The New York Times is out today with an article on just how much money NAMI has been getting from Big Pharma in recent years--a ton, three-fourths of its total fundraising. "The mental health alliance, which is hugely influential in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 22, 2009 01:10 PM
Most of you are aware of a long-running campaign by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to ferret out undisclosed pharma company funding of academic researchers who also wind up taking federal research money. Well, it ain't the Senator who does all...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 21, 2009 12:03 AM
I've been wrestling with how to say something sensible about the Senate Finance Committee's health care reform bill, but what can you say when the country is literally ripping itself apart over the shape of the reforms and an unexpected...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 18, 2009 12:03 AM
A new study out in Psychiatric Services asserts that a full 60 percent of antipsychotics prescribed in the VA system in 2007 were being prescribed off-label and, in my opinion, for conditions for which there is little scientific evidence supporting...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 11, 2009 12:03 AM
A study out recently in Bipolar Disorders shows that Seroquel failed to beat, and was in fact beaten by, placebo in treating depression in 32 adolescents aged 12 to 18 and diagnosed with bipolar disorder type 1 who were given...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 14, 2009 12:05 AM
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has struck again, today sending a letter to 23 medical schools and asking them to reveal policies on conflicts of interest and requirements for disclosure of financial relationships between faculty and Big Pharma. The 23 schools...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 24, 2009 10:38 AM
Yes, it's happened yet again, as the Wall Street Journal's Health blog reported yesterday, Sen. Charles Grassley has uncovered yet another psych researcher who was getting oodles of money from pharma companies while also doing federally-funded research, this time on...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 11, 2009 12:01 AM
Well, here's a stunner: in a study just out in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, researchers report that Depakote ER (technically, divalproex ER in the study) had no treatment effect in a four-week, placebo-controlled...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 19, 2009 12:03 AM
Via the Dallas Morning News comes word that Karen Wagner, a well-known University of Texas psych researcher, is being investigated both by the University of Texas and the Department of Health and Human Services (which handles most federal health research...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 8, 2009 12:10 PM
Most of you are aware that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to the National Alliance on Mental Illness last month, asking for the organization, which lobbies Congress, to reveal how much it gets from what pharma companies. NAMI...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 6, 2009 12:05 AM
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (known as Psych Rights) yesterday sent letters to several members of Congress, including Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), alleging that since the 1990s Medicaid has been paying for psych meds used in kids off-label and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 6, 2009 12:03 AM
Beyond Meds posted a lengthy, searing indictment of NAMI and its "Family to Family" program recently. It's essentially the text of a booklet authored by a psychologist named Ty Colbert who, among other things, criticizes NAMI for offering families "false...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 27, 2009 12:01 AM
I learned yesterday that the Alliance for Human Research Protection last week sent a letter to the president of Harvard University, calling for the school to order a broad-based, independent review of the work of controversial Harvard child psychiatrist Joseph...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 21, 2009 12:01 AM
I'm sure some of you will get a chuckle out of this: in November, the International Forum on Mood and Anxiety Disorders (website) will hold its annual conference, this year in Monaco, and one of the conference topics will be...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 17, 2009 12:01 AM
Yesterday a self-identified NAMI volunteer offered the following comment in regards to an investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) of NAMI National's pharma funding. I'll let it speak for itself. "I am a NAMI volunteer and all of this comment...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 15, 2009 12:03 AM
A reader sent along an email from NAMI National to its many supporters yesterday and I thought I'd share it with you all. The initial Grassley query of NAMI is here. From: Mike Fitzpatrick Sent: Tue 4/7/2009 3:05 PM To:...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 8, 2009 12:53 PM
As I noted last year, America's uber mental health advocacy group the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) was getting oodles from pharma companies, including $490,000 from Eli Lilly. What NAMI uses that money for isn't clear to me, but...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 6, 2009 03:02 PM
Via Alison Bass, news is out that Martin Keller, the chair of psychiatry at Brown University, will step down from his post in June. It's not clear if he was forced out or if this a "to spend more time...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 6, 2009 12:50 PM
The New York Times is reporting that controversial Harvard child psychiatrist Joseph Biederman was selling J&J/Janssen on results of clinical trials in children of its antipsychotic Risperdal and its stimulant Concerta in advance of conducting the actual studies. Biederman is...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 20, 2009 12:01 AM
There's a commentary in the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, gingerly addressing the conflict of interest scandals roiling psychiatry--and bringing it to its knees, in the words of Tufts' University's Danny Carlat--and one of the very psychiatric...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 4, 2009 12:01 AM
I've now seen a copy of the federal complaint against Forest Labs for allegedly illegally promoting Lexapro and Celexa for use in children, both uses for which the company has no approvals. It's the usual tale of ignoring negative clinical...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 26, 2009 11:54 AM
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that officials with the HHS inspector general's office are looking into questions of whether Emory University misled NIH about the work and consulting contracts of Charles Nemeroff, a professor of psychiatry there and recently...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 26, 2009 12:03 AM
There's been much news of conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and outside researchers possibly biasing the results of studies of psychiatric drugs over the last year. Notably, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has exposed researchers at Harvard University, Emory University...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 25, 2009 12:01 AM
On Sunday, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a profile of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), longtime thorn in the side of government waste, the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry, and friend to whistleblowers. His thoughts on the FDA's relationship with drug and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 10, 2009 10:06 AM
Yesterday, I noted that CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, was expected to be named Surgeon-General of the US by President-Elect Barack Obama. I noted that I had concerns because Gupta struck me as a lightweight as a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 8, 2009 12:03 AM
Amidst the many bizarre revelations around the conflict of interest scandal around academic psychiatric researchers and Big Pharma being probed by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) comes the oddest revelation of them all. In 2000, Emory University psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff wrote...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 18, 2008 11:45 AM
John McManamy, who blogs over at HealthCentral.com on bipolar disorder and depression, has for the second time gone after the New York Times and its crack reporter Gardiner Harris, who covers public health for the paper in its DC bureau,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 4, 2008 12:01 AM
I have corrected this post at NPR's request as I had incorrectly identified "The Infinite Mind" as being NPR-distributed when in fact it was only on NPR's Sirius channel. I've changed the description to "NPR-connected." To clarify further for readers,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 24, 2008 12:03 AM
Today's New York Times has news that Sen. Charles Grassley has caught yet another researcher in his conflict of interest probe. This time out, it's Fred Goodwin--perhaps the most influential researcher and writer in the world of bipolar disorder--and the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 21, 2008 08:29 AM
In the ongoing saga of members of Congress looking into pharma payouts to various researchers, Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) have asked J&J to turn over details of its payouts to physicians in regards to its antipsychotic...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 6, 2008 12:22 PM
Paul Rubin, an economist at Emory University, had a very weird op-ed published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution the other day. In it, he decried attacks upon psych researchers and their conflicts of interest wherein the docs take money from...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 30, 2008 08:28 AM
There was a fascinating short profile of Charles Nemeroff, the embattled Emory University psychiatrist in the Atlanta Journal Constitution over the weekend. Nemeroff is in all kinds of hot water due to his allegedly nasty habit of taking millions from...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 14, 2008 12:05 AM
A large number of you have passed along Judith Warner's latest "Domestic Disturbances" column from today's Times. Thanks. In it, Warner, who is generally a pharma defender and author of a forthcoming book on children's mental health (which I simply...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 10, 2008 11:51 AM
There's a reason for the Harvard bit in the headline: the Harvard ADHD/Bipolar Child--that would be child psychiatrists Tim Wilens and Joe Biederman, both objects of a Senate investigation into not properly disclosing their Big Pharma funding--are out with a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 10, 2008 12:03 AM
A few of you have probably already caught the news elsewhere: yesterday, Charles Nemeroff resigned as chair of the psychiatry department at Emory University. The move came on the heels of revelations that he'd taken in $2.8 million in pharma...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 4, 2008 01:45 PM
You just had to know that Sen. Charles Grassley's (R-Iowa) inquiries into psych researchers taking federal research money on one hand and pharma money on the other and not honestly reporting the conflict would eventually reach Charles Nemeroff, a professor...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 3, 2008 11:52 AM
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has gone and done it again: poked into a major psych researcher's payouts from Big Pharma, compared it against other required disclosures, and found some underreporting going on. This time out the bustee is none other...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 24, 2008 10:35 AM
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has nailed yet another university and yet another psych researcher for underreporting of monies received from a pharma company. This time out its the University of Texas and Karen Wagner, a psychiatry professor at UT-Galveston. From...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 11, 2008 12:01 AM
Ronald Pies, editor of Psychiatric Times, has announced in an editorial that his journal (which is one of the APA's journals, tellingly) will ask its editorial board members to report various pharma monies they've received. Presumably, this information will then...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 2, 2008 11:00 AM
A few months ago, I rolled out Eli Lilly's grants to various advocacy groups, universities, continuing medical education companies and whatnot for the first quarter of 2008. Some of the big grantees were Harvard and the American Psychiatric Association. The...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 22, 2008 12:03 AM
Yesterday, I reported that the FDA's psychiatry products chief, Thomas Laughren, and the FDA itself were refusing to answer questions about pediatric bipolar disorder which the agency had two weeks previously determined unilaterally was a valid diagnosis. The FDA's move...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 15, 2008 09:16 AM
A report issued by the General Accounting Office asserts that it takes the FDA seven months to catch instances of off-label marketing by pharma companies and issue a warning to the company and another four months for the company to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 28, 2008 11:06 AM
Pharmalot is reporting that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who's been going whole hog on connections between Big Pharma and researchers and their conflicts, is now looking into Brown University's Martin Keller. Among other things, Keller is infamous for Paxil Study...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 15, 2008 11:35 AM
The New York Times is out today with an article on Sen. Charles Grassley's (R-Iowa) investigation of the deep ties between medicine and Big Pharma and in particular of the field of psychiatry. As the paper's Ben Carey and Gardiner...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 12, 2008 11:29 AM
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is sure turning into a one-man wrecking crew for many psych researchers and will probably move onto other branches of medicine soon enough. He's already exposed massive conflicts and misreported payouts from pharma companies involving three...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 27, 2008 12:05 AM
The Wall Street Journal has a piece in today's issue--and I can only get a snippet of it on this side of the subscription firewall--stating that the feds are widening their probe of allegations that GlaxoSmithKline hid suicidality data on...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 20, 2008 12:05 AM
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is sure turning into a one-man problem for Big Pharma. Today he's calling on the FDA to take a look-see at Glaxo's data on Paxil safety. "The British counterpart to our country’s FDA found that GlaxoSmithKline...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 12, 2008 11:18 AM
Much credit to AHRP and Pharmalot for picking up an interesting bit on one the defenders of Harvard child psychiatrist Joe Biederman who was touted in Sunday's New York Times piece as "a true visionary in recognizing this illness in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 10, 2008 07:53 AM
Some of you are aware that yesterday the New York Times had a front page article detailing multi million dollar payouts from pharmaceutical companies to Joe Biederman, Timothy Wilens and another Harvard/Massachusetts General psychiatrist. These researchers are the chief proponents...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 9, 2008 12:03 AM
Many of you know that last week news came out that documents in a California-based lawsuit established that GlaxoSmithKline had been hiding suicidality data connected with the use of Paxil (Seroxat elsewhere) for some 15 years and that a US...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 12, 2008 12:07 AM
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) yesterday sent a letter to GSK asking for copies of documents recently unsealed in a court in California that point to the company knowing of elevated suicide risks around its anti-depressant Paxil as far back as...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 8, 2008 12:03 AM
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has been looking into the atypical anti-psychotics for a few months. Now he's asking Lilly, AstraZeneca and Janssen/J&J to provide details of how they've marketed anti-psychotics for nursing...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 13, 2007 12:01 AM
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and now its ranking member, has requested that Eli Lilly turn over the documents leaked to the New York Times in December. The committee has authority over Medicare and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 5, 2007 12:05 AM