Ah, that is so true. What webs we weave.

It's the arrogance of narcissism and what I believe borders on sociopathy. To do whatever, without regard to how it impacts on others, is evil. Maybe a bit too harsh for Dr Biederman's case, but how far off, i do not know.

Another adage I feel applies to doctors is this:
the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Keep on writin', FS!

Susan Resko has moved up the ladder at CABF, she's been there a long time, back in my days there it was Martha Hellendar who once advised me to have my daughter use ECT....

Let's also add that Dr. Melissa DelBello's tight financial ties to AstraZeneca are again under scrutiny:Clinical Psychology and Psych Blog.

Besides all of them being on the board at some point at CABF; that site used to be free for parent support forums (I was an active member and was banned for warning others of the suicidal ideations associated with SSRI's in 2001) is now disclosed as having pharma funding, and when parents such as myself inquired on the message boards if they had funding those comments were censored and deleted.

Now they disclose they have funding, long after we all suspected it was the reason we were never allowed to discuss negative/adverse reactions in any medication experience our children were having.

That site heavily promoted medicating children and that was 7 years ago that I was part of it.

Long before any of these meds were EVER FDA approved for use in kids.

Now they disclose they have funding, long after we all suspected it was the reason we were never allowed to discuss negative/adverse reactions in any medication experience our children were having. >>>>>I have been with CABF since March 2000 after my son tried to commit suicide while on depakote it made him psychotic. I was never told not to discuss negative medication experiences with that med or any others! While some meds work for one child or adult may not work for others. That is what I share with other members. I also share links to the side affects of these meds. so parents are informed what to look out for.

is now disclosed as having pharma funding>>>> CABF ALWAYS listed who funded them on their web site and when their funding was cut by the pharmaceutical companies is when they had to ask their members to pay a membership fee. If CABF or other web sites trying to help parents help their children get well could get funding from other resources then the drug companies they would! I know CABF has tried for years!

Very interesting Joanne, first you say the drug companies stopped funding CABF, then you state if you could get funding from other resources you would.

Have you looked at the advisory board of CABF lately? These are all Pharma spokemans. Bierderman alone, as we just learned is making millions. Now you want us to believe you are getting no funding from Pharma. Bierdeman and the others are big pharma.

There would be no CABF without big pharma. The pharma companies made childhood bipolar disorder. Without them you would not exist.

Very interesting Joanne, first you say the drug companies stopped funding >>> No they cut the funding meaning they cut down the amount of money they give.

The pharma companies made childhood bipolar disorder. >>>> I guess the depression, mania, self harm and voices before meds were made up huh?? My friends memories growing up miserable that is all made up??

CABF response to New York Times article "Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay" ...

'Re: "Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay"',
Letter to the Editor, Chicago Tribune, December 5, 2007,
by Susan Resko, CABF Executive Director

June 8, 2008

Wilmette - The Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation supports full disclosure of pharmaceutical company payments to physicians and researchers. Parents and doctors need all the information to evaluate research on treatments, including potential conflicts.

Families living with pediatric bipolar disorder face challenges few others can imagine. Their children may be suicidal or explosive and unable to function in school or at home. Early treatment saves lives and improves the long-term prognosis, but diagnosis typically trails onset by a decade. We cannot allow controversy or confusion to further harm children yet undiagnosed.

Complex psychiatric condition such as pediatric bipolar disorder require more well-designed, large-scale and long-term studies. These studies should be federally financed, so researchers will be less reliant on pharmaceutical funding.

This is a dumb response from CABF. Using the old scare the public argument to hide the real issues. Is the person who posted this on this thread some kind of agent for them and pharma cos?

well Joanne, I was banned and emailed by Martha Hellendar herself, not to discuss adverse SSRI' stories, was given a week probation, and maybe you just didn't see that, because my comments were DELETED AND CENSORED. I was subject to (as were others)mandatory screening of our comments, then they would decide whether they would go online. AND I was told to always add this: "I am not a doctor" to EVERY SINGLE POST.
I ended up being banned completely, no matter how I wrote my daughter's 2001 Zoloft story, "from a personal story" to "i'm not a doctor"...also, in fact it IS true they did not disclose as they do now on their site the drug funding, as also they've not talked about the falling out of Demtri and the site, or how they fired Martha Helledar and had it appear she was simply doing "research" rather than President.
There were more ppl than me, we started an off-shoot group, and others were banned for discussing ALTERNATIVEs to psych meds, and eventually they created a "forum" for that.

I think I've said enough here, there's more I could say, and have it saved on disks if I need to back anything up--that's how vicious it got.

Joanne said: "My friends memories growing up miserable that is all made up??"
No, I don't think that is made up, nor do I think growing up miserable is bipolar disorder.
I also thought it was a dumb response from CABF. Especially this part "We cannot allow controversy or confusion to further harm children yet undiagnosised." What about all the controversy, confusion and HARM done to the children that have been diagnosised because of greedy researchers?

Furious Seasons:A Question For The Child And Adolescent Bipolar Foundation.

I really don't know what to think about this news. On the one hand, the presence of such vast amounts of money in the pharm. business seems to invariably lead to corruption; on the other hand, I watched my 15 year old bipolar daughter brought back within 3 days from a terrifying episode of psychosis with Risperdal. It's so hard to need so much help from these folks, yet never to feel that they are entirely trustworthy...

Also, to clarify back then the site was free. When the FDA black box warning came into place for SSRI's and suicidal ideation in teens then they displayed that--which was exactly what some of us parents had lived with, and known for years--like me(since 2001).

It was a smack in the face then, to have that forum and it's moderators start saying what we had learned by watching our kids suffer!

The main cocktail of meds back then promoted by CABF was Depakote, an SSRI, and an antipsychotic (Zyprexa was keen then).

A moderator contacted me and told me I was on a "black list" of posters to watch for.

Read it and weep. I'm not impressed at all with what they do. They promoted pharmaceutical intervention with drugs in kids LONG before any were EVER FDA approved, and told me and others if our kids went off of meds they would kill themselves.

Talk about fearmongering! at it's worst!

I think I've said enough here, there's more I could say, and have it saved on disks if I need to back anything up--that's how vicious it got.>>>>>>Stephany, I am truly sorry about your experience and do hope your daughter is doing well. Without the support of CABF my children would have been lost in the system or dead. I learned that I had to learn as much about BP and the meds in order to help my children to get well. That is was ok to be a bitch to get what my children needed. I pass that onto my members of my group. Knowledge is power!

my daughter did get lost in the system and was nearly dead as a result of that misdiagnoses.

oh, and i prevented her from being locked up in a state institution in october 07; hard advocacy works.

thank you for the good wishes though Joanne, sincerely.

Odd. My response seemed to have been deleted. I'll try again.

Jones wrote:
Is the person who posted this on this thread some kind of agent for them and pharma cos?

Hardly. It blew me away how self-serving CABF's response was.

CABF:
These studies should be federally financed, so researchers will be less reliant on pharmaceutical funding.

So now taxpayer's money needs to pay for these studies? And given pharma's lobbying and influence in politics, this just gives them an extra layer to hide their influence behind.

cairn
Show some respect.
As you really cannot take a tip and is unresponsive to children behaving violently under these drugs I go the stupid way:
GET OUT!
You have already crossed all lines here. You have called people names and are acting cynical.
There's almost no post in which you behave like an idiot.
We are talking about children here.
Children that will have serious side effects for the rest of their lives because of these drugs.
Iatrogenic conditions has already shown it's effect on 18 years old males and females who were put on SSRIs when they were teenagers.
No! I don't believe you're work for pharmas.
They do a very good job and know damn well how to be nice and tender to convey their messages.
You're nothing but a scoundrel.

I'm sorry all of you. But sometimes I loose my temper.

I'm sorry!

I took the liberty to be so aggressive because it's still in my mind the time this person said that
that it's impossible to discuss with crazy people.
There was an ERRATA: "by crazy I meant irrational"

That's too much for me.

Maybe you should reread my post, Ana. I was surprised myself at how self-serving and cynical CABF's response actually was.

Something that's given me pause, though, is that just because a researcher fails to disclose the funding for his research, and remember it's for the studies, not personal payola, it doesn't necessarily invalidate his work. It should still be judged on its own merits. Attacking the person to undermine their science kind of thing.

not to mention biederman's name is on just about every adhd/childhood bipolar study out there; and there has been a 4000%increase in the childhood bp dx. (and over 500,000 kids are on antipsychotics, where'd i read that? i think it was at pharmlot blog.)

nah, let's let him do his science, and pocket over a million dollars he seemed to have forgotten to report as income!

enough is enough!

Stephany (and others), have you read the article on Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2193472/) titled,

New World Disorder: Was ADHD an evolutionary asset?

By William Saletan

Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008

It's a fascinating study. Some juicy bits ...

Is ADHD a disease?

...The condition's very name incorporates this assumption: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Lots of kids with ADHD have trouble functioning in modern society.

But what if society were different? What if it were structured so that having ADHD was actually an advantage?

That post got away from me before I finished. Anyway, the study examined a Kenyan tribe who were nomadic. Part of the tribe had recently settled into a farming community while the rest remained nomadic. The group as a whole was tested for a genetic marker that has been linked to ADHD symptoms. They found that nomadic tribesmen with the marker were better off nutritionally than their city cousins. This turns out to be consistent with findings of a higher frequency of this ADHD marker in nomadic people around the world.

Quoting:

But how would the gene help nomads? The authors speculate:

Increased impulsivity, ADHD-like traits, novelty-seeking like traits, aggression, violence and/or activity levels may help nomads obtain food resources, or exhibit a degree of behavioral unpredictability that is protective against interpersonal violence or robberies. … It might be that the attention spans conferred by the DRD4/7R+ genotype allow nomadic children to more readily learn effectively in a dynamic environment (without schools), while the same attention span interferes with classroom learning in Songa, the settled community. 7R+ boys might develop into warriors (the life-stage of an Ariaal male that lies between childhood and manhood) and men who can more effectively defend against livestock raiders, perhaps through a reputation of unpredictable behavior that inspires fear. Among 7R+ men in the settled community of Songa, such tendencies might be less well suited to practicing agriculture and selling goods at market. It might also be that higher activity levels in 7R+ nomads are translated into increased food production, while such activity levels in settled men are a less efficient use of calories in food production.

Interesting, eh?