Antidepressant Use in Children Soars Despite Efficacy Doubts – Washington Post Mon, 19 Apr 2004 A front page article by Shankar Vedantam in The Washington Post examines the soaring increase in the antidepressant drug prescriptions for children, noting: “The explosion in antidepressant use occurred even though the vast majority of…
AMA Serves Pharma Marketing Priority/ FDA To Add Warnings on ADHD drugs–Concerta, Ritalin, Strattera, Adderall Wed, 29 Jun 2005 The FDA is finally taking note of the fact that many drugs prescribed for the treatment of psychiatric problems are CAUSING serious psychiatric and cardiovascular problems in children and adolescents !…
Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2005 pp. 111-124 Screening for Mental Illness: The Merger of Eugenics and the Drug Industry Vera Hassner Sharav, MLS New York, NY The implementation by the President’s New Freedom Commission (NFC) to screen the entire United States population – children…
Randomized Controlled Trials: Evidence Biased Psychiatry By David Healy, MD MRCPsych Introduction A new drug gets introduced to the market. It has been approved after stringent scrutiny by the FDA, which requires ever more convincing evidence that it works and that its safe. The new treatment will always cost more…
NIMH-Harvard study: 74% children prescribed SSRI suffer adverse effects Fri, 22 Aug 2003 A report in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology (abstract below) Dr. Timothy Wilens, Dr. Joseph Biederman, et al, child psychiatrists at Harvard’s teaching hospital, Massachusetts General, found that 22% of children and adolescents who had…
Eugenics: the California connection to Nazi policies_SF Chronicle Mon, 10 Nov 2003 On Sunday, Nov 9, the San Francisco Chronicle published an extraordinary, most informative article by Edwin Black, that sheds light on the role played by the American eugenics movement in the Nazi extermination policy. Eugenics is a pseudoscience…
FDA Is Flexing Less Muscle where Safety is the Issue – Wash Post Thu, 18 Nov 2004 The Washington Post examines FDA’s record of surveillance and the evidence is clear: since 1992 when Congress required drug companies to pay users fees to the FDA, the agency’s focus changed from safety…
Ecstasy- Long-lasting brain damage and may trigger Parkinson’s_BBC October 2, 2002 In 1989 Dr. George Ricaurte (Johsn Hopkins University) reported that MDMA (Ecstasy) the party drug used at all night dances (“raves”) caused neurotoxicity, long-lasting brain damage in non-human primates at doses similar to those ingested by humans. In the…
Lilly duloxetine drug trial–19 Quit after a suicide – Philadelphia Inquirer Fri, 13 Feb 2004 19-year old Teri Johnson’s suicide occurred one week after an FDA advisory committee had urged the FDA to issue warnings about prescribing antidepressant drugs for children under 18 because of an increased risk in suicide….
Merck / Johnson & Johnson/ Lilly-Zyprexa: $690 Million settlement / a Flowering of Diabetes Drugs Fri, 10 Jun 2005 A cluster of news reports about three pillars of the pharmaceutical industry– Merck, Eli Lilly, and Johnson & Johnson–leave no doubt that this industry has shown its disregard for the welfare…
Infomail 2005 News Stories on Human Research Protection and Commentary by Vera Hassner Sharav Subscribe to the AHRP infomail list Dec 16: Drugs, Devices & Doctors – NYT Paul Krugman Dec 11: Scientific Fraud & Corruption on Both sides of Atlantic: Merck / Proctor & Gamble Dec 11: Gov Accountability…
OHRP Response to AHRP re: Surrogate Consent to Research Office of the Secretary Department of Health & Human Services Office of Public Health and Science Office for Human Research Protections Rockville, Maryland E-mail: mcarome@osophs.dhhs.gov August 28, 2002 Vera Hassner Sharav President, The Alliance for Human Research Protection John H. Noble,…
