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U.S. to Force Drug Firms to Report Money Paid to Doctors

Monday, January 16th, 2012

The New York Times – January 16, 2012

by Robert Pear

The new standards carry out legislation championed by Senators Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin. The legislation was included in the 2010 health care overhaul. “The goal is to let the sun shine in and make information available to foster accountability,” Mr. Grassley said.

WASHINGTON — To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.

Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices.

Consumer advocates and members of Congress say patients may benefit from the new standards, being issued by the government under the new health care law. Federal officials said the disclosures increased the likelihood that doctors would make decisions in the best interests of patients, without regard to the doctors’ financial interests.

Large numbers of doctors receive payments from drug and device companies every year — sometimes into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars — in exchange for providing advice and giving lectures. Analyses by The New York Times and others have found that about a quarter of doctors take cash payments from drug or device makers and that nearly two-thirds accept routine gifts of food, including lunch for staff members and dinner for themselves.

The Times has found that doctors who take money from drug makers often practice medicine differently from those who do not and that they are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways, such as prescribing powerful antipsychotic medicines for children.

Under the new standards, if a company has just one product covered by Medicare or Medicaid, it will have to disclose all its payments to doctors other than its own employees. The federal government will post the payment data on a Web site where it will be available to the public.

Manufacturers of prescription drugs and devices will have to report if they pay a doctor to help develop, assess and promote new products — or if, for example, a pharmaceutical sales agent delivers $25 worth of bagels and coffee to a doctor’s office for a meeting. Royalty payments to doctors, for inventions or discoveries, and payments to teaching hospitals for research or other activities will also have to be reported.

The Obama administration estimates that more than 1,100 drug, device and medical supply companies will have to file reports, generating “large amounts of new data.” Federal officials said they would inspect and audit drug company records to make sure the reports were accurate and complete.

Companies will be subject to a penalty up to $10,000 for each payment they fail to report. A company that knowingly fails to report payments will be subject to a penalty up to $100,000 for each violation, up to a total of $1 million a year.

Top executives are potentially liable because a senior official of each company — the chief executive, chief financial officer or chief compliance officer — must attest to the accuracy of each report.

The new requirements, or something very similar, will take effect soon; in fact, they are overdue. Under the new health care law, the administration was supposed to establish payment-reporting procedures by Oct. 1, 2011. The public will have until Feb. 17 to comment on the proposals, which are broadly consistent with the expectations of industry and consumer groups. After considering the comments, Medicare officials will issue final rules with the force of law.

Consumer advocates have long demanded details of the financial ties between doctors and drug and device companies.

Allan J. Coukell, a pharmacist and consumer advocate at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said: “Patients want to know they are getting treatment based on medical evidence, not a lunch or a financial relationship. They want to know if their doctor has a financial relationship with a pharmaceutical company, but they are often uncomfortable asking the doctor directly.”

In an introduction to the proposed rules, the Obama administration says that patients can benefit when doctors and the industry work together to develop life-saving drugs and devices. But, it said, these relationships can also “lead to conflicts of interests that may affect clinical decision-making” and “threaten the underlying integrity of the health care system.”

The administration does not try to define the difference between proper and improper payments. It says simply that public reporting of the financial ties between doctors and drug and device companies “will permit patients to make better-informed decisions when choosing health care professionals and making treatment decisions.”

The new standards carry out legislation championed by Senators Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin. The legislation was included in the 2010 health care overhaul.

“The goal is to let the sun shine in and make information available to foster accountability,” Mr. Grassley said.

Christopher L. White, executive vice president of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, which represents makers of medical devices, said the payment data could be used by federal law enforcement agencies, plaintiffs’ lawyers and whistleblowers.

“Some companies fear that doctors may no longer want to engage in consulting arrangements, and such reluctance could chill innovation,” Mr. White said.

Medicare and Medicaid, the programs for older Americans, the disabled and the poor, spend more than $100 billion a year on drugs and devices.

Although the Congressional Budget Office does not predict immediate savings, it has said that, “over time, disclosure has the potential to reduce spending,” by reducing instances of overprescribing.

As an example of inappropriate payments, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services cited a case in which manufacturers of medical devices had provided financial incentives — in the form of consulting agreements, lavish trips and other perks — to induce doctors to use particular hip and knee replacement products. Under a civil settlement with the government, the companies agreed to new compliance procedures.

The law also requires drug and device companies to report the amount of “any ownership or investment interest” held by doctors or their immediate family members, other than holdings of publicly traded stocks.

The administration intends to apply the same disclosure requirements to doctor-owned companies that distribute medical devices. Such companies allow doctors to benefit financially from sales of devices they use in surgery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/health/policy/us-to-tell-drug-makers-to-disclose-payments-to-doctors.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

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Big Pharma’s Scam: U.S. Drug companies rig medication studies

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

December 6, 2011  – Note from CCHR:  We created the psychiatric drug side effects database due to the misleading studies about psychiatric drug safety and efficacy being put out by the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry.  For facts (instead of pharma funded studies)  from international drug regulatory agencies visit the psychiatric drug side effects database – click here

Many of these pharmaceutical studies were sponsored by the drug manufacturers; sponsors who the report states "may promote the use of outcomes that are most likely to indicate favourable results for their products."

Mercola.com—New research has revealed just how misleading and questionable the results of medication studies cited in top medical journals actually are — adding to an already sizeable mountain of data on mainstream medical manipulation.

Pharmaceutical and vaccine makers are continually found to be sponsoring the very institution performing the study on the effectiveness of their product.

Such is the case with a recent inquiry that examined the trustworthiness of top drug trials.

Investigators from UCLA and Harvard recently analyzed the randomized drug trials from six prestigious journals, reaching a conclusion that brings into question the overall credibility of many top medication studies and those who perform them.

  •  Many medication studies published in leading journals have been found to be sponsored by drug manufacturers and include deceptive statistical reporting and wording.

 

  • The flu vaccine is a perfect example of medical manipulation, with research concluding the effectiveness of the shots to be as low as one percent. In addition, the “gold standard” for scientific reviews has repeatedly found that there is little to no evidence backing flu vaccines as an effective flu prevention strategy. Despite this, they are still pushed by mainstream health officials
  • The reason why much of the population believes in mainstream medicine can be traced back to the PR campaigns of Edward Bernays, the so-called father of spin. Bernays focused on ‘conditioning’ consumers into believing many mainstream medical fallacies.

The investigative team found that many of these pharmaceutical studies were sponsored by the drug manufacturers; sponsors who the report states “may promote the use of outcomes that are most likely to indicate favourable results for their products.”

In fact many of these studies have been found to utilize different statistical techniques in order to establish the supposed safety of many medications that may actually be harmful to you.

———————————————————————–

For international drug regulatory warnings on documented side effects/risks of psychiatric drugs click here

 

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Ron Paul is right—Mental “screening” of school kids aims to Leave No Child Unmedicated

Monday, October 24th, 2011

The Moral Liberal – October 24, 2011

TeenScreen Expandiing Despite Concerns

More than 30,000 people have signed an online petition to stop using TeenScreen in schools.

More and more public schools are using TeenScreen, a controversial mental health screening diagnostic, despite public protests, myriad problems, and known conflicts of interest. According to TeenScreen deputy director Leslie McGuire, the program has expanded from 30 sites in 2003 to 600 sites in 46 states today. Requests for their screening questionnaires have almost tripled to 426,000 in 2010, according to the group.

One school district in Wisconsin has subjected its students to this dubious diagnostic for almost a decade. “Since 2002, we have been implementing TeenScreen mental health checkups throughout our system of 7,300 students,” wrote Fond du Lac High School principal Jon Wiltzius and district superintendent James Sebert in a letter urging fellow administrators to adopt the program.

A report authored by TeenScreen officials and published by the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in August said that nearly 20% of participating students attending Fond du Lac district high schools between 2005 and 2009 were deemed “at risk” for mental illness or suicide. The computerized 52-item survey screens for social phobia, anxiety, depression and other mental health issues using questions like these:

 Has there been a time when you felt you couldn’t do anything well or that you weren’t as good-looking or smart as other people?
  1. Have you often felt very nervous or uncomfortable when you have been with a group of children or young people, like in the lunchroom at school, or at a party?
  2. In the last year, has there been any situation when you had less energy than usual?

But what normal high-school student hasn’t experienced self-doubt or felt very nervous or been tired? Even TeenScreen creator David Shaffer of Columbia University conceded in a 2004 article that the test (also known as the Columbia SuicideScreen) “would result in 84 nonsuicidal teens being referred for further evaluation for every 16 youths correctly identified.” Still, maintained Shaffer, “many of these so-called false-positive cases may be experiencing painful depressive symptoms . . . and are likely to benefit from treatment.”

No Child Left Unmedicated?

Congressman Ron Paul has re-introduced The Parental Consent Act , A bill which prohibits federal funds from being used to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health, psychiatric, or socioemotional screening program.

Allen Jones, former investigator with the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, charges that the translation of normal human emotions into symptoms of mental illness is driven not by genuine concern for kids, but by a profit motive. “TeenScreen was developed and promoted by persons with deep financial ties to makers of psychiatric drugs,” said Jones. Indeed, a stated priority of the TeenScreen program is to “connect” kids with mental health treatment – which all-too-often means prescribing psychotropic drugs. (Referrals to medical doctors who might diagnose physical problems are not part of the TeenScreen protocol.)

Jones’ claim is backed up by at least two watchdog groups who have noted TeenScreen leadership’s ties to pharmaceutical firms. David Shaffer has served as a paid consultant for Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and numerous other manufacturers of psychiatric drugs. Laurie Flynn, TeenScreen Director, previously served as executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which receives about three quarters of its funding from drug companies, according to a 2009 investigation by The New York Times.

TeenScreen advisory board member Michael Hogan served in leadership roles for at least two entities that are heavily funded by drug company “educational grants.” As director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Hogan is largely responsible for making Ohio one of the first states to roll out and fund TeenScreen in 2002. Under Hogan’s watch, nearly 40,000 kids on Medicaid were taking drugs for anxiety, depression, delusions, hyperactivity and violent behavior by July of 2004. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services spent $65.5 million for kids’ mental health drugs that year alone, according the Columbus Dispatch.

Ohio is not alone in this record level of spending to medicate children. Nationally, the Medco 2010 Drug Trend Report found that the number of children taking antipsychotic drugs has doubled over the past nine years.

But the unnecessary expense isn’t the worst aspect of this trend. Antipsychotics can cause severe physiological and mental side effects, including apathy, obesity, diabetes and involuntary tremors. Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, suggests that over-prescribed stimulants and antidepressants have contributed to the 40-fold increase in the number of children diagnosed as bipolar since 1995. Whitaker explains that stimulants can trigger periods of mania followed by sluggishness in children. These kids may then be re-diagnosed as bipolar, a disorder which only a few decades ago was considered to be an exclusively adult malady.

Many Problems, Few Benefits

There are still more problems with universal mental health screening. One of the major selling points for TeenScreen advocates is suicide prevention, but the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force found “no evidence” that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality.

Furthermore, even authors of the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM), the bible of psychiatric diagnosis upon which TeenScreen questions are based, admit that the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for mental illness are vague and without “clear empirical data supporting . . . the diagnosis.”

Although the TeenScreen website explicitly states that questionnaire results are not linked to students’ academic records, a 2003 Illinois law illustrates that this is not necessarily true. The Illinois Children’s Mental Health Act calls for a statewide data-reporting system to track the results of periodic social-emotional development screens in kindergarten, 4th and 9th grades. It also calls for report cards on children’s social-emotional development. These records may be available to government officials and special interest groups without parental or child consent.

 Even if the mental illness diagnosis is correct, the prescribed drug may not, in fact, be helpful. A September 2004 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hearing revealed that more than two-thirds of the studies done on the efficacy of antidepressants for children found that prescription drugs were no more effective than placebos. The only positive trials were published by the pharmaceutical industry. That same month, the FDA issued its most severe Black Box Warning for some newer antidepressants found to increase suicidal thoughts and behavior in children.

Underlying all of these problems is the fact that mental health screening plans override parents’ rights to control the care of their children. Despite assurances that both parents and children must provide consent before TeenScreen or similar surveys are administered, schools and TeenScreen officials are not above using underhanded means. Kids have been bribed with movie passes or pizza parties if they participate. Schools sometimes require only “passive” consent from parents, meaning that if parents don’t sign a form explicitly opting their child out of the program, their consent is assumed.

Parents have also been coerced into putting their kids on unsafe psychiatric medications. Patricia Weathers, the Carrolls, Johnstons, and Salazars have all been charged or threatened with child abuse charges for resisting efforts to drug their children. Just recently, Detroit officials seized a mentally handicapped 13-year-old from mother Maryanne Godboldo’s home because Godboldo stopped injecting her child with Risperdal, a psychotic drug notorious for severe side effects including suicidal thoughts and an inability to control motor functions.

Congressman Ron Paul has noted the potential for universal or mandatory mental health screenings to be used for politically motivated purposes. One federally-funded violence prevention program already lists “intolerance” as a mental problem that may lead a child to commit violent acts at school, and there are efforts underway to add a diagnosis of “extreme intolerance” to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. “Because ‘intolerance’ is often a code word for believing in traditional values, children who share their parents’ values could be labeled as having mental problems and a risk of causing violence,” said Paul as he reintroduced his Parental Consent Act before the House of Representatives in August.

First introduced in 2005, Paul’s bill would forbid the use of federal funds to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health screening program. The bill also states that no federal education funds may be paid to any local education agency that uses the refusal of a parent or guardian to consent to mental health screening as a basis of child abuse or neglect.

More than 30,000 people have signed an online petition to stop using TeenScreen in schools. Parents and other concerned citizens should also tell their Members of Congress to support Paul’s bill. They should oppose mental health screening at the school board and state legislature levels, and ask state representatives to pass Pupil Rights legislation to keep students from being subjected to nosy psychological or psychiatric questions without prior, informed, written parental consent. (Wall Street Journal, 8-30-11; blogs.ScientificAmerican. com, 9-2-11; RepublicMagazine.com, 8-31-11; cchrint.org, 8-26-09)

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Doctors Paid Millions To Promote Drugs and Medical Devices

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

InjuryBoard Blog Network – September 29, 2011

AstraZeneca paid one Chicago doctor, Dr. Michael Reinstein nearly half-a-million dollars to promote Seroquel. In return, Dr. Reinstein provided AstraZeneca with a vast customer base.

The Chicago Tribune reportedthat drug companies paid more than $25 million to Illinois doctors to promote and use drugs from the pharmaceutical companies. Nearly 40 physicians got payments and perks exceeding $100,000 between 2009 and early 2011.

Eight drug companies paid more than $220 million to doctors and promotional speakers in 2010 to promote their drugs.

Starting in 2013, all drug and medical device companies must report such information to the federal government which will make these disclosures available to the public.

The most controversial payments involve consulting arrangements and promotional speeches. Drug company officials say they are funding talks that provide much-needed medical education, led by physicians who are experts in their fields. Critics say financial relationship between doctors and drug companies can threaten patient care by influencing physicians to prescribe certain medications whether or not they are the best choice.

Until 2009, drug company payments to doctors and other health professionals were closely held as trade secrets. However, some companies have begun reporting this information in advance of the 2013 requirements and pressure from lawmakers or as a condition of settling federal whistle-blower lawsuits.

ProPublica has created a database called Dollars for Docs identifying amounts paid to doctors for promotion of drugs and medical devices. Dollars for Docs has identified more than $760 million in disclosed marketing payments from only 12 companies between 2009 and the 2nd quarter of 2011.

“[The drug company payments] make it look like physicians are not impartial or are in the service of the drug companies, and can cause patients to wonder if physicians’ recommendations for treatment are being made because it was the best option based on their clinical expertise or because they have a relationship with the company,” [Hastings Center research scholar Josephine] Johnston said. “I don’t think many physicians have taken that risk (of patient distrust) as seriously as they should.”

In 2009, the Chicago Tribune reported on the millions of dollars paid by foreign drug maker AstraZeneca to doctors in order to promote its anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel. AstraZeneca paid one Chicago doctor, Dr. Michael Reinstein nearly half-a-million dollars to promote Seroquel. In return, Dr. Reinstein provided AstraZeneca with a vast customer base.

Dr. Reinstein was traveling the country telling doctors that Seroquel would help patients lose weight while the FDA was warning about Seroquel’s link to weight gain and diabetes. Even Seroquel executives called Dr. Reinstein’s conclusion that patients experienced no adverse side effects “suspect” and “hard to believe”. When faced with the choice of protecting patients or protecting profits, AstraZeneca and Dr. Reinstein chose profits over safety.

Johnson & Johnson’s DePuy Orthopaedics division also paid millions — more than $80 million — to surgeons to promote its artificial hip systems. The US Department of Justice brought charges against four medical device companies – including DePuy – in 2007, claiming the companies were using kickbacks to doctors in promoting their products. However, DePuy kept paying doctors:

  • $48 million to doctors in 2009
  • $33 million from January to September 2010

Some surgeons received more than $1 million in single year.

These payments create a direct conflict of interest between doctor and patient. Drug company sponsored research potentially taints results and doctors create the impression – and sometimes the actual effect – of choosing profits and drug company kickbacks over patient safety.

Read More:

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Claim: J&J Wrongly Marketed Antipsychotic Drug Risperdal to Kids

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

BNET – August 3, 2011
by Jim Edwards
The FDA told Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) in 1997 that its request to market the antipsychotic drug Risperdal for children was “without any justification.” In the following years, J&J’s army of pharmaceutical sales reps made 100,000 sales calls on child and adolescent psychiatrists, justifying this by “qualifying” the docs if they had as few as one adult patient exhibiting signs of schizophrenia, according to a lawsuit.

It was a distinction only a lawyer can love, and now the Massachusetts attorney general is using it against J&J and its Janssen unit, alleging that J&J’s promotion of Risperdal for children was misleading.

J&J had initially asked the FDA to approve the drug for use in children, and the FDA eventually allowed limited use in the over-10s in the 2006 and 2007. But in 1997, without clinical evidence to back its request, the FDA frowned on use of the drug for children. In a latter the J&J, the FDA wrote:

To permit the inclusion of the proposed vague references to the safety and effectiveness in pediatric patients and the nonspecific cautionary advice about how to prescribe Risperdal for the unspecified target indications would serve only to promote the use of this drug in pediatric patients without any justification.

“Promote use of this drug in pediatric patients” is exactly what J&J then did, according to the suit:

From January 1994 through September 2006, Janssen sales representatives directly promoted Risperdal to thousands of child and adolescent psychiatrists and pediatricians even though Risperdal was not approved to treat any pediatric conditions until October 2006.

Doctors were paid $1,000 to attend J&J’s pediatric “advisory board” meetings held at posh resorts, and eventually Risperdal reached a 50 percent share of pediatric antispychotic category, the suit alleges.

Kids grew breasts, docs went to the Four Seasons

This success came at some price to the children receiving the drug, as Risperdal’s side effects include weight gain, diabetes and “galactarhea,” the premature production of breast milk in both boys and girls. One of J&J’s sales reps made this internal sales call note on that issue:

An August 2, 2001 call note (000000244279 ) reports on a sales call with a Braintree doctor: “. . . . She is using Risperdal with great success in kids ala Biederman. She did mention galactarhea so I told her how Biederman is using Dostinex. She is going to get more info on this dopamine agonist. She is going to attend the 4 Seasons event.”

“4 Seasons” is likely a reference to the posh Four Seasons hotel in Boston (its indoor pool is pictured). The Biederman

name is familiar to anyone following the Risperdal saga, of course. Joseph Biederman was the Harvard medical school doctor who was paid by J&J to churn out reams of studies promoting Risperdal in kids. He became infamous when he suggested in a deposition that he was one pay-scale below God.

http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/claim-j-j-wrongly-marketed-antipsychotic-drug-risperdal-to-kids/9344

For more information on Joseph Biederman – http://www.cchrint.org/2011/07/22/pharma-funded-psychiatrists-behind-bogus-child-bi-polar-epidemic-disciplined-for-conflicts-of-interest/

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Ex pharma sales rep Gwen Olsen says Big Pharma only interested in profits, not health

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

Note from CCHR: Both Gwen Olsen, and Mike Adams, founder of NaturalNews.com are CCHR Human Rights Awards recipients.

Natural News – July 12, 2011

Gwen Olsen, an ex-pharmaceutical sales representative, is using her personal experience and insider knowledge to turn the tables on Big Pharma and tell people the disturbing and disheartening truth about the highly corrupt industry: it’s only after the money, not the health of its patients. Gwen, a 2007 Human Rights Award recipient, is a dedicated mental health activist, public speaker, and writer committed to child and mental health advocacy; her specialties include promoting the cessation of America’s over medication of its children and teens. It’s hard to imagine that this same woman was once a successful pharmaceutical sales rep for more than 15 years, working for many of the industry’s big name manufacturers. “We (were) being trained to misinform people,” said Gwen.

Now on a personal, passionate quest to wake up as many people as possible to the deception of the pharmaceutical industry, Gwen’s research emphasizes her concerns about the increasingly prevalent use of prescription drugs and the deadly effects that these drugs can have. “There is no such thing as a safe drug,” said Gwen in a video interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4bY…).

Gwen’s astounding admissions in another video interview on Natural News (http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=29359…) dispels the myth that Big Pharma is in the business of healing or helping cure disease — instead, the industry is out to regulate illness,  manage symptoms, and keep people trapped in a lethal cycle of chemical dependency, says Gwen.

In the video, Gwen explains that drugs — psychiatric drugs in particular — are meant to encourage people to remain customers of the pharmaceutical industry. After all, if Big Pharma intended to help cure disease, they would be putting themselves out of business.

“I don’t want people thinking that I am a conspiracy theorist, because in fact, there is no theory behind what I’m telling you, it’s all provable… what I’m saying is provable is, the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t want to cure people,” said Gwen in the video.

The confessions of a Pharma veteran

The Rx Reformer recently released a book, Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher(http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-D…), which provides considerable insider knowledge of the serious dangers that lie within the game of the pharmaceutical industry and the disinformation that has jeopardized lives. Her book presents many admissions, some deeply personal, of what she discovered and observed throughout her career with Big Pharma, during which she was encouraged to minimize the side effects of the drugs she was selling when speaking to doctors.

Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher is a strikingly candid and much-needed wake-up call about the flawed U.S. health care system, which is — with good reason — currently ranked last among 19 industrialized nations worldwide. You can read more about the book on Gwen’s site: http://www.gwenolsen.com

As Gwen’s book reveals to readers, more than 180,000 people die annually from the effects of legal drugs. “By the time a  drug is approved and it hits the general population, we don’t even know 50% of the side effects involved,” said Gwen. In the same interview, Gwen explains that there is no medical evidence required for psychiatrists who wish to prescribe their patients drugs. This broadens the potential patient population considerably, allowing Big Pharma a lucrative advantage over an increasingly diseased and medicated public.

How the Rx Reformer came into existence

Gwen’s self-proclaimed calling as the “Rx Reformer” evolved not only from extensive personal experiences obtained during the years she spent working for major drug companies, but a shocking event that occurred within her own family.

The health of Gwen’s niece, Megan Blanchard, a bright pre-med student, quickly deteriorated through the onset of drug-induced addiction, withdrawal, mental illness, and depression. This painful suffering resulted in Meg’s unfortunate and tragic suicide, and Gwen quickly realized that her niece was not the first to painfully suffer from the consequences of doctor prescribed pharmaceuticals, nor would she be the last. In her book, Gwen writes: “Compassion is what Meg really needed, not more drugs.”

“There are thousands and thousands of people like that out there — and they need a voice,” said Gwen. “I serve as that voice.”

Gwen’s disillusionment with the industry — her anger at the immense deceit and misinformation she witnessed taking place within the profitable alliance between medical doctors and Big Pharma — led her to get out of pharmaceutical sales and pursue a new vocation: spreading truth.

“I had been used in the game, I literally was the one at the front lines, harming people — unintentionally — but I was responsible, and I carry a burden for that now,” said Gwen.

Gwen has now made it her moral obligation, or what she has labeled her “spiritual calling,” to educate others on what she learned the hard way about the abundance of harmful drugs being given to a credulous population.

Watch a recorded interview with Gwen here: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=29359…

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Bad Side-Effects Ahead For Pharma?

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Forbes – June 30, 2011

by Martin Fridson

In 2006, The New York Review of Books reported that four-year-old Rebecca Riley died of the effects of two prescription drugs—Clonidine and Depakote.

These medications, along with Seroquel, were prescribed for Rebecca after she was diagnosed, at the age of two, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder.  The three drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treatment of ADHD or long-term treatment of bipolar disorder, nor are they approved for children as young as Rebecca.

The New York Review of Books‘ recent two-part article (1)  by Marcia Angell on the treatment of mental illness with psychoactive drugs (those that affect the mental state) addresses an issue that may one day prove very important to investors in pharmaceutical stocks.  (All statistics and quotations herein are drawn from Dr. Angell’s article.)

It is not illegal for a doctor to prescribe a drug off-label, that is, for a non-FDA-approved use, but a drug marketer cannot lawfully encourage a doctor to do so.  The profits in psychoactive drugs, however, make it tempting to flout the law.  In the past four years, AstraZeneca (AZN), Pfizer (PFE), Eli Lilly (LLY), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and Forest Labs (FRX) have all settled federal charges of marketing psychoactive drugs off-label, at a cost running into hundreds of millions.

Seeing that pharmaceutical marketing executives are evidently undeterred by the law, Dr. Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, advocates a prohibition on prescribing psychoactive drugs off-label.

A ban would cut into a major growth area for pharmaceutical companies.

This growth is not a function of a few blockbuster drug discoveries. It parallels an extraordinary rise in the portion of the population, particularly children, diagnosed with mental illness.  For example, if diagnoses mirror the actual incidence of juvenile polar disorder, that affliction grew forty-fold between 1993 and 2004.

Have mental disorders genuinely proliferated that dramatically?  Dr. Angell suggests instead that the surge in certain diagnoses reflects a long-run shift in emphasis from “talk therapy” to medication.  This change just so happens to enable psychiatrists to see more patients and earn higher fees.  Not incidentally, with drugs now regarded as the preferred mode of treatment, the increase in diagnoses is a boon to pharmaceutical manufacturers.  The new generation of psychoactives has displaced cholesterol-reducing medications as the biggest-selling class of drugs in the U.S.

Also benefiting from the present arrangement are low-income families that receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments on the basis of mental disabilities.  To qualify, applicants (children included) generally must be taking psychoactive drugs.  Getting into the program usually also ensures that the family will qualify for Medicaid.  The disbursements can be so substantial that MIT economics professor David Autor describes SSI as “the new welfare.”

The parents and two siblings of Rebecca Riley, the four-year-old who died from the effects of off-label drugs, were all on psychoactive drugs and were receiving about $30,000 a year from SSI.  Dr. Angell links the astonishing rise in diagnoses of certain mental disorders to the huge financial stakes of physicians, pharmaceutical companies and SSI recipients.

I do not want to portray this issue as an imminent or mortal threat to pharmaceutical stocks. If a ban on off-label prescription of psychoactive drugs were proposed in Congress, the companies’ lobbyists probably could stave it off for a long time.  Furthermore, the major pharmaceutical companies have widely diversified product lines, so a setback in the psychoactive category, even though it is a major growth area, would not be a body blow.

Still, this topic is one to keep an eye on for investors who hope to gain an edge by seeing beyond the quarterly EPS data.  Psychoactive drugs have been around since the 1950s, but parents can readily observe that their use with children is far more widespread than it was a generation ago.  If advocates such as Marcia Angell can make a persuasive case that the change is not fully justified on medical grounds, yet poses significant health hazards, is it unrealistic to expect a public opinion backlash some day?

[1] Marcia Angell, “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” The New York Review of Books (June 23, 2011), pp. 20-22 and “The Illusions of Psychiatry” (July 14, 2011), pp. 20-22.  The article is a review of three books on the contemporary practice of psychiatry by Irving Kirsch, Robert Whitaker, and Daniel Carlat.

http://blogs.forbes.com/investor/2011/06/30/bad-side-effects-ahead-for-pharma/

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At annual convention, psychiatrists collaborate on mental disease mongering to boost profits

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Natural News – June 8, 2011

by Monica G. Young

While sipping drinks from coconut shells, psychiatrists from around the world recently met in Honolulu to discuss more ways to capitalize on human behavior and promote drug dependency. The occasion was the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), held in a Hawaiian convention center lined with mental disorder displays and pharmaceutical booths.

“Hot” topics (potential markets for social control and drug pushing) included:

1) Mental health issues during a woman’s reproductive cycle, such as “treating” pregnant women for bipolar – a disorder said to cause unusual shifts in mood and energy levels. In speaking to Medscape News, an APA committee co-chair, Dr. Don Hilty, called this “a really nice-growing area.”

Yet most every woman experiences mood and energy shifts during pregnancy. Despite this, it is not uncommon for pregnant women to be diagnosed as bipolar and prescribed antipsychotics, some of the most powerful drugs on the market. Even the FDA website alerts doctors to “be aware of the effects of antipsychotic medications on newborns when the medications are used during pregnancy.” The site warns of abnormal muscle movements and withdrawal symptoms, and the FDA’s adverse effects reporting program (Medwatch) includes cerebral hemorrhage, heart malformations and death as documented reactions in newborns. Similarly, studies show birth defects and other serious risks for infants whose mothers took antidepressants while pregnant.

2) Childhood disorders were a particularly popular issue at the convention. But they didn’t stop there – prenatal and newborn genetic screening for mental illness has taken on new emphasis in the psychiatric world. “It’s also trying to understand how genetics predict what medications can be used,” stated APA’s Dr. Hilty.

Having already labeled millions of kids “abnormal” and drenched their brains in toxic substances – a multi-billion dollar business – apparently they aren’t satisfied. They aim to brand children as mental patients and destine them for drug-dependency before they’re even born.

The conference even touched upon electroconvulsive shock therapy (ECT) for children – sending electric volts through their heads. That will teach ‘em to shut up and sit still! It will also cause permanent brain damage.

3) ADHD is usually promoted as a childhood disorder but a team of psychiatrists proposed a new definition to make it easier to diagnose (and drug) older teens and adults. They claim people who tend to miss work deadlines and interrupt others deserve this label.

This would surely lead to millions more on daily meds. Who doesn’t know co-workers who miss deadlines or even friends who interrupt you? Not emphasized however is that, per a study published in The Clinical Neuropsychologist, one in four adults seeking an ADHD diagnosis fake it to obtain stimulant drugs.

4) Capitalizing on America’s service men and women was another hot one: diagnosing and drugging the military for post-traumatic distress disorder, depression and anxiety.

Did they mention that 18 U.S. veterans commit suicide daily, largely due to psychiatric drugs? Not likely. As reported by Neev M. Arnell in NaturalNews, “the increasingly high number of deaths among both veterans and active duty soldiers-including suicides, accidental overdose, and lethal drug interactions-have now been linked to the exponential increase in the prescribing of drugs for post traumatic stress disorder, depression and other psychological illnesses.” (http://www.naturalnews.com/032598_v…)

5) Anticipating the “silver tsunami” as the Baby Boomer generation moves into the over-65 bracket, psychiatrists stressed the need for more psychiatric services for the elderly.

Not stressed, if mentioned at all, is the rampant over-use of psychiatric drugs in nursing homes. Elderly patients’ reactions to physical ailments are often squelched with mind-altering drugs. And a recently released government audit shows nearly one in seven elderly nursing home residents are given antipsychotics – nearly all of them dementia patients for whom the drugs can be lethal. Many lawsuits and settlements have revealed that drug companies have falsely promoted these drugs to doctors and nursing homes for years.

6) While not on the “hot” list, another issue that bit was bedbugs. A New York psychiatrist and his colleagues presented a detailed study showing bedbugs can trigger anxiety.

What a remarkable – and potentially profitable – discovery! Gee, with the rise in bedbug infestation in New York City, maybe Bedbug Anxiety should be included in the next edition of the DSM (psychiatry’s diagnostic and billing bible).

Father of psychiatry – the bloodletter

The American Psychiatric Association calls itself “the voice and conscience of modern psychiatry.”

Adorning the convention hall was the APA logo which enshrines Dr. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) as the father of psychiatry. A very influential doctor, teacher and statesman of his time, Rush propagated his theory that Blacks suffered from an inherited disease called “Negritude.” The only evidence of a cure, he said, was the skin turning white. He warned, “whites should not intermarry with them, for this would tend to infect posterity with the ‘disorder.’” Whites, seeking not to be “infected,” used this fabled disease to justify segregation.

Rush was also a chief proponent of bloodletting as a cure-all for mental and physical illnesses. Widespread in America in those days, he made lots of money at it. One of Rush’s students applied his teachings to a patient who complained of a sore throat: nine pints of blood were removed from the man’s body in twenty-four hours and he died. That patient was George Washington, the first President of the United States.

Sources for this article include:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle…

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle…

http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/…

http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/…

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/h…

http://www.jstor.org/pss/985399

http://www.websters-online-dictiona…

http://www.cchr.org/cchr-reports/cr…

About the author:
Monica G. Young is a human rights investigator and educational writer with a purpose to expose the truth about the pharmaceutical and psychiatric industries and safeguard human liberty. She encourages non-drug alternative approaches based on healthy lifestyles and human decency. She supports the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and like-minded groups.

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Children Exploited for Profit Using Fictitious Mental Disorders

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

"For over two decades drug and psychiatric industries have bombarded schools, parents, doctors, the media and government with propaganda that ADHD is a medical condition that must be managed with drugs."

NaturalNews.com— April 7, 2011

By Monica G. Young

We’re ashamed that exploitation of children for profit was once tolerated in America: such as children as young as five shackled to machines while working 16-hour days in factories, or black children auctioned and sold as slaves. Yet future generations will look back on our era too with shame: a time when labeling kids with fictitious mental disorders and hooking them on drugs was a multi-billion dollar business.

About 10 percent of U.S children – over five million – are said to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a mental illness treated with drugs. A recent study blows a wide hole in that myth.

A team of Dutch researchers took 100 unmedicated children diagnosed with ADHD and fed half of them a diet free of processed foods and allergens. The other half served as a control group. Within five weeks, 64 percent of those in the test group saw remarkable changes. “After the diet, they were just normal children with normal behavior,” lead researcher Dr. Lidy Pelsser tells NPR. “They were no longer more easily distracted, they were no more forgetful, there were no more temper-tantrums.”

Dr. Pelsser explains, “ADHD, it’s just a couple of symptoms — it’s not a disease. There is a paradigm shift needed. If a child is diagnosed ADHD, we should say, ‘OK, we have got those symptoms, now let’s start looking for a cause.’… With all children, we should start with diet research. But now we are giving them all drugs, and I think that’s a huge mistake.”

Most ADHD-diagnosed kids are prescribed powerful stimulants which can cause nausea, insomnia, liver damage, heart failure, hallucinations, convulsions, violent behavior, suicidal thoughts and sudden death. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration categorizes these as Schedule II drugs – the same class as cocaine and opium.

For over two decades drug and psychiatric industries have bombarded schools, parents, doctors, the media and government with propaganda that ADHD is a medical condition that must be managed with drugs. But let’s dissect this:

* Pharmaceutical and psychiatric literature, ads and advocates typically claim ADHD kids have brain dysfunctions or brain chemical imbalances and that it’s genetically based, while also stating the cause is unknown and no lab tests can detect it.

Huh? As no lab tests can detect it and its cause is unknown, how can they scientifically link it to brain malfunction, chemical imbalances or genetic influence? They can’t.

* They say a doctor’s diagnosis relies on the child’s response to questions, the family’s description of behavior problems and a school assessment.

Hello? Can you imagine a doctor diagnosing cancer without lab tests? Or diagnosing diabetes and prescribing insulin injections based on a family member’s report? Or putting a boy’s leg in a cast due to a teacher’s assessment? We would call such a doctor a fraud.

* They say symptoms include impulsivity, dashing around, difficulty focusing on one thing, avoiding activities that are boring, squirming and bouncing a lot, talking excessively and finding it difficult to play quietly. And these symptoms must have been present before the age of seven.

Wait a second. When are kids generally the most spontaneous, energetic, rambunctious and have the lowest attention span? Before the age of seven!

* They say that in a child with ADHD, the above symptoms are more pronounced than in other kids the same age. In other words, this isn’t medical science – it’s OPINION. Plus they omit or enormously downplay the factor of diet.

*And here’s the clincher. They say ADHD cannot be cured but its symptoms can be managed with medication.

So there you have it – it’s clearly a marketing scheme to target children and create lifelong customers for the psychiatric drug industry.

Dr. Fred Baughman, neurologist and author who has testified before Congress, says it like this, “They made a list of the most common symptoms of emotional discomfiture of children; those which bother teachers and parents most, and in a stroke that could not be more devoid of science or Hippocratic motive — termed them a ‘disease.’ Twenty five years of research, not deserving of the term ‘research,’ has failed to validate ADD/ADHD as a disease. Tragically – the ‘epidemic’ having grown from 500 thousand in 1985 to between five and seven million today – this remains the state of the ‘science’ of ADHD.”

One of the world’s most influential child psychiatrists and “expert” proponents of ADHD for years has been Harvard’s Dr. Joseph Biederman. He has published hundreds of papers on ADHD and ADHD drug treatment, and is one of the most-cited researchers on the subject. In 2009 a Congressional inquiry revealed that between 2000-2007, Biederman earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers. It appears Dr. Biederman has an acute case of Greed Disorder.

Just as our country has defeated and outlawed child exploitation in the past, psychiatric labeling and drugging of children must too be abolished.

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Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Note from CCHR:  One of the most common misconceptions about psychiatry is that they help patients navigate through life’s problems with conversation or  dialogue.   While that may make for interesting drama on  The Soprano’s —its a far cry from real life psychiatry.   Psychiatrists are drug pushers.   They diagnose and drug, plain and simple.  And they diagnose patients without the aid of any medical tests  for the simple reason, there aren’t any.  Psychiatry as a profession  must maintain that all life’s problems are the result of brain malfunction, otherwise known as the biological model of mental disorders as “disease” in order to maintain their partnership with Big Pharma that garners billions in government funding and convinces the public to take drugs.   And what a brilliant marketing campaign it has been;  the public, legislators, governments and the press have all been convinced that mental disorders are medical conditions, requiring drugs to “treat” them, despite the fact there is not one chemical imbalance or blood test, MRI or X-ray to prove this theory.  Now that, is what billions of dollars spent on lobbyists, pharmaceutical front groups like the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) and paid psychiatric experts can buy you.    However, it also stands to reason that the psychiatric industry cannot really employ or endorse talk therapy, because they would be admitting that life’s problems are not the result of chemically imbalanced or faulty brains,  that people can get better without the use of mind-altering and life-threatening drugs.     So while the article below has some good points, it misses a big one— the psychiatric industry is the one that sold insurance companies, governments and the general public  on the fraudulent “mental disorders are biological/medical conditions” marketing campaign that is the foundation upon which their $82 billion-dollar-a-year drug industry rests.  For more information watch Dr. Niall McLaren, a practicing psychiatrist for 22 years, explaining how psychiatry’s reliance on the biological model of mental disorder as disease and how the facts could unravel the entire profession

Or read Psychiatric Disorders

Talk Therapy Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy

New York Times
by Gardiner Harris, March 5, 2011

DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — Alone with his psychiatrist, the patient confided that his newborn had serious health problems, his distraught wife was screaming at him and he had started drinking again. With his life and second marriage falling apart, the man said he needed help.

But the psychiatrist, Dr. Donald Levin, stopped him and said: “Hold it. I’m not your therapist. I could adjust your medications, but I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Like many of the nation’s 48,000 psychiatrists, Dr. Levin, in large part because of changes in how much insurance will pay, no longer provides talk therapy, the form of psychiatry popularized by Sigmund Freud that dominated the profession for decades. Instead, he prescribes medication, usually after a brief consultation with each patient. So Dr. Levin sent the man away with a referral to a less costly therapist and a personal crisis unexplored and unresolved.

Medicine is rapidly changing in the United States from a cottage industry to one dominated by large hospital groups and corporations, but the new efficiencies can be accompanied by a telling loss of intimacy between doctors and patients. And no specialty has suffered this loss more profoundly than psychiatry.

Trained as a traditional psychiatrist at Michael Reese Hospital, a sprawling Chicago medical center that has since closed, Dr. Levin, 68, first established a private practice in 1972, when talk therapy was in its heyday.

Then, like many psychiatrists, he treated 50 to 60 patients in once- or twice-weekly talk-therapy sessions of 45 minutes each. Now, like many of his peers, he treats 1,200 people in mostly 15-minute visits for prescription adjustments that are sometimes months apart. Then, he knew his patients’ inner lives better than he knew his wife’s; now, he often cannot remember their names. Then, his goal was to help his patients become happy and fulfilled; now, it is just to keep them functional.

Dr. Levin has found the transition difficult. He now resists helping patients to manage their lives better. “I had to train myself not to get too interested in their problems,” he said, “and not to get sidetracked trying to be a semi-therapist.”

Brief consultations have become common in psychiatry, said Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association and the president and chief executive of Sheppard Pratt Health System, Maryland’s largest behavioral health system.

“It’s a practice that’s very reminiscent of primary care,” Dr. Sharfstein said. “They check up on people; they pull out the prescription pad; they order tests.”

With thinning hair, a gray beard and rimless glasses, Dr. Levin looks every bit the psychiatrist pictured for decades in New Yorker cartoons. His office, just above Dog Daze Canine Hair Designs in this suburb of Philadelphia, has matching leather chairs, and African masks and a moose head on the wall. But there is no couch or daybed; Dr. Levin has neither the time nor the space for patients to lie down anymore.

On a recent day, a 50-year-old man visited Dr. Levin to get his prescriptions renewed, an encounter that took about 12 minutes.

Two years ago, the man developed rheumatoid arthritis and became severely depressed. His family doctor prescribed an antidepressant, to no effect. He went on medical leave from his job at an insurance company, withdrew to his basement and rarely ventured out.

“I became like a bear hibernating,” he said.

Missing the Intrigue

He looked for a psychiatrist who would provide talk therapy, write prescriptions if needed and accept his insurance. He found none. He settled on Dr. Levin, who persuaded him to get talk therapy from a psychologist and spent months adjusting a mix of medications that now includes different antidepressants and an antipsychotic. The man eventually returned to work and now goes out to movies and friends’ houses.

The man’s recovery has been gratifying for Dr. Levin, but the brevity of his appointments — like those of all of his patients — leaves him unfulfilled.

“I miss the mystery and intrigue of psychotherapy,” he said. “Now I feel like a good Volkswagen mechanic.”

“I’m good at it,” Dr. Levin went on, “but there’s not a lot to master in medications. It’s like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ where you had Hal the supercomputer juxtaposed with the ape with the bone. I feel like I’m the ape with the bone now.”

The switch from talk therapy to medications has swept psychiatric practices and hospitals, leaving many older psychiatrists feeling unhappy and inadequate. A 2005 government survey found that just 11 percent of psychiatrists provided talk therapy to all patients, a share that had been falling for years and has most likely fallen more since. Psychiatric hospitals that once offered patients months of talk therapy now discharge them within days with only pills.

Recent studies suggest that talk therapy may be as good as or better than drugs in the treatment of depression, but fewer than half of depressed patients now get such therapy compared with the vast majority 20 years ago. Insurance company reimbursement rates and policies that discourage talk therapy are part of the reason. A psychiatrist can earn $150 for three 15-minute medication visits compared with $90 for a 45-minute talk therapy session.

Competition from psychologists and social workers — who unlike psychiatrists do not attend medical school, so they can often afford to charge less — is the reason that talk therapy is priced at a lower rate. There is no evidence that psychiatrists provide higher quality talk therapy than psychologists or social workers.

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