“I was trained from day one to market the drug illegally…My job was to promote Neurontin and motivate doctors to experiment on patients. After being hired as a medical liaison, I was selling drugs. The uses promoted were from the “snake-oil list” of 13 medical conditions."
Unless the overall treatment and services provided to schizophrenia patients in Finland is unique and especially protective—which the authors do not suggest—their claimed findings of lowered mortality rates for antipsychotic drug users are belied by a consistent body of evidence.
The FDA’s expanded marketing approval process for antipsychotics, highly toxic drugs, is unaffected by evidence uncovered by the US Justice Department showing that the studies submitted by drug manufacturers were often flawed, if not fraudulent.
Sen. Charles Grassley’s focused investigation is clearly aimed at cleansing fraudulent, industry-crafted promotional pieces that have made a mockery of evidence-based clinical practice in psychiatry.
In its response to Sen. Grassley’s probe, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) acknowledges that a majority of its funds over the last five years, 56% on average, have come from drug corporations.
“Every failure-to-warn case against a drug company has been affected by Wyeth”
The Hill , a newspaper covering congressional news, reports: "Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) is considering leaving his powerful post as senior Republican on the Finance Committee so that he can become the highest-ranking Republican on the Judiciary panel. To avoid a dramatic shake-up, Grassley is hoping to strike a deal…
Grassley’s team has asked NAMI to disclose the specifics of its funding so that people with mental illness and their families, as well as the public and healthcare officials, can see for themselves how conflicted this advocacy group is.
The FDA expanded approval process for toxic drugs is unaffected by evidence uncovered by the US Justice Department showing the studies to be flawed, if not fraudulent.
Two prominent academic-psychiatrists–Jeffrey Bostic MD, director of school psychiatry, Harvard-Massachusetts General Hospital, and Charles Nemeroff MD, the former chairman of psychiatry at Emory–are featured in current government investigations.
Like their benefactors–drug manufacturers–who violate the law, doctors will be prosecuted in court by the federal government.
This has the potential for restoring integrity to medicine by providing doctors and the public with impartial risk / benefit information about existing treatments devoid of commercial bias.
