The excerpts from The New Yorker (below) may be read as a companion piece to the Atlantic article profiling Dr. John Ioannidis. However, the opening example that Lehrer uses to make the point that initial impressive positive research findings often weaken in time, perpetuates a myth about the new…
"Prescription Drugs Associated with Reports of Violence Towards Others, " identifies 31 drugs linked to 1,527 acts of violence…
"When you’re selling $1 billion a year or more of a drug, it’s very tempting for a company to just ignore the traffic ticket and keep speeding.”
The prescribed drugs transformed Kyle Warren from a rambunctious healthy child into a drooling, sedated, obese, “shell.”
The catalyst for Dr. Elliott’s article was the tragic case of Dan Markingson, a 26-year old who committed suicide in May 2004, while enrolled in the CAFE trial, prescribed Seroquel. This case encapsulates the tragic consequences of a broken system which is not designed to detect the hazards for human subjects posed by market-driven research.
Unlike patients in other fields of medicine, those who are designated mentally ill–or even declared to be "at risk" for mental illness in the future–are at once stigmatized and suffer losss of their autonomy.
"Among all the problematic suggestions for DSM5, the proposal for a "Psychosis Risk Syndrome" stands out as the most ill–conceived and potentially harmful." Allen Frances, MD
"Anything you put in that book, any little change you make, has huge implications not only for psychiatry but for pharmaceutical marketing, research, for the legal system, for who’s considered to be normal or not, for who’s considered disabled," said Dr. Michael First, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who edited the DSM4l but is not involved in the DSM5.
In the first half of the twenty-first century, U.S. psychiatrists are prescribing the second generation neuroleptics—Zyprexa, Risperdal, Geodon, Seroquel, Abilfy—to coerce innocent children and the elderly into submission.
At the July 30, 2009 FDA advisory committee hearing, the only formal presentations at the meeting were a summary of the safety and efficacy data by the sponsor.
Among the most damaging scientific evidence against the use of antipsychotic drugs is empirical evidence that they cause brain damage.
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.
