“In the 30 years that followed World War II, the federal government spent over $1.2 billion to fund psychological research, and much of this research was funded through the military services.” (Martin E.P. Seligman and Raymond D. Fowler, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness and the Future of Psychology, American Psychologist, 2011: cited…
August 31, 2016: The Times of Israel reports that brain parts used for research during, and after WWII by Nazi doctors — most likely by the premier neuroscientist, Professor Julius Hallervorden –have been newly uncovered at the Max Planck Institute — formerly the Kaiser Willhelm Society. In the 1980s, some…
Cluster failure: Why fMRI inferences for spatial extent have inflated false-positive rates, by Swedish neuroscientists Anders Eklund, Tom Nichols, and Hans Knutsson, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2016) reveals the discovery of a major flaw in the software used by neuroscientists in functional magnetic resonance…
A battle is in full swing between scientists demanding access to clinical trial data from published reports; journal gatekeepers protect the interests of sponsors — commercial companies, academic institutions and government agencies. In numerous legal procedures, the claimed clinical trial results in published scientific reports have been shown to be…
Public health policies encourage the misuse of public funds for expensive, harm-producing psychotropic drugs. Government agencies are funding the abuse of America’s children in foster care who are subjected to assaultive prescription orders by psychiatrists. These drugs and prescribed combination of these drugs are seriously undermining children’s mental and physical…
Whereas government agencies in Canada, Australia European countries set limits on the cost of prescription drugs, in the United States, thanks to a laissez faire government pass, pharmaceutical companies are encouraged to set prescription drug prices however high they wish without any limits. This is an unsustainable public policy. (Read…
Beware the month of August – when Congress and many citizens are vacationing! Government bureaucrats favor August to issue announcements about radical medical research policy changes, for which taxpayer money is sought. They do so, to avoid public controversy about public funding of radical experimentation…
In his article in the BMJ, “Psychiatry in crisis? Dr. Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ (British Medical Journal) summarizes the message delivered by several speakers at a meeting also convened in June 2016. This meeting took place in Leiden, the Netherlands; it focused on some of psychiatry’s serious…
Child psychiatrists at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Atlanta, in May 2016, called for “big solutions to improving child mental health care,” recommending an aggressive drug algorithm approach for children. (Psychiatric News, June 16, 2016) This is a not very subtle effort to resuscitate the notorious…
July 8, 2016: Swiss Public Television SRF uncovered evidence that “human rights were breached” in non-consensual drug tests conducted on patients at a psychiatric clinic in Herisau, Switzerland in the 1950s. The experimental drug Tofanil was tested in pre-marketing trials on behalf of its manufacturer Geigy. Medical documents reveal that…
UK Mirror, March 2016: “Woman Died After NHS Electric Shock Therapy Was Given Without Consent or Second Opinion” Senior Coroner Derek Winter, expressed concern to the UK Health Secretary about the circumstances that resulted in the death of a mentally ill woman after she was subjected to Electroshock without her…
A book review by AHRP board member, John J Noble Jr, Emeritus Professor, was recently published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. The book, Reducing Adverse Events in Older Patients Taking Newly Released Drugs by Margaret T. Whitstock, an Australian research professional, is an indictment of the the U.S. Food…
