My First "Krusty The Klown Award," Many Links, Many Thanks

I should've done this on Friday, but I was all wrapped-up in The Zyprexa Chronicles and blew off posting something about all the other fine work floating around the mental health blogging world. Until now.

CL Psych, as usual, had a stream of fine items last week, including one on a doctor named Siegfried Kasper who likes to affix his name to studies he's never written. Once upon a time, this same clown also stuck his name on a paper David Healy refused to slap his name on for a Phamra company. And while I know it's fun to bitch about docs doing shady unscientific things and then call the result double-blind, peer-reviewed gold-standard science, I think I need to get into the proper spirit of how medicine really works and give out awards for such behavior. It is in that spirit that I bestow Furious Seasons' first Krusty The Klown Award upon Dr. Siegfried Kasper.

You remember Krusty, right? "I heartily endorse this event or product" was his mantra. I'm sure Kasper knows it by heart.

There was also a fine op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in which lawyer-ethicist--two words you almost never see together--Richard Sitrin wrote about the Zyprexa scandal and how big companies get to deep-six documents all the time.

Intueri tangled with the great, and greatly incomprehensible, Michel Foucault. (Maria: I had the philosophy classes and I still don't know what the fuck he's talking about.) Marissa Miller at depression introspection writes about suicidal feelings. Liz Spikol started her new job and posted on the ridiculously ignored problem of cops committing suicide. (The rate is 18 per 100,000, more than the general population, but right in line with the suicide rate among men aged 25 to 64 years old.) And the cops who get help like Angela Holland? Oh, they get written off as psychos based on bogus medical exams, are fired, lose their pensions and careers. Stephany at soulful sepulcher was in Seroquel hell. And so on.

Also, I need to thank several blogs for linking to my blither-blather. Those would be Neurophilosphy, Mind Hacks, Health Supreme, the Alliance for Human Research Protection and Seattlest.