomy and community. Thus, the mental health profession not only has financial value for drug companies but it has political value for those at the top of societal hierarchies who want to retain the status quo.

Today, a handful of dissident mental health professionals do challenge and resist their profession’s dehumanizing standard practices. I know several of these dissidents, and they are the only psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health professionals that I have any respect for.

Read article here:  http://www.alternet.org/story/153634/7_reasons_america%27s_mental_health_industry_is_a_threat_to_our_sanity/

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Pharmageddon: America’s bitter pill — U.S. is world’s biggest user of psychotropic drugs

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

Russia Today – December 27, 2011

The United States has a passion for pills, being the world’s biggest users of psychotropic drugs, consuming 60 per cent of them. And pharmaceutical firms are keen to keep cashing in on the multibillion-dollar market, even if it costs people’s health.

America is regarded as a country with a prodigious appetite for consumption. Today, a widespread fondness for pharmaceuticals has turned the US into a nation of pill-poppers.

With over $14 billion in annual sales, antipsychotics remain the top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the US.

Dr. Harriet Fraad believes Big Pharma has manufactured a climate of insanity by manipulating and even creating illness for capital gain.

“One of the things that drives Big Pharma is to find a diagnosis that is very vague, so that everybody can fall into that,” she told RT. “Everybody is sad sometimes. There are good reasons. The point is to market pharmaceuticals. And the advertising strategy is to have vague diagnosis and then find wiggle room so that they apply to everyone.”

The US is the only Western country that allows direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. For example, an ad for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder warns that untreated patients will likely end up divorced. Another commercial promises to make you happier, but side-effects may include dry mouth, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, diarrhea, nausea and sleepiness.”

Critics also say Big Pharma uses its financial muscle to ply doctors with gifts, cash kick-backs and research funding in exchange for endorsing or prescribing the latest and most lucrative drugs.

Harriet Fraad says there is a whole network of doctors hustling these drugs.

“If a patient comes in with a knee injury and says, ‘I’m so sad.’ Oh, are you depressed? Hey write a prescription! They’re given out like M&Ms.”

Last year, prescription drug abuse became the number one cause of accidental death, with more than 30,000 Americans overdosing.

For instance, Seroquel, medication for bi-polar disorder, generated $4.4 billion in sales last year.Listing all its side-effects requires 49 seconds of air-time.

The number of children consuming antipsychotic medication has doubled in the past decade. Millions of American adolescents are taking drugs like Adderall, doled out by doctors to treat hyperactivity.

Author of Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic, psychologist Bruce Levine, told RT that, “All these drugs are very similar to illicit or illegal drugs, except they’re more dangerous. Marijuana is a little safer. But kids have no choice.”

Pfizer, America’s most profitable multinational pharmaceutical company makes anti-depressants not only for people, but also for animals. In 2009, the pharmaceutical giant paid $2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal allegations over illegally marketing one of its drugs. It was the largest healthcare fraud settlement and criminal fine in US history. That being said, the fine amounted to less than three weeks of Pfizer’s drug sales.

“The money is so huge that the fines are immaterial. They’re not thinking about the social effects of what they’re doing. They’re thinking about the profits they accrue,” says psychotherapist Harriet Fraad.

The pharmaceutical industry remains the most profitable business in the US. More success and financial gain for the companies will always remain possible as long as more Americans are encouraged to take drugs.

http://rt.com/news/us-prescription-drugs-abuse-715/

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JAMA: Spotty results with off-label antipsychotic use

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

FiercePharma
By Tracy Staton
September 27, 2011

Off-label use of powerful antipsychotic drugs has come in for plenty of debate in recent years. The expensive, newer-generation “atypicals” have been used to treat dementia, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, dementia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder…the list goes on. And all this while the Justice Department was investigating Big Pharma for off-label promotion of the drugs.

An updated analysis now finds that antipsychotic drugs’ utility in off-label uses is minimal, but the risks are significant, Medscape reports. Several illnesses didn’t respond at all to antipsychotic therapy, the data showed, including eating disorders and addiction problems. The evidence for treatment of personality disorders was a toss-up. Meanwhile, side effects were sometimes severe, including weight gain, metabolic problems, fatigue, urinary tract symptoms and even an increased risk of death, the researchers said.

A few off-label uses won support from the new data. Anxiety patients got moderate benefit from AstraZeneca’s ($AZN) Seroquel, and OCD sufferers were helped by treatment with Johnson & Johnson’s ($JNJ) Risperdal. Elderly patients with dementia saw a small benefit with antipsychotic use.

“We need to use this information and be wary of prescribing when it isn’t warranted,” said Dr. Alicia Ruelaz Maher, lead author of the JAMA-published study. “I think the biggest takeaway is that instead of just prescribing blindly, we now have evidence to guide us.” And, as Maher told Reuters, “Each individual patient needs to be considered as opposed to, ‘This is good for this condition.’”

http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/jama-spotty-results-label-antipsychotic-use/2011-09-28

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New Study Confirms: Millions of kids misdiagnosed with ADHD and drugged

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

September 20, 2011

New Study published in American Journal of Family Therapy confirms millions of normal kids misdiagnosed with ADHD & drugged.

by CCHR Int—A new study published today in the American Journal of Family Therapy has found that millions of children have been misdiagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and wrongly prescribed amphetamine-like drugs categorized by  the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the same class of highly addictive drugs as cocaine, opium and morphine.

The study conducted by researchers at the New England Center for Pediatric Psychology and the Rhode Island College Department of Special Education found that of the “over 5 million children who are now being treated with ADHD medication, a majority may be suffering from Faux-ADHD, a disorder linked to irregular bedtimes” and that a majority of the children diagnosed ADHD may be unnecessarily medicated.    Now while we at CCHR applaud any study on the issue of “ADHD” which is not  ghost written by Big Pharma or those with a vested interest in drugging kids, we would like to pose two simple questions regarding this latest study:

1)  If there is such as thing as  “Faux-ADHD” what exactly is “real” ADHD?    There are no blood tests, brain scans, x-rays or genetic abnormalities that can prove any child has a “real” condition of ADHD.   Therefore any diagnoses of ADHD is “Faux.”   The criteria for an ADHD diagnoses  rests entirely on a checklist of behaviors,  including such “abnormal” child behavior as:

  • “runs about or climbs excessively in situations when it is not appropriate”
  • ” is often “on the go”
  • “acts as if driven by a motor”
  •  ”blurts out answers”
  •  ”is easily distracted”
  • ” loses pencils or toys”
  • “often doesn’t seem to listen”

2)  Given the diagnoses itself is not a medical condition, what child being prescribed drugs isn’t being “unnecessarily medicated?”   ADHD drugs are classified by the DEA as schedule ll drugs because they are as highly addictive as cocaine, morphine and opium.  ADHD drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall are documented by the FDA and international drug regulatory agencies to cause hallucinations, mania, psychosis, drug dependence,  stunted growth, insomnia,  heart attack, suicidal ideation and sudden death.  Normal children are simply being drugged.  Not medicated.  Drugged.

The fact is that any child diagnosed with ADHD has been misdiagnosed.  Any child placed on cocaine–like ADHD drugs is being unnecessarily drugged.  The diagnoses of ADHD in any circumstances is a Faux-diagnoses, serving only the psychiatric pharmaceutical industries and fueling their $4.8 billion a year ADHD drug empire.

 

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U.S. doctors steeped in financial ties – drug money from Big Pharma

Monday, September 12th, 2011

Natural News – September 11, 2011

by S. D. Wells

Pharmaceutical firms in the United States are shelling out massive funds for doctors travel and entertainment expenses in hopes of boosting sales of new drugs. More than 160,000 doctors have received related payments in 2011 already.

The big push includes free samples, hospital detailing, journal ads, gifting, and the sponsoring of continuing medical education, but patients fear this all leads to doctors prescribing popular, money making drugs instead of following standard of care practices .

Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and AstraZeneca top the list of companies also spending far more on “marketing” than on research, with a total estimated $57,000 billion in overall marketing expenditures in just one year in the United States.

Pharmaceutical giants are claiming they are just trying to be open about how they conduct business, but the statements come at a time of intense scrutiny, and after several prosecutions regarding unlawful marketing practices.

In fact, some of these databases were actually set up as part of settlements of federal criminal investigations into the illegal marketing of drugs to doctors. Many companies have not released any data whatsoever, but Lilly and Pfizer combine to have paid out over 90 million dollars.

United States government agencies are preparing guidelines that will make such information mandatory by 2013. Currently there are over 80,000 pharmaceutical sales reps in the U.S. pursuing about 800,000 pharmaceutical prescribers, so it can be extremely difficult to track the money for one doctor from several sources, or to identify the largest recipients, like an entire hospital, without laborious work by a whole team of computer experts.

By 2013, new federal healthcare laws are expected to make it easier for the public to track a doctor’s payments from multiple companies; however, there may be controversial business opportunities available in the setting up and running of these supposedly transparent websites, such as PharmaShine, which was founded auspiciously by a former attorney for Merck.

Critics are complaining about the extreme conflicts of interest that arise from all the gift giving and promotional items, saying doctor’s can negatively influence the cost of medicine by recommending or prescribing brand name drugs over cheaper generics. In many instances, the reward is substantial for doctors to do exactly that. Over 380 doctors have earned more than $100,000 from drug companies in just the past two years.

But there is also a flip side to these perks. One doctor said he had to follow a slide show presentation word for word in order to receive funding for a speaking engagement promoting certain pharmaceuticals, or there would be changes made to his contract.

On top of all the other problems inherent in proper ethics and disclosure, many prominent doctors at academic medical centers have failed to disclose millions of dollars in drug company payments, and Federal prosecutors say some payments are really kickbacks for illegal or excessive prescribing. Are doctors now moonlighting as drug salesmen in order to keep the perks flowing?

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Depression? Don’t believe it —Big Pharma has gained an ever greater hold over our mental & emotional lives

Friday, September 9th, 2011

The Brisbane Times, Australia – Spetember 9, 2011
by Lisa Appignanesi

"Over the last 40 years the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - the bible of the psychiatric professions - has spawned more and more diagnostic categories, "inventing" disorders along the way and radically reducing the range of what can be construed as normal or sane. Meanwhile Big Pharma, feeding its appetite for profits and ours for drugs, has gained an ever greater hold over our mental and emotional lives, medicalising normality."

In 2000 the World Health Organisation named depression as the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease and predicted that by 2020 it would rise to second place. I suppose WHO didn’t mean it to sound like a target to be aimed for, but we seem to be rising to the challenge in any case.

A new survey from the European College of Psychopharmacology, a meta-analysis of a mass of research, reports that a staggering 164.8 million Europeans – 38.2 per cent of the population – suffer from a mental disorder in any year.

As well as depression, this includes neural disorders such as dementia and Parkinson’s; childhood problems from ADHD to “conduct disorder”; and the leading anxiety disorders – everything from panic attacks to obsessive-compulsive disorder to shyness. The latest figures for Australia, from 2007, indicate that more than one in five people – 3.2 million – had suffered from anxiety, a mood disorder or substance abuse in the preceding 12 months; 2-3 per cent more were estimated to have been affected by other mental illnesses.

Depression and anxiety, they tell us, are disproportionately women’s ailments. Men, it seems, become alcoholics (another illness category) rather than depressives, particularly in eastern Europe.

Such reports are worrying. They may draw attention to a rising toll of human suffering, but they pinpoint the imperialising tendency of the mental health sector. Our ills and unhappiness are squeezed into a package labelled “disorder” and an ever-proliferating assortment of supposedly objective diagnostic categories. A cure is somehow promised, though it rarely seems to come, certainly not for everyone or for ever. In talking to the press or drafting press releases, researchers often extrapolate from their material in order to create good copy.

The notion that women are somehow more prone to mental illness often emerges. According to Hans-Ulrich Wittchen, one of the report’s authors, the reason women suffer nearly twice as much depression and anxiety disorders as men lies in the changing social pattern in which women take on work on top of marriage and children.

So stay home, ladies, and you’ll be as happy as apple pie; though in the 50s when we stayed home to bake it, the doctors gave us Miltown and Valium to help us take pain-free care of hubby and the young ones.

On the subject of women’s greater susceptibility, it’s just as well to remember that women go to doctors far more than men, for all kinds of ills: indeed, women’s greater incidence of mental ills just about equals their greater number of visits to the doctors. If men went to doctors as often as they go to the pub, it’s a fair guess that their unhappiness would be represented as depression or anxiety as well.

One of the many things that became clear to me as I was working on my book on the rise and rise of the mind-doctoring professions over the last 200 years, is that classifications of mental disorder are hardly absolutes. They are far more often constructs that mirror their time’s aspirations and ways of understanding. They may reflect subjective experience, but only insofar as we can prod and organise our inchoate inner lives to fit pre-existing psychiatric tick lists.

Useful tools for statisticians, the classifications are also useful to public health administrators, insurance companies, lobbying bodies, or pharmaceutical companies who need “homogeneous populations” on whom to carry out drug trials. But I remain to be convinced that these proliferating classifications help individuals find relief – except, of course, that momentary relief from giving an expert name to what may feel like an intractable set of problems.

Over the last 40 years the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the bible of the psychiatric professions – has spawned more and more diagnostic categories, “inventing” disorders along the way and radically reducing the range of what can be construed as normal or sane. Meanwhile Big Pharma, feeding its appetite for profits and ours for drugs, has gained an ever greater hold over our mental and emotional lives, medicalising normality.

The more studies that come along to tell us about the rise in mental illness, the more we fit our problems and unhappiness into a category of mental disorder, developing symptoms to take to the doctor in search of a cure. Humans are suggestible creatures. And doctors like to help: they provide the pills Big Pharma recommends, though many must now know that research has shown placebos can work just as well and with fewer side effects.

If doctors – rather than politicians or teachers or priests or friends and family – are to be the guardians of our wellbeing, then doctors really should be provided with new kinds of “treatments”. Psycho- and group therapy could, of course, be rolled out, and not just of the 10-week variety: anything that builds up the individual’s inner resources and allows emotions to be reflected on can’t be bad.

But doctors could recommend group running for depression, proved to have far better effects than SSRIs. Reading groups, too, offer a definite lift. As for women, more free childcare, after-school clubs and husbands who take days off to go to the doctor with the kids (or sort out that drinking problem) would lift a depressed mood wonderfully. Then there’s poverty, terrible schools … could health systems take those on as well?

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Would Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn be diagnosed mentally ill and drugged?

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Natural News – September 1, 2011

by Monica G. Young

Imagine if the beloved young characters in Mark Twain’s classic, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” lived today. Based on current psychiatric criteria, Tom and Huck could be designated mentally ill and prescribed mind-altering drugs. Quiet, listless and numb, their legendary adventures would be over.

Describing a day in school, Twain wrote: “The harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas wandered.” His “heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time.” That’s a text book so-called symptom of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). A teacher today could refer him to a psychiatrist who would dope him with stimulants. Yet like any typical boy, Tom had no trouble focusing attention on something he found interesting – like finding a hidden treasure.

Tom’s friend Huckleberry might fare worse. An avowed non-conformist, a psychiatric checklist could tag him with ODD – oppositional defiant disorder. And having run away from an abusive father, Huck would land in the hands of Child Protective Services who would sedate him on psychoactive drugs subsidized by government funds.

Although no brain scan, blood test or x-ray had been done, the psych doctors would claim the boys’ mental illness stemmed from a neurobiological disorder involving chemical imbalances in the brain, probably hereditary.

Tom and Huck would likely experience insomnia, stomach aches, high blood pressure, stunted growth or some other “side” effects, and more drugs would be added to treat these. They would start feeling despondent and have mood swings, leading to probable depression or bipolar disorder diagnoses and more drug cocktails. The once spirited youths might end up as life-long pharmaceutical junkies.

Psychiatry revealed as an industry of fakers

Recently Harvard-trained psychiatrist Daniel Carlat exposed psychiatry as essentially a field of imposters. His book, “Unhinged; the Trouble with Psychiatry – a Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis,” reads much like a confession – and rightly so.

Despite all their years in medical school, psychiatrists do not use any medical tests in diagnosing. Instead their labels are entirely subjective, opinionated and based upon a manual of disorders voted into existence by a psychiatric committee.

Yet these “experts” have transformed boyhood into “ADHD,” shyness into “social anxiety disorder” and menstrual discomfort into “premenstrual dysphoric disorder.” Some toddlers are labeled before given a chance to learn to talk.

Carlat states, “Psychiatrists have cordoned off the most painful versions of normal life, defined them as syndromes, and have given them medical-sounding names.” Yes, there are people who suffer from severe mental disturbances, but he says it’s “an illusion that we understand our patients when all we are doing is assigning them labels.”

Where is the science in all this? He writes, “While the scientific literature contains thousands of papers proposing neurobiological theories to explain PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder], depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other psychiatric disorders, these theories remain unproven…” And he confides, “the shocking truth is that psychiatry has yet to develop a convincing explanation for the pathophysiology of any illness at all.”

In regards the chemical imbalance rant, Carlat says this is nothing more than a “convenient myth” so psychiatrists can appear authoritative and avoid looking ignorant with their patients.

This is an industry riveted to drugs, drugs and more drugs. Forget really listening to and understanding a patient’s troubles in life. Now it’s all about lucrative fifteen-minute monthly med checks – about as personal as Wendy’s drive-through.

Pharmaceutical industry influence has vast bearing on what medications psychiatrists use and how often. Carlat admits, “We have been seduced by the constant encouragement from drug companies to prescribe more medications…” Such seduction ranges from a drug rep bringing a doctor his favorite drink from Starbucks, to companies paying him up to a million or more to be their marketing mouthpiece.

Psycho-Pharma’s drug obsession diverts society’s attention off non-harmful solutions like teaching life skills, improving education, better nutrition and exercise, and addressing environmental factors.

In short, for all their diplomas, chic offices, puffed-up terminology and high fees, this is a field where greed and deception replace ethics and scientific methodology. Fortunately some like Daniel Carlat are blowing the whistle.

Most unforgivable is the dispensing of labels and drugs to millions of children. The leading gurus of this campaign have been psychiatrists deep in the pockets of Big Pharma, such as the exalted Dr. Joseph Biederman – flanked by an army of Pharma-paid “advocacy” groups.

Perhaps we should ourselves vote on labels to categorize such mentally-depraved individuals, such as conscience deficit hyper-lying disorder (CDHD) or better yet, false representation and underhandedness disorder (FRAUD).

Sources for this article include:

“The book, “Unhinged; the Trouble with Psychiatry – a Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis,” by Daniel J. Carlat, M.D.

http://speedupsitstill.com/dangerou…

http://www.thefix.com/content/jj-su…

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Big pharma pays US doctors $150m in 2011

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

PMLive
August 30, 2011

A report by the Financial Times has claimed a group of pharmaceutical companies has paid doctors in the US almost $150m so far during 2011.

Prepared in conjunction with the data provider, PharmaShine, the figures show the money was paid by pharmaceutical firms, including Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca (AZ) and Pfizer, for doctors’ travel and entertainment expenses as well as education and consultancy fees.

Of those companies who have released data, Lilly is reported to have paid $48m and Pfizer to have paid $42m.

AZ, who recently launched a database containing payments made to doctors and institutions, said $24.7m was paid out in associated compensation for the second quarter of 2011, with $8.1m going to individual physicians and $16.6m going to institutions.

In a post on the company’s AZ Health Connections blog, US compliance officer, Marie Martino, gave reason as to why the company was releasing its data.

She said: “AstraZeneca believes it is important to be open about how we conduct our business, and this new reporting expands on a major initiative announced three years ago to provide greater public visibility into how we do business.”

Around 165,000 doctors have received related payments in 2011 so far, compared to 262,000 doctors who received payment in 2010.

The report comes at a time when US government agencies are preparing guidelines to make the publication of industry support for medical professionals compulsory by 2013.

This is part of ongoing US healthcare reforms as an attempt to allow better, more consistent understanding of the pharmaceutical industry’s relationship with healthcare professionals in the US.

In the UK, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) changed its code of practice at the beginning of 2011 to help increase transparency of working practices between the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare professionals to help increase trust.

Companies will have to declare payments to healthcare professionals for services including speaker fees, advisory boards and consultancy, and sponsorship for attendance at meetings on an annual basis. The first declaration will be made in 2013 for payments made in 2012.

http://www.pmlive.com/find_an_article/allarticles/categories/General/2011/august_2011/news/big_pharma_pays_us_doctors_$150m_in_2011

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CCHR exposes list of psycho-pharma front groups

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Natural News
By PF Louis
August 29, 2011

A highly effective public relations technique is the “third party technique” of creating front groups to endorse or promote the need of any service or product. The first party is the original group or client that would benefit more from increased public trust or affinity. The second group is the public or consumers. A third group is created with a contrived name to appear publicly as a disinterested party endorsing the industry of the first party.

Often, the third party, or front group, uses a name that implies authority or concern for the public’s welfare or concerns. You can be sure these bogus front groups are usually only concerned about their clients welfare and themselves.

Edward Bernays Pioneered Front Groups

Edward Bernays, a notorious spin doctor throughout the 20th Century, is considered USA’s original front group creator as well as the father of public relations. The public relations industry is concerned with creating a favorable image more than direct sales advertising, although they can be closely associated at times.

The womens rights movement peaked in 1919 with the passage of the 19th amendment, granting women the right to vote. A very few years later, Edward Bernays created an image to help promote the tobacco industry. He had photographs published in newspapers and magazines of several women marching in a New York City Easter parade brazenly smoking cigarettes, which until then was considered unladylike. The idea was to link a womans struggle for more rights with openly smoking anywhere, just like the guys.

Besides making tobacco appear healthy over several years using fake doctors to promote various cigarette brands, Bernays also used front groups to glorify fluoridating water supplies. He was a very important contributor to our mass poisoning.

Psychiatry, Big Pharma, and Front Groups

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHRI) focuses on psychiatry’s irrational and barbaric treatment of mental illness with its propensity for categorizing behavior in order to dispense harmful drugs. It’s a cozy arrangement with the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and Big Pharma.

Ever since the APA was accepted as a regular medical organization a few decades ago, Big Pharma’s sales for psychotropic drugs have gone through the roof. What was once pen and pad for taking notes by a psychiatrist during talk therapy became the pen and prescription pad.

For children, psychiatry’s categorizing behavioral problems enables educational and child care institutional personnel virtual prescription power as well. Children are kidnapped “legally” by social services agencies if parents refuse to medicate them according to psychiatric decree. Big Pharma’s reach into TV advertising enables depressed adults to demand prescriptions for drugs that lead to bad health, actual insanity, and death.

Front groups exposed by CCHRI include the following: The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHAAD) and several bipolar, depression or ADHD “support groups” that flourish on the internet.

CCHRI has several more front groups listed on one of their site pages with links to explanations of who they really are and how they function for psychiatry and Big Pharma. (see CCHRI source below)

CCHRI’s depth of investigative reporting offers the premier site for understanding the true nature of psychiatry and its relationship with Big Pharma’s destructive psychotropic drug racket.

Front Groups Everywhere

Front groups can also lobby directly to government officials, elected or appointed. And they are created for almost any controversial issue that needs to be white or green washed.

A former health insurance insider, Wendell Potter, became a whistle blower with his book Deadly Spin. He explained that a front group “Health Care America” was used to attack Michael Moore’s “Sicko” documentary.

APCO Worldwide created Health Care America with Big Pharma money. The insurance industry used APCO in 2007. APCO recruits think tanks and other agencies as allies for their campaigns. The public is unaware of who is really supplying the media’s information.

Earlier in 2011, New York Republican Congresswoman Nan Hayworth submitted a press release photo of her receiving a plaque from a representative of a purported senior citizen support group called 60 Plus Association. The sign above those two declared in large letters “Senor Citizens Thank You for Protecting Medicare and Social Security.”

There are two lies here. Nan Hayworth had voted against Medicare, and 60 Plus has hardly any senior citizen members at all. They remain afloat financially from Big Pharma’s funding, according to AARP.

All this crassly corrupt activity backed by government and corporations continues to escalate through the mainstream media. A lyric from a 1980s jazz tune rings true “We are Caught in a Blizzard of Lies.” The upside is we are forced to distinguish between truth and fiction and become our own informed authority.

Sources for this article include:

List of Front Groups for Psychiatry and Big Pharma http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharm…

Main page CCHRI site http://www.cchrint.org/

Insurance whistle blower Wendell Potter http://www.commondreams.org/view/20…

60s Plus Group outed by AARP as Big Pharma front group http://my.firedoglake.com/junkyardd…

Edward Bernays pioneered third party technique of PR and advertising http://www.frontgroups.org/node/418

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