Big Pharma--Tricks of the Trade

From the E Pluribus Media Community

A better new book on the subject is Shyness by Christopher Lane. Both authors document the way in which the American Psychiatric Institute has worked with the big pharmas to redefine mood disorders as mental illness, in order to create a market for anti-anxiety and anti-depression remedies. Here is an excerpt from Levin's article.

Not too long ago, a child who was irritable, moody, and distractible and who at times sounded grandiose or acted without regard for consequences was considered a "handful." In the U.S. by the 1980s, that child was labeled with a "behavioral disorder" and today that child is being diagnosed as "bipolar" and "psychotic" -- and prescribed expensive antipsychotic drugs. Bloomberg News, also on September 4, 2007, reported, "The expanded use of bipolar as a pediatric diagnosis has made children the fastest-growing part of the $11.5 billion U.S. market for antipsychotic drugs."

Both authors are strong on the subject of how the steriotypical upbeat personality type has been defined as a norm for mental health.

Worried about the world? Lost that you may loose your  job and won't be able to put food on the table or get medical care for your kids? Pop a pill. By this account being an "introvert" is a no-no. Big reader, or worse yet someone who likes to research things and write about them, you know an introspective type or maybe just plain shy. These days you may be diagnosed as suffering from a Mood Disorder.

Remember how chemical imbalance in the brain was ostensibly discovered to be at the root of mental illness and drugs like prozac were prescribed to take care of this. Well know it seems that new research indicates its just not so. Levin reprises the new research results in his article and comes to a startling conclusion.

The serotonin-deficiency theory of depression was so successfully marketed that it was news to many Americans when Newsweek's February 26, 2007 cover story, "Men and Depression," mentioned that scientists now reject the theory that depression is caused by low levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, told Newsweek that "a depressed brain is not necessarily underproducing something."

He asks the question, why we are seeing the release of these results now and offers an interesting hypothesis that the reason is because the patents on the present generation of anti-psychotic drugs are beginning to lapse. This is clearing the way for a new generation of wonder drugs.

To the delight of Big Pharma, NIMH uses taxpayer monies to fund researchers who are financially connected to pharmaceutical companies. One important example is the "Sequential Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D)," a $35 million U.S. taxpayer-funded study that proclaimed the effectiveness of antidepressant treatment. The results of STAR*D were widely reported by the corporate media.

Unfortunately, the NIMH press release about STAR*D excluded the fact that STAR*D researchers received consulting and speaker fees from the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the antidepressants studied in STAR*D -- and this fact went unreported by the corporate media.

Also not in the press release and unreported is the fact that STAR*D researchers failed to include a placebo control and failed to incorporate relapse rates in the overall results. So in reality, STAR*D antidepressant results were no better than the customary placebo results or the results of no treatment at all -- this also unreported by the corporate media.