Psychopharmacology in Turmoil: David Healy, MD Presentation Columbia + Debate Dr

[Guest guest]

SSRI-Research@

Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:01:06 -0500

[sSRI-Research] Psychopharmacology in Turmoil: David Healy,

MD Presentation Columbia + Debate Dr. Joseph Coyne, Ph.D

 

 

 

 

Psychopharmacology in Turmoil: David Healy, MD Presentation Columbia +

Debate Dr. Joseph Coyne, Ph.D

A

LLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)

Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability

www.ahrp.org

 

FYI

Recent reports describing a determined effort to pathologize US

infants and toddlers who are being declared to suffer from " severe

mental disorders " --the latest, most aggressively marketed diagnosis

for children is Bipolar disorder, which is practically unheard of

across the Atlantic.

 

See: Researchers identify bipolar disorder in preschoolers

http://mednews.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/6244.html

 

The following is particularly timely as it sheds light on psychiatry's

pivotal role in promoting false claims that assist the pharmaceutical

industry's market expansion goals.

 

On October 20, David Healy, MD, made a presentation to a seminar

graduate program at Columbia University School of Public Health: "

Psychopharmacology in Turmoil: an ethical or scientific crisis? "

 

The lecture was originally scheduled as a debate between Dr. Healy and

James Coyne, Ph.D a professor in the department of psychiatry,

University of Pennsylvania. Dr Coyne subsequently lectured at Rutgers

the following week.*

 

In his documented presentation, Dr. Healy took the psychiatric

profession to task for having been seduced by the drug industry. He

demonstrated how this industry's corrupting influence has penetrated

all facets of the profession--tainting academic research and clinical

practice guidelines--subverting the scientific method even at premier

research centers.

 

He presented documents showing that the pillars of US psychiatry have

been compromised having penned their names to ghost written journal

reports that concealed the negative data and misstated the actual

trial findings-thereby participating in deception.

 

The deception that Dr. Healy documented is not isolated or limited to

a few " rotten apples " but was shown to be controlled by drug

manufacturers who systemically planted the false verdict that SSRIs

were " safe and effective " for children. The placement of those

deceptive reports were calibrated to ensure the widest possible

penetration of the major journals that influence prescribing

physicians. These include the Journal of the American Medical

Association, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the

American Academy of Pediatricians, not to mention the major

psychiatric journals. As a result, the integrity of the scientific

medical literature has been irrevocably tainted.

 

The major issues covered were as follows:

 

1. The academic literature on treating childhood depression is

demonstrably the greatest known divide in all of medicine between what

the supposed scientific literature says, and what the raw data that

this literature purports to represent shows. Thus reports about

childhood depression in prestigious scientific journals are no more

trustworthy than marketing infomercials.

 

2. This divide is most clear-cut in the case of childhood

depression, where it seems possible that the entire literature is

ghost-written. But something similar must be suspected in the case of

almost all articles purporting to represent the results of trials

conducted on recent antipsychotics, antidepressants and mood-stabilizers.

 

3/ Industry has been using these infomercials to seduce experts

into coming to a consensus about the risks of leaving conditions

untreated and the need to treat these conditions with the latest

products. Based on this " evidence " experts have constructed guidelines

and algorithms--the most infamous of these is TMAP. But even those

guidelines that appear to be completely independent of industry are

corrupted by the process as completely as TMAP and similar industry

products.

 

4/ But even if the trials were conducted in a completely

independent manner and the data publicly available, there are grounds

to think that psychiatry would get it wrong because current approaches

to statistical data are simply wrong with journal article after

journal article stating there are no risks to treatments when the data

presented clearly indicate there are risks.

 

5/ Similarly trial data are presented as indicating that

treatments work and should be adopted forthwith when in fact the data

suggests that treatment makes a small contribution to the therapeutic

response and should accordingly be used judiciously (i.e., sparingly)

rather than indiscriminately.

 

 

 

Dr. Healy's lecture and slides are posted at:

http://www.ahrp.org/COI/HealyColumbia1005/index.php

 

* Debate:

An e-mail from Dr. Coyne covering the main points of his lecture at

Rutgers--is posted at: http://www.ahrp.org/COI/HealyColumbia1005/Coyne.php

 

Dr Coyne has made serious accusations about Dr. Healy's ethics and

financial incentives--

Dr. Healy's response to each of those accusations is in the form of a

series of questions for Dr. Coyne.

 

 

See also, the New York Times profile of Dr. Healy, " A Self-Effacing

Scholar Is Psychiatry's Gadfly " By BENEDICT CAREY

at: http://www.ahrp.org/COI/HealyColumbia1005/NYThealy.php

 

 

 

 

 

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

212-595-8974

veracare