The New York Times reports that former FDA Commissioner, Dr. Lester Crawford "is under criminalo investigation by a federal grand jury over accusations of financial improprieties and false statements to Congress."
Under the influence of pharmaceutical companies, physicians anhd drug companies engage in "disease mongering." Below is a critique of Dr. David Healy’s essay: Dr. Nassir Ghaemi who argues for the legitimacy of bipolar diagnosis.
Bbioethicists are seizing the opportunity to expand their own marketability. The UK publication, NATURE, reports about the latest bioethics gimmick that has sprung up in California– ‘dial-an-ethicist’—at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics.
A BBC documentary that airs Thursday, April 27 exposes the disregard for the welfare of patients exploited by US pharmaceutical companies that outsource their clinical drug trials to India, the drug industry’s current favorite drug testing laboratory.
The answer given by Dr. Joseph Britto, a pediatric intensive care physician, hits the nail on the head: "Unlike pilots, doctors don’t go down with their planes."
In the U.S. the two populations at greatest risk of inappropriate, coercive, dangerous prescribing of highly toxic psychotropic drugs as chemical
restraints are the elderly and children.
"Corruption in any one of the critical decision points in the pharmaceutical system can be detrimental to a country’s ability to improve the health of its population." [World Banki]
“More than a year after the Food and Drug Administration announced it had strengthened its drug safety system, the agency still lacks a reliable system for keeping track of emerging problems, congressional investigators concluded in a report to be released today.” [Los Angeles Times, below]
Three reports illustrate the wide and deepening disconnect between medicine under the influence of pharmaceutical industry marketing goals and scientific evidence that contradicts current practice and public health policies:
APA "Diagnostic Statistical Manual" Task Force has been shown to have financial relationships with drug manufacturers.
Dr. Robert Spitzer, who has continued to play a central role in DSM revisions since 1980, claim he does not think a conflict of interest exists.
See list of APA Task Force on DSM-IV and DSM-IV Revised Text at: https://ahrp.org/cms/content/view/145/27/
The undisclosed financial relationships between drug manufacturers and psychiatry’s leading "authorities" who determine what constitutes a “mental disorder” have been exposed.
