Friday, December 28, 2007

Harvard Psychiatrists Target 4-year old Children (New Video)

I recently came across this post, complete with YouTube Video as evidence. Originally I found it on an automated website, generated with stolen pages for content. I tracked it back to the original post, and found it was from the fine folks at the Alliance For Human Research Protection.

Four-year old Rebecca Riley' was a casualty of psychiatric "treatment. Her death from a combination of prescribed of toxic psychotropic drugs is a demonstration of medicine derailed from its legitimate therapeutic mission. The public was shocked that when still a toddler--aged 28 months--Rebecca was "diagnosed" with both bipolar disorder and ADHD by a board certified psychiatrist.

But a cadre of child psychiatrists at the nation's most prestigious medical centers, have made their career by working hand in glove with drug manufacturers on whose behalf they test the most toxic drugs in young children and lend their reputations to promote the use of these drugs--and drug combinations for young children--seemingly without regard for children's safety or welfare.
An example of crass commercialism can be seen in a MGH advertisement (2001) posted on YouTube that sought to recruit children as young as 4 to serve as human guinea pigs in one of its numerous lucrative psychotropic drug trials.

The ad is an example of disease mongering and pathologizing childhood behavior. MGH department of psychiatry instills fear in parents by insinuating that their child's behavior problems are biological:

"Your child may be facing a chemical problem that you can't manage without help." "We're Mass General, and we can help." The number given to call is 617-724-4MGH.

A report in the Boston Globe (2005) revealed that "After decades of offering continuing medical education classes in Boston, Harvard Medical School teaching hospital--Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)--last year raised $6.5 million from Cephalon Inc., Janssen Medical Affairs, GlaxoSmithKline, and Wyeth for its 2005 program. The pool of money will allow the psychiatry department to dramatically expand its continuing medical education program with live lectures in 24 cities, teleconferences, and around-the-clock webcasts."

Dr. Robert Birnbaum, medical director of the Division of Postgraduate Education for the psychiatry department insults our intelligence when he claims : "The companies don't have any input into the curriculum, and there is no ongoing dialogue throughout the year."

As Dr. Arnold Relman, a Harvard Medical School professor, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, observed: "I am skeptical that a company would give a lot of money just to be able to say 'We were nice to the Mass. General Hospital."
The post also extensively quotes from the Boston Globe article

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