Beware the ghost(writer)s of medical research

How ghostwriting feeds Big Pharma profits – Big Pharma firms spend twice as much on promotion as on research and development (R&D). But it is worse than that: more and more medical R&D is organized as promotional campaigns to make physicians aware of products. The bulk of the industry’s external funding for research now goes to contract research organizations to produce studies that feed into large numbers of articles submitted to medical journals.

Internal documents from Pfizer, made public in litigation, showed that 85 scientific articles on its antidepressant Zoloft were produced and coordinated by a public relations company. Pfizer itself thus produced a critical mass of the favourable articles placed among the 211 scientific papers on Zoloft in the same period. Internal documents tell similar stories for Merck’s Vioxx, GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil, Astra-Zeneca’s Seroquel, and Wyeth’s hormone-replacement drugs.

Australia’s Outrageous Mental Health Agenda Under Attack from Leading U.S. Psychiatrist

While the United States unfortunately leads the world in labeling its children with mental ‘disorders’ which cannot be scientifically proven to exist as medical conditions, Australia seems determined to take over the [dishonorable] title. And they just might do it. For poised to carry them into the winners circle is none other than psychiatrist and former “Australian of the Year” Patrick McGorry. The scam is called “pre-psychosis risk syndrome” which simply translates as this: Despite the fact there is not one proven scientific or medical test to prove any child has a mental “disorder,” Patrick McGorry maintains he can determine who will develop one. That’s right. He can determine who will develop a mental disorder before they develop a mental disorder that cannot be medically proven to exist. If that sounds a little crazy to you, rest assured, you’re not alone. In fact, the logic is so backwards that McGorry’s plan has come under fire from U.S. psychiatrist Allen Frances, who chaired the committee that produced the psychiatric diagnostic bible of “mental disorders” used the world over, ‘The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV. That is called being attacked from altitude. And from your own profession nonetheless.

US expert slams Patrick McGorry’s psychosis model

PATRICK McGorry’s model of early diagnosis of psychosis, favoured by the federal government and the Coalition in their mental-health policies, has come under attack from a leading US psychiatrist, who warns that predicting psychosis is unreliable and could lead to patients being wrongly medicated.

Allen Frances, who chaired the committee that produced the current diagnostic bible for psychiatry, the DSM-IV, has warned that Professor McGorry’s Early Psychosis Intervention Centres do not have a reliable early diagnosis tool.

Professor Frances, an emeritus professor at Duke University in North Carolina, fears early diagnosis could lead to people without psychosis being put on medications that have serious side-effects, including massive weight gain.

He has also attacked the Gillard government’s plans to spend $222 million expanding Professor McGorry’s EPIC program by another 16 centres as a “vast untried public-health experiment”.

Child victims of the chemical cosh: Boy who killed himself after taking Ritalin

Captured in a family video, Harry Hucknall gives a cheeky grin before whizzing off down the street on his new bike. His father, Darren, will never forget the moment — when Harry was seven — and often watches the scene again and again.

It is a precious memory of Harry who, one Sunday evening in September last year, kissed his mother Jane and older brother, David, goodnight before going upstairs to his bedroom and locking the door. He then hanged himself with a belt from his bunk bed.

He was ten years old.

His father blames Harry’s death on two ‘mind-altering’ drugs that his son had been prescribed by a psychiatrist to cure his boisterous behaviour and low spirits.

Australia’s Reckless Experiment In Early Intervention

Early intervention to prevent psychosis requires first that there be an accurate tool to identify who will later become psychotic and who will not. Unfortunately, no such accurate tool exists. The false positive rate in selecting prepsychosis is at least about 60-70% in the very best of hands and may be as high as 90% in general practice. That’s right, folks, nine misidentified non patients for one accurately identified truly prepsychotic patient. Those are totally unacceptable odds.