NAMI Lies: A brief analysis of NAMI sponsored misinformation about “schizophrenia”

http://recoveryfromschizophrenia.org/2011/12/nami-lies-a-brief-analysis-of-nami-sponsored-misinformation-about-“schizophrenia”/

NAMI Lies: A brief analysis of NAMI sponsored misinformation about “schizophrenia”
Author: Ron Unger


At least as of today, if a person Googles “schizophrenia recovery” the first link that is not an advertisement is to a document titled “Understanding Schizophrenia and Recovery” authored by NAMI. (I would link to it for your convenience, but I hesitate to do anything that would further increase the Google rankings of a site that claims to be increasing “understanding” yet seems more dedicated to deliberately distorting the facts.)

I’ll start with a disclaimer. While I am seriously challenging the national organization of NAMI that is responsible for the document under discussion, I am not expressing an opinion about any local NAMI chapter. Local NAMI chapters have some degree of independence from NAMI national, and some of them are fairly progressive. But hopefully NAMI chapters that wouldn’t spread misinformation will do more to challenge the national organization that seems only too willing to lie to the public.

NAMI’s propaganda efforts start within the title of the document, which is: “Schizophrenia and Recovery; What you need to know about this medical illness.” NAMI is implying that it is a fact that “schizophrenia” is a “medical illness” and wants us to think that it is not in any way an understandable reaction to life events; but there are actually large numbers of both research studies and individual stories that point to the opposite conclusion.

The next sentence spreads more confusion, with its claim that “Schizophrenia interferes with a person’s ability to think clearly, manage emotions, make decisions, and relate to others.” NAMI wants us to ignore the possibility that the person diagnosed with “schizophrenia” may be having problems with thinking, emotions, decisions and relationships because of what happened to them and how they were treated, and wants us to think that some theoretical “illness” called “schizophrenia” did it instead.

It is worth reflection on the likely consequences of telling someone that their experience and behavior is definitely being caused by a “medical illness,” and not by what has happened to them and how they chose to react to it. A very probable effect of this sort of “explanation” is the creation of confusion within the person that in itself is likely to interfere with that person’s ability to handle thinking, emotions, decisions and relationships. Of course, if the NAMI explanation creates more difficulties for the person, those difficulties will also be attributed by NAMI to the “illness” and not to the misinformation.

On page 2, it is stated that “Research has linked schizophrenia to changes in brain chemistry and structure….” Reading this, one might assume that changes in brain chemistry and structure have been found to go along with “schizophrenia” in the same way that having high blood sugar goes along with diabetes, a condition NAMI suggests in the next sentence is “like” schizophrenia. But this simply isn’t true. Instead, researchers have only found that the people diagnosed with schizophrenia are LIKELY to have brain differences compared to the AVERAGE person who doesn’t have the diagnosis: many people diagnosed with schizophrenia don’t have the differences, and some people not diagnosed do have the differences. And it isn’t clear where all the differences come from: someare likely caused by the drugs, others by being inactive, and most all of the differences have also been found in people who suffered abuse in childhood.

This last issue, abuse in childhood, is something NAMI clearly doesn’t want anyone to associate with “schizophrenia.” NAMI states definitively in the next paragraph that “Schizophrenia is not caused by bad parenting….” NAMI makes this statement despite what is now a very large amount of research that shows that abuse in childhood dramatically raises the odds of getting a diagnosis of schizophrenia in adulthood. This applies to all types of abuse: neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse. More severe levels of abuse have been associated with more severe levels of later psychosis in all the studies that looked for such a “dosage relationship.”

NAMI’s denial of the possible link between bad parenting, or abuse, and later “schizophrenia” amounts to collaboration with abusers in denying the effects of abuse even for people who have been severely mistreated. “You are just “schizophrenic,” you can’t blame your problems on anything that happened to you!” Such denial is itself “crazy-making” and results in further emotional abandonment of already abused people; but of course if any “symptoms” result from the “schizophrenic” person encountering such lies, it will just be blamed on “the illness.”

In making the above statements, I am definitely not saying that all people diagnosed with “schizophrenia” had abusive childhoods or that it is definitely true that any NAMI parents are abusers. There was a period of time when many clinicians would automatically blame parents when a child appeared to have “schizophrenia” but such approaches were seriously over-simplified. More complex perspectives acknowledge that children may experience abuse and trauma growing up even when parents are doing their best to keep them safe, and in other cases, children may have a non-traumatic childhood but experience problems that lead to the difficulties labeled “schizophrenia” later in life. So NAMI would have my full support if their point was that we should not assume that bad parenting caused any particular case of “schizophrenia,” but when they claim that bad parenting is definitely never a cause, they appear to have deliberately lost touch with reality. (The information on the connection between having an abuse history and a later diagnosis of “schizophrenia” is now widely enough know that I believe there is no way NAMI leadership could be unaware of it, which is why I am suggesting that NAMI is “lying” and not just misinformed or misunderstanding.)

NAMI goes on to declare in the next paragraph that “schizophrenia” is completely unrelated to “dissociative identity disorder’ (a disorder common among those severely traumatized as children.) While NAMI is only repeating here what many so-called “experts” have to say, the truth seems to be that the same sorts of problems exist for people with both diagnoses, and the “voices” that often plague those diagnosed with “schizophrenia” are not fundamentally different from the “dissociated identity states” that plague those diagnosed with “dissociative identity disorder.”

Toward the bottom of page 2, NAMI states that “Medications are crucial to symptom control….” The fact is that only some people find medications crucial to symptom control. Many people find ways to completely recover and definitely do not need medications. Others don’t recover but also find that the medications don’t make things better and may make things worse. Of course, some people do find the medications helpful, but even in those cases it is often unclear if they are truly necessary; it may just be that the right alternatives have not been offered to some of these people.

I won’t even bother trying to sort out the distortions in the rest of the document. It isn’t all misinformation: NAMI mixes in some facts and some helpful details. But the existence of so many false claims in just the beginning of a document indicates that NAMI is more committed to spreading propaganda than it is to the truth.

I hope that if enough of us comment on these sorts of lies, we can embarrass NAMI into cleaning up its act. And by confronting NAMI, we can also make some headway in getting more accurate information out to those who need it, accurate information that is seriously overdue for most of those in our mental health system.
&&&&&&

Link to article on 29 Medical Causes of Schizophrenia

Bonkers: Sell Eli Lilly stock now

Coming in 2011: The end of Eli Lilly as we know it.
Urgent message to Lilly shareholders: Sell now.


"No country can afford not to have periodic showcase prosecutions of serious corporate abuses to foster deterrence.
          – John Braithwaite, Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Routledge, 1984)

To prepare for the drama that's about to unfold, here's a little history.

On Jan. 30, 2009, Eli Lilly and Company pleaded guilty to a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). The Court sentenced Lilly to pay a criminal fine of $515 million and asset forfeiture of $100 million, the largest criminal fine imposed against an individual defendant in the history of the United States.

The Government believed this historic criminal fine reflected the seriousness of the offense and Eli Lilly's earlier violations of the FDCA. The Government believed the criminal fine would promote respect for the law, and that the sentence would deter Eli Lilly from further unlawful promotion of its pharmaceutical products. The Government believed a criminal fine of this magnitude would serve as general deterrence to others who might be tempted to go down the road of off-label marketing.

Under the Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) between Lilly and the U S. Department of Health and Human Services, the parties agreed that Eli Lilly would not be placed on probation. However, the agreement imposed a strict compliance program to ensure that Lilly's criminal conduct would not recur.

Eli Lilly is subject to exclusion from Federal Health Care programs, including but not limited to Medicaid, for a material breach of the CIA. A material breach includes failure by Lilly to report a reportable event and take corrective action. A reportable event means anything that involves a matter that a reasonable person would consider a probable violation of criminal, civil, or administrative laws applicable to any Federal Health Care program and/or applicable to any FDA requirements relating to the promotion of Lilly products.

The CIA applies to Eli Lilly employees and all contractors, subcontractors, agents and other persons who perform promotional and product services on behalf of Lilly.   Exclusion will have national effect and apply to all other Federal procurement and nonprocurement programs.

Shareholder lawsuits filed against the company for engaging in a long list of illegal activities were settled in March 2010, with Lilly agreeing to abide by strict new measures guaranteeing that matters affecting patient safety and benefit shall be of paramount importance. 

That's the background story, in a nutshell. Future WikiLeaks to follow.
For details regarding the precise nature of the substance that will soon be hitting the fan, watch this space"....
http://www.bonkersinstitute.org/goodbyelilly.html




We hope Lilly stockholders get the bath they need.


Thanks and a tip of the Mad Hatter's Hat to 
The Bonkers Institute - http://bonkerstinstitute.org

Dollars for Docs Widget

The Dollars for Docs Widget from ProPublica lets you track which doctors/health care providers are taking Pharma money.

"As part of ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs” series and interactive news application, we've created a small widget that you can embed on your web site. It will let your readers look up whether their health care providers are taking money from the drug companies in our database. The widget shows the amount of money paid to each practitioner in our database, which company made the payment, and in some cases, what the companies saidthey were paying for: speaking fees, consulting, etc. The widget also lists what drugs each company sells so readers can check their own prescriptions.
We’ll be keeping this data up-to-date roughly quarterly, and the widget running on your site will always have the latest data."

http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/use-our-dollars-for-docs-widget-on-your-site

We are going to grab this gadget, and hope you do too!

USA: Desperate jobless pharmacists?

WASHINGTON -- Isang Inokon, a headhunter for Amherst Healthcare recruiting firm, posted a Craigslist job ad on November 18 for clinical pharmacists -- but only the kind who already have jobs.

"Do yourself and favor and start looking now," he wrote in the ad. "When you lose your job, you will interview from a position of weakness."
With the U.S. unemployment rate still soaring at 9.8 percent and 6.3 million Americans having been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, employers can now afford to be extremely picky about whom they hire. In addition to seeking very specific skills, degrees, and numbers of years of experience, many employers are specifying in job ads that candidates be "currently employed" elsewhere to be considered for the position.
Inokon, who has worked in staffing and recruiting for almost 15 years, said he has trouble placing jobless pharmacists because the reality of today's job market is that employers "want somebody who's wanted."
"When you show desperation in your face and your tone during an interview, management is going to pick up on that vibe. They're gonna feel it and see it and notice something's off," he told HuffPost. "It's like somebody who hasn't been on a date in a while -- they're awkward, and the other person's gonna be turned off. It's always better for a person to interview while they're employed."

Why would pharmacists be jobless? Who's next? 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/03/employers-wont-hire-the-u_n_791710.html

Incarcerated kids drugged with antipsychotics

Evelyn Pringle reports on chemical child abuse being pushed by psychiatry in juvenile detention centers.
LINK
Archive of Evelyn Pringle's articles

From THE ATLANTIC magazine

The Drug Pushers
"As America turns its health-care system over to the market, pharmaceutical reps are wielding more and more influence—and the line between them and doctors is beginning to blur


By CARL ELLIOTT
Back in the old days, long before drug companies started making headlines in the business pages, doctors were routinely called upon by company representatives known as “detail men.” To “detail” a doctor is to give that doctor information about a company’s new drugs, with the aim of persuading the doctor to prescribe them. When I was growing up, in South Carolina in the 1970s, I would occasionally see detail men sitting patiently in the waiting room outside the office of my father, a family doctor. They were pretty easy to spot. Detail men were usually sober, conservatively dressed gentlemen who would not have looked out of place at the Presbyterian church across the street. Instead of Bibles or hymn books, though, they carried detail bags, which were filled with journal articles, drug samples, and branded knickknacks for the office.

Today detail men are officially known as “pharmaceutical sales representatives,” but everyone I know calls them “drug reps.” Drug reps are still easy to spot in a clinic or hospital, but for slightly different reasons. The most obvious is their appearance. It is probably fair to say that doctors, pharmacists, and medical-school professors are not generally admired for their good looks and fashion sense. Against this backdrop, the average drug rep looks like a supermodel, or maybe an A-list movie star. Drug reps today are often young, well groomed, and strikingly good-looking. Many are women. They are usually affable and sometimes very smart. Many give off a kind of glow, as if they had just emerged from a spa or salon. And they are always, hands down, the best-dressed people in the hospital.

Drug reps have been calling on doctors since the mid-nineteenth century, but during the past decade or so their numbers have increased dramatically. From 1996 to 2001 the pharmaceutical sales force in America doubled, to a total of 90,000 reps. One reason is simple: good reps move product. Detailing is expensive, but almost all practicing doctors see reps at least occasionally, and many doctors say they find reps useful. One study found that for drugs introduced after 1997 with revenues exceeding $200 million a year, the average return for each dollar spent on detailing was $10.29. That is an impressive figure. It is almost twice the return on investment in medical-journal advertising, and more than seven times the return on direct-to-consumer advertising.

But the relationship between doctors and drug reps has never been uncomplicated, for reasons that should be obvious. The first duty of doctors, at least in theory, is to their patients. Doctors must make prescribing decisions based on medical evidence and their own clinical judgment. Drug reps, in contrast, are salespeople. They swear no oaths, take care of no patients, and profess no high-minded ethical duties. Their job is to persuade doctors to prescribe their drugs. If reps are lucky, their drugs are good, the studies are clear, and their job is easy. But sometimes reps must persuade doctors to prescribe drugs that are marginally effective, exorbitantly expensive, difficult to administer, or even dangerously toxic. Reps that succeed are rewarded with bonuses or commissions. Reps that fail may find themselves unemployed.

Most people who work in health care, if they give drug reps any thought at all, regard them with mixed feelings. A handful avoid reps as if they were vampires, backing out of the room when they see one approaching. In their view, the best that can be said about reps is that they are a necessary by-product of a market economy. They view reps much as NBA players used to view Michael Jordan: as an awesome, powerful force that you can never really stop, only hope to control.

Yet many reps are so friendly, so easygoing, so much fun to flirt with that it is virtually impossible to demonize them. How can you demonize someone who brings you lunch and touches your arm and remembers your birthday and knows the names of all your children? After awhile even the most steel-willed doctors may look forward to visits by a rep, if only in the self-interested way that they look forward to the UPS truck pulling up in their driveway. A rep at the door means a delivery has arrived: take-out for the staff, trinkets for the kids, and, most indispensably, drug samples on the house. Although samples are the single largest marketing expense for the drug industry, they pay handsome dividends: doctors who accept samples of a drug are far more likely to prescribe that drug later on...."

Continues at Link

Novartis Paid Doctor Who Urged Use of Seizure Meds on Bipolar Kids

http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/novartis-paid-doc-who-urged-use-of-seizure-meds-on-bipolar-kids/6050

Novartis (NVS) gave research funds to a doctor who advocated using the anti-seizure drug Trileptal as an anti-bipolar depression treatment in children — an unapproved use of that drug — the company confirmed to BNET. The doctor, Michael Jay Reinstein, once told a newsletter for parents with bipolar children that “high enough” doses of Trileptal were useful in quelling aggression in bipolar children. Novartis spokesperson Anna Fradle said:

He has done clinical studies on Trileptal on our behalf.

She declined to detail how much money Novartis had paid Reinstein over the years. The use of antidepressants and other pyschiatric drugs in children is controversial. It is not well-established that conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder or mania exist in children, or that if they do the appropriate treatment is a seizure medicine like Trileptal. Yet Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Shire(SHPGY) and AstraZeneca (AZN) have all funded research by doctors who advocate antidepressants for kids, and so did Forest Labs (FRX).

The admission illustrates how a small group of doctors can end up on the payroll of multiple drug companies, triggering illegal “off-label” sales.

Novartis agreed to pay $422 million to end Department of Justice allegations that the company promoted Trileptal for unapproved uses and paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe the drug. In the whistleblower complaint that led to the settlement, former Novartis pharmaceutical sales rep Steve McKee alleged that he and other reps would encourage doctors to ask about off-label uses of Trileptal...

Continues at link

Photo of the doctor

‘What Doctors May Not Tell You About Psychiatric Drugs’

Frightening - and a must-read.

Presentation by Grace E. Jackson, MD

Public Lecture, UCE Birmingham, UCE Birmingham,

June 2004

In PDF form

http://whale.to/drugs/Jackson.pdf

Zombie Drug Rep

Pharmageddon 2012 – the end of an era for pharmaceutical marketing?
"According to a story from MedAdNews, Pharmageddon 2012 is an experimental lab on social medias where communications agencies Friday Morning and S+R Medical Communications expose – in a very unusual and somewhat anonymous way – the findings of a round-table discussion they have had with doctors in early 2009. It’s meant to shed a light on the state of the relationship between healthcare professionals, the pharmaceutical industry and the marketing efforts behind pharma products by using an analogy to “2012“. They use the social media with apocalyptic scenarios to tell that story in quite an entertaining way."
Link

Pharmageddon 2012

More fun videos are here
http://www.youtube.com/user/pharmageddon2012

FSD: Sex for our pleasure or their profit?

FSD - "Female Sexual Dysfunction"

Challenging the Medicalization of Sex

WELCOME

The New View Campaign was formed in 2000 as a grassroots network to challenge the distorted and oversimplified messages about sexuality that the pharmaceutical industry relies on to sell its new drugs.

The pharmaceutical industry wants people to think that sexual problems are simple medical matters, and it offers drugs as expensive magic fixes. But sexual problems are complicated, sexuality is diverse, and no drug is without side effects.

The goal of the New View Campaign is to expose biased research and promotional methods that serve corporate profit rather than people's pleasure and satisfaction. The Campaign challenges all views that reduce sexual experience to genital biology and thereby ignore the many dimensions of real life.

The New View Campaign is devoted to education, activism, and empowerment. We invite you to benefit from the information on this website, and we invite your support and participation.

Link

The biggest drug dealers are listed on the stock exchange

(Reuters) - Abuse of prescription drugs is growing rapidly around the world, with more people abusing legal narcotics than heroin, cocaine and ecstasy combined, the United Nations global drugs watchdog said on Wednesday.

Read the article here

Medicating Children: A “Whistleblower’s” Lawsuit Raises a Novel Legal Question

From Robert Whitaker's Blog, MAD IN AMERICA, at Psychology Today

"In the past few years, a number of pharmaceutical companies have admitted to federal charges that they illegally
marketed psychiatric medications for non-approved uses, with the companies paying large sums to settle the cases.
Now, a legal complaint filed by the Law Project for Psychiatric Rightsin an Alaskan federal court is raising a
related question. When healthcare providers bill Medicaid for prescriptions of psychiatric drugs to children for non-
approved uses, are they committing Medicaid fraud?
The case, United States ex-rel Law Project for Psychiatric Rights v. Matsutani, was unsealed earlier this year, and
legal papers were recently filed that have brought this novel question -- which obviously has profound implications
for the prescribing of psychiatric medications to poor children and adolescents -- into sharp focus.
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) , which is headed by Alaskan attorney James Gottstein, filed its
whistleblower complaint in April 2009. Known as a qui tam lawsuit, PsychRights sued on behalf of the federal
government under the False Claims Act, which allows private individuals to pursue legal complaints against
individuals or companies that are allegedly defrauding the government. In December, the federal government
declined to join PsychRights in the case.
PsychRights named Alaskan state officials, hospitals, mental health agencies, psychiatrists, and pharmacies as
defendants. In its complaint, PsychRights argues that the federal government has agreed to provide Medicaid
reimbursement only for those outpatient drugs that are prescribed for an FDA-approved use or for a use supported
by a medical compendium (such as the DRUGDEX Information System.) PsychRights maintains that the defendants
defrauded the federal government when they billed Medicaid (or the federal Children's Health Insurance Program)
for outpatient drugs that didn't meet this standard.
As part of its complaint, PsychRights identified 16 commonly prescribed psychiatric medications that have no
"medically accepted indication" for youth under 18 years old, and it also identified the limited number of "medically
accepted indications" that exist for 32 other psychiatric drugs. PsychRights compiled this list of "approved" uses by
methodically going through the drug compendiums, and it serves as the evidential heart of the complaint, for it
reveals that psychiatric medications are regularly prescribed to poor children for non-approved uses. PsychRights is asking the federal court to stop this practice (which it argues is harmful), and to pay hefty financial penalties for the fraudulent claims made to date."

Riveting! Thank you, Robert Whitaker.

Read the rest at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/

Some of our previous posts on Robert Whitaker's views and anti-psych meds articles -

http://www.thestreetspirit.org.
This site is owned by The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),
a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice and peace.

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/mad.htm

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/madinterview.htm

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/leonards.htm

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/August2005/zyprexa.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20071119112008/http://www.namiscc.org/newsletters/February02/JohnNashDrugFreeRecovery.htm

http://pharmaceuticalsanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/12/us-kids-represent-psychiatric-goldmine.html

http://pharmaceuticalsanonymous.blogspot.com/2008/05/royal-recovery-from-schizophrenia.html

Canada's Big Pharma Drug War

From
Canada's Big Pharma Drug War

by Dr. Joel Lexchin

"The Ontario government has recently announced major changes to the way that it will pay for generic drugs for those covered under its public drug plan, primarily people 65 and over and those on social welfare. The aim is to rein in rapidly increasing costs for the Ontario Drug Benefit Program. Up until recently spending has been going up by more than 10% annually and overall across Canada drug costs are the second most expensive part of the health care system behind only hospitals.

The current government made a first attempt to deal with drug spending back in 2006 when it reduced the price for generic medicines from 70% of the brand name drug to 50%. At that time, $222-million in savings (from a drug bill of $3.5-billion) from reduced generic prices and other reforms was predicted. There was never any independent analysis about whether those anticipated savings were realized. Now faced with a deficit of over $20-billion and health care costs that take up 42 cents of every public dollar, the government is looking at a new initiative to rein in at least one segment of health care costs. The question of whether that 42-cent figure represents too much spending on health care or is mostly the product of a series of tax cuts that have reduced government revenue is a crucial issue that must be taken up soon.

The Politics of Generic Drugs

One of the key factors that makes public drug plans affordable is the existence of generic versions for many of the products that are on the provincial formulary. Generic drugs work the same as the original brand-name products but are much lower in cost since generic companies don't incur the research and development expenditures and also don't engage in costly promotion of their products.

However, in order for generic drugs to get used they need to be dispensed by pharmacists and this gives the pharmacy owners a huge stick in dealing with the generic companies. In effect what the pharmacy owners tell the generic companies is that they will not stock their products unless the companies sell to them at a discount. The pharmacy owners are reimbursed by the government at the list price of the medication not the discounted price. Therefore, the discount goes to the pharmacy owners not the government. These discounts amount to about 20% of the price of the drug."

Continues at Link

CBC: Pfizer ordered to pay $142M in damages

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/03/25/gabapentin-ubc.html

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has been ordered to pay $142 million US in damages for fraudulently marketing gabapentin, an anti-seizure drug marketed under the name Neurontin.

Video: Big Bucks, Big Pharma

Link: Big Bucks, Big Pharma
This documentary attempts to expose the business behind medicine–often done at the expense of the health of consumers.

Pharma exec implicated in meds murder-suicide

Gigi Jordan feeds son, 8, fatal dose of pills, leaves strange 2-page note in botched murder-suicide
Link

Remembering Andrea Yeats....

News: Pharma Training Doctors

Looks like the foxes are still in charge of the henhouse, and as long as that is so, good health diagnosis and helpful natural healing modalities and maintenance will not be of as much interest to physicians as they should be.

Pfizer Giving Stanford $3 Million Grant For Improving Doctors' Training
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/01/by_scott_hensley_a_leading.html
Lilly Endowment Awards $60 Million to Indiana University School of Medicine
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=277600013

What happens when drugs, money and education mix? Read BLIND FAITH.

NYT: Menopause, as Brought to You by Drug Companies

Mare's urine, you say?

From the article:

PREMPRO is a combination of Premarin, an estrogen drug derived from the urine of pregnant mares and first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1942, with an additional hormone, progestin.

Part of the Premarin saga shows how a drug maker successfully and cannily expanded a franchise whose central ingredient is horse estrogens into a billion-dollar panacea for aging women. Yet several hundred pages of court documents also raise questions about another aspect of Premarin’s trajectory: how Wyeth worked over decades to maintain the image and credibility of its hormone drugs even as the products were repeatedly under siege.

Pfizer representatives say court documents paint an unfair picture of Wyeth’s practices and that plaintiffs’ lawyers have cherry-picked documents for out-of-context comments to sway juries.

Still, the documents offer a snapshot of Wyeth’s efforts. Taken together, they depict a company that over several decades spent tens of millions of dollars on influential physicians, professional medical societies, scientific publications, courses and celebrity ads, inundating doctors and patients with a sea of positive preventive health messages that plaintiffs’ lawyers say deflected users’ attention from cancer concerns.

Link

Update: a video on hormones and cancer that Big Pharma does not want us to see:

U.S. Sen. Grassley: Grassley works for disclosure of drug company payments to medical groups

Three Cheers for Senator Grassley!

12/8/2009

Link

WASHINGTON --- Senator Grassley has asked 33 medical groups for information about the financial backing they get from the pharmaceutical, medical device and insurance industries.

“These organizations have a lot of influence over public policy, and people rely on their leadership. There’s a strong case for disclosure and the accountability that results,” Grassley said.

Grassley said his inquiry follows a review of industry support for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, where he questioned the organization’s national office and state chapters. The Alliance subsequently adopted a new policy of publicly releasing industry support over $5,000. “It’d be good for the system if other organizations would follow NAMI’s lead in this area,” Grassley said.

For several years, Grassley has conducted extensive oversight and sought disclosure of financial ties with industry from research physicians, medical schools, medical journals, continuing medical education, and the patient advocacy community. He has worked to expose cases where there was vast disparity between drug-company payments received and reported by leading medical researchers. In response to Grassley’s work, the National Institutes of Health is working on new disclosure guidelines for federal grant recipients.

Grassley is also working for congressional passage of reform legislation he has sponsored with Senator Herb Kohl. Their bipartisan Physician Payments Sunshine Act would require annual public reporting by drug, device and biologic manufacturers of payments made to physicians nationwide.

“I’m interested in transparency,” Grassley said. “Letting the sun shine in and making information public is basic to building people’s confidence in medical research, education and the practice of medicine,” Grassley said.

This week, t he senator’s letters of inquiry were sent to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the Alzheimer’s Association, the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology, the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Surgeons, the American Dental Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Dietetic Association, the American Heart Association, the American Hospital Association Inc., the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons, the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, the American Society of Health–System Pharmacists, the American Society of Hypertension, Inc., the American Society of Nephrology, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, the Heart Rhythm Society, Mental Health America, NARSAD, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the National Organization for Rare Disorders, the North American Spine Society, Screening for Mental Health Inc., the National Center for Mental Checkups at Columbia University (TeenScreen), The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and the American Cancer Society.

Here is the text of Grassley’s letter.

December 7, 2009

Dear _________________:

The United States Senate Committee on Finance (Committee) has jurisdiction over the Medicare and Medicaid programs and, accordingly, a responsibility to the more than 100 million Americans who receive health care coverage under these programs. As Ranking Member of the Committee, I have a duty to protect the health of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and safeguard taxpayer dollars authorized by Congress for these programs.

For the last three years, the Committee has been looking into various aspects of the pharmaceutical industry, including consulting arrangements, and industry funding for Continuing Medical Education (CME). My inquiry was spurred, in part by press accounts documenting the lack of transparency in the relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and nonprofit organizations. For instance, in April 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported that industry representatives, including ten major drug companies, formed a coalition to promote looser restrictions on off-label marketing. [1] The coalition asked the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to speak in favor of this issue.

On October 6th of this year, I sent letters to all fifty state chapters of NAMI asking them to disclose income from pharmaceutical companies. In that letter, I explained that NAMI National receives almost two-thirds of its funding from the drug industry. [2] I learned recently that a few days after I sent those letters, one of the founders of NAMI and member of the NAMI National Board of Directors emailed his resignation, stating that he was shocked at NAMI’s reliance on pharmaceutical industry funding. In particular he said: “This financial dependency presents a number of problems.”

In response to my concerns, NAMI began to disclose publicly on its website, any amount of funding exceeding $5,000 that it received from pharmaceutical companies and other foundations. This decision in favor of transparency by NAMI is encouraging.

In April of this year, the Institute of Medicine issued a report endorsing transparency and stating that protections against conflicts can be established without inhibiting productive relationships between medicine and industry to improve medical knowledge and care. I am hoping you can assist me in this effort by providing additional insights into these relationships as well as any changes in transparency that your organization may be planning for in the future. Operating with transparency sends a message that there is nothing to hide.

Accordingly, I would appreciate an accounting of industry funding that pharmaceutical, medical device companies, foundations established by these companies or the insurance industry have provided to the (Organization) (The term “industry funding” means any transfer of value, including but not limited to grants, donations, and sponsorship for meetings or programs, etc.) This request covers the period of January 2006 to the present.

Because reporting practices vary widely from one charitable organization to another, I would appreciate you also placing this income into a chart, detailing annual amounts of industry funding. For each year, please provide the following information for (Organization) :

1) Year;

2) Name of company;

3) Amount of funding; and

4) Reason(s) that the funding was provided.

In addition, please explain (Organization) policies for accepting industry funding and the disclosure requirements of your top executives and board members by answering the following questions. For each question, please respond by first repeating the enumerated question followed by the appropriate answer. Again, this request covers the period of January 2006 to the present:

1)

Please describe the policies for accepting industry funding and whether or not (Organization) allows companies to place restrictions or provide guidance on how funding will be spent.

2)

If (Organization) allows companies to place restrictions on industry funding, then please explain all restrictions and/or guidance for each transfer of value from industry. For every transfer of value with a restriction, please provide the following information: year of transfer, name of company, and restriction placed on funding.

3)

Please explain what policies, if any that(Organization) plans to adopt to ensure transparency of funding in order to provide a greater public trust in the independence of your organization.

4)

Please explain your policies on disclosure of outside income by your top executives and board members.

5)

Please provide the disclosures of outside income filed with your organizations by your top executives and board members.

In cooperating with the Committee’s review, no documents, records, data or information related to these matters shall be destroyed, modified, removed or otherwise made inaccessible to the Committee.

I look forward to hearing from you by no later than December 21, 2009.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Grassley United States Senator Ranking Member of the Committee on Finance

*****

The New York Times December 8, 2009

Grassley Seeks Details on Medical Financing by Gardiner Harris

A top Republican senator, Charles E. Grassley, has sent letters to the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society and 31 other disease and medical advocacy organizations asking them to provide details about the amount of money that they and their directors receive from drug and device makers.

Such financing amounts are often considered proprietary by the organizations and their directors, but critics contend that the industry’s sway over such groups leads them to lobby on the industry’s behalf.

Mike Lynch, a spokesman for the A.M.A., said the organization had received the senator’s letter and would respond. Mr. Lynch said industry financing made up less than 2 percent of the organization’s budget.

Steve Weiss, a spokesman for the American Cancer Society, sent an e-mail message stating that the society “holds itself to the highest standards of transparency and public accountability, and we look forward to working with Senator Grassley to provide the information he requested.”

Kate Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Alzheimer’s Association, which also received a letter from the senator, said the organization “was going to answer all of his questions,” but she would not immediately say what share of the organization’s financing comes from drug or device makers.

The letter is part of Mr. Grassley’s long-running investigation into the influence of drug and device makers on the practice of medicine. Mr. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has also long been interested in how charities get and spend their tax-deductible contributions.

“These organizations have a lot of influence over public policy, and people rely on their leadership,” he said. “There’s a strong case for disclosure and the accountability that results.” Earlier this year, Mr. Grassley sent a similar letter to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The group told the senator that more than two-thirds of its donations came from the pharmaceutical industry. In response to the disclosure, Dr. H. Richard Lamb resigned from the group’s board.

Dr. Lamb joined the board of the organization in 2005, when he was “shocked to learn that approximately half of NAMI’s income comes from the large pharmaceutical companies,” he wrote in a resignation letter that Mr. Grassley made public. Alliance officials assured Dr. Lamb that the situation would change. “However,” Dr. Lamb wrote, “very little has changed, right up to the present day.” In an interview, Dr. Lamb said that NAMI’s dependence on the drug industry made some actions impossible. For instance, Dr. Lamb said that NAMI should consider warning against the use of some mental health drugs with life-threatening side effects. But Dr. Lamb said the organization could not consider such a move because it could threaten much of its financing.

Michael J. Fitzpatrick, the organization’s executive director, promised that the industry’s share of the group’s fund-raising would drop significantly next year.

Mr. Grassley’s request that organizations provide details about the outside income of directors may cause some consternation. While a few large patient advocacy groups have provided general guidance about their reliance on industry, almost none have given such details about their leaders.

Senator Grassley is looking at Pharma funding of universities too.
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For Immediate Release
June 24, 2009

"Grassley seeks information about medical school policies for disclosure of financial ties

WASHINGTON --- Senator Chuck Grassley has asked 23 medical schools for information about their policies for conflicts of interest and requirements for disclosure of financial relationships between faculty members and the drug industry.

Grassley sent his request to the 23 educational institutions that did not respond to an earlier request made by the American Medical Student Association for the same information. In that case, the schools reportedly replied to a survey by answering either "no response" or "decline to submit policies." Of the 149 schools asked, 126 provided information to the student association.

"There's a lot of skepticism about financial relationships between doctors and drug companies," Grassley said. "Disclosure of those ties would help to build confidence that there's nothing to hide. Requiring disclosure is a common sense reform based on the public dollars and public trust at stake in medical training, medical research and the practice of medicine."

Grassley has been working to achieve uniform and universal disclosure of the money that pharmaceutical, medical device and biologic companies give to physicians. He has conducted extensive oversight of financial relationships, especially among doctors who conduct research with the $24 billion awarded annually in federal grants by the National Institutes of Health. Institutions receiving these federal dollars are required to track financial relationships, but Grassley has found enforcement of those requirements often to be either lax or in violation. Grassley also has sponsored reform legislation that would require payments from the drug industry to be publicly reported. Senator Herb Kohl is the cosponsor of the "Physician Payments Sunshine Act," S.301.

The 23 schools receiving Grassley's letter are: the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine, Northeastern Ohio University College of Medicine, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine, Tulane University School of Medicine, University of Florida College of Medicine, University of Nevada School of Medicine, Albany Medical College, Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School, Howard University College of Medicine, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, Louisiana State University School of Medicine - New Orleans, Meharry Medical College, Morehouse School of Medicine, New York College of Osteopathic Medicine of the New York Institute of Technology, Ponce School of Medicine, San Juan Bautista School Of Medicine, University at Buffalo School of Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry New Jersey - New Jersey Medical School, University of South Carolina School of Medicine. The text of the letter is below."

NATURE: Pharmaceutical industry financial UNDERperformance

Pharmaceutical industry financial performance
doi:10.1038/nrd3049
Only 2 of the 14 large–cap pharmaceutical companies are predicted to have a positive net present value gap against a 5% compound annual growth rate in revenue for the period 2009–2015.

Oh noes...

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