Pfizer Employees Attack APA President

In the new issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, 17 Pfizer employees, research psychiatrists all, offered their thoughts on APA President Steven Sharfstein's address last year to the APA convention that was extremely critical of Big Pharma. The original speech is here. Pfizer makes Geodon and Zoloft (which sells very little these days). The Pfizer employees are pissed at Sharfstein.

"Dr. Sharfstein sees in the pharmaceutical industry a profit motive at odds with the psychiatrist’s aim to provide the highest quality of psychiatric care to patients. For those committed to expanding the range of treatment options available to patients with serious mental illness, the path forward requires a more critical evaluation of the current state of psychiatry than simply advancing the notion that "big pharma" is responsible for avariciously pushing the field toward an increasingly biological model. That sweeping condemnation detracts from both the true complexity of the underlying factors contributing to this trend and the contributions pharmaceutical research has made to patient care. Certainly, the primary role for the pharmaceutical industry is to help serve the collective desire for innovation that offers tomorrow’s cures. For this reason, we respectfully disagree with Dr. Sharfstein’s suggestion that the interests of patients and the field are best served by adding distance to the very partnerships that have enhanced the quality and quantity of life for so many."

Sharfstein responded thus:

"I take exception to the implication that our partnership must be cheek-to-cheek. The marketing of medications through millions of dollars in gifts, free trips, meaningless surveys, and other enticements is wrong. It also generates distrust among our patients and drives up costs, as less expensive but equally therapeutic alternative medications fall from routine use. Too close a relationship with the pharmaceutical industry exacerbates concerning trends in the medical marketplace. Increasingly, psychiatrists are seen as pill pushers, with the result that we are reimbursed for our pharmacologic expertise and very little else. Another unfortunate result (for everyone) is that our profession has less credibility to stand up and object to unnecessary black box warnings."

I agree with Sharfstein, except for the black box thing. As for Pfizer's house psych docs, how's that Geodon working out for you guys? How many bipolars have you made manic today?

If anyone has any questions about the effects of the kissy-face relationship between Big Pharma and academic psych docs, go Google "zyprexakills.tar.gz," and review the documents concerning Eli Lilly, Zyprexa and nice guys like Eli Lilly's Lord Aytpical, er Mauricio Tohen, who is simultaneously on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at Lilly, who has designed and guided many of the Zyprexa studies performed by "independent" academics. Or re-read the posts on this site about Paxil. Or go visit David Healy's website. And so on.