Fwd: NEWS: Who bankroll$ extremist psychiatrist Torrey?

[Guest guest]

DESTROY_PSYCHIATRY , psychiatrykills7@a...

wrote:

 

 

 

NEWS: http://www.MindFreedom.org - 21 Oct. 2004

 

PSYCHIATRIST E. FULLER TORREY FACES

CHARGES OF FRAUDULENT " BRAIN HARVESTING. "

 

TORREY PUSHES FOR MORE FORCED PSYCHIATRY.

 

WHO FUNDS E. FULLER TORREY'S WORK?

 

by David Oaks, Director, MindFreedom

 

One of the main psychiatrists in the world to promote the use

of more force by psychiatry -- E. Fuller Torrey -- is in the

midst of a controversy because of the way his organization

apparently obtained brains for research without proper

informed consent of families. (See alert AT BOTTOM.)

 

To whom is Dr. Torrey accountable?

 

Much of the millions of dollars behind much of Torrey's work

are from millionaire Ted Stanley who owns MBI Inc., one of

the biggest direct marketers in the world. You may

recognize MBI's product outlets such as Danbury Mint, the Easton

Press, the Postal Commemorative Society and others. MBI Inc.'s

web site claims they launch about 500 new products each year.

 

With those millions Dr. Torrey has been lobbying for more

forced psychiatry, especially the use of court orders to

require US citizens to take psychiatric drugs while living

in their own homes. Today, 42 USA states have such

" outpatient commitment " laws.

 

Torrey and his Treatment Advocacy Center have also pushed research

into implanted disks with time released neuroleptic psychiatric drugs.

See http://www.mindfreedom.org/mindfreedom/implant_1.shtml.

 

And apparently Dr. Torrey has been unethically obtaining

the brains of people diagnosed with psychiatric disabilities

for research. (See alert and articles at bottom.)

 

~~~~~~~~

 

* ACTION * ACTION * ACTION *

 

BELOW is contact information for civil phone calls and

media inquiries to Mr. Ted Stanley to ask him about

his funding of Dr. Torrey's pursuit of more involuntary

psychiatric procedures and his pursuit of more brains.

 

You may need to talk about much more general subjects

in order to reach Ted Stanley on the phone line first,

or leave a civil message.

 

MBI Inc

47 Richards Ave

Norwalk, CT 06854 USA

 

http://www.mbi-inc.com/

 

webmail@m...

 

Phone number to try to reach Ted Stanley c/o of his

assistant Barbara at MBI Inc. is: (203) 853-2000.

 

SAMPLE MESSAGE: " Why have you not held Dr. Torrey

accountable for his promotion of forced psychiatry,

and his apparently improper brain collection methods? "

 

BELOW is a release from AHRP about the brain

theft controversy with news articles. Feel free to forward.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[bELOW is separate forwarded message by AHRP

that is not related to above introduction.]

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Please forward.

 

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION Promoting

Openness and Full Disclosure www.ahrp.org

 

FYI

 

An investigative series of articles in Sunday's

Portland Press Herald (excerpt below) reveals that the

state's funeral inspector had harvested and shipped 99

brains--one third without informed consent--to the

Stanley Foundation. The Stanley Foundation maintains

a brain bank of about 560 brains of people diagnosed

with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, many of who

committed suicide.

 

In the UK a similar scandal has led the government to

pledge tightened legal protection: BBC reports that

the government indicated its intention to " 'enshrine

the principles' of informed consent - changing the

emphasis away from simply acting if relatives object,

towards having to gain explicit consent in every

case. "

 

See: BBC. Q & A: Brain 'theft' inquiry 2003/05/12

 

See:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/3021367.stm

 

The Stanley Foundation is headed by E. Fuller Torrey,

a psychiatrist whose controversial viral theory of

schizophrenia has not been validated by any

confirmatory evidence. The Stanley Foundation is the

largest private funder of mental illness research:

providing $40 million a year in grants for research in

schizophrenia and manic-depression--whether the

research meets ethical standards or not.

 

For example, Stanley has funded symptom provocation

experiments (a.k.a. " challenge studies " ) that

deliberately exacerbated patients' disabling condition

in order to take brain scans during a psychotic

episode. Our complaints about such inhumane

experiments on mentally disabled human beings aroused

public condemnation, forcing the director of the

National Institute of Mental Health to shut down 29

such experiments in 1998. But that has not changed

the schizophrenia research culture.

 

Until the Gagnon family filed a lawsuit against Mathew

Cyr, the state's funeral inspector, the Stanley

Foundation, and Torrey, charging them with taking

their son's brain without their permission, the

Stanley Foundation never disclosed how it acquired its

brains. Private research foundations are accountable

to no one except themselves. AHRP believes that

invites abuse.

 

According to the Portland Herald, the Stanley

Foundation paid Cyr $150,000 for his services. The

arrangement was approved by the state Chief Medical

Officer who had been approached by Dr. Torrey. Of

note: The Stanley Foundation is not accredited by the

American Association of Tissue Banks, a national

organization that sets ethical standards.

 

The Herald reports: " Some of the consent forms

obtained by the newspaper indicate that phone calls

between Cyr and the families were supposed to be

tape-recorded. However, someone crossed out the word

" recorded " on the form and wrote the word " witnessed. "

 

" Dow, of the Attorney General's Office, said the state

does not have any recordings of the phone calls. Nor

are state officials aware of any such recordings.

Lorie Stevens of Bucksport was listed as the witness

on 65 of the 68 forms. In any dispute with a donor

family, the relationship between Cyr and Stevens could

undermine efforts to show that the brains were

obtained with the families' clear permission "

 

Court documents reveal rather tawdry business

transactions. For example, to increase the number of

brains sent to the Foundation, Torrey offered greater

and greater financial incentives to Cyr. Torrey put a

higher price tag on the brains of people diagnosed

with schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder ($2,000)

compared to those diagnosed with depression ($1,500);

and he paid Cyr an extra $500 for obtaining a donor's

psychiatric records.

 

In a March 2001 letter, the Herald reports: " Torrey

also encouraged Cyr to take advantage of his state

government connections. He suggested that Cyr offer a

modest sum of money to a clerical employee in the

Medical Examiner's Office to send the request letters

on office stationery.

 

" It is our experience with San Diego and Seattle that

when a record request is sent out on (medical

examiner's office) stationery at the time of death,

the response is excellent and very rapid, " Torrey

wrote.

 

No employee of the Medical Examiner's Office sent such

letters, according to Dow, spokesman for the attorney

general. Greenwald, through the spokesman, said she

is not aware that any employee in her office was asked

to do such work.

 

In his March 2001 letter to Cyr Torrey wrote: " Given

your energy and track record in obtaining specimens,

it seems reasonable that you could average about two

normal controls and one case per month, which if you

also obtained records, would gross $5,000-$5,500 per

month although we can cover whatever you can obtain.

Obviously some months might be better and some worse. "

 

In the US, a 1987 Uniform Anatomical Gift Act,

prohibits the trafficking of organs for transplants,

there is no federal law prohibiting the sale of human

organs for research. Given the lucrative financial

incentives, and the absence of regulatory restraints,

a cottage industry in brain harvesting is thriving in

the US and the UK: many of the brains are acquired by

academic research institutions were acquired without

the knowledge or informed consent of surviving

relatives.

 

One might question the validity of the legal double

standard applied to organ harvesting for

transplantation compared to research--inasmuch as

organ transplants save lives, while one is hard

pressed to point at any clinically significant

diagnostic or therapeutic improvements as a result of

these brain studies.

 

See: PORTLAND PRESS HERALD series. Ethical problems

plagued brain donations in Maine By KEVIN WACK,

October 17, 2004 online at:

 

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/041017brain.shtml

 

Of further note: The Stanley Foundation also bankrolls

the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) a lobbying

organization that exploits the perception that

mentally ill patients are violent, in order to promote

state involuntary commitment laws for mental patients

to allow them to be " treated. " The tactic says much

about ruthless prophets whose arrogant certainty about

what's good for others leads them to justify any means

toward achieving those ends.

 

As the facts about psychotropic drug effects continue

to unfold, it will become evident that more often than

not, the drugs, not the disorder, are the catalyst for

violent behavior.

 

See, for example: Psychiatrist: Mom was depressed

Hearing held for Polk woman charged in fire death of

her children By Matt Birkbeck. October 19, 2004

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-

b1_1childdeathsoct19,0,4608449.story?col

l=all-newslocal-hed

 

Another example: " Her 14-year-old daughter, Dominique,

died in April 2003 after jumping into a canal. Slater

blames her death on the four different antidepressants

her daughter was put on in less than a year. She said

the drug companies failed to warn of suicide risk and

that Dominique's doctors failed to carefully monitor

her.

 

Dominique's depression began during the summer of

2002. She told her parents she had taken an Internet

survey sponsored by a drug company that seemed to

confirm her depression and asked to see a doctor.

 

The family physician agreed Dominique was depressed

and put her on an antidepressant. A month later, she

tried to kill herself but failed.

 

A series of antidepressants and hospitalizations

ensued. Finally, after being put on the drug

Effexor... Days later, her daughter was dead.

 

Sacramento Bee: Warning spurs caution on

antidepressants in kids By Dorsey Griffith, September

27, 2004.

 

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/10892887p-11810493c.html

 

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav 212-595-8974

veracare@a...

 

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2004/10/17/

brain_harvesting_operation_raises_questions/

 

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Brain-harvesting program faulted Parents say donation

lacked consent By Associated Press October 18, 2004

 

PORTLAND, Maine -- A Gorham couple's claim that their

dead son's entire brain was donated to a research

laboratory in Maryland without their consent points to

a lack of oversight of brain harvesting at the state

medical examiner's office, according to the Maine

Sunday Telegram.

 

The newspaper said its investigation found that 31 of

99 brains that were shipped from Maine to the Stanley

Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., from 1999

to 2003 lacked consent forms that would provide

written proof that family members authorized the

donations.

 

The brain harvesting was coordinated by Matthew Cyr,

who was then the state's funeral inspector. The

Telegram said the Stanley Institute paid Cyr $1,000 to

$2,000 for each brain he sent there, and that records

show that he collected more than $150,000 from the

laboratory during the four years. Cyr resigned his

part-time post as funeral inspector last August. Four

months earlier, he was named, along with the private

research laboratory and its founder, as a defendant in

a lawsuit filed by Frank and Lorraine Gagnon in

Cumberland County Superior Court.

 

The Gagnons said they agreed to supply a 1-inch or

2-inch sample of the brain of their son, A.J. Gagnon,

who died last year of a drug overdose. Lorraine

Gagnon said she was stunned to learn that her son's

entire brain had been taken.

 

''This is a kid I brought into the world and loved and

cherished, and in death they have no right to touch

him, " Lorraine Gagnon said. Officials with the

Stanley Institute, renowned for its research into

schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are fighting the

lawsuit. The lab's founder, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey,

concluded in a memo last year that Lorraine Gagnon

consented to the brain removal, then changed her mind.

 

''This is the first such instance in the 560 brains we

have collected to date but should be expected to occur

occasionally, given the difficult circumstances of

death for a family. We will therefore return the

brain to the funeral home as Ms. Gagnon requests, "

Torrey wrote.

 

In June 2003, a brain, identified by the Stanley

Institute as A.J. Gagnon's, was sent to a Portland

funeral home for cremation.

 

Maine's connection with the Stanley Institute came

about after Dr. Margaret Greenwald was hired as

Maine's deputy chief medical examiner in 1997.

Greenwald, now chief medical examiner, had done work

for Torrey's brain bank while she was in San Diego and

he approached her in 1998 about supplying brains from

Maine.

 

Greenwald declined the offer but suggested that Torrey

work with Cyr, who went on to coordinate the brain

harvesting work within the medical examiner's office

in Augusta. Cyr, who now works as a police officer in

Bucksport, still has a contract with the medical

examiner's office to answer its phones after business

hours, when reports of fatal accidents, drug

overdoses, and suicides often come in. Cyr did not

respond to the Telegram's requests for an interview

and has not responded to the suit.

 

Chuck Dow, spokesman at the attorney general's office,

said there is no evidence that any laws were broken

during the period when Cyr supplied the research

laboratory with brains, but several bioethicists said

lax oversight and record-keeping can invite problems.

 

C Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

 

~~~~~~~

 

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/041017torrey.shtml

 

Portland Press Herald Sunday, October 17, 2004 Deep

pockets fuel brain researcher's quest By KEVIN WACK,

 

It's a scientist's dream - a mega-rich philanthropist

opens his checkbook to underwrite your research.

 

Suddenly the constant scramble for money is a memory.

And there's more. Your benefactor is so committed

that millions of dollars are left over, meaning you

can issue grants of your own and extend your influence

worldwide. Fifteen years ago, that's exactly what

happened to Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the

Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md.

Torrey had written a book called " Surviving

Schizophrenia, " in which he argued that mental-illness

research was underfunded. The book struck a chord

with a Connecticut businessman whose son was diagnosed

in the late 1980s with bipolar disorder, or manic

depression.

 

Ted Stanley, who built a fortune in direct-mail

marketing, arranged to meet the book's author for

dinner. Since then, the philanthropist and his wife

have given hundreds of millions of dollars to a

research institute founded by Torrey, whose

contractor's efforts to collect brains in Maine are

the subject of a lawsuit. It's not the first time

that Torrey, once described by the Washington Post as

the " perhaps the most famous psychiatrist in America, "

has faced controversy.

 

His theories about possible infectious causes of

schizophrenia are seen by many researchers as outside

the mainstream. Another lightning rod is Torrey's

support for forcing drug treatment on some mentally

ill patients, which he voiced during a " 60 Minutes "

interview in 2002.

 

But Torrey's detractors have not soured the Stanleys'

support. " Obviously we've been very impressed by

him, " Ted Stanley said in a telephone interview from

his office at MBI Inc. in Norwalk, Conn. " Basically,

we provide the money, and he has figured out what to

do with it. " The first research programs began in 1989

at what would become the nonprofit Stanley Institute.

Five years later, Torrey started a brain bank so he

would have brains to use for his own research.

Torrey, 67, hopes to find the causes of schizophrenia

and bipolar disorder - or, short of that, to develop

more effective treatments.

 

Those are daunting scientific challenges, Torrey said

in a telephone interview. " The complexity of the

brain is extraordinary, and it's also been

extraordinarily underresearched. It's in a very

inconvenient place called your head, " he said.

 

For most of Torrey's more than 30 years in psychiatry,

he has been exploring the idea that infectious agents

contribute to schizophrenia. " I think he's been on a

mission to prove that, " said Dr. Daniel Weinberger of

the National Institute of Mental Health, who has at

times criticized Torrey but also has collaborated with

him. " And I don't think he's been particularly

objective in his analyses of the data. "

 

In 2000, Weinberger told an academic magazine that

Torrey's viral theory is " very interesting " but has

" been supported by very little credible scientific

data. "

 

Today, science has established that genetics are

central to explaining schizophrenia, something Torrey

acknowledges. " There are now five, close to 10

schizophrenia genes that have been found, " Weinberger

said. " We're no longer in the realm of speculation

when it comes to schizophrenia. "

 

However, establishing the role of genes does not

necessarily rule out the involvement of infectious

agents. One theory being explored by Torrey posits a

link between schizophrenia and Toxoplasma gondii, a

parasite found in cat feces. Dr. Irving Gottesman of

the University of Minnesota, a leading proponent of

genetic explanations, said environmental factors,

including viruses, could trigger the disease among

people who have a genetic predisposition.

 

This explanation offers some common ground between

Torrey and mainstream geneticists, but there are still

differences. " We don't agree on the major causes in

the story of schizophrenia. But we've agreed to

disagree, " Gottesman said.

 

Torrey's theories cast a large shadow over the field,

in part because he oversees the distribution of so

much money. Last year, the institute's rapidly

growing research budget exceeded $40 million, 74

percent of which was doled out to other researchers

through grants, according to the lab's 2003 annual

report.

 

Today, the Stanley Institute, which has 30 employees,

funds half of all U.S. research on bipolar disorder

and about a quarter of all schizophrenia research,

according to its Web site and various industry

reports. The Stanley Institute spends a large

percentage of its money funding research related to

Torrey's own viral theory, according to Gottesman. " I

have to say - as an outside judge with a biased

opinion - that Fuller is in a very powerful position, "

Gottesman said. Torrey's reputation as something of a

maverick among scientists extends well beyond his

research.

 

Xxx cut xxxx

 

- Staff researchers Julia McCue and Beth Murphy

contributed to this report. Staff Writer Kevin Wack

can be contacted at 282-8226 or at:

kwack@p...

 

[end AHRP alert]

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Forwarded by http://www.MindFreedom.org

 

A NEW ISSUE OF MINDFREEDOM JOURNAL is now out.

Join or renew to get your issue about winning

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