Tag Archives: conflicts of interest

US health agency revises conflict of interest rules

WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) – The U.S. National Institutes of Health revised on Tuesday its 16-year-old conflict of interest rules for medical researchers, lowering the amount of money that constitutes a financial conflict and expanding the required disclosures….Concern about the integrity of research in the United States has grown since 2008, when Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley criticized prominent Harvard University psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman and others for failing to fully disclose payments from drug companies.

Twisted web of lies in Maryanne Godboldo Case: Big Pharma, multiple agencies, judge, DHS all profit from child abduction

There is a good chance you have heard the story of Maryanne Godboldo and how armed government agents broke down her door and attempted to kidnap her 13-year-old daughter Ariana to turn over to CPS because she refused to medicate her with a potentially dangerous and mind-altering anti-psychotic drug Risperdal (http://www.naturalnews.com/032191_C…). Maryanne had been using holistic remedies for her daughter instead, such as dance therapy.

The Detroit mother is now currently going through a criminal and custody trial because of this incident, and a variety of revealing and disturbing information is starting to come out about the involvement of Big Pharma and other parties in the twisted web of lies the case is wrapped in.

The jury presiding over the hearing was convinced to believe that Maryanne’s refusal to give her daughter the controversial drug, supposedly used to “treat” ADHD, represented a form of parental neglect. Thanks to the Voice of Detroit (VOD), it is now coming to light that the New Oakland Child-Adolescent & Family Center – a private facility which reported Maryanne to CPS for taking her daughter off the drug — has paid connections with Big Pharma since at least 2004.

Grassley Wants Website Disclosing Conflicts of Interest—Letter Cites Harvard Psychiatrists Failure To Report Nearly $1 Million

Sen. Chuck Grassley warned the administration not to back off from a proposed rule that would create a website to disclose medical researchers’ conflicts of interest. “I am troubled that taxpayers cannot learn about the outside income of the researchers whom the taxpayers are funding, and this flies in the face of President Obama’s call for more transparency in the government. The public’s business should be public.

Harvard Expert Ties Mental Illness “Epidemic” to Big Pharma’s Agenda

For any mental illness or passing mood swing that may trouble a person, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — better known as the DSM — has a label and a code. Recurring bad dreams? That may be a Nightmare Disorder, or 307.47. Narcolepsy uses the same digits in a different order: 347.00. Fancy feather ticklers? That sounds like Fetishism, or 302.81. Then there’s the ultimate catch-all for vague sadness or uneasiness, General Anxiety Disorder, or 300.02. That’s a label almost everyone can lay claim to.Drug companies are particularly eager to win over faculty psychiatrists at prestigious academic medical centers. Called “key opinion leaders” (KOLs) by the industry, these are the people who through their writing and teaching influence how mental illness will be diagnosed and treated. They also publish much of the clinical research on drugs and, most importantly, largely determine the content of the DSM. In a sense, they are the best sales force the industry could have, and are worth every cent spent on them. Of the 170 contributors to the current version of the DSM (the DSM-IV-TR), almost all of whom would be described as KOLs, ninety-five had financial ties to drug companies, including all of the contributors to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia.

Drug firms paid ‘independent’ experts

Doctors working in state hospitals and community mental health centers began switching patients to the atypical antipsychotics because they were deemed the best treatment by an expert panel convened by the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation.

But a detailed examination of public records documents on file in a whistleblower lawsuit that has been joined by the Texas Attorney General’s Office allege that the experts hired to evaluate the drugs and make recommendations for their usage were also accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from the companies developing and marketing the medications.

It started in the middle 1990s when MHMR contracted with University of Texas and some of its professors to evaluate the medications and develop a set of treatment guidelines.

The program was named the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, or TMAP. The result was step-by-step guidelines for treating major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.