NAMI: PACT, Pharma's slush fund, and Mrs. Doonesbury

NAMI gets the money to run its "meds to your door and we'll watch while you take them" program, called PACT,
from Big Pharma.

Read NAMI's PACT pamphlet here

Investigative journalist Jane Pauley and her husband Garry Trudeau, freedom-loving creator of DOONESBURY, should learn about PACT before she accepts an award from NAMI.
Will most people who hear about her breakdown through NAMI ever know that she became ill while taking steroids and antidepressants - because of medication?


Pauley and a crew of Pharma movers and shakers are
big money-makers.

As a celebrity spokesperson (whose speaker's fee is "Category E - $50,000 to $100,000"), Pauley broadcasts the prescription dictum promoted (in unison) by leading psychiat lists and the drug industry.
In a New York Times Magazine Eli Lilly Advertising Supplement, (October 30, 2005), Pauley embraces drug-dependency for life without an iota of skepticism or reservation:

"Although I had only one episode, no one can tell me whether I will have another one, so I must take medication for the rest of my life."
She says she takes both Lithium and an antidepressant.

To understand how Big Pharma buys influence, The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) is a good example.
DBSA bills itself as a grass roots organization that: "throughout 2003 over 4 million people asked DSBA for help."
The DBSA website has multiple "self assessment" tools to assist interested persons in self-diagnosis for a variety of conditions.
The site offers "testimonials" from "real people" who credit medications for their recoveries.
(To see their self-tests online - so bad they are embarassing - go here)

While claiming to be member supported, at a minimum 90% of DBSA'a income comes from the drug industry.
The DBSA 2003 annual report shows who the major donors are:


The “Leadership Circle” consists of donors of $150,000 or more. Listed are: Abbott Labs, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Meyers Squibb,Elan Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen and Pfizer.
The “Founders Club” consists of donors of $10,000 to $149,000. These include: Cyberonics, Forest Labs, Merck, Organon, Wyeth.
The “Advocate Council” consists of donors of $5,000 to $9,999. These include: the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association (SAMSHA).
The “Platinum” donors of $1,000 to $4,999 include TAP Pharmaceutical
See: http://www.dbsalliance.org/PDF/AnnReptFINAL.pdf

Is NAMI Jane's Bag?














Images from http://www.namipharma.org


Is it time to give that Cronkite Award back?

AND...

Lilly to give $1M to treat Veterans

May 26, 2008
Lilly Foundation Awards $1 Million to Provide Mental Health Care for Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans
The Eli Lilly and Company Foundation has announced a $1 million grant to Give an Hour and the American Psychiatric Foundation to expand a national effort to meet the unmet mental health needs of returning U.S. soldiers and their families.

GAH and APF, the philanthropic arm of the American Psychiatric Association, will work to recruit mental health professionals to volunteer an hour each week for at least a year to provide services such as marital and family therapy and substance-abuse counseling in person, by phone, or in cooperation with schools and community organizations. The volunteers will become part of a national network that addresses postwar mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, drug abuse, anxiety, and depression over the next three years.

Among troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, approximately 40 percent of soldiers, a third of Marines, and half of National Guard members report psychological problems. While the U.S. Department of Defense has encouraged personnel to seek mental health treatment, a significant increase in demand has forced the rationing of services, created long waiting lists, and limited individual counseling sessions in some areas. At the same time, some members of military families do not qualify for care through the Veterans Administration or DOD, even though they are affected by the mental health of the veterans in their families.

"This grant will allow us to get out the message that help is available. We want to normalize what our military personnel and their families are experiencing and support the sacrifices that they are making by providing critical mental health support at no cost," said Barbara V. Romberg, founder and president of GAH. "We will be educating the military community and broader public about these mental health needs in hope of helping veterans keep their lives and families intact."

“American Psychiatric Foundation, Lilly Foundation, and Give an Hour Join Forces to Provide Mental Health Care to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans.” Eli Lilly and Company Foundation 5/19/08.

Primary Subject: Health
Secondary Subject(s): Human Services
Location(s): National

FC011970

Link

Considering that the profits last year of Pharma corporations were greater than those of all the rest of the stock market combined, that's a pathetic amount.
If this leads to more being spent on meds, it's a clever investment strategy for Lilly. But, as we know, psychotropics have dubious results
and can hold dangers. NAMI has also jumped on the Veterans bandwagon very recently and will be happy to take your calls, and ask for your donations. Does their center offer anything of substance? You be the judge.

The Army has already got plans for alternative treatments in place:
read about army bioenergy here

New York Times: Doctors should be banned from taking gifts from Pharma

April 28, 2008
Group Urges Ban on Medical Giveaways

By GARDINER HARRIS
Drug and medical device companies should be banned from offering free food, gifts, travel and ghost-writing services to doctors, staff members and students in all 129 of the nation’s medical colleges, an influential college association has concluded.

The proposed ban is the result of a two-year effort by the group, the Association of American Medical Colleges, to create a model policy governing interactions between the schools and industry. While schools can ignore the association’s advice, most follow its recommendations.

Rob Restuccia, executive director of the Prescription Project, a nonprofit group dedicated to eliminating conflicts of interest in medicine, said the report would transform medical education.

“Most medical schools do not have strong conflict-of-interest policies, and this report will change that,” Mr. Restuccia said.

The rules would apply only to medical schools, but they could have enormous influence across medicine, said Dr. David Rothman, president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University.

“We’re hoping the example set by academic medical colleges will be contagious,” Dr. Rothman said.

Drug companies spend billions wooing doctors — more than they spend on research or consumer advertising. Medical schools, packed with prominent professors and impressionable trainees, are particularly attractive marketing targets.

So companies have for decades provided faculty and students free food and gifts, offered lucrative consulting arrangements to top-notch teachers and even ghost-wrote research papers for busy professors.

Read the article here

Gardasil in UK

A trial of the new cervical cancer vaccine programme for schoolgirls across the country has encountered opposition from parents, with 20% refusing to give permission for their daughters to have the jab.

A third of those who gave a reason for refusal said they were worried about the long-term safety, on which there is no data. But some may have concerns that allowing vaccination may promote promiscuity, because the cancer-causing virus which the vaccination targets is passed on in sexual intercourse. Two schools declined to take part for religious reasons.

The findings from the pilot study, involving 2,817 girls aged 12 and 13 in year 8 at 36 secondary schools in Greater Manchester, are published by the British Medical Journal today. In an accompanying editorial, Professor Jo Waller and Dr Jane Wardle from the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London say 12- and 13-year-old girls whose parents refuse consent may be competent to decide for themselves.

Article here

Aside from its ALUMINUM adjuvant, Gardasil has a few other teeny problems.

You can get these HPV warts from non-intimate activities, like sharing a towel at a pool.
Many Americans are already infected with HPV according to the Washinton Post. Is the sky falling? No. It isn't even a blip on the public health screen. Most people who get these warts get over them without ever knowing they had them. In Canada, a country of 30 million, there were a mere 400 mortalities from cervical cancer last year.

$o, what's this all about? Follow the money. Just like Bush's attempt to screen the entire US population for mental illness (TMAP), this story has links to Texas. Read about Texas' Governor Goodhair's good deeds for Merck here.