CCHR International » senator grassley

Texas Doctors Prescribe $47 Million Worth of Antipsychotic & Anti-Anixety Drugs, Primarily for Kids—One Child Psychiatrist Alone Wrote 27,000 Prescriptions For Xanax

admin — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 17:57:50 +0000

The Star Telegram – Dec 12, 2010

By Darren Barbee

The boy, 20 months old, is a maelstrom of tears and self-abusive behavior. Simply holding him sets off hours of crying, banging of his head or biting himself. His mother used drugs during her pregnancy. Clinical notes recommend he receive potent antipsychotic medication, one for adults suffering bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. — State medical records

With little oversight and apparent carte blanche, a relative handful of Texas physicians wrote $47 million worth of Medicaid prescriptions for powerful antipsychotic and anti-anxiety drugs over the past two years, according to a Star-Telegram analysis.

The top five doctors alone wrote $18 million worth.

Most of the drugs have gone to children and adolescents, although prescribing the drugs to children, such as a toddler, is considered “off-label” — uses not approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Now the state’s Medicaid program is among others under scrutiny, after Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, began investigating the use of mental-health drugs this year. Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, told federal health officials to keep a better watch on top prescribers. His conclusion: Either some physicians have specialized expertise or the number of prescriptions suggests “overutilization or even health care fraud,” according to an October letter sent to the Health and Human Services Department.

Some advocates are concerned that the drugs are unsafe for children, who make up nearly 75 percent of Texas Medicaid’s 3.2 million recipients. In a 16-state study, Texas had the maximum rate of prescribing multiple mental-health drugs to youths in foster care. Although the number of prescriptions had dropped 19 percent by 2007, Texas was still tops, according to the June study.

John Breeding, a psychologist concerned that the drugs may cause permanent neurological and metabolic damage, told the state, “That so many of our very young children, younger than 4 or even 3 years old, are being given these drugs is so very sad and upsetting.”

And some doctors churn out prescriptions for children and others at an alarming rate. Antipsychotic drugs prescribed to children under 6 grew by 20 percent from 2007 to 2009, according to a November report by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

About 1.7 percent of children on Medicaid received antipsychotic drugs in fiscal 2009, state officials said.

Some children are overmedicated: One area doctor routinely prescribes five potent mental-health drugs simultaneously, said one of the state’s top prescribers. He said he tries to scale back the number of drugs the children are on.

Some experts believe that medication has pushed aside talk therapy, which might be effective and reduce medication needs.

“I do think that a lot of people receive medication without any therapy,” said Tami Mark, a researcher with Thomson Reuters in Washington, D.C. “Most of the literature suggests that therapy is effective and can improve the effectiveness of the medication. So it’s better to get both.”

Top prescribers

The child, 31/2, suffers from shaken baby syndrome. When stressed, he pulls at his ventilator hoses and tracheotomy tube so much that his hands must be tied to the bed. He is prescribed antipsychotics because other sedatives could suppress the breathing centers of the brain.

Grassley asked Texas and other states for the top 10 prescribers who billed Medicaid for certain drugs. The Star-Telegram used prescriber numbers to identify the doctors, then sorted and tallied the drugs they were prescribing. Also reviewed was information on other mental-health drugs that have cost taxpayers about $1.3 billion during the past five years.

The analysis and research found:

In the past two years, 72 Medicaid providers wrote 186,992 prescriptions, an average of 2,597 each.

The state’s top prescriber, child psychiatrist G.K. Ravichandran of Houston’s Shamrock Psychiatric clinic wrote 27,000 scripts for the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in the past two years. The next-closest physician wrote 6,300.

Under his license, 44,138 prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs were written, at a cost to Medicaid of $6.4 million.

Ravichandran did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Dr. Fernando Siles, a child psychiatrist in Greenville, is the second most prolific Medicaid prescriber. He sees children from across North Texas, including Tarrant County.

In the past two years, Siles’ medical license was used to write 13,601 antipsychotic prescriptions at a cost of $4.6 million.

Siles, who treats solely Medicaid recipients, some as young as 3, has three nurse practitioners who also write prescriptions under his license, he said.

Many children referred to him are already on multiple antipsychotic drugs, and he tries to cut back, he said. “Fifty percent of the medications I prescribe, I did not start them on the medicine,” he said. “They came from other doctors.”

There may be other physicians who are also prescribing high volumes of antipsychotic drugs but aren’t as easily detected, state officials say.

Some physicians use a clinic to hide the volume of their prescribing, said Stephanie Goodman, spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees Medicaid.

“To be quite honest, we feel like single doctors have started to bill under clinics to maybe hide that, to make it look like it’s not a single doctor prescribing all these,” she said.

State sanctions

The 13-year-old girl suffered depression and post traumatic stress disorder. She cut her arms and stomach. Her stepfather molested her, and then beat her when she refused to have sex. She cannot sleep at night for the nightmares of being locked in a closet. Prescribed an antipsychotic off label, she begins to have fewer flashbacks and nightmares.

Another top prescriber, Dr. Adolphus Lewis of Fort Worth, is a family physician who also treats the elderly. In one year ending in 1994, he wrote 61 prescriptions for one male patient, including enough Vicodin and Valium to pop seven pills a day.

The state medical board accused Lewis of prescribing “medically excessive” numbers of pills to a woman who later died, court documents show. Her death, which was due to respiratory failure, implicated three drugs, including two that Lewis previously prescribed, according to the documents.

Lewis did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

About 40 percent of the 72 top Medicaid prescribers among certain antipsychotic drugs have been disciplined by the state medical board. By comparison, last year the state disciplined less than 1 percent of the state’s 62,521 doctors.

In 2002, the Texas Medical Board restricted Ravichandran’s license for five years for “unprofessional or dishonorable conduct that is likely to deceive or defraud the public or injury the public.” The restriction, which was not related to prescriptions, was lifted within three years.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/12/11/2697798/some-doctors-handing-out-prescriptions.html#tvg#ixzz17uj9SWtQ

« Return to news items

News Feed

Drug Maker Wrote Book Under 2 Doctors’ Names, Documents Say

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:27:39 +0000

Alan F. Schatzberg

Note from CCHR: The two “prominent authors” of this Pharma-funded handbook for diagnosing and drugging patients, are psychiatrists Alan F. Schatzberg and Charles Nemeroff. Schatzberg is the former President of the American Psychiatric Association and owned $6 million equity in drug developer Corcept Therapeutics at the same time that he was principle investigator in an NIH-funded, Stanford-based study of Corcept’s drug mifepristone.

Charles Nemeroff

Charles Nemeroff was Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. Senate investigations revealed Nemeroff failed to disclose at least $1.2 million in Pharma funding including GlaxoSmithKline.

The New York Times
November 29, 2010
by Duff Williams

Two prominent authors of a 1999 book teaching family doctors how to treat psychiatric disorders provided acknowledgment in the preface for an “unrestricted educational grant” from a major pharmaceutical company.

From the book “Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care.”

But the drug maker, then known as SmithKline Beecham, actually had much more involvement than the book described, newly disclosed documents show. The grant paid for a writing company to develop the outline and text for the two named authors, the documents show, and then the writing company said it planned to show three drafts directly to the pharmaceutical company for comments and “sign-off” and page proofs for “final approval.”

“That doesn’t sound unrestricted to me,” Dr. Bernard Lo, a medical ethicist and chairman of an Institute of Medicine group that wrote a 2009 report on conflicts of interest, said after reviewing the documents. “That sounds like they have ultimate control.”

The 269-page book, “Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care,” is so far the first book among publications, namely medical journal articles, that have been criticized in recent years for hidden drug industry influence, colloquially known as ghostwriting.

“To ghostwrite an entire textbook is a new level of chutzpah,” said Dr. David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, after reviewing the documents. “I’ve never heard of that before. It takes your breath away.”

The book has never been in wide circulation and has not been sold for a few years. Guidelines restricting the use of industry money to support medical journal articles or doctors’ research have come into wide acceptance within the last several years, to try to minimize the influence of companies’ marketing on medical practices.

The book’s listed co-authors were Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Miami medical school since 2009 and Emory University before that, and Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg, who was chairman of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine from 1991 until last year.

The letter documenting the relationship between Dr. Nemeroff, a writing company and SmithKline was dated Feb. 4, 1997. It and a “preliminary draft” of the book, dated Feb. 21, 1997, and adding Dr. Schatzberg’s name were released Monday by the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington advocacy group. They were attached to a letter of complaint to Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. In the letter, Danielle Brian, executive director of the project, and Paul Thacker, an investigator, formerly with the staff of Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, also cited other examples of what they termed ghostwriting and asked the N.I.H. for better policing of such practices.

The documents were separately obtained by The New York Times from the Los Angeles law firm of Baum Hedlund, which received them as part of discovery in lawsuits against the drug company, now known as GlaxoSmithKline, involving Paxil. Leemon B. McHenry, a bioethicist with California State University, Northridge, who consults for the law firm, said many similar documents remain sealed. “This is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

Responding to questions by e-mail last week, Dr. Nemeroff and Dr. Schatzberg emphasized the “unrestricted” nature of the grant from the drug maker to develop the book and said they did most of the work. SmithKline “had no involvement in content,” Dr. Schatzberg said, adding, “An unrestricted grant does not give the company any right of sign-off on content and in fact they had no sign-off in content.”

Dr. Nemeroff said he and Dr. Schatzberg “conceptualized this book, wrote the original outline and worked on all of the content.”

But the writing company, Scientific Therapeutics Information of Springfield, N.J., had developed “a complete content outline” for Dr. Nemeroff’s comment, according to the 1997 letter from one of the company’s officials. The company also said it had “begun development of the text.” The writing company did not respond to requests for comment.

Kevin G. Colgan, a spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, said the company’s role in the book was described in its preface. In recent years, he added, the company has tightened its internal guidelines for medical writers.

Ron McMillen, chief executive of American Psychiatric Publishing, which published the book, said he reviewed files on it Monday and found no evidence of influence by the writing company or GlaxoSmithKline. But Mr. McMillen also said he had been unaware of the plan outlined in the two-page letter to Dr. Nemeroff.

“This would show more involvement than we would accept,” he said after reviewing it.

The book sold about 26,000 copies, including 10,000 bought by SmithKline Beecham for American family doctors and 10,000 purchased by the Dutch pharmaceutical company Organon, Mr. McMillen said. The authors together received a 15 percent royalty of the $120,000 sales, or about $18,000, he said.

Since there are about 100,000 family physicians in the United States, the book reached only a small percentage of them and has probably declined in usage since 1999. Dr. Howard A. Brody, an author, blogger and professor of family medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, speculated that family doctors may have had some resistance to a book from a psychiatric press.

Mr. McMillen said the book was co-published with the American Medical Association. He said it was distributed until a few years ago.

Dr. Nemeroff said the book was written to fill an unmet need in educating family doctors and primary care physicians on how to provide adequate treatment for people with mental illness. “Remarkably, the book remains quite accurate and relevant to clinical practice today,” he said.

Dr. Nemeroff said he and Dr. Schatzberg “scrutinized every page and rewrote and edited as we deemed necessary,” keeping control of the final draft.

Dr. Schatzberg said he had not seen the 1997 letter to Dr. Nemeroff. He termed it “a theoretical proposal that bears little, if any relationship to what actually happened.”

Dr. Lo, who is a professor of medicine and director of the medical ethics program at the University of California, San Francisco, said that medical textbooks and handbooks should make it clear — as peer-reviewed journals now do — whose idea it was, who wrote the first draft, and who edited. Dr. Lo and other experts said ghostwriting has receded in recent years with tougher journal standards.

Dr. Nemeroff and Dr. Schatzberg have been listed on other titles, including co-editors of the Textbook of Psychopharmacology, a book for psychiatrists and medical students, whose third edition appeared in 2003. In 2008, Emory University imposed a two-year ban on Dr. Nemeroff receiving N.I.H. grants after a Senate inquiry found that he had failed to disclose at least $1.2 million in industry financing over seven years from pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline.

« Return to news items

News Feed

South Carolina Doctors Under Fraud Investigation After Writing Thousands of Antipsychotic & Painkiller Prescriptions

admin — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:32:34 +0000

The State, November 22, 2010

By Renee Dudley

CHARLESTON — An influential U.S. senator is checking up on South Carolina doctors who have billed millions of dollars in prescriptions to the financially struggling, taxpayer-funded Medicaid program.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, requested data from each state this year listing which doctors write the most prescriptions for eight common drugs covered by Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor. The reports were intended to “ensure that taxpayer dollars are appropriately spent,” Grassley wrote in a letter to state officials.

The Palmetto State’s report, released to The (Charleston) Post and Courier, identifies a handful of doctors who have written thousands of prescriptions for painkillers and anti-psychotics over the past two years. While many of the claims are legitimate, state Department of Health and Human Services officials confirmed this week that some doctors on the list are under investigation for fraud.

8 common drugs in report

The report detailed the top prescribers of the following drugs:

Abilify

Geodon

Oxycontin

Risperdal

Roxicodone

Seroquel

Xanax

Zyprexa

Kathleen Snider, the state agency’s compliance chief, declined to say which doctors are under review because their cases are open. State health departments are responsible for monitoring Medicaid prescription rates and billing irregularities.

Among the doctors getting the most reimbursements were a Columbia psychiatrist who wrote about 3,900 prescriptions for the drugs in question in 2008 and 2009. The doctor billed about $1.3 million to Medicaid, according to a Post and Courier review of the data.

A family doctor in Summerville billed about $635,000 for writing nearly 2,400 prescriptions for antipsychotics and painkillers during that time.

A psychiatrist with an Augusta address wrote more than 1,300 prescriptions, billing nearly $720,000 over the two years.

A Sumter family doctor billed more than $500,000 for writing about 860 prescriptions.

Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid, requested the state reports after discovering a Florida provider wrote 96,685 prescriptions for mental health drugs in a 21-month period.

Although the report shows no Palmetto State doctors approached that figure, Grassley took South Carolina’s data into consideration when he wrote to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius last month. His letter detailed states’ findings and encouraged the federal department to “step up efforts to monitor providers that are outliers” in both the Medicaid and Medicare systems.

A spokeswoman for Grassley said Friday Sebelius has not yet responded.

The states’ data does not indicate illegal activity, but shows that “there are very often providers that prescribe certain drugs at significantly higher rates than their peers,” Grassley wrote in his letter.

He continued, “This may be because a particular physician has a specific expertise or patient population, but it might also suggest overutilization or even health care fraud.”

Grassley also noted that the top prescriber for a particular drug often writes several times more prescriptions than the 10th highest prescriber. This was the case for several of South Carolina’s lists.

For example, a Greenville area neurologist wrote 100 prescriptions for Oxycontin in 2009 — 10 times more prescriptions that the No. 10 prescriber on the list.

The No. 1 prescriber of Xanax, a Greenville psychiatrist, wrote 1,073 prescriptions in 2009, while the number 10 prescriber wrote 63, according to the data.

Snider, of the S.C. Department of Health and Human Services, said over the past several years, the state has enacted data-mining surveillance systems to target Medicaid doctors who over-prescribe drugs.

While prescription drug abuse strains the system, Snider said other examples of fraud — billing for duplicate tests, extra hours or phantom patients — cause even more wasteful payouts because they can be harder to detect.

« Return to news items

News Feed

In Indiana, Psychiatrists Once Again Top the List of Top Drug Prescribers Under Medicaid/Medicare

admin — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 23:33:16 +0000

IndyStar.com

by John Russell

Indiana doctors who write thousands of prescriptions a year for drugs covered by publicly funded Medicaid and Medicare programs are coming under federal scrutiny.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa has launched an investigation into doctors here and around the country who are top prescribers for drugs billed to the federal program, citing concerns that expensive medications are being overprescribed. Several states, including Indiana, have already responded with lists of top prescribers.

Grassley said that some physicians are writing tens of thousands of prescriptions for costly drugs. He cited a doctor in Florida who wrote 96,685 prescriptions for mental health drugs in a 21-month period.

No Indiana doctor came close to that amount, according to a list sent to Grassley’s office by the Indiana Family & Social Services Administration. The agency compiled a list of top prescribers overall in 2008 and top prescribers for certain psychiatric medications in 2008 and 2009, including Zyprexa, Geodon, Risperdal and Abilify.

According to the list, the top overall prescriber in Indiana is Dr. Daniel Kinsey, a psychiatrist in Goshen. He wrote 2,894 prescriptions in 2008, which resulted in $791,289 in medication charges to the state.

The next highest was Dr. Melinda Weekly, a psychiatrist in Bloomington, who wrote 2,456 prescriptions in 2008, resulting in charges to Indiana of $1.16 million.

Other states have also compiled lists. In Texas, one doctor authorized 13,596 prescriptions for anxiety drug Xanax in 2008, and increased it to 14,170, according to a letter Grassley recently sent to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In Connecticut, one doctor ranked consistently as the top prescription writer across a full range of pharmaceuticals, Grassley said, writing 5,945 prescriptions in 2008 and 7,459 in 2009 for seven medications.

“I want to be clear that none of the information provided suggests any illegal or wrongful behavior,” Grassley wrote. “It merely demonstrates that across pharmaceutical brands and categories, as well as across states, there are very often providers that prescribe certain drugs at significantly higher rates than their peers.”

He continued: “This may be because a particular physician has a specific expertise or patient population, but it might also suggest overutilization or even health care fraud.”

Grassley, who is a top member of the Senate Finance Committee, urged federal authorities to look into the matter.

“The trend is found again and again across the states, suggesting that top prescribers stand out not only against other providers in their state, but against the very top prescribers in those states,” he said.

« Return to news items

News Feed

Doctor Who Criticizes Senators For “Attacking” Pharma in Washington Times Article Failed to Mention He’s Served Prison Time for Fraud

cchrint — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:13:45 +0000

By Allen Jones
Former Investigator,
Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General

On March 4, 2010, The Washington Times posted a scathing op-ed by Dr. Gilbert Ross in which Ross slammed Senator Grassley, Senator Baucus and FDA Whistleblower David Graham. In a rambling tirade Ross accuses the trio of tinkering with the practice of medicine by unfairly criticizing pharmaceutical companies and defends GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and their discredited drug Avandia.

Ross fails to disclose that he has a personal reason for being angry with the Federal Government. In June of 1993, Ross was found guilty in Federal Court of 13 counts of fraud in a scheme to operate medical clinics for the purpose of obtaining payments directly and indirectly from the Medicaid system. He served 2 years in Federal Prison. http://w3.health.state.ny.us/opmc/factions.nsf/0522fed2dd2160ff852568c0004e894a/85b1e5abf211b2a585256a4a0047eb10/$FILE/ATTH2LGV/lc116347.pdf

Ross is identified as “medical director of the American Council on Science and Health,” but Ross discloses no financial ties to GSK. The ACSH website however acknowledges that 40% of ACSH’s budget comes from “corporations.” Does this include Pharma funding? http://www.acsh.org/about/pageID.85/default.asp

It is disgraceful that The Washington Times would post Ross’ criticism of great men and their worthy cause without disclosing very relevant facts relating to Ross’ credibility.

Allen Jones worked as an investigator in the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and gained widespread national and international attention as a whistleblower after uncovering pharmaceutical industry payments to government officials for the purpose of implementing a national mental health screening/psychotropic drug treatment plan based on the controversial Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP). In May 2004, the British Medical Journal reported Jones had uncovered evidence major drug companies sought to influence government officials.

« Return to news items

News Feed

How Vested Interests Created the Perfect Marketing/Lobbying Machine: Mental Health “Advocacy” Groups—Funded by Pharma

admin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:21:00 +0000

by CCHR International

An ongoing U.S. Senate investigation headed by Senator Charles Grassley has sought disclosure of pharmaceutical funding paid to researchers, physicians, medical schools and medical journals. Some of the nation’s most prominent psychiatrists have now been exposed for extensive conflicts of interest amounting to millions in undisclosed pharmaceutical funding, including Dr. Charles Nemeroff, Dr. Joseph Biederman, Dr. Melissa DelBello, Dr. Timothy Wilens, Dr. Thomas Spencer, Dr. Alan Schatzberg, Dr. Martin Keller, Dr. A. John Rush, Dr. Karen Wagner, Dr. Jeffrey Bostic and Dr. Frederick Goodwin — many of which serve as advisory board members to mental illness “advocacy groups” which are now also the subject of the Senate investigation for their undisclosed pharmaceutical funding.

The majority of the public may or may not be familiar with these so-called mental health advocacy organizations, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) or the myriad of bipolar, depression or ADHD “support groups” that are inundating the internet.

But they need to be.

These are groups operating under the guise of advocates for the “mentally ill,” which in reality are heavily funded pharmaceutical front groups – lobbying and working on state and federal laws which effect the entire nation — from our elderly in nursing homes to our military, pregnant women, nursing mothers and school children. Presenting themselves as patient advocacy groups is highly disingenuous not only to their membership, many of which may have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a family member with mental problems, but to legislators, the press and the American public — for they have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent.

Certainly any organization claiming to be for the rights of patients diagnosed mentally ill would have as their primary goal, full informed consent in the field of mental health – including full and complete disclosure of all drug risks, the right to refuse treatment, the right to know that psychiatric diagnoses are not medical conditions (evident by the fact there is not one confirmatory medical/scientific test). Above all such groups would provide patients with an abundance of information on non-harmful, non- drug, medical solutions and options considering the dangerous and well documented risks of psychiatric drugs by international drug regulatory agencies.

These groups do not.

A patients rights group for the mentally ill would never endorse something as absurd and obviously dangerous as giving electroshock to pregnant women, nor condone schools being able to require children to take a psychiatric drug as a condition of attending school. Furthermore, they would never be opposed to the FDA actually doing its job and finally issuing long overdue warnings that antidepressants can cause children to commit suicide, or issue warnings that ADHD drugs have serious and even deadly side effects. Yet these are just some of the actions condoned and promoted by these so-called patients rights groups.

As another example take the federally proposed bill, The Mothers Act; a previous version of this bill called on using a method of “screening” pregnant women and new mothers called EPDS, a screening method documented to triple the number of women diagnosed with Postpartum depression, according to a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology. The Scandinavian Journal of Public Health stated that EPDS screening was unethical and should not be used. None of the so called advocacy groups for the mentally ill had any objections to this bill whatsoever, or endorsing such an unethical screening tool. They supported it. The bill would have passed with no objections from them whatsoever, if not for the dedication of real advocacy groups with no vested interests (ties to Pharma) opposing language in this bill that would have led to women being falsely diagnosed and put on dangerous psychiatric drugs to “treat” them, unnecessarily placing new mothers and their infants at great risk.

To put it simply, these groups are not what they appear to be. Yet their influence over legislation, lobbying, drug regulation (or lack thereof), and public relations campaigns is substantial and effects the entire nation. For they claim to be the voice of the “mentally ill.” But are they? Or are they the result of a brilliant marketing/lobbying campaign designed to benefit the industry that funds them—the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry.

To find out how it all started click here: http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/

« Return to news items

News Feed

U.S. Sen Grassley-Demanding transparency for Pharma funds paid to doctors, researchers, patient ‘advocacy’ groups

cchrint — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:57:31 +0000

IowaPolitics.com
November 19, 2009

WASHINGTON — Senator Chuck Grassley has asked leading medical schools to describe their policies on ghostwriting as part of his continuing effort to shed light on financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and medical professionals.

“I’m interested in transparency, and academic institutions play an important role in establishing adequate and meaningful disclosure. Letting the sun shine in and making information public is basic to building people’s confidence in medical research and the practice of medicine,” Grassley said.

Last July, Grassley wrote to eight leading medical journals to ask the same kinds of questions he’s presented to the medical schools. Prior to that, he asked two major drug companies about allegations that they hired ghostwriters to draft articles promoting company products and seek academics to sign on as primary authors.

Grassley also has conducted oversight and sought disclosure with physicians, continuing medical education and the patient advocacy community. He has worked to expose cases where there was vast disparity between drug-company payments received and reported by leading medical researchers. The National Institutes of Health is working on new disclosure guidelines for federal grant recipients in response to Grassley’s work.

In January, Grassley and Senator Herb Kohl introduced, for the second time, the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. The legislation would require annual public reporting by drug, device and biologic manufacturers of payments made to physicians nationwide. It was included in the health care reform bill passed in October by the Senate Committee on Finance.

Read entire article: http://www.iowapolitics.com/index.iml?Article=177376

« Return to news items

News Feed

Sen. Grassley’s bill requires disclosure of Pharma $ to doctors, ghost writers & “patient advocacy” groups like NAMI

cchrint — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:41:22 +0000

IowaPolitics.com
October 23, 2009

WASHINGTON — Senator Chuck Grassley is continuing his campaign to establish transparency with the financial relationships between drug companies and medical professionals.

Grassley has conducted oversight and sought disclosure with physicians, especially those involved in influential taxpayer-sponsored medical research; medical journals containing ghostwritten articles; medical colleges; continuing medical education; and the patient advocacy community.

This week, the senator released a letter seeking information from state-level chapters of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The inquiry follows one Grassley made earlier this year asking NAMI and other patient advocacy groups and medical professional societies for information about financial relationships with drug companies and medical device manufacturers. The letter is posted with this news release at http://grassley.senate.gov and http://finance.senate.gov.

“Public trust and public dollars are at stake,” Grassley said. “People rely on medical advice and taxpayers spend billions of dollars on prescription drugs and devices through Medicare and Medicaid. Public confidence could be greatly improved if financial relationships were disclosed. My legislative effort is a common-sense reform that would require the pharmaceutical and device industry to report the money it gives to doctors.”

Read entire article: http://www.iowapolitics.com/index.iml?Article=174518

« Return to news items

News Feed

Grassley’s NAMI Invest Should Include Whistleblower Suit: Claims NAMI promoted off label use of antipsychotics in kids

cchrint — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:58:30 +0000

Jim Edwards
BNET
October 22, 2009

Sen. Charles Grassley is investigating the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the New York Times reports. He might want to look into Pfizer’s $2.3 billion Bextra settlement as one of the suits within it made some juicy claims about how NAMI works.

NAMI is supposed to represent mentally ill people, not drug companies, but executive director Michael Fitzpatrick agrees Big Pharma’s influence over the organization has been excessive. The Times:

“I understand that NAMI gets painted as being in the pockets of pharmaceutical companies, and somehow that all we care about is pharmaceuticals,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said. “It’s simply not true.”

To underline the point, the Times describes this NAMI gala at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington:

Tickets were $300 each. Before a dinner of roasted red bell pepper soup, beef tenderloin and tilapia, Dr. Stephen H. Feinstein, president of the alliance’s board, thanked Bristol-Myers Squibb, the pharmaceutical company.

Read entire article: http://industry.bnet.com/pharma/10004934/grassleys-nami-probe-may-want-to-look-at-pfizer-whistleblower-suit/

« Return to news items

News Feed

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) – A Pharma front group

cchrint — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:37:37 +0000

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) states it is no wonder that the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a group that claims to be an advocacy organization for people with “mental illness,” opposed the black box warnings on antidepressants causing suicide for under 18 year olds in 2004, and black box warnings on ADHD drugs causing heart attack, stroke and sudden death in children in 2006, when you look at their biggest source of funding: Pharma.

Today’s New York Times article, “Drug Makers Are Advocacy Group’s Biggest Donors” states “A majority of the donations made to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one of the nation’s most influential disease advocacy groups, have come from drug makers in recent years, according to Congressional investigators. The alliance, known as NAMI, has long been criticized for coordinating some of its lobbying efforts with drug makers and for pushing legislation that also benefits industry. Last spring, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent letters to the alliance and about a dozen other influential disease and patient advocacy organizations asking about their ties to drug and device makers. The request was part of his investigation into the drug industry’s influence on the practice of medicine.

The mental health alliance, which is hugely influential in many state capitols, has refused for years to disclose specifics of its fund-raising, saying the details were private. But according to investigators in Mr. Grassley’s office and documents obtained by The New York Times, drug makers from 2006 to 2008 contributed nearly $23 million to the alliance, about three-quarters of its donations.”

Read NY Times article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/health/22nami.html?_r=2

CCHR International » senator grassley

Texas Doctors Prescribe $47 Million Worth of Antipsychotic & Anti-Anixety Drugs, Primarily for Kids—One Child Psychiatrist Alone Wrote 27,000 Prescriptions For Xanax

Related Posts

Drug Maker Wrote Book Under 2 Doctors’ Names, Documents Say

Related Posts

South Carolina Doctors Under Fraud Investigation After Writing Thousands of Antipsychotic & Painkiller Prescriptions

Related Posts

In Indiana, Psychiatrists Once Again Top the List of Top Drug Prescribers Under Medicaid/Medicare

Related Posts

Doctor Who Criticizes Senators For “Attacking” Pharma in Washington Times Article Failed to Mention He’s Served Prison Time for Fraud

Related Posts

How Vested Interests Created the Perfect Marketing/Lobbying Machine: Mental Health “Advocacy” Groups—Funded by Pharma

Related Posts

U.S. Sen Grassley-Demanding transparency for Pharma funds paid to doctors, researchers, patient ‘advocacy’ groups

Related Posts

Sen. Grassley’s bill requires disclosure of Pharma $ to doctors, ghost writers & “patient advocacy” groups like NAMI

Related Posts

Grassley’s NAMI Invest Should Include Whistleblower Suit: Claims NAMI promoted off label use of antipsychotics in kids

Related Posts

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) – A Pharma front group

Related Posts