Friday, November 21, 2008

Don't Go Mental

We all know how screwed up the American health care system is, so bad that a single payer system needs to happen & needs to happen soon. What is also a terrible turn of events & it will be no shock to any person who can feel a pin prick in the foot, is that medical research has become a matter of Big Pharma throwing millions & millions at medical researchers with the hope that most of the money will stick & then the results will be just great for the drug makers. Even as we watch the once honorable discipline of psychiatry become nothing more than a pill monitoring profession, it's far worse than we thought.
An influential psychiatrist who served as the host of public radio’s popular “The Infinite Mind” program earned at least $1.3 million between 2000 and 2007 giving marketing lectures for drug makers, income not mentioned on the program.

The psychiatrist and radio host, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, is the latest in a series of doctors and researchers whose ties to drug makers have been uncovered... Dr. Goodwin, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, is the first media figure investigated.

Dr. Goodwin’s radio programs have often touched on subjects important to the commercial interests of the companies for which he consults. In a program broadcast on Sept. 20, 2005, Dr. Goodwin warned that children with bipolar disorder who are left untreated could suffer brain damage, a controversial view. “But as we’ll be hearing today,” Dr. Goodwin reassured his audience, “modern treatments — mood stabilizers in particular — have been proven both safe and effective in bipolar children.”

That very day, GlaxoSmithKline paid Dr. Goodwin $2,500 to give a promotional lecture for its mood stabilizer drug, Lamictal, at the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla. Indeed, Glaxo paid Dr. Goodwin more than $329,000 that year for promoting Lamictal, records given Congressional investigators show.
& this ethically challenged MD is not the only shrink to really screw with people's mind, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff seems to have trouble with the truth.
In July 2004, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff signed a letter to Emory University administrators, stating that he would not earn more than an annual $10,000 from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the world's second largest pharmaceutical company.

Nevertheless, UK-based GSK reported payments to Nemeroff amounting to $170,000 in 2004.
& then there are the wonderful nick names this loser earned.
He’s “Dr. Bling-Bling”.... An “arrogant academic bully”.... Whether Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff is....“a shill” for pharmaceutical companies, as a former boss described him ....
People struggle like hell to get better in the head, are given loads of different chemicals to try & balance out the brain chemicals, & search for someone to talk with, someone with a relevant education to help them out, as well. Then to read about these people, who really don't have the best interests of the patient foremost in their practice/research is really disheartening. Now instead of working out of a deep depression, people have to worry that the shrink that is monitoring their meds read some of this questionable research & then prescribed that drug. It's another worry a person just doesn't need or deserve.

My emphasis.

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