TeenScreen: the Law Suits Begin
Mon, 13 Jun 2005
Newsworthy developments about the duo-drug promotion scam‹TeenScreen & TMAP:
A. The first legal challenge against TeenScreen, the mental health screening scheme that is invading the public school system across the nation, declaring otherwise normal children to be mentally ill, has been filed in Indiana.
The parents of a child who was screened without their permission and deemed to have two mental disorders, have filed intent to sue documents. Once diagnosed with a medical condition, parents who disagree with a prescribed treatment‹even if the treatment is harmful‹parents often find that their rights to make medical decisions for their child have been overridden by government mental health officials.
Last week a government-sponsored Harvard study pronounce 50% of Americans suffer from mental illness sometimes‹The only evidence of a mental illness epidemic is to be found within the mental health provider industry whose members are trained to secure their employment by discovering undetected mental illness in every man, woman and child who they can stop long enough to ask a few pointed questions.
B. On June 10, 2005, Senators Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus of the Senate Finance Committee issued a Press Release stating that they have asked a number of large drug makers to explain their practice of giving money to state governments and other organizations in the form of “educational grants.” The senators are concerned that the grants are more focused on product promotion than education:
“We need to know how this behind-the-scenes funneling of money is influencing decision makers,” Grassley said, “The decisions result in the government spending billions of dollars on drugs. The tactics look aggressive, and the response on behalf of the public needs to be just as vigorous.” Below, is the latest of a series of investigative reports by Evelyn Pringle who has been doing a bang up job connecting the dots that show the money trail behind TeenScreen and TMAP.
TeenScreen, the brainchild of Columbia University psychiatrist, David Shaffer, is run by Laurie Flynn, who previously had been at the helm of NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) when it was co-opted by the pharmaceutical industry. [1]
Pringle reports that in Congressional testimony, Flynn bragged about her associations with government officials in Florida stating:
“TeenScreen Program staff has been working with Governor Jeb Bush to help achieve his goal of reducing suicides in the state. We have specifically collaborated with Jim McDonough, Director of the Office of Drug Control and the state Suicide Prevention Talk Force. In partnership with the University of South Florida we are piloting district wide mental health screening of 9th graders in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.” [2]
“Collaboration” with Jim McDonough, Pringle reports, involved TeenScreen paying him $180,000 to get TeenScreen set up. Furthermore, Pringle reports that in an e-mail to McDonough, Flynn reveals her true objective:
“I’m looking for a horse to ride in here! … I need to get some kids screened — if the schools are a road block we are interested in community organizations. Next week we are talking with the Boys and Girls Club in Pinellas. … I also think we should see if local agencies or businesses could be engaged in “community screenings.” [2]
AHRP board member, psychiatrist, Stefan Kruszeuski, MD, who was in charge of investigating Pennsylvania’s mental health and substance abuse programs for fraud, waste, and abuse, was fired when he blew the whistle on corrupt relations between the state’s politicians and pharmaceutical industry representatives.
Allen Jones, the former inspector with the Pennsylvania Inspector General’s office blew the whistle on pay offs by drug companies to state agencies and officials who were in positions to approve the TMAP practice guidelines. [3] So far the information provided by Kruszeuski and Jones has resulted in the reprimand and fine of Penn’s state’s Pharmacist, Steven Fiorello. [4]
TeenScreen was stopped in Florida, but the TeenScreen/ TMAP strategy poses a threat for every community. AHRP board member, pediatrician, Karen Effrem, MD, summarized the folly of mental health screening: “Given the very real problems of already existing coercion, subjective criteria, dangerous and ineffective medication, and the failure of screening to prevent suicide … Congress would be wise to withhold the $44 million requested for state grants.”
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
References:
1. Pringle, E.TeenScreen – Angel of Mercy or Pill-Pusher for Drug Industry, OpEd News, April 15, 2005: https://ahrp.org/infomail/05/04/14.php
2. Pringle, E. Meet Laurie Flynn: TeenScreen’s Top Pusher, CounterPunch, June 6, 2005: http://www.counterpunch.org/pringle06062005.html
3. See, Allen Jones Report at: http://psychrights.org/Drugs/AllenJonesTMAPJanuary20.pdf
4. See: Penn State Pharmacist Fined for Ethics Violations & Taking Cash from Pfizer https://ahrp.org/infomail/05/04/15a.php
Scoop-New Zealand Independent Media
TeenScreen – The Law Suits Begin
by Evelyn Pringle
The scheme concocted by the pharmaceutical industry and pushed forward by the Bush administration to screen the entire nation’s public school population for mental illness and treat them with controversial drugs was already setting off alarms among parents all across the country. But in the state of Indiana, the alarm just got louder.
Tax payers had better get out their check books because school taxes are about to go up as the law suits against school boards start mounting over the TeenScreen depression survey being administered to children in the school.
The first notice of intent to sue was filed this month in Indiana by Michael and Teresa Rhoades who were outraged when they learned their daughter had been given a psychological test at school without their consent.
In December 2004, their daughter came home from school and said she had been diagnosed with an obsessive compulsive and social anxiety disorder after taking the TeenScreen survey.
Teresa Rhoades always viewed her daughter as a happy normal teenager. “I was absolutely outraged that my daughter was told she had these two conditions based off a computer test,” said Rhoades.
Attorney John Price, who is representing the Rhoadeses, confirmed that he had sent a notice of tort claim to both the school and Madison Center, which worked with the school system to administer the test.
This action means that the Rhoadeses are declaring their intent to file a lawsuit against both entities. Price said state law requires a notice of claim to be sent to any governmental agencies, including schools, before a lawsuit can be filed against them, according to the June 9, South Bend Tribune.
In the notice, Teresa and Michael Rhoades claim the survey was erroneous, improper, and done with reckless disregard for their daughter’s welfare and that they did not give the school permission to give the test.
The parents allege that when their daughter took the test, she was improperly diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder. That diagnosis, they claim, caused both the teen and her parents emotional distress, and the family intends to seek the “maximum amount of damages.”
The Indiana child was diagnosed with two disorders in one crack but there are many more.
If a teen doesn’t like doing math assignments, parents should not worry. TeenScreen may determine that the child simply has a mental illness known as developmental-arithmetic disorder.
There’s also a diagnosis for those children who like to argue with their parents, they may be afflicted with a mental illness known oppositional-defiant disorder.
And for anybody critical of the of the above 2 disorders, they may be suffering the mental illness called noncompliance-with-treatment disorder.
No kidding, these illnesses are included in the more than 350 “mental disorders” listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the insurance billing bible for mental disorders.
Tax Dollars Already Being Funneled To Pharma
In addition to lawsuits, tax dollars are already funding TeenScreen and many of the drugs purchased by the new customers it recruits.
While promoting TeenScreen to Congress, its Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, flat out lied when she told members of congress that TeenScreen was free and its website statement that “The program does not receive financial support from the government and is not affiliated with, or funded by, any pharmaceutical companies,” is also a blatant lie.
On Oct 21, 2004 Bush authorized $82 million for suicide prevention programs like TeenScreen and a report in Psychiatric Times said the administration had proposed an increase in the budget for the Center for Mental Health Service from $862 million in 2004 to $912 million in fiscal 2005. TeenScreen is sure to get a cut of those tax dollars.
Federal tax dollars are also being funneled through state governments to fund TeenScreen. On Nov 17, 2004, Officials at the University of South Florida Department of Child & Family Studies said $98,641 was awarded to expand the TeenScreen program in the Tampa Bay area.
In Ohio, under the governor’s Executive Budget for 2006 and 2007, the Department of Mental Health has specifically earmarked $70,000 for TeenScreen for each of those years, reports investigator Sue Weibert.
On June, 2002 the Update Newsletter published by the Tennessee Department of Mental Health, reported that 170 Nashville students had completed a TeenScreen survey. The Newsletter said the survey was funded by grants from AdvoCare and Eli Lilly. Last I knew, Eli Lilly was a pharmaceutical company.
The great news for Pharma was that 96 of the 170 students who took the survey ended up speaking to a therapist which no doubt resulted in the recruitment of 96 new pill-popping teens.
Tax Dollars Spent On Drugs
Unbeknownst to many, tax payers are already paying an enormous price as a result of marketing schemes designed to get students hooked on antipsychotic drugs. A list of drugs that must be prescribed for kids is already set up, modeled after a list used in Texas since 1995 called the TMAP. The list contains the most expensive drugs on the market.
In 2002, national sales of antipsychotics reached $6.4 billion in 2002, making them the fourth-highest-selling class of drugs, according to IMS Health, a company that tracks drug sales, in the May 2003, New York Times. By 2004, sales had jumped by over $2 billion with antipsychotics sales totaling $8.8 billion — $2.4 billion of which was paid for by state Medicaid funds, according to the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones Magazine.
Here’s how this part of the scheme works. The drug companies bribe state officials and donate money in the form of “educational grants” to the states to approve and implement these TMAP drug programs, and then in return, state Medicaid programs fund the cost of the drugs with tax dollars.
For instance, in Texas, Pfizer awarded $232,000 in grants to the Texas department of mental health to “educate” mental health providers about TMAP, and in return, the Texas Medicaid program spent $233 million tax dollars on Pfizer drugs like Zoloft.
Johnson & Johnson (Janssen Pharmaceutica) gave grants of $224,000 to Texas and Medicaid spent $272 million on J & J antipsychotic drug, Risperdal.
Eli Lilly awarded $109,000 in grants to “educate” state mental health providers and as a result, Texas Medicaid spent $328 million for Lilly’s antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.
The TMAP was approved in Texas in 1995, and by February 9, 2001, an article in the Dallas Morning News, titled State Spending More on Mental Illness Drugs reported: “Texas now spends more money on medication to treat mental illness for low-income residents than on any other type of prescription drug.”
In addition to covering nearly 40% of the drugs for Medicaid recipients, the state also spends about another $60 million a year on “hundreds of thousands of prescription drugs for other state-funded programs at the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,” the paper reported.
By the time the 2002-2003 budget was established, Texas lawmakers had to increase the amount of money allocated to the department of health and human services by $1 billion with a significant portion earmarked for prescription drugs, according to Texas officials.
In 1999, Ohio adopted its version of TMAP and by 2002 Ohio’s Medicaid program was spending $145 million on schizophrenia medications alone.
California spent over $500 million on the Atypicals Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroqual in 2003.
In 2002, Missouri Medicaid spent $104 million on three TMAP drugs alone. The three topped the list of all other medications covered by Medicaid, including HIV, cancer, and heart drugs.
Chickens Come Home To Roost
Pennsylvania taxpayers are now saddled with PennMap, its own version of the Texas list of expensive drugs, for the treatment of mentally ill, as a result of a the pharmaceutical scheme used to infiltrate public institutions and influence state officials and treatment practices.
It has since been revealed by whistleblowers Allen Jones and Stefan Kruszewiski that the Pennsylvania officials who approved the drugs for PennMap were receiving improper or illegal financial rewards from drug companies involved in promoting the program.
Dr Stefan Kruszewski was hired as a psychiatric consultant for the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Human Services. He was in charge of the state’s mental health and substance misuse programs to protect against fraud, waste, and abuse. He was fired after he uncovered corrupt relations between Pennsylvania politicians and pharmaceutical representatives and has since filed a Whistleblower suit against the state.
Allen Jones was an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, and revealed that state officials with influence over the PennMap program received financial benefits from drug companies that had a stake in getting PennMap accepted. Jones was fired after he made his discoveries known to the BMJ and the New York Times when his superiors ordered him to stop his investigation. He also has filed a Whistleblower suit.
Well, it looks like the chickens have finally come home to roost in Pennsylvania.
One of the officials that Jones named was Steven Fiorello. On April 15, 2005 the Associated Press reported that Pennsylvania’s top pharmacist repeatedly took money from Pfizer and other outside sources, violating ethics laws, a government panel found.
The State Ethics Commission fined Fiorello more than $27,000 and referred the case to the state attorney general’s office for possible criminal prosecution.
The commission cited repeated conflicts between Fiorello’s unofficial activities and his official duties, which included serving on a panel that decides which drugs may be given to patients at the nine state mental hospitals. The report also cited repeated failures to disclose his income from drug companies, Pfizer and Janssen, and other outside sources.
It seems Fiorello became a member of Pfizer’s “advisory council” around the same time he joined the PennMap panel. The council held annual meetings, apparently “to solicit input from health-care professionals to help Pfizer define its commercial strategies for its products,” the commission said in the report.
The ethics committee also discovered a “Medical Director’s Education Account,” which was funded by unrestricted educational grants from pharmaceutical companies and that Fiorello himself had solicited funds for the account.
It was recently announce that these “educational” grants that have benefited state officials who were in positions to approve the TMAP lists are finally going to be investigated by a senate committee.
On June 10, 2005, Senators Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus issued a Press Release that said they have asked a number of large drug makers to explain a marketing practice where the companies give money to state governments and other organizations in the form of grants. The drug companies call the awards educational grants, but the senators are concerned that the dollars are more focused on product promotion than education, the release said.
Grassley is chairman and Baucus is ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, which has legislative and oversight responsibility for the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
In addition, on June 9, 2005, the senators sent a letter to drug companies that states in part, “The Committee seeks further information on this topic so that it can assess how educational grants are used, in what contexts and for what purposes, and who receives them.”
It was sent to the following drug makers: Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Amgen, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly, Sanofi Aventis, Eisai, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Schering-Plough Corporation, Hoffman-LaRoche, Forest Pharmaceuticals, Abbott Laboratories, Genentech, Biogen Idec, Genzyme Corporation, Chiron Corporation, Serono, and TAP Pharmaceutical Products.
The Senators said their inquiry is based on reports that some companies have awarded these grants to health care providers as inducements to those providers to prescribe medications the companies produce. In other cases, such grants to state agencies may have prompted those agencies to develop programs leading to over-medication of patients at the expense of patient health or to unnecessary expense for taxpayers.
“We need to know how this behind-the-scenes funneling of money is influencing decision makers,” Grassley said, “The decisions result in the government spending billions of dollars on drugs. The tactics look aggressive, and the response on behalf of the public needs to be just as vigorous.”
This committee was needed because Pennsylvania is merely the tip of the iceberg. Many of the same tactics have been used in other states like Florida with Jim McDonough, Director of the Florida Office of Drug Control, who is listed as an “advisor” to TeenScreen on its website. TeenScreen gifted McDonough’s office with $180,000 to get TeenScreen set up.
However, Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, is now crying foul because she doesn’t feel the money has been put to good use since McDonough failed to get the program in all the schools as promised, in large part because he met his match in Ken Kramer.
In Ohio there’s Mike Hogan, Director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health. He’s hooked in with Parexel Medical Marketing, a front group that takes Pharma money to set “advisory panels” for Pharma. The panel memberships are made up exclusively of Mental Health, Medicaid and other Directors from the various states. Michael Hogan is listed as an advisory board member.
The panel members are treated to trips, first class accommodations and other perks in exchange for showing up and listening to a spiel by Janssen sales personnel who direct the course of the meetings. The same kinds of meetings that Fiorello attended.
Hopefully will be just a matter of time before the new senate committee disbands this gang of pharma-backed government pill-pushers.
Trying To Save The Children
Dire warnings against mass mental health screening are coming from every segment of society, including parents, physicians, academics, journalists, and human rights groups because the influence of the pharmaceutical industry in this scheme is so patently obvious.
People are particularly worried about saving the children from senseless and dangerous drugging. According to long-time anti-child drugging advocate, Doyle Mills, “Psychiatry has a long history of abject failure. Psychiatric treatments – drugs, electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomies – have harmed millions and robbed them of any hope of a normal life.”
Expert records researcher, Ken Kramer, has been fighting against child drugging for years has conducted a research project on child suicides in Florida that determined that medicating kids with the types of dangerous mind-altering drugs on these lists is causing suicide. He helped defeat TeenScreen’s attempt to gain access to schools in 2 of Florida’s largest counties. Ken has a TeenScreen website at http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html Dr Karen Effrem, a pediatrician and strong opponent of mandatory screening recently warned, “Universal mental health screening and the drugging of children … needs to be stopped so that many thousands if not millions of children will be saved from receiving stigmatizing diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of their lives. America’s school children should not be medicated by expensive, ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and dubious diagnoses.”
In a letter to the editor in the Washington Times on October 31, 2004, Effrem summed up the dangers of using tax dollars to fund mass mental health screening of children:
“Given the very real problems of already existing coercion, subjective criteria, dangerous and ineffective medication, and the failure of screening to prevent suicide … Congress would be wise to withhold the $44 million requested for state grants.”
The nation’s first law suit has been filed and let it serve as a warning to other schools across the country to think twice before allowing the TeenScreen recruitment scheme to zero in on their students.
Evelyn Pringle
(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on corruption in government)
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