http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=13927
US Senate widens psychiatry/pharma funding probe
15 July 2008
US Senator Charles Grassley has asked the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to provide him with financial records of its links with pharmaceutical companies going back to 2003.
He has requested that the Association’s chief executive, James Scully, provides him with a complete accounting of its revenues, except those from advertising in its journals, for the period by July 24.
For the last three years, Sen Grassley, the ranking (Republican) member of the US Senate Finance Committee and the rest of the panel have been investigating the pharmaceutical industry’s consulting arrangements and funding for continuing medical education (CME). Then, earlier this year, Sen Grassley began a specific investigation into reports that a number of leading psychiatrists - APA president-elect Alan Schatszberg of Stanford University, Joseph Biederman and Timothy Wilens of Harvard and Melissa DelBello of the University of Cincinnati – had failed to disclose payments received from pharmaceutical companies.
In his request to Dr Scully, Sen Grassley says that, based upon reports in the New York Times: “I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of non-profit organizations which purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions. Specifically, it is alleged that pharmaceutical companies give money to non-profits in an attempt to garner favor in ways that increase sales of their products.”
As well as requesting details of the annual amounts of funding received by the APA from pharmaceutical companies since 2003, Sen Grassley asks Dr Scully to explain to him the Association’s policies for accepting industry funding and whether or not it allows companies to place restrictions or provide guidance on howfunding will be spent. Also, he adds: “if the APA allows companies to place restrictions on industry funding, then please explain all restrictions and/or guidance for each transfer of value from a pharmaceutical company since January 2003.”
The APA has reported that the pharmaceutical industry provided 29% of its total $62.5 million revenues in 2006, the most recent year for which data is available. Around 15% of this was accounted for by advertising in its journals and at the Association’s annual meeting, while 8% came from unrestricted funding for research fellowships and conferences and 6% from industry-supported symposia at the annual meeting. After expenses, these activities provided the Association with around $3.7 million in income from the industry that year, it adds.
The APA began conducting a review of its revenues from the pharmaceutical industry back in March, Association president Nada Stotland has said.
- Late last year, Sen Grassley and Democratic Senator Herb Kohl introduced the Physician Payments Sunshine Act that would require drug and device manufacturers to publicly disclose anything of value given to physicians, such as payments, gifts, honoraria or travel above certain amounts. An amended version of the bill has received the support of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PHRMA) and a number of leading drugmakers.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Crooked Academics in Psychiatry and the Universities That Shield Them
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com
FYI
"The chief villains remain our academic institutions and medical leadership.
They have colluded with and have acted as apologists for commercial
scientific fraud. They have tolerated the telling of lies by senior
academics. They have encouraged the prostitution of medicine. They have
allowed abuse of the most fundamental safeguards of science. Most
importantly, they have set terrible examples for our students." See:
http://scientific-misconduct.
The next academic psychiatrist to be caught by Senator Charles Grassley's
floodlight is Martin Keller, MD of Brown University, the lead author of a
fraudulent journal report about the safety and tolerability of Paxil
(Seroxat), in children.
See: Ed Silverman of Pharmalot:
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/
The published report in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry (2001) misrepresented the actual findings of
GlaxoSmithKline's Study 329. The highly skewed report was penned by some of
the leading pillars of U.S. child psychiatry as "co-authors" was
ghostwritten by Scientific Therapeutics Information. [1]
Documents uncovered during Paxil litigation
http://www.pharmalot.com/wp-
Dr. Keller' sworn deposition during Paxil litigation and his explanation of
his working relationship with the ghostwriters is accessible online:
http://www.pharmalot.com/wp-
df
Our colleague in the UK, Dr. Aubrey Blumsohn, puts it bluntly:
"It is hard to say this nicely. Based on the publicly available evidence,
Professor Martin Keller is guilty of gross and obvious scientific deception
and abuse of the scientific process. He has betrayed the trust of our
patients. Brown University have continued to provide Keller with a shield
of University respectability. Since he remains in post, we can only guess
the level of scientific deception that Brown administration deem to be
acceptable.
http://scientific-misconduct.
See Dr. Blumsohn's letter to Brown University's new dean, Edward J. Wing:
http://scientific-misconduct.
egrity-at.html
The sordid story of fraud involving Dr. Keller et al-GSK-Paxil--Scientific
Information--is laid out in Alison Bass' book, Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a
Whistleblower, and A Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial.
The New England Journal of Medicine:
"Alison Bass has put on trial in her book far more than just a bestselling
antidepressant--she has used the case of Paxil to expose the unsavory and
self-serving relationships among members of the pharmaceutical industry,
psychiatrists, and members of the FDA. And she does it in a book that has
the brio of a crime thriller...." -
Reference
1. KELLER, MARTIN B. M.D.; RYAN, NEAL D. M.D.; STROBER, MICHAEL PH.D.;
KLEIN, RACHEL G. PH.D.; KUTCHER, STAN P. M.D.; BIRMAHER, BORIS M.D.; HAGINO,
OWEN R. M.D.; KOPLEWICZ, HAROLD M.D.; CARLSON, GABRIELLE A. M.D.; CLARKE,
GREGORY N. PH.D.; EMSLIE, GRAHAM J. M.D.; FEINBERG, DAVID M.D.; GELLER,
BARBARA M.D.; KUSUMAKAR, VIVEK M.D.; PAPATHEODOROU, GEORGE M.D.; SACK,
WILLIAM H. M.D.; SWEENEY, MICHAEL PH.D.; WAGNER, KAREN DINEEN M.D., PH.D.;
WELLER, ELIZABETH B. M.D.; WINTERS, NANCY C. M.D.; OAKES, ROSEMARY M.S.;
MCCAFFERTY, JAMES P. B.S.
Efficacy of Paroxetine in the Treatment of Adolescent Major Depression: A
Randomized, Controlled Trial. Journal of the American Academy of Child &
Adolescent Psychiatry. 40(7):762-772, July 2001.
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
Monday, July 14, 2008
A FASCIST QUACKERY CALLED PSYCHIATRY, AND INHERENT CORRUPTION IN THE AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION (APA)
by Justice Lover
Here is some more proof of the APA corruption :
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/07/grassley-probes-psychiatrists-over-ties-to-pharma/
July 11th, 2008
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com
Correction!
Please note, the following statement in the Infomail about conflicts of
interest at the American Psychiatric Association was incorrect:
The Times reported that in 2006 "drug industry accounted for about 30
percent of the association's $62.5 million in financing.
Whatever the actual amount, the American Psychiatric Association--in all its
activities is under the influence of psychotropic drug manufacturers.
The influence of Big Pharma affects every facet of the APA: its bloated
diagnostic manual (DSM-IV) whose arbiters have copious financial ties to
industry; its practice guidelines invariably favor expensive patented drugs;
indeed, in its journal publications and at promotional meetings masquerading
as "continuing education."
The APA Foundation is predominantly funded by drug companies:
http://www.psychfoundation.org/pubs/SpringSummer2007.pdf
In addition, the APA encourages members to seek industry fellowships:
"Research Fellowships - Provides information about numerous programs
designed to support residents, postresidency research fellows, and junior
faculty. Trainees currently at the residency level with an interest in
starting a research career should visit the Janssen Resident Research
Scholars Program site. Current psychiatry residents that are in their last
year of training and are seeking a research fellowship might be interested
in reading about the AstraZeneca, Lilly, and Wyeth awards."
http://www.psych.org/MainMenu/Research/ResearchTrainingandFunding.aspx
Through its industry-influenced research agenda, its journals and
industry-funded CME courses the APA has promoted neurotoxic drugs and drug
cocktails for unapproved, off-label uses catapulting these drugs into
mega-profitable blockbusters. Such off-label promotion by industry is
illegal--the APA earns its millions from the industry by filling that
promotional gap.
The APA bears major responsibility for promoting the new, highly toxic
neuroleptics (a.k.a. atypical antipsychotics) which have become blockbuster
best sellers--even as their life-threatening effects undermine patients'
health. The truth about these drugs has been established and reported--but
the American psychiatric establishment continues to ignore these drugs'
debilitating effects.
Writing in the Quarterly Journal of Medicine (Oxford University Press) in
2006, Dr. Bruce Charlton placed the responsibility squarely on prescribing
physicians:
"Neuroleptics have achieved their powerful therapeutic effects at too great
a cost, and a cost which is intrinsic to their effect. The cost has been
many millions of formerly-psychotic patients who are socially docile but
emotionally blunted, demotivated, chronically neuroleptic-dependent, and
suffering significantly increased mortality rates. Consequently, as a matter
of some urgency, neuroleptic prescriptions should be curtailed to the point
that they are used only as a last resort." [1]
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/6/417
Indeed, the findings of a study presented at the 2007 APA Annual meeting
(below) confirm that "Despite potential health consequences, the metabolic
status of patients appears to have little bearing on clinicians' choices of
an atypical antipsychotic agent."
Thomas Wise, M.D., chairman of psychiatry at Inova Fairfax Hospital in
Fairfax, Va., who was not involved in the study, acknowledged psychiatry's
dismal failure toward its patients: "The findings are emblematic of the
failure of modern medicine to fully integrate the treatment of the mind with
the treatment of the body. In order to have the proper treatment, one
cannot partition mind from body. In addition to a system that doesn't work,
we have completely partitioned psychiatric care from medical care."
References:
1. B.G. CHARLTON Why are doctors still prescribing neuroleptics? Quarterly
Journal of Medicine, 2006; 99:417-420
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of
Physicians. http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/6/417
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
by Justice Lover
Here is some more proof of the APA corruption :
http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/07/grassley-probes-psychiatrists-over-ties-to-pharma/
Grassley Probes Psychiatrists Over Ties To Pharma
by Ed Silverman //July 11th, 2008
The investigation by the Senate Finance Committee, where Chuck Grassley is the ranking Republican, into the ties between drugmakers and medicine is expanding. After targeting grants issued to academic psychiatrists, Grassley now wants the American Psychiatric Association to open its books for a look-see at pharma funding.
Psychiatrists, of course, prescribe antidepressants and antipsychotics, both of which have stirred controversy. And psychiatrists have frequently shown up at the top of lists of doctors receiving pharma money. This week, for instance, Vermont’s Attorney General released its annual report showing that, of the top 100 recipients, psychiatrists received the highest level of payments, and 11 psychiatrists received a total of about $626,000, or approximately 20 percent of the total value of payments. The average amount received by psychiatrists was nearly $57,000.
Not coincidentally, the Senate committee’s conflicts-of-interest probe into oversight of grants issued by drugmakers and the NIH has focused on three psychiatrists - Harvard University’s Joe Biederman, Stanford University’s Alan Schatzberg and the University of Cincinnati’s Melissa DelBello.
==========================
The following message was emailed to me today :
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com
Correction!
Please note, the following statement in the Infomail about conflicts of
interest at the American Psychiatric Association was incorrect:
The Times reported that in 2006 "drug industry accounted for about 30
percent of the association's $62.5 million in financing.
Whatever the actual amount, the American Psychiatric Association--in all its
activities is under the influence of psychotropic drug manufacturers.
The influence of Big Pharma affects every facet of the APA: its bloated
diagnostic manual (DSM-IV) whose arbiters have copious financial ties to
industry; its practice guidelines invariably favor expensive patented drugs;
indeed, in its journal publications and at promotional meetings masquerading
as "continuing education."
The APA Foundation is predominantly funded by drug companies:
http://www.psychfoundation.
In addition, the APA encourages members to seek industry fellowships:
"Research Fellowships - Provides information about numerous programs
designed to support residents, postresidency research fellows, and junior
faculty. Trainees currently at the residency level with an interest in
starting a research career should visit the Janssen Resident Research
Scholars Program site. Current psychiatry residents that are in their last
year of training and are seeking a research fellowship might be interested
in reading about the AstraZeneca, Lilly, and Wyeth awards."
http://www.psych.org/MainMenu/
Through its industry-influenced research agenda, its journals and
industry-funded CME courses the APA has promoted neurotoxic drugs and drug
cocktails for unapproved, off-label uses catapulting these drugs into
mega-profitable blockbusters. Such off-label promotion by industry is
illegal--the APA earns its millions from the industry by filling that
promotional gap.
The APA bears major responsibility for promoting the new, highly toxic
neuroleptics (a.k.a. atypical antipsychotics) which have become blockbuster
best sellers--even as their life-threatening effects undermine patients'
health. The truth about these drugs has been established and reported--but
the American psychiatric establishment continues to ignore these drugs'
debilitating effects.
Writing in the Quarterly Journal of Medicine (Oxford University Press) in
2006, Dr. Bruce Charlton placed the responsibility squarely on prescribing
physicians:
"Neuroleptics have achieved their powerful therapeutic effects at too great
a cost, and a cost which is intrinsic to their effect. The cost has been
many millions of formerly-psychotic patients who are socially docile but
emotionally blunted, demotivated, chronically neuroleptic-dependent, and
suffering significantly increased mortality rates. Consequently, as a matter
of some urgency, neuroleptic prescriptions should be curtailed to the point
that they are used only as a last resort." [1]
http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.
Indeed, the findings of a study presented at the 2007 APA Annual meeting
(below) confirm that "Despite potential health consequences, the metabolic
status of patients appears to have little bearing on clinicians' choices of
an atypical antipsychotic agent."
Thomas Wise, M.D., chairman of psychiatry at Inova Fairfax Hospital in
Fairfax, Va., who was not involved in the study, acknowledged psychiatry's
dismal failure toward its patients: "The findings are emblematic of the
failure of modern medicine to fully integrate the treatment of the mind with
the treatment of the body. In order to have the proper treatment, one
cannot partition mind from body. In addition to a system that doesn't work,
we have completely partitioned psychiatric care from medical care."
References:
1. B.G. CHARLTON Why are doctors still prescribing neuroleptics? Quarterly
Journal of Medicine, 2006; 99:417-420
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association of
Physicians. http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
Saturday, July 12, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/12/IN7G11L6TL.DTL
ARE OUR LEADING PEDIATRICIANS DRUG INDUSTRY SHILLS ?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Most parents have never heard of him, but Joseph Biederman of Harvard may be the United States' most influential doctor when it comes to determining whether their children are normal or mentally ill.
In 1996, for example, Biederman suggested that drugs like Ritalin might serve 10 percent of American kids for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. By 2004, one in nine 11-year-old boys was taking the drug. Biederman and his team also are more responsible than anyone for a child bipolar epidemic sweeping America (and no other country) that has 2-year-olds on three or four psychiatric drugs.
The science of children's psychiatric medications is so primitive and Biederman's influence so great that when he merely mentions a drug during a presentation, tens of thousands of children within a year or two will end up taking that drug, or combination of drugs. This happens in the absence of a drug trial of any kind - instead, the decision is based upon word of mouth among the 7,000 child psychiatrists in America.
That's why Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley's recent revelation that Biederman did not declare $1.6 million in drug company consulting fees is so important, scary and tragic. If true, this scandal is yet one more stake in the heart of American academic medicine's credibility with frontline doctors like me - and more importantly, with the parents of the patients I deal with every day.
American medicine, with psychiatry the most culpable, has fallen back to a time more than 100 years ago when doctor credibility was tantamount to the promotion of patent medicine. Subsequent reforms severed ties between medical school doctors and the drug industry - and for decades there was a much more ethical balance between the industry and physicians.
Now once again, drug company money is corrupting medical practice and the maintenance of our country's health. In a market economy, both doctors and the companies are motivated by profit. However, doctors' Hippocratic oath and their personal/professional relationships with their patients attenuate the most crass aspects of a fee-for-service system.
In contrast, drug companies owe primary responsibility to their shareholders. Of course these companies must operate within legal business and Food and Drug Administration restraints, but the drive to push such rules to the limit is implicit in any business.
Such a strategy isn't always beneficial when our children's health is affected.
The Fortune 500 drug companies, by their sheer economic clout, have become the single most dominant influence in our health care system. The ambiguities of children's mental health and illness make child psychiatry the most vulnerable branch of medicine open to such influence.
In this climate, drug company research money, professional medical education and direct advertisements to parents tilt families and doctors to biologically brain-based solutions, rather than nondrug (e.g., parenting and education) approaches.
That's why we're seeing famous (or infamous) Newsweek cover boys like Max, a 10-year-old who has taken 38 psychiatric medications in his short, unhappy life.
Research funding must be directed to the needs of patients and their doctors - not to the bottom line of stockholders. Drug companies can still make money, but it's ethically immoral when stockholder profits trump children's health needs (as in the cover-up of negative studies of antidepressants in children).
More money must be directed toward head-to-head competition between existing generics and the new products, and toward more studies comparing nondrug or combination approaches to drug-only interventions for children's problems.
Drug company funding of medical research is not going to end - nor should it entirely stop. Yet a new set of federal rules dictating the transparency and direction of such funding is desperately needed to redress a dangerously corrupt system. It's not enough to simply have doctors more explicitly report their incomes from drug companies, though it is a very useful first step.
I remember about six years ago when I read a major article by the Biederman team on the advantages of a non-Ritalin drug pathway for ADHD. On the same day, much to my dismay, I also heard him give a speech - for a Wall Street audience - promoting a new drug by Eli Lilly called Strattera.
Although Strattera turned out to be a bust both clinically and commercially for ADHD, I was still shaken that such a prominent researcher could be so brazen with his potential conflict of interest appearance.
The $1.6 million that Biederman didn't declare is only a small fraction of the full amount of research funding that his clinic receives from nearly a dozen companies that pay for not only the cost of running studies but also the salaries of the doctors involved. Virtually all doctors who receive drug company money say they are not influenced, but every independent study examining the effects of such money says they are.
The leadership of Harvard's psychiatry department is strangely silent or even defends Biederman. These are good men with solid reputations both in drug and nondrug aspects of treatment. Yet they know that their psychiatry department would not exist were it not for drug company money - considering the withdrawal of federal research dollars over the past 25 years and the meager reimbursements that psychiatrists receive for their services from insurance companies and Medi-Cal.
Sens. Grassley, a Republican, and Herbert Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, have introduced the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which will require more vigorous reporting and enforcement on payments (anything more than $500) received by doctors from drug companies.
But in addition, we need laws to have the federal government, along with the major academic research centers, coordinate and direct the use of drug company money in medical research. This is not pie-in-the sky wishing. Such reform was precisely what the doctors of 100 years ago accomplished in this country.
Lawrence Diller, M.D., practices behavioral-developmental pediatrics in Walnut Creek and is on the clinical faculty of UCSF. He is the author of "The Last Normal Child" (Praeger, 2006).
(Emphasis by justice Lover)
The More It "Changes" the More It is the Same (Racket)
("plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.")
by Justice Lover
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com
FYI
According to The New York Times, Senator Charles Grassley "is demanding that
the American Psychiatric Association give an accounting of its finances."
Last year, drug manufacturers provided the APA with at least $62.5 million.
Sen. Grassley is peeling away psychiatry's layers of deception about the
efficacy and safety of its treatments and its commercially influenced
dubious diagnostic criteria: "I have come to understand that money from the
pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of nonprofit organizations
that purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions."
Indeed, the APA-which publishes and has control over the field's major
journals and standard diagnostic manual, which are over run with drug money
influence - is the voice of psychiatry's establishment. The APA lends
legitimacy to psychiatry's diagnostic and prescribing practices-even when no
scientific evidence supports them.
Comments by former presidents of the APA-- Steven Sharfstein, MD and Paul
Appelbaum, MD-reveal that they are trying to disassociate from industry
influence, not so, the APA.
Dr. Sharfstein, president of Sheppard Pratt Health System, acknowledges:
"With every new revelation, our credibility with patients has been damaged"
Dr. Appelbaum, director of the division of psychiatry, medicine and the law
at Columbia University, is quoted stating: "I think we may be coming to a
point where hospitals and medical schools have to get serious about
sanctioning. You can suspend doctors' privileges, or suspend their right to
treat patients; both have a huge impact on income and career. But if you're
serious about these disclosure policies, you have to be willing to back them
up."
In sharp contrast, the APA confirmed its cynicism and unwavering vote of
confidence in commercially successful psychiatrists-without any regard for
the unseemly means used to achieve that "success." The APA membership
elected as its new president, Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg, chairman of Psychiatry
at Stanford University, who gained notoriety when he expressed his
enthusiastic endorsement for the use of the abortion pill, mifepristone
(better known as RU-486) to treat depression by claiming the drug "may be
the equivalent of shock treatments in a pill without the side effects."
Needless to say, there was no scientific evidence to support such a claim.
There was, however, a very sizable financial interest.
See:
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/06/stanford-schatzberg-and-corcept.html
Dr. Schatzberg's financial conflicts of interest were documented in The
Mercury News by Paul Jacobs (2006). Dr. Schatzberg administers a
$600,000-a-year federal grant from NIMH, part of which pays for ongoing
research at the medical school on mifepristone, in depression. But he is the
"co-founder of Corcept Therapeutics", a publicly traded company that hopes to
turn mifepristone into an approved treatment for depression and other
psychiatric ills. There is no clear boundary between Dr. Schatzberg's
NIMH-supported research and his service to the corporation he founded, and
in which he has a substantial vested interest.
Sen. Grassley's probe is uncovering both individual undisclosed financial
conflicts of interest as well as institutional conflicts. Corcept had an
exclusive license from Stanford for Dr. Schatzberg's discovery. Thus, the
university also stood to profit from the successful marketing of a
controversial abortion pill for depression.
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/286/27/
Notwithstanding Stanford's oft-made claim that its conflict of interest
standards are the most stringent..
http://med.stanford.edu/coi/siip/policy.html
read Stanford's statement in response to Sen. Grassley's letter pointing out
that Dr. Schatzberg only reported to the university that his stock holdings
in Corcept are worth "over $100,000," when, in fact, the psychiatrist's
stake is worth more than $6 million.
Stanford's reply: "$100,000 is the highest dollar category on the form."
See: http://ucomm.stanford.edu/news/062508conflict_of_interest.pdf
Clearly, neither the American Psychiatric Association nor major academic
medical centers take seriously federal and university disclosure
regulations. "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
("plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.")
by Justice Lover
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com
FYI
According to The New York Times, Senator Charles Grassley "is demanding that
the American Psychiatric Association give an accounting of its finances."
Last year, drug manufacturers provided the APA with at least $62.5 million.
Sen. Grassley is peeling away psychiatry's layers of deception about the
efficacy and safety of its treatments and its commercially influenced
dubious diagnostic criteria: "I have come to understand that money from the
pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of nonprofit organizations
that purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions."
Indeed, the APA-which publishes and has control over the field's major
journals and standard diagnostic manual, which are over run with drug money
influence - is the voice of psychiatry's establishment. The APA lends
legitimacy to psychiatry's diagnostic and prescribing practices-even when no
scientific evidence supports them.
Comments by former presidents of the APA-- Steven Sharfstein, MD and Paul
Appelbaum, MD-reveal that they are trying to disassociate from industry
influence, not so, the APA.
Dr. Sharfstein, president of Sheppard Pratt Health System, acknowledges:
"With every new revelation, our credibility with patients has been damaged"
Dr. Appelbaum, director of the division of psychiatry, medicine and the law
at Columbia University, is quoted stating: "I think we may be coming to a
point where hospitals and medical schools have to get serious about
sanctioning. You can suspend doctors' privileges, or suspend their right to
treat patients; both have a huge impact on income and career. But if you're
serious about these disclosure policies, you have to be willing to back them
up."
In sharp contrast, the APA confirmed its cynicism and unwavering vote of
confidence in commercially successful psychiatrists-without any regard for
the unseemly means used to achieve that "success." The APA membership
elected as its new president, Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg, chairman of Psychiatry
at Stanford University, who gained notoriety when he expressed his
enthusiastic endorsement for the use of the abortion pill, mifepristone
(better known as RU-486) to treat depression by claiming the drug "may be
the equivalent of shock treatments in a pill without the side effects."
Needless to say, there was no scientific evidence to support such a claim.
There was, however, a very sizable financial interest.
See:
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/
Dr. Schatzberg's financial conflicts of interest were documented in The
Mercury News by Paul Jacobs (2006). Dr. Schatzberg administers a
$600,000-a-year federal grant from NIMH, part of which pays for ongoing
research at the medical school on mifepristone, in depression. But he is the
"co-founder of Corcept Therapeutics", a publicly traded company that hopes to
turn mifepristone into an approved treatment for depression and other
psychiatric ills. There is no clear boundary between Dr. Schatzberg's
NIMH-supported research and his service to the corporation he founded, and
in which he has a substantial vested interest.
Sen. Grassley's probe is uncovering both individual undisclosed financial
conflicts of interest as well as institutional conflicts. Corcept had an
exclusive license from Stanford for Dr. Schatzberg's discovery. Thus, the
university also stood to profit from the successful marketing of a
controversial abortion pill for depression.
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/
Notwithstanding Stanford's oft-made claim that its conflict of interest
standards are the most stringent..
http://med.stanford.edu/coi/
read Stanford's statement in response to Sen. Grassley's letter pointing out
that Dr. Schatzberg only reported to the university that his stock holdings
in Corcept are worth "over $100,000," when, in fact, the psychiatrist's
stake is worth more than $6 million.
Stanford's reply: "$100,000 is the highest dollar category on the form."
See: http://ucomm.stanford.edu/
Clearly, neither the American Psychiatric Association nor major academic
medical centers take seriously federal and university disclosure
regulations. "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
Friday, July 11, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/washington/12psych.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print
July 12, 2008
Psychiatric Association Faces Senate Scrutiny Over Drug Industry Ties
By BENEDICT CAREY and GARDINER HARRIS
It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides. Psychiatrists would bring to the union their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications, faster.
But now the profession itself is under attack in Congress, accused of allowing this relationship to become too cozy. After a series of stinging investigations of individual doctors’ arrangements with drug makers, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is demanding that the American Psychiatric Association, the field’s premier professional organization, give an accounting of its financing.
The association is the voice of establishment psychiatry, publishing the field’s major journals and its standard diagnostic manual.
“I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of nonprofit organizations that purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions,” Mr. Grassley said Thursday in a letter to the association.
In 2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, the drug industry accounted for about 30 percent of the association’s $62.5 million in financing. About half of that money went to drug advertisements in psychiatric journals and exhibits at the annual meeting, and the other half to sponsor fellowships, conferences and industry symposiums at the annual meeting.
This weekend in Chicago, the psychiatry association’s board will meet behind closed doors, in part to discuss how to respond to the increasingly intense scrutiny and questions about conflicts of interest.
“With every new revelation, our credibility with patients has been damaged, and we have to protect that first and foremost,” said Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, a former president of the association and now president of the Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore. “I think we need to review all arrangements between doctors and industry and be very clear about what constitutes a conflict of interest and what does not.”
One of the doctors named by Mr. Grassley is the association’s president-elect, Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg of Stanford, whose $4.8 million stock holdings in a drug development company raised the senator’s concern. In a telephone interview, Dr. Schatzberg said he had fully complied with Stanford’s rigorous disclosure policies and federal guidelines that pertained to his research.
Blocking or constraining researchers from trying to bring medications to market “will mean less opportunities to help patients with severe illnesses,” Dr. Schatzberg said, adding, “Drugs that are helpful may not be developed by big pharmaceutical companies, for a variety of reasons, and we need some degree of communication between academia and industry” to expand options for patients.
Commercial arrangements are rampant throughout medicine. In the past two decades, drug and device makers have paid tens of thousands of doctors and researchers of all specialties. Worried that this money could taint doctors’ research plans or clinical judgment, government agencies, medical journals and universities have been forced to look more closely at deal details.
In psychiatry, Mr. Grassley has found an orchard of low-hanging fruit. As a group, psychiatrists earn less in base salary than any other specialists, according to a nationwide survey by the Medical Group Management Association. In 2007, median compensation for psychiatrists was $198,653, less than half of the $464,420 earned by diagnostic radiologists and barely more than the $190,547 earned by doctors practicing internal medicine.
But many psychiatrists supplement this income with consulting arrangements with drug makers, traveling the country to give dinner talks about drugs to other doctors for fees generally ranging from $750 to $3,500 per event, for instance.
While data on industry consulting arrangements are sparse, state officials in Vermont reported that in the 2007 fiscal year, drug makers gave more money to psychiatrists than to doctors in any other specialty. Eleven psychiatrists in the state received an average of $56,944 each. Data from Minnesota, among the few other states to collect such information, show a similar trend.
In both states, individual psychiatrists are not top earners, but consulting arrangements are so common that their total tops all others. The worry is that this money may subtly alter psychiatrists’ choices of which drugs to prescribe.
An analysis of Minnesota data by The New York Times last year found that on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none.
The drugs are not approved for most uses in children, who appear to be especially susceptible to the side effects, including rapid weight gain.
Senator Grassley’s investigations have not only detailed how lucrative those arrangements can be but have also shown that some top psychiatrists failed to report all their earnings as required.
After The Times reported on such an arrangement involving Dr. Melissa P. DelBello of the University of Cincinnati, Mr. Grassley asked the university to provide her income disclosure forms and asked AstraZeneca, the maker of the antipsychotic Seroquel, to reveal how much it paid her.
In scientific publications, Dr. DelBello has reported working for eight drug makers and told university officials that from 2005 to 2007 she earned about $100,000 in outside income, according to Mr. Grassley.
But AstraZeneca told Mr. Grassley it paid her more than $238,000 in that period. AstraZeneca sent some of its payments through MSZ Associates, an Ohio corporation Dr. DelBello established for “personal financial purposes.”
The University of Cincinnati agreed to monitor those payments more closely.
In early June, the senator reported to Congress that Dr. Joseph Biederman, a renowned child psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, and a colleague, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, had reported to university officials earning several hundred thousand dollars apiece in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 when in fact they had earned at least $1.6 million each.
Another member of the Harvard group, Dr. Thomas Spencer, reported earning at least $1 million after being pressed by Mr. Grassley’s investigators. The Harvard psychiatrists said they took conflict-of-interest policies seriously and had abided by disclosure rules.
In late June, after Mr. Grassley singled out Dr. Schatzberg, Stanford disputed some of the numbers in the report and has denied that Dr. Schatzberg violated any research rules devised to police such conflicts.
In an interview on Wednesday, Dr. Nada L. Stotland, president of the psychiatric association, said the group had studied Mr. Grassley’s letter and Stanford’s response and agreed with Stanford. Dr. Schatzberg will take over as president of the association as planned, she said.
“The larger issue here is that there’s a revolution going on” in how medicine handles industry money, said Dr. Stotland, a psychiatrist at Rush Medical College in Chicago. “That’s good, that’s what we need, and I believe we’ve been on the cutting edge of that revolution in many ways.”
Dr. Stotland said that the association began reviewing the income it received from pharmaceutical companies last March, to identify potential conflicts. Doctors and academic researchers generally worked at arm’s length from industry until the early 1980s, when Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act. This legislation encouraged closer collaboration between researchers and industry to bring products to market more quickly. The act helped foster the growth of the biotech industry, and soon professors and universities were busy obtaining patents and building relationships with industry.
Some psychiatrists have long argued that consulting with a company — to help design a rigorous drug trial, for instance — benefits patients, as long as the researcher has no financial stake in the product and is not paid to speak about the drug to other doctors, like a traveling pitchman.
Others say industry and academic researchers are now so deeply intertwined that exposing doctors’ private arrangements only stokes suspicion without correcting the real problem: bias.
“Having everyone stand up like a Boy Scout and make a pledge isn’t going to quell suspicion,” said Dr. Donald Klein, an emeritus professor at Columbia, who has consulted with drug makers himself. “The only hope to rule out bias is to have open access to all data that’s produced in studies and know that there are people checking it” who are not on that company’s payroll.
Studies have shown that researchers who are paid by a company are more likely to report positive findings when evaluating that company’s drugs. The private deals can directly affect patient care, said Dr. William Niederhut, a psychiatrist in private practice in Denver who receives no industry money.
Dr. Niederhut said company-sponsored doctors had spread the word that new and expensive drugs were better in treating bipolar disorder than lithium, the cheaper old standby treatment.
“It’s a sales pitch, and now it’s looking like a whole lot of people would have done better if they’d started on lithium in the first place,” Dr. Niederhut said in a telephone interview. “The profession absolutely has to come clean on these industry deals, and soon.”
Tighter rules, stronger statements and more debate may not make much difference, if Mr. Grassley’s findings are any guide. Universities have rules requiring that faculty members disclose their outside income so that conflicts of interest in research or patient care can be managed. But some of the psychiatrists named in the investigations apparently ignored the rules.
“I think we may be coming to a point where hospitals and medical schools have to get serious about sanctioning,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, director of the division of psychiatry, medicine and the law at Columbia. “You can suspend doctors’ privileges, or suspend their right to treat patients; both have a huge impact on income and career. But if you’re serious about these disclosure policies, you have to be willing to back them up.”
(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
July 12, 2008
Psychiatric Association Faces Senate Scrutiny Over Drug Industry Ties
By BENEDICT CAREY and GARDINER HARRIS
It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides. Psychiatrists would bring to the union their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications, faster.
But now the profession itself is under attack in Congress, accused of allowing this relationship to become too cozy. After a series of stinging investigations of individual doctors’ arrangements with drug makers, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is demanding that the American Psychiatric Association, the field’s premier professional organization, give an accounting of its financing.
The association is the voice of establishment psychiatry, publishing the field’s major journals and its standard diagnostic manual.
“I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of nonprofit organizations that purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions,” Mr. Grassley said Thursday in a letter to the association.
In 2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, the drug industry accounted for about 30 percent of the association’s $62.5 million in financing. About half of that money went to drug advertisements in psychiatric journals and exhibits at the annual meeting, and the other half to sponsor fellowships, conferences and industry symposiums at the annual meeting.
This weekend in Chicago, the psychiatry association’s board will meet behind closed doors, in part to discuss how to respond to the increasingly intense scrutiny and questions about conflicts of interest.
“With every new revelation, our credibility with patients has been damaged, and we have to protect that first and foremost,” said Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, a former president of the association and now president of the Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore. “I think we need to review all arrangements between doctors and industry and be very clear about what constitutes a conflict of interest and what does not.”
One of the doctors named by Mr. Grassley is the association’s president-elect, Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg of Stanford, whose $4.8 million stock holdings in a drug development company raised the senator’s concern. In a telephone interview, Dr. Schatzberg said he had fully complied with Stanford’s rigorous disclosure policies and federal guidelines that pertained to his research.
Blocking or constraining researchers from trying to bring medications to market “will mean less opportunities to help patients with severe illnesses,” Dr. Schatzberg said, adding, “Drugs that are helpful may not be developed by big pharmaceutical companies, for a variety of reasons, and we need some degree of communication between academia and industry” to expand options for patients.
Commercial arrangements are rampant throughout medicine. In the past two decades, drug and device makers have paid tens of thousands of doctors and researchers of all specialties. Worried that this money could taint doctors’ research plans or clinical judgment, government agencies, medical journals and universities have been forced to look more closely at deal details.
In psychiatry, Mr. Grassley has found an orchard of low-hanging fruit. As a group, psychiatrists earn less in base salary than any other specialists, according to a nationwide survey by the Medical Group Management Association. In 2007, median compensation for psychiatrists was $198,653, less than half of the $464,420 earned by diagnostic radiologists and barely more than the $190,547 earned by doctors practicing internal medicine.
But many psychiatrists supplement this income with consulting arrangements with drug makers, traveling the country to give dinner talks about drugs to other doctors for fees generally ranging from $750 to $3,500 per event, for instance.
While data on industry consulting arrangements are sparse, state officials in Vermont reported that in the 2007 fiscal year, drug makers gave more money to psychiatrists than to doctors in any other specialty. Eleven psychiatrists in the state received an average of $56,944 each. Data from Minnesota, among the few other states to collect such information, show a similar trend.
In both states, individual psychiatrists are not top earners, but consulting arrangements are so common that their total tops all others. The worry is that this money may subtly alter psychiatrists’ choices of which drugs to prescribe.
An analysis of Minnesota data by The New York Times last year found that on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none.
The drugs are not approved for most uses in children, who appear to be especially susceptible to the side effects, including rapid weight gain.
Senator Grassley’s investigations have not only detailed how lucrative those arrangements can be but have also shown that some top psychiatrists failed to report all their earnings as required.
After The Times reported on such an arrangement involving Dr. Melissa P. DelBello of the University of Cincinnati, Mr. Grassley asked the university to provide her income disclosure forms and asked AstraZeneca, the maker of the antipsychotic Seroquel, to reveal how much it paid her.
In scientific publications, Dr. DelBello has reported working for eight drug makers and told university officials that from 2005 to 2007 she earned about $100,000 in outside income, according to Mr. Grassley.
But AstraZeneca told Mr. Grassley it paid her more than $238,000 in that period. AstraZeneca sent some of its payments through MSZ Associates, an Ohio corporation Dr. DelBello established for “personal financial purposes.”
The University of Cincinnati agreed to monitor those payments more closely.
In early June, the senator reported to Congress that Dr. Joseph Biederman, a renowned child psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, and a colleague, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, had reported to university officials earning several hundred thousand dollars apiece in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 when in fact they had earned at least $1.6 million each.
Another member of the Harvard group, Dr. Thomas Spencer, reported earning at least $1 million after being pressed by Mr. Grassley’s investigators. The Harvard psychiatrists said they took conflict-of-interest policies seriously and had abided by disclosure rules.
In late June, after Mr. Grassley singled out Dr. Schatzberg, Stanford disputed some of the numbers in the report and has denied that Dr. Schatzberg violated any research rules devised to police such conflicts.
In an interview on Wednesday, Dr. Nada L. Stotland, president of the psychiatric association, said the group had studied Mr. Grassley’s letter and Stanford’s response and agreed with Stanford. Dr. Schatzberg will take over as president of the association as planned, she said.
“The larger issue here is that there’s a revolution going on” in how medicine handles industry money, said Dr. Stotland, a psychiatrist at Rush Medical College in Chicago. “That’s good, that’s what we need, and I believe we’ve been on the cutting edge of that revolution in many ways.”
Dr. Stotland said that the association began reviewing the income it received from pharmaceutical companies last March, to identify potential conflicts. Doctors and academic researchers generally worked at arm’s length from industry until the early 1980s, when Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act. This legislation encouraged closer collaboration between researchers and industry to bring products to market more quickly. The act helped foster the growth of the biotech industry, and soon professors and universities were busy obtaining patents and building relationships with industry.
Some psychiatrists have long argued that consulting with a company — to help design a rigorous drug trial, for instance — benefits patients, as long as the researcher has no financial stake in the product and is not paid to speak about the drug to other doctors, like a traveling pitchman.
Others say industry and academic researchers are now so deeply intertwined that exposing doctors’ private arrangements only stokes suspicion without correcting the real problem: bias.
“Having everyone stand up like a Boy Scout and make a pledge isn’t going to quell suspicion,” said Dr. Donald Klein, an emeritus professor at Columbia, who has consulted with drug makers himself. “The only hope to rule out bias is to have open access to all data that’s produced in studies and know that there are people checking it” who are not on that company’s payroll.
Studies have shown that researchers who are paid by a company are more likely to report positive findings when evaluating that company’s drugs. The private deals can directly affect patient care, said Dr. William Niederhut, a psychiatrist in private practice in Denver who receives no industry money.
Dr. Niederhut said company-sponsored doctors had spread the word that new and expensive drugs were better in treating bipolar disorder than lithium, the cheaper old standby treatment.
“It’s a sales pitch, and now it’s looking like a whole lot of people would have done better if they’d started on lithium in the first place,” Dr. Niederhut said in a telephone interview. “The profession absolutely has to come clean on these industry deals, and soon.”
Tighter rules, stronger statements and more debate may not make much difference, if Mr. Grassley’s findings are any guide. Universities have rules requiring that faculty members disclose their outside income so that conflicts of interest in research or patient care can be managed. But some of the psychiatrists named in the investigations apparently ignored the rules.
“I think we may be coming to a point where hospitals and medical schools have to get serious about sanctioning,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, director of the division of psychiatry, medicine and the law at Columbia. “You can suspend doctors’ privileges, or suspend their right to treat patients; both have a huge impact on income and career. But if you’re serious about these disclosure policies, you have to be willing to back them up.”
(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
Thursday, July 10, 2008
UPDATE ON THE ONGOING PSYCHIATRIC TORTURE OF REBECCA MERHAV
by Justice Lover
The following article by Benjamin Merhav, Rebecca's father,was emailed today to the Minister for Mental Health, Victoria :
IS THE CHIEF PSYCHIATRIST OF VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA, NOT ACCOUNTABLE ?
IS HE ABOVE THE LAW ?
Ostensibly these are rhetorical questions, because legally all people employed by the state are accountable, and must obey the law, of course . Yet, in reality the Chief Psychiatrist does what he likes, even in open violation of the Mental Health Act, 1986, and he gets away with it , as we shall see in this article, no matter what could be the disastrous consequences for a particular patient, Rebecca Merhav in this case,with total disregard to her human rights, and no matter what complaints she or her father, on her behalf, have submitted to him or to the Minister for Mental Health against him.
Let us first consider the relevant provisions of the Mental Health Act , 1986 (hereafter the MHA).Despite its many failings there can be little doubt that the legislators of the MHA had the clear intention of protecting patients’ rights while getting for them the best care. Thus, Sec. 4 of the MHA provides amongst others as follows :
“4. (1) The objects of this Act are-
(ac) to protect the rights of people with a mental disorder;
(2) It is the intention of Parliament that the provisions of this Act are to be interpreted and that every function, power, authority, discretion, jurisdiction and duty conferred or imposed by this Act is to be exercised or performed so that-
(a) people with a mental disorder are given the best possible care and treatment appropriate to their needs in the least possible restrictive environment and least possible intrusive manner consistent with the effective giving of that care and treatment; and
(b) in providing for the care and treatment of people with a mental disorder and the protection of members of the public any restriction upon the liberty of patients and other people with a mental disorder and any interference with their rights, privacy, dignity and self-respect are kept to the minimum necessary in the circumstances.”
Similarly, Sec. 6A provides amongst others as follows :
"the following principles be given effect to with respect to the provision of treatment and care to people with a mental disorder-
(b) wherever possible, people with a mental disorder should be treated in the community;
(c) the provision of treatment and care should be designed to assist people with a mental disorder to, wherever possible, live, work and participate in the community;
(d) the provision of treatment and care for people with a mental disorder should promote and assist self reliance;
(e) people with a mental disorder should be provided with appropriate and comprehensive information about their mental disorder, proposed and alternative treatments, including medication, and services available to meet their needs;
(h) the prescription of medication should meet the best health needs of the person with a mental disorder and should be given only for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes and never as a punishment or for the convenience of others;
(j) every effort that is reasonably practicable should be made to involve a person with a mental disorder in the development of an ongoing treatment plan.
Treatment and care of a person with a mental disorder should be based on this plan. The plan should be reviewed regularly and revised as necessary.”
This last demand of consultation by the treating psychiatrist with the patient and his/her trusted parent is even more clearly repeated in Sec. 19A of MHA which provides amongst others as follows :
“19A. (1) The authorised psychiatrist must prepare, review on a regular basis and revise as required, a treatment plan for each patient.
(2) In preparing, reviewing and revising a treatment plan for a patient, the authorised psychiatrist must take into account-
(a) the wishes of the patient, as far as they can be ascertained; and
(b) unless the patient objects, the wishes of any guardian, family member or primary carer who is involved in providing ongoing care or support to the
patient; “
It should be pointed out that the demand by the MHA in Sec. 6A(e) that the patients“should be provided with appropriate and comprehensive information about their mental disorder, proposed and alternative treatments” is repeated in other provisions of the MHA, such as Sec. 8(1)(e) which demands, as a necessary criteria for involuntary treatment, that :“(e) the person cannot receive adequate treatment for the mental illness in a manner less restrictive of his or her freedom of decision and action.”
In brief, the MHA demands an all round protection of the patient, respect for the patient’s opinion and the patient’s fully informed involvement in the treatment. It demands that the patient be returned to the community, encouraged to be self reliant and be independent. Above all the MHA demands that the treating psychiatrist fully inform the patient both on the proposed treatment as well as the alternative treatments available, and only if no such alternative is available should the psychiatrist consider an involuntary treatment.
As for Rebecca Merhav none of the above MHA protection provisions has been available to her for over 30 years of compulsory psychiatric treatment. In open violation of the MHA, she has been tortured by the Antipsychotic drugs (with the risks of brain damage and death as a result) without informing her of the dangers involved; humiliated by the cynical and complete disregard for her basic human rights displayed by the treating psychiatrists and for her own objections ; degraded and stigmatised by all kinds of wrong labels they attached to her; denied her independence and irrationally incarcerated to force on her all kinds experimentations with the most deadly Antipsycotics; and ruined her best years of her life with the horrible prospect of having her life span shortened by 25 years !
The psychiatrists concerned still won’t let go of her, and so her unbearable sufferings continue while her capriciously treating psychiatrist continues to force on her daily the 350mg Clozapine and 75mg Risperdal every 10 days. The latest atrocity in the offing - as Rebecca was recently told by her mother - is to force her to leave her home where she lives as an independent adult, and move to a so called “group home” so as to tighten the psychiatric control over her.
All of which make it impossible to understand why the Chief Psychiatrist says that he had investigated the treatment of Rebecca, following my complaints on her behalf, and found it to be “satisfactory”, and therefore rejected all my complaints on her behalf.Furthermore, he is also happy with the communication ban imposed on me by the treating psychiatrist so as to deprive me of any information and to close any avenue to complain on behalf of my daughter.
The Chief Psychiatrist here in Victoria carries a very heavy responsibility for any wrong treatment which is being dished out by the psychiatrists under his supervision.The MHA does not allow him to get away by saying one word, namely, that he is “satisfied”, thereby reject a long list of very serious complaints, backed by scientific evdence. Doing so is complicity in the atrocities perpetrated against my daughter by the relevant psychiatrists !
Section 105(2)(a) of the MHA states clearly that the Chief Psychiatrist “is responsible for the medical care and welfare of persons receiving treatment or care for a mental illness”. Section 106 gives him special powers to make a thorough investigation based on my complaints on behalf of my daughter.
Section 106AA authorizes him as follows :
"106AA. (1) The chief psychiatrist, by written notice, may direct a psychiatric service-
(a) to discontinue, or alter as specified in the notice, a practice,procedure or treatment observed or carried out by the service;”
Yet, the Chief Psychiatrist has chosen to ignore his duties and authority, and to dismiss offhand - without giving any reasons, and without a point by point reply - all my complaints, adding that the matter is closed now !
Surely, the Minister for Mental Health is the authority to whom to the Chief Psychiatrist is accountable. Surely, the Minister has the power to demand a point by point detailed reply to all my complaints on behalf of my daughter. Surely, the Minister has the power to order him perform a full investigation into the psychiatric atrocities which have been perpetrated against my daughter for over 30 years.
I therefore ask the Minister to do so as early as possible, before a terrible disaster befalls my daughter !
To close this appeal I wish to repeat what I stated many times before, namely, that my complaints on behalf of my daughter do not challenge the psychiatric dogma of mental illness, as they are rather within the confines of psychiatry and within the confines of the law. However, even so, the truth is that the very first diagnosis of my daughter was terribly wrong, because there was absolutely nothing wrong with her when she was first incarcerated at the age of 15 more than 30 years ago. The “treatment”by the Antipsychotic drugs, and her justified attempts to abscond (followed by abrupt termination of the drugs consumption), created the psychotic symptoms for which she is still being forced to get psychiatric “treatment”! Even this is a fact which does not challenge any psychiatric theories !
by Justice Lover
The following article by Benjamin Merhav, Rebecca's father,was emailed today to the Minister for Mental Health, Victoria :
IS THE CHIEF PSYCHIATRIST OF VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA, NOT ACCOUNTABLE ?
IS HE ABOVE THE LAW ?
Ostensibly these are rhetorical questions, because legally all people employed by the state are accountable, and must obey the law, of course . Yet, in reality the Chief Psychiatrist does what he likes, even in open violation of the Mental Health Act, 1986, and he gets away with it , as we shall see in this article, no matter what could be the disastrous consequences for a particular patient, Rebecca Merhav in this case,with total disregard to her human rights, and no matter what complaints she or her father, on her behalf, have submitted to him or to the Minister for Mental Health against him.
Let us first consider the relevant provisions of the Mental Health Act , 1986 (hereafter the MHA).Despite its many failings there can be little doubt that the legislators of the MHA had the clear intention of protecting patients’ rights while getting for them the best care. Thus, Sec. 4 of the MHA provides amongst others as follows :
“4. (1) The objects of this Act are-
(ac) to protect the rights of people with a mental disorder;
(2) It is the intention of Parliament that the provisions of this Act are to be interpreted and that every function, power, authority, discretion, jurisdiction and duty conferred or imposed by this Act is to be exercised or performed so that-
(a) people with a mental disorder are given the best possible care and treatment appropriate to their needs in the least possible restrictive environment and least possible intrusive manner consistent with the effective giving of that care and treatment; and
(b) in providing for the care and treatment of people with a mental disorder and the protection of members of the public any restriction upon the liberty of patients and other people with a mental disorder and any interference with their rights, privacy, dignity and self-respect are kept to the minimum necessary in the circumstances.”
Similarly, Sec. 6A provides amongst others as follows :
"the following principles be given effect to with respect to the provision of treatment and care to people with a mental disorder-
(b) wherever possible, people with a mental disorder should be treated in the community;
(c) the provision of treatment and care should be designed to assist people with a mental disorder to, wherever possible, live, work and participate in the community;
(d) the provision of treatment and care for people with a mental disorder should promote and assist self reliance;
(e) people with a mental disorder should be provided with appropriate and comprehensive information about their mental disorder, proposed and alternative treatments, including medication, and services available to meet their needs;
(h) the prescription of medication should meet the best health needs of the person with a mental disorder and should be given only for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes and never as a punishment or for the convenience of others;
(j) every effort that is reasonably practicable should be made to involve a person with a mental disorder in the development of an ongoing treatment plan.
Treatment and care of a person with a mental disorder should be based on this plan. The plan should be reviewed regularly and revised as necessary.”
This last demand of consultation by the treating psychiatrist with the patient and his/her trusted parent is even more clearly repeated in Sec. 19A of MHA which provides amongst others as follows :
“19A. (1) The authorised psychiatrist must prepare, review on a regular basis and revise as required, a treatment plan for each patient.
(2) In preparing, reviewing and revising a treatment plan for a patient, the authorised psychiatrist must take into account-
(a) the wishes of the patient, as far as they can be ascertained; and
(b) unless the patient objects, the wishes of any guardian, family member or primary carer who is involved in providing ongoing care or support to the
patient; “
It should be pointed out that the demand by the MHA in Sec. 6A(e) that the patients“should be provided with appropriate and comprehensive information about their mental disorder, proposed and alternative treatments” is repeated in other provisions of the MHA, such as Sec. 8(1)(e) which demands, as a necessary criteria for involuntary treatment, that :“(e) the person cannot receive adequate treatment for the mental illness in a manner less restrictive of his or her freedom of decision and action.”
In brief, the MHA demands an all round protection of the patient, respect for the patient’s opinion and the patient’s fully informed involvement in the treatment. It demands that the patient be returned to the community, encouraged to be self reliant and be independent. Above all the MHA demands that the treating psychiatrist fully inform the patient both on the proposed treatment as well as the alternative treatments available, and only if no such alternative is available should the psychiatrist consider an involuntary treatment.
As for Rebecca Merhav none of the above MHA protection provisions has been available to her for over 30 years of compulsory psychiatric treatment. In open violation of the MHA, she has been tortured by the Antipsychotic drugs (with the risks of brain damage and death as a result) without informing her of the dangers involved; humiliated by the cynical and complete disregard for her basic human rights displayed by the treating psychiatrists and for her own objections ; degraded and stigmatised by all kinds of wrong labels they attached to her; denied her independence and irrationally incarcerated to force on her all kinds experimentations with the most deadly Antipsycotics; and ruined her best years of her life with the horrible prospect of having her life span shortened by 25 years !
The psychiatrists concerned still won’t let go of her, and so her unbearable sufferings continue while her capriciously treating psychiatrist continues to force on her daily the 350mg Clozapine and 75mg Risperdal every 10 days. The latest atrocity in the offing - as Rebecca was recently told by her mother - is to force her to leave her home where she lives as an independent adult, and move to a so called “group home” so as to tighten the psychiatric control over her.
All of which make it impossible to understand why the Chief Psychiatrist says that he had investigated the treatment of Rebecca, following my complaints on her behalf, and found it to be “satisfactory”, and therefore rejected all my complaints on her behalf.Furthermore, he is also happy with the communication ban imposed on me by the treating psychiatrist so as to deprive me of any information and to close any avenue to complain on behalf of my daughter.
The Chief Psychiatrist here in Victoria carries a very heavy responsibility for any wrong treatment which is being dished out by the psychiatrists under his supervision.The MHA does not allow him to get away by saying one word, namely, that he is “satisfied”, thereby reject a long list of very serious complaints, backed by scientific evdence. Doing so is complicity in the atrocities perpetrated against my daughter by the relevant psychiatrists !
Section 105(2)(a) of the MHA states clearly that the Chief Psychiatrist “is responsible for the medical care and welfare of persons receiving treatment or care for a mental illness”. Section 106 gives him special powers to make a thorough investigation based on my complaints on behalf of my daughter.
Section 106AA authorizes him as follows :
"106AA. (1) The chief psychiatrist, by written notice, may direct a psychiatric service-
(a) to discontinue, or alter as specified in the notice, a practice,procedure or treatment observed or carried out by the service;”
Yet, the Chief Psychiatrist has chosen to ignore his duties and authority, and to dismiss offhand - without giving any reasons, and without a point by point reply - all my complaints, adding that the matter is closed now !
Surely, the Minister for Mental Health is the authority to whom to the Chief Psychiatrist is accountable. Surely, the Minister has the power to demand a point by point detailed reply to all my complaints on behalf of my daughter. Surely, the Minister has the power to order him perform a full investigation into the psychiatric atrocities which have been perpetrated against my daughter for over 30 years.
I therefore ask the Minister to do so as early as possible, before a terrible disaster befalls my daughter !
To close this appeal I wish to repeat what I stated many times before, namely, that my complaints on behalf of my daughter do not challenge the psychiatric dogma of mental illness, as they are rather within the confines of psychiatry and within the confines of the law. However, even so, the truth is that the very first diagnosis of my daughter was terribly wrong, because there was absolutely nothing wrong with her when she was first incarcerated at the age of 15 more than 30 years ago. The “treatment”by the Antipsychotic drugs, and her justified attempts to abscond (followed by abrupt termination of the drugs consumption), created the psychotic symptoms for which she is still being forced to get psychiatric “treatment”! Even this is a fact which does not challenge any psychiatric theories !
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