Fox News—The American Psychiatric Association Scam

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is in danger of losing the little credibility it still enjoys.

The organization is chasing medical insurance company reimbursement money by empowering “working groups” to invent whole new diagnoses by committee.

This is bad form for an association of professionals whose life work is supposed to be pursuit of the truth. And it comes at the worst time: When Americans have about had it with ploys to pump up revenues and profit from the public till.

According to sources familiar with the content of the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V—under development by the APA and slated for publication this year—people who are grieving and people who are shy will be labeled with “disorders.” So, too, will some people who rape children or adults. Hoarders—who, heretofore, might have qualified for obsessive-compulsive disorder—may get their own special diagnosis, too.

Lawsuit Claims J&J Hid Drug Studies Showing Risperdal Causes Diabetes to Protect Billions in Sales

Johnson & Johnson hid studies showing its Risperdal anti-psychotic drug caused diabetes to protect billions of dollars in sales, a lawyer said in the first personal-injury claim over the medication to go to trial.

Researchers at J&J’s Janssen unit knew as early as 1999 that a study found Risperdal caused diabetes at a higher rate than a competing drug and failed to hand over the results to regulators probing links between the disease and anti-psychotic medicines, Fletch Trammell, a lawyer for a former Risperdal user, told a New Jersey jury today in opening statements.

“The evidence will show Janssen buried studies for a competitive advantage,” Trammell told jurors in state court in New Brunswick, New Jersey. J&J, the world’s second-largest health-products maker, is based in the city.

The trial of Gary Skala’s claims that his 14 years’ worth of Risperdal use caused his diabetes began two weeks after J&J agreed to pay $158 million to settle Texas officials’ claims that it fraudulently marketed the drug.

4 Creepy Ways Big Pharma Peddles its Drugs

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

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

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

Texas AG suit over the drug Risperdal goes to trial Monday

A routine inquiry a decade ago by an investigator for the Pennsylvania inspector general exposed a pattern in which pharmaceutical companies showered trips, meals and other perks on state officials in positions to influence which drugs would be used to treat patients under Medicaid. The efforts appeared to have been particularly successful in Texas, which has one of the largest Medicaid populations.

In 2004, Allen Jones, a whistle-blower who worked with the Pennsylvania inspector general, filed suit alleging that pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson improperly marketed its antipsychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses while funneling money to members of a state panel charged with recommending drug treatments for those in state health programs.

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

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

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