Moody Is the New Bipolar - as mental illness has become extremely profitable, we are seeing more of it.

The following is an introduction to a much longer article, available online via AlterNET and first seen in the November 2007 issue of Z Magazine

In Eugene Jarecki's documentary film Why We Fight, about the U.S. military-industrial complex, U.S. foreign policy critic Chalmers Johnson states: "I guarantee you when war becomes that profitable, you are going to see more of it." Similarly, as mental illness has become extremely profitable, we are seeing more of it.

On September 4, 2007, the New York Times reported, "The number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003 ... Drug makers and company-sponsored psychiatrists have been encouraging doctors to look for the disorder."

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."

Psychopathologizing young people is not the only reason for the dramatic rise in sales of such antipsychotics as Eli Lilly's Zyprexa and Johnson & Johnson's Risperdal (each, in recent years, grossing annually from $3 to $4 billion). Much of Big Pharma's antipsychotic boon is attributable to generous U.S. government agencies, especially Medicaid. The Medicaid gravy train has been fueled by Big Pharma corruption so over-the-top that it has been the subject of recent media exposures.

The Associated Press, on August 21, 2007, reported, "A groundbreaking Minnesota law is shining a rare light into the big money that drug companies spend on members of state advisory panels who help select which drugs are used in Medicaid programs for the poor and disabled." Those advisory panels -- dominated by physicians -- have great influence over the $28 billion spent by Medicaid on drugs, but only Minnesota, Vermont, and Maine require drug companies to report monies paid to physicians. The AP article focused on John E. Simon, a psychiatrist on the Minnesota advisory panel since 2004, who received $489,000 from Eli Lilly between 1998 and 2006. The top drugs paid for by Minnesota Medicaid, according to the AP article, have been antipsychotic drugs, especially Eli Lilly's Zyprexa.

Another Case of Kids Over-Medicated on Psych Drugs

A report from Corpus Christi, Texas

The parents of three elementary students who showed up for school seemingly under the influence of drugs were back in court Tuesday to see if a judge would allow them to keep the children temporarily.

The kids, ages 6, 9 and 10, reportedly have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. They have been living with their paternal grandparents since they were taken from their mother and stepfather in September.

Tuesday judge Carl Lewis decided Tuesday the children would remain with the grandparents for at least the next 30 days.

In the courtroom, the kids' mother Jennifer Bartley and stepfather Edward Bartley avoided KRIS-TV cameras, and they would not say on-camera whether they intentionally overmedicated their children. But, police said, on Sept. 14, the children appeared drunk as the couple dropped off two of Jennifer's three children at Luther Jones Elementary

Investigators later found out the 10-year-old daughter tested positive for a drug similar to Xanax, a drug not prescribed to her.

A court document recently obtained by 6 News...read, "the children were admitted into the hospital for over a week". It went on to say, "there was sexual acting out by (the 10-year-old) with (the 6-year-old.)"

The document outlined a family service plan outlining tasks Jennifer and Edward Bartley must complete, including placing the children's medications in a lock box that includes a sign-in sheet listing times and dates medications are given.

The couple was also order to undergo family counseling. The Bartleys, along with the children's father, Joshua Davenport, also must submit to random drug testing.

Davenport did not want to talk on camera, but he told the judge he no longer uses drugs and that he hopes to get custody of his children someday.

The court did allow for the parents to see the children once a week.

Davenport said the 9-year-old suffers from bipolar disorder and ADHD, and he has been admitted into Padre Behavioral Hospital. Court documents said the child has made little progress with his conditions.

The other two children reportedly were also seeing a psychiatrist.

Lewis said he will review the case again in 30 days.

A police investigation has not determined whether the parents unnecessarily drugged the children. If it does, however, whoever is to blame could face a charge of injury to a child or endangering a child.

Hopefully this won't turn into another case where a psychiatrist misdiagnosed a case of child abuse as ADHD. Tragically, there is an awful chance that it will.

Fortunately, no child was killed due to drug side effects. Tragically, the psychiatrist in charge of this fiasco is not likely to be investigated.

Normal Variations in Brain Development Misdiagnosed as ADHD

As seen in this ABC News Report, regarding new research in ADHD

"In children with ADHD, the brain matures in a normal pattern but is delayed by three years in some regions, when compared to children without the disorder," said the study's lead investigator, Dr. Philip Shaw, a child psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Seeing as there are well known variations for humans reaching sexual maturity, ranging from age 12 (and younger) to age 18 (and older), it is not surprising that there would be a similar variations in brain development. In fact, it would not surprise me if it followed a bell curve distribution.

As a comparison for numbers, in 1998, a study suggested that approximately 7 to 10 percent of the adult population was left-handed. Studies indicate that left-handedness is more common in males than females.

Similar numbers are reported for ADHD. It is argued the condition labeled ADHD is a disease, when left handedness is obviously not a disease.

There is a distinct possibility that the condition labelled ADHD is NORMAL and is in fact a prosurvival variation in development.

It now seems that these normal variations will be seized on as an excuse to drug children if they are not meeting certain social standards for behavior.

Normal variations should never be turned into a medical condition, and served up as an excuse for drugging kids.

Because the brain matures at a variable rate up to three years later (or earlier) than the average, it seems that the best treatment is TIME, not drugs.

Child psychiatrist suspended

As seen here

A child psychiatrist from Rye has been banned from practice by the General Medical Council, pending the outcome of a GMC investigation into matters relating to him.

The decision means that Hartmut Steffen, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, will remain suspended until 23 April, 2008.

No details of the circumstances leading to imposition of the ban are given in the decision, which has just been published.

However, a spokesman for the GMC said cases such as this are referred to the Interim Orders Panel when a doctor is facing allegations of such a nature that it may be necessary for the protection of members of the public, or otherwise be in the public interest or in the interests of the doctor, for the doctor's registration to be restricted whilst the allegations are resolved.

The spokesman said that considerations taken into account included preserving public trust in the medical profession and maintaining good standards

Without evidence, we can only speculate as to the actual reasons behind the suspension. Typical reasons in recent years involve drugs, sex, or both, with tax fraud bringing up tyhe rear.

Man fights to keep his testicle, Psychiatrist had waived his rights to keep it.

As seen in this report

Jail inmate Brandon Crewe didn't know he was in a Halifax hospital to have his testicle removed - an operation he hadn't agreed to - until hospital staff told him they didn't need his consent.

A jailhouse psychiatrist had already waived it for him. But Crewe, whose other testicle was accidentally removed when he was an infant during a hernia operation, has now won the right to decide for himself whether the operation should be performed, and he has been released from hospital.

Crewe, an inmate at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth, has a lump in his left testicle, likely due to testicular cancer.

At least he gets a chance to decide his own fate.

Study finds Ritalin of no long-term benefit

Report from the Guardian

A team of American scientists conducting the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) has found that over a three-year period drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta brought about no demonstrable improvement in children's behaviour. They also found the drugs could stunt growth.

Research released today raises questions about the long-term effectiveness of drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

[...]

The research, which will be broadcast on the BBC Panorama programme tonight, shows that GPs in the UK prescribed ADHD drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta to around 55,000 children last year – at a cost of £28m to the NHS.

The MTA's warning about ADHD drugs constitutes something of a revised opinion. The scientists, who have been monitoring the treatment of 600 children across the US since the 1990s, concluded in 1999 that, after one year, medication worked better than behavioural therapy for ADHD. This finding influenced medical practice on both sides of the Atlantic and prescription rates in the UK have since tripled.

The report's co-author, Professor William Pelham, of the University of Buffalo, said: "I think we exaggerated the beneficial impact of medication in the first study. We had thought that children medicated longer would have better outcomes. That didn't happen to be the case.

"The children had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth, so they weren't growing as much as other kids in terms of both their height and their weight. And the second was that there were no beneficial effects - none.

"In the short run [medication] will help the child behave better, in the long run it won't. And that information should be made very clear to parents."

Dr Tim Kendall, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who is helping prepare new NHS guidelines for the treatment of ADHD, said: "A generous understanding would be to say that doctors have reached the point where they don't know what else to offer.

"I hope we will be able to make recommendations that will give people a comprehensive approach to treatment and that will advise about what teachers might be able to do within the classroom when they're trying to deal with kids who have difficult problems of this kind.

"I think the important thing is we have a comprehensive approach that doesn't focus on just one type of treatment."

The new treatment guidelines will be published next year.

• Panorama: What Next for Craig? will be broadcast on BBC1 tonight at 8pm.

Prescription Drug Companies Fined - Drug Companies Ordered To Pay $13.6 Million In Pricing Suit

As seen in this report

A federal judge has ordered drug companies AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squib to pay a combined $13.6 million in a Massachusetts case that alleged they inflated the so-called "average wholesale price" of expensive, and sometimes life-saving, drugs.

U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris found that the companies "unfairly and deceptively caused to be published false" average wholesale prices of drugs.

As a result, Saris wrote in a judgment dated Thursday, the companies caused "real injuries to the insurers and the patients who were paying grossly inflated prices for critically important, often life-sustaining drugs."

Bristol-Myers Squib said its pricing was fair and it will appeal.

Saris ordered AstraZeneca to pay $12.9 million and Bristol-Myers Squib to pay $695,594 in damages. Those affected by the ruling include insurers who reimbursed Medicare beneficiaries for their co-insurance, and insurers and consumers who made co-insurance payments based on the average wholesale price.

"Bristol-Myers Squib has long maintained that it is not responsible for the averaage wholesale price reimbursement benchmark used by private insurers and Medicare and that its own pricing, sales and marketing practices were fair and reasonable. The company maintains this position and will appeal this decision," said company spokeman Tony Plohoros.

A call to AstraZeneca was not immediately returned on Friday night.

Saris said she decided to double the damages because the conduct was willful on the part of the companies.

"The defendants well understood the devastating impact the mega-spreads had on old and sick patients required to make co-payments they could ill afford," Saris wrote.

Steve Berman, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, praised the decision. "Judge Saris agreed with our damage estimates and did not pull punches in her characterization of the defendants' actions," he said.

Berman said the court has indicated that plaintiffs could expand this case to a nationwide class action lawsuit. The state class action suit was originally filed in 2002 in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts and named 23 pharmaceutical companies. The original suit represented all people who had taken or paid for any one of 37 named drugs.

Tantrums, casual sex and useless £12,000 therapy: what REALLY goes on inside rehab

Modern psychiatric and psychological drug rehab for the famous and the unknown is not only expensive, but worthless. As reporte4d in the Daily Mail.

[...]

I finally bottomed out in July 2005 when I had a panic attack. I'd been drinking for three days, virtually nonstop, having gone to a wild party at someone's house and slept on the floor for two nights.

My hands were shaking and I started hyperventilating and had to go to hospital where I was given Valium. It was an utterly terrifying experience and it signalled a turning point.

My body was clearly telling me it couldn't cope any more and I decided to tell my parents my secret - that I had a drink problem.

[...]

I had a high-flying career, good friends, and even a Prada handbag! I looked healthy and ate a reasonable diet. But I knew I needed help and I asked my father if he'd pay for me to go to rehab.

He generously agreed to do so at a huge cost of £12,000 for six weeks' treatment. I confessed all to my boss who was very kind, telling me to take a chunk of unpaid leave and simply concentrate on getting well. [...] My father was effectively paying £2,000 a week for me to sit around doing nothing.

[...]

In the evening we'd have "group workshops", which involved making notes about various aspects of our addictions and asking fellow patients to evaluate our work.

Most of the time we simply went through the motions quickly and then went back to playing Blackjack with Monopoly money and listening to our iPods.

The work assignments occasionally handed out were far too simple. For example, we were asked to write about our worst drinking experiences - but we'd already covered this in group therapy.

When we actually had lectures they were over simplistic, and patronising to anyone with half a brain.

We were asked to perform mimes showing each other how we could enjoy ourselves without resorting to drink and drugs on a given day. I mimed country-dancing.

[...]

After all this, and wasting 12,000 of her father's money, she eventually made some progress when she joined AA. Many more details at the original link.

Psychiatric hospital kept quiet about sexual assault

From the Ha'aretz Newspaper

A psychiatric hospital in the Galilee failed to report a sexual assault that occurred last summer between two patients, a male and a female, Haaretz has learned.

The 73-year-old male attacker was removed from the unisex psychogeriatric department at Mizra Psychiatric Hospital, where the assault had occurred in July. But some months later, the doctor in charge decided to transfer him back and house him with female patients.

The decision to move the attacker, a convicted killer diagnosed with schizophrenia, who was transferred to Mizra in May, prompted one of the institution's senior physicians to complain to management about potential risks. The senior doctor warned that returning the man to the mixed department put female patients in danger of being sexually assaulted.

The attacker, who had been convicted 24 years ago of killing his wife and one of his daughters, was eventually removed and transferred to an all-male ward.

The assault happened at night, when the attacker entered the room of a disabled 60-year-old woman suffering from severe dementia. He reportedly climbed in bed with her and started groping her breasts. Nurses removed the man after the victim yelled for help. The man reportedly told the doctor on duty that he had tried to have sex with the woman.

Sources in the Health Ministry told Haaretz that although Mizra's management had defined the assault as a "severe incident," it was not reported to the ministry, the district psychiatrist or the police. Additionally, the hospital did not report the incident to the victim's family. The woman is now hospitalized elsewhere, at a care facility in the center of the country.

By not reporting the incident, Mizra's management may have violated the ministry's protocol for such incidents. Proper procedures require all hospitals to "report any unusual event that could put patients in danger, and inform police of any case involving a suspected criminal offense."

In the ministry's official reaction, its spokesman said: "We do not view this case lightly, nor does Mizra's management. However, this is not the sort of event that requires hospitals to contact the ministry or the district psychiatrist and inform them about the circumstances of that occurrence."

The ministry went on to explain the hospital is exempt from reporting the incident because it does not involve "significant damage" to the patient or death, "as stipulated in the health ministry's orders to hospitals and medical institutions."

But a Health Ministry official told Haaretz there is no doubt in his mind that both from the moral and legal perspectives, Mizra should have reported the incident. "Mizra's Management had failed to meet the standards for the proper administration of a hospital," the official said.

The ministry learned of the incident only two weeks ago, approximately four months after it happened. The ministry became aware of the assault after the northern district's deputy psychiatrist, Dr. Nabil Gerassi, received the correspondence between Mizra's ward director and one of his senior staff, who warned against returning the attacker to the ward.

The correspondence revealed that the attacker, who after the assault had been transferred to the all-male ward, was transferred back to the unisex department on October 18. Dr. Yuli Wetchkov, head of the psychogeriatric department at Mizra, signed the transfer, based on the request and recommendation of Yulinna Naj, the head of the all-male ward.

The senior physician at Mizra who opposed the transfer, Dr. Michael Segal, then wrote Wetchkov and the institution's management to warn against the move. Upon reading his warning, management instructed Wetchkov to transfer the attacker back to the all-male ward.

Ten days ago, Wetchkov wrote Segal to tell him that the psychogeriatric department's handling of the incident was "professional and appropriate," and that the recommendation that the attacker be transferred back to the unisex ward was "done after much thought," Wetchkov added.

In its official reaction, the Health Ministry told Haaretz: "When the patient was hospitalized, he displayed no signs of violence or abnormal sexual behavior, and there was no reason to refrain from receiving him in the ward. During the two months of his stay before the incident, the man displayed no abnormal behavior.

"The incident itself did not result in sexual intercourse or rape. After the incident, them man was transferred to the all-male ward for two months. He was then put in the psychogeriatric department for a few days, during which he displayed no violent behavior. However, he was then transferred to the all-male department to reevaluate the degree of danger that he might pose to other patients.

"The incident called for an internal inspection, which was carried out and concluded, albeit a few days too late."

The 'Gilbert Affair' - notes on the decline and fall of Swedish Psychiatry

The following discusses some medical research by Christopher Gillberg, and what has come to be known as the “Gillberg affair”. As seen here, which also has references to many original sources. The whole matter gets worse the more one looks into it, and supports many speculations as to the probability of fraudulent research (especially ADHD) and fictional diseases.

This follows a number of scandals diminishing the reputation of Swedish psychiatry, which now seems to be in tatters and ruins.

The Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman published its English Summary for the fiscal year ending June 2006. The Summary is 26 pages long; 18 pages are about the Gillberg case. [Available here in PDF Form] It is very critical of both Gillberg and Gothenburg University.

Christopher Gillberg is a professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Gothenburg University, in Sweden. He is internationally known for his research, and he has been a professor or visiting professor at the universities of Bergen, London, New York, Odense, San Fransisco, and Strathclyde. He is also author or editor of several scientific books, and he has authored or co-authored more than 300 research articles.

A significant portion of Gillberg's research has been about a psychiatric concept known as “DAMP” (Deficits in Attention, Motor control, and Perception). DAMP is related to Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The concept of DAMP was conceived by Gillberg, but DAMP has been ignored or strongly criticized by other researchers.

Much of Gillberg's research on DAMP has involved children in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. Gillberg undertook a study of children in Gothenburg who had been born in 1971. The study began when the children were 6–7 years old (in 1978), and lasted until the children were adults. Some of the children were diagnosed as having DAMP; others were not.

By following the children through to adulthood, the study was able to draw conclusions about how having DAMP affects peoples lives. For example, the study concluded that children with DAMP had more problems with the law, drugs, interpersonal relations, etc. when they reached adulthood than people who did not have DAMP.

Gillberg's study is one of very few studies to follow a group of people from childhood to adulthood (such a study is known as “longitudinal”). The study is thus important evidence for the hypothesis that having DAMP (or ADHD) as a child adversely affects the person's life in adulthood.

In the study, Gillberg asserted that one out of ten Swedish children have either DAMP or a similar neuropsychiatric problem. (A neuropsychiatric problem is a mental illness which is almost always inherited or otherwise congenital.) The optimal treatment for such problems generally involves the use of psychiatric drugs, e.g. Ritalin. Such drugs are typically prescribed for many years.

Eva Kärfve, a professor of sociology at Lund University, in Sweden, and Leif Elinder, a Swedish pediatrician, were highly skeptical of Gillberg's conclusion that about 10% of Swedish children had a congenital mental illness. They were also concerned because the safety of the psychiatric drugs on the developing brains of children is questionable, and because good-quality evidence for the drugs' long-term effectiveness is lacking.

Allegations of misconduct

In 2000, Gillberg and his colleague Peder Rasmussen published a major article describing an investigation of the Gothenburg study participants. (Most of the data for the investigation was actually gathered in 1993, when the participants were 22 years old.)

Kärfve and Elinder claimed to find serious discrepancies in the article. In 2002, Elinder petitioned Gothenburg University to investigate Gillberg's research for fraud. His petition was handled by the Ethics Committee, which dismissed it, after receiving a response from Gillberg. Kärfve then petitioned the university for an investigation. Her petition was considered more carefully. Ultimately, the Ethics Committee voted on whether or not to refer the matter to the Swedish Research Council for investigation. The vote was 3–1 against.

The main issues in the allegations made by Kärfve and Elinder seem clear. For example, Gillberg would not supply the names of the various specialists who examined the study subjects (for psychiatric disorders, etc.); even more, Gillberg repeatedly claimed that he had supplied the names—but he would not say what the names were.

Acts such as this obviously support suspicion of misconduct. Moreover—and importantly—they do not require specialist training in neuropsychiatry to understand. The decision of the Ethics Committee seems to have been based at least partially on the belief that a researcher with a reputation as great as Gillberg's could not have committed fraud.

Data requested

Kärfve and Elinder also requested access to the data used in the Gothenburg study, so as to investigate for themselves. They were denied this, on the grounds that the study participants had been promised confidentiality. They asked for the data to be anonymized (i.e. obfuscated so that individuals cannot be identified: this is a standard practice). They were told, however, that this could not be done.

Kärfve and Elinder took the matter to court, under the Swedish law of the Principle of Public Access. The court decided that they would be allowed access to some of the data. Gillberg refused to respect the court's decision. Instead, Gillberg asked to have the research material scrutinized by outside experts. A panel of appropriate experts was promptly constituted by the Swedish Research Council.

Before the panel could begin work, however, the Gillberg group asked Ove Lundgren, who was the Chairman of the Ethics Committee (and a Professor Emeritus of Physiology at the university) to examine the data. Lundgren was asked to do this as a private person, i.e. not representing the Committee. There was 22 meters of material, including about 100,000 pages. Lundgren was given four hours to scrutinize all this. He found nothing that seemed seriously wrong.

Gillberg then told the rector of the university that the Chairman of the Ethics Committee had done an investigation and that as a result “the accusations about scientific fraud … definitely could be dismissed”. (The head of the faculty of health sciences—the Sahlgrenska Academy—at the university supported Gillberg in this.) Gillberg then withdrew his prior agreement to have the research material scrutinized by outside experts. His justification was that such scrutiny was no longer needed, because Lundgren had now acquitted him of fraud.

The members of the Ethics Committee later responded to all this by publishing a letter stating that the Committee “never acquitted Gillberg of the allegations” and that “the question about scientific fraud never has been investigated”. Lundgren said on Swedish TV that he thought he had been used/exploited by Gillberg.

Gillberg gave an additional reason for refusing to make the data available: he said that the study participants had been asked what they thought of this, and all but one was strongly opposed. That is true, but the Swedish journalist MarieLouise Samuelsson discovered that there is more to the story. Her report is referenced below; briefly, the story is as follows.

Among the study participants, there was a widespread belief that an investigation (by Kärfve and Elinder) would mean that virtually everyone would be allowed to see the research data. For example, a man who was a participant made a comment on Swedish television where he warned that “your worst enemy would get access to this sensitive information”. Gillberg also analogized an investigation thusly: “What would you say if you had AIDS and your doctor threw your medical records out on the street?”.

In reality, only Kärfve and Elinder would have been able to see the data, and they had to sign statements agreeing to maintain confidentiality. (Moreover, they had asked for the data to be anonymized: even if Gillberg's claim that anonymization could not be done completely was valid, this could have been done at least partially.)

As well, the study participants were not simply asked if they were for or against making the data available. Rather, each participant was telephoned by someone representing the Gillberg group, and afterwards received a strongly-worded letter of protest against making the data available.

It is clear from all of this that the study participants were pressured and misled into opposing an investigation. It is worth considering what motives Gillberg could have had for doing that.

Gillberg, with assistance from the university, asked the court to reconsider its prior decision to require that the data be made available. The court dismissed this. The rector of the university, Gunnar Svedberg, then wrote a letter to Elinder and Kärfve, saying that although the university was required to comply with the judgement of the Swedish court, it would not be doing so in this instance. The reason he gave was that doing so would cause mental stress to Gillberg and colleagues.

Data destroyed

The question about access to the research material went to court several times, each time with the court ruling that some access should be allowed. On 4 May 2004, the Swedish court ruled for the fifth and final time that the research material had to be made available to Elinder and Kärfve.

The following weekend, three of Gillberg's coworkers, one of whom was his wife, deliberately destroyed almost all of the material. They argued that to obey the court order to make the material available would violate the promises of confidentiality that had been made to the study's participants. Gillberg claimed in an interview with the British Medical Journal that he was “completely unaware” of the destruction until after it was over.

Afterwards

In June 2005, Gillberg and the rector of Gothenburg University, Svedberg, were convicted (by a criminal court) for not making the data available to Kärfve and Elinder. Gillberg received a suspended sentence and a fine; Svedberg received a fine. Gillberg appealed his conviction up to the Supreme Court, and had his last appeal rejected in April 2006. Separately, the three coworkers were convicted for destroying the data. Each of the three received a suspended sentence and a fine.

The rector resigned his position at the university. Gillberg and his colleagues, though, continue with their work. In November 2006, Gillberg was awarded a substantial research grant by the Swedish Research Council. Gillberg also continues his research and his clinical practice in Britain (at the University of Strathclyde and the National Centre for Young People with Epilepsy).

The Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman published its English Summary for the fiscal year ending June 2006. The Summary is 26 pages long; 18 pages are about the Gillberg case. It is very critical of both Gillberg and Gothenburg University.

The Swedish government decreed a new regulation for the handling of research misconduct allegations. The decree states, “A university that, by a petition from someone or in any other way, receives information about possible scientific misconduct in research, artistic reseach, or any other research at the university, will investigate the allegations”.

The whole affair has been the topic of much discussion in the media in Sweden, where it is known as the “Gillberg affair”. To date, there has been little media coverage outside Sweden, with the exception of Norway.

In Norway, the newspaper Dagsavisen ran a series of stories about the Gillberg affair. This led to a loss of confidence in Gillberg, who was head advisor of the Children in Bergen project (a project involving close to 10,000 children). Consequently, in February 2006, Gillberg resigned his position there.

Other criticisms

In 2005, Per-Anders Rydelius, Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Karolinska Institute, and Rolf Zetterström, past chief editor of Acta Paediatrica, published a report on the Gothenburg study. The report pointed out that the Gillberg group, in order to prove their hypothesis, repeatedly changed diagnoses and information in their material: “Accessible articles [from the Gillberg group] reveal that those studied have been managed in an unscientific way, a conclusion that does not need strengthening by what could have been found in the destroyed research material”. (Another problem is the boy:girl ratios in the study; the ratio in the control group is 1:1, whereas the ratio in the index groups is 4:1.)

Supplements

Petitions to the Ethics Committee

Timeline for the Gillberg affair

External discussions

Scientific Misconduct blog on the Gillberg affair

Liberating Boys from Ritalin

A book review seen on TownHall.com

After two generations of concern scrupulously focused on girls — their education in all its many manifestations, their alleged victimization by male dominance, their brain development, their sorrows and strengths and even the word employed to describe them (are they not, after all, young women?) — boys are coming in for new attention.

Applause, please. Yet at this late hour, with masculinity so politically incorrect, the task at hand is Augean.

These observations are prompted by data, anecdotal observation, and the summer publication of “The Dangerous Book for Boys” — a tome wildly successful here and, earlier, in England.

The data are devastating: schoolyard murder, emotional shutdown, soaring rates of male suicide, a plummeting male presence in the academy. According to the Department of Education, boys trail girls in literacy skills by one and one-half school years, are less committed to studying, and are less likely to go to college. An indicator: In 1970, precisely 57 percent of those graduating from college were males; today the percentage is 41 — and heading steeply south.

Disproportionately high percentages of boys are designated “discipline problems” parents and teachers can’t handle. So to calm their behavior, the obstreperous get put on Ritalin — the high-tone name for a low street drug called “speed.”

A view of today’s climate of anomie finds too many among our young male cohort tentative, unfocused, bored. Rising divorce and illegitimacy leave more and more solo mothers raising boys — and this in an otherwise feminizing culture too often removing fathers from the daily contact sons especially need, especially in a society so depreciating manliness.

In the words of the always perceptive Midge Decter (author of, for instance, “The Liberated Woman & Other Americans”): Infantilized, deprived (“despite the ease” into which they are born), and “standing at the tail-end of a veritable whirlwind of anti-male sentiment that has been sweeping through the country for decades,” American boys “have been left with scarcely any good way either to be wholly themselves or to be assured they are indeed on the way to becoming men.”

So onto this tortured landscape, as a partial remedy for (Decter’s words) this suppression of “the natural condition of boys,” principal author Conn Iggulden and his brother Hal have dropped “The Dangerous Book for Boys.”

Why that most interesting word in the title — “dangerous”? If girls are task-completers, boys are risk-takers. Conn Iggulden:

“It’s about remembering a time when danger wasn’t a dirty word. It’s safer to put a boy in front of a PlayStation for a while, but not in the long run. The irony of making boys’ lives too safe is that later they take worse risks on their own. You only have to push a baby boy hard on a swing and see his face light up. It’s not learned behavior — he’s hardwired to enjoy a little risk.”

The Iggulden’s book is a reaching back, yes — a cross (sort of) between William McKeever’s dour 1913 classic “Training the Boy” and (until recent dismal dilutions) the Boy Scout Handbook. Moral and ethical teaching combined with essential information and fascinating data, paeans to heroes (remember them?), and abundant how-to — how to do things that long have defined boys taking risks and being boys. Iggulden again:

“Boys are different from girls. Teaching them as though they are girls who don’t wash as much leads to their failure in school, causing trouble all the way. Boys don’t like group work. They do better on exams than they do in coursework, and they don’t like class discussion. In history lessons, they prefer stories of Rome and of courage to projects on the suffragettes. . . . The dark side of masculinity may involve gangs and aggression, but there’s another side — self-discipline, wry humor, and quiet determination.”

Feminists who would condition us all may argue that boys are doing no worse than before — it only seems that way because girls, liberated at last, are doing better; the real crisis facing boys, they say, is that they’re not enough like girls. Yet something is rendering boys enervated and effete; something is sapping their energy. Midge Decter notes a “shying away from their instinctive restlessness and competitiveness, and, with it, a fading of whatever happened to be the standards of gallantry.”

Maybe it’s the feminist revolution. Maybe it’s divorce and single(-mother) families. Maybe it’s our Spockian mores of child-rearing. Maybe it’s an outgrowth of the relativism that no longer finds innate goodness in America — and so worth defending, and its enemies worth fighting — and likewise no longer recognizes, or values, the goodness inhering in boys.

And so into a culture relentlessly finding the normal abnormal and exalting the abnormal as normal, the Igguldens ride “to free boys to be themselves again” and call upon boys to rally to their “dangerous” standard — a standard dangerous for declaring it’s OK to be a normal boy doing normal boy things. Long may it wave.

Prozac nation: alarm at huge rise in anti-depressants’ use

From the Herald, in Scotland

Government efforts to cut the number of anti-depressants prescribed by GPs were thrown into doubt yesterday after new figures showed they had increased four-fold over the past decade.

A report by NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (QIS) found that the number of prescribed daily doses of the drugs had gone up from 19 per thousand to 85 between 1992 and 2006.

Medical experts at QIS, a health board established to oversee improvements in the NHS, said the record level of prescriptions may be due to the popularity of newer anti-depressants such as Prozac, which had fewer side effects, and patients being given more drugs over a longer period. But it was not clear whether there had been any increase in the number of people diagnosed as depressed.

Mental health charities expressed alarm at the latest figures, saying they showed an overdependence on medication to treat mental illnesses and highlighted a lack of available alternative treatments such as psychological therapy.

Faced with a rise in prescriptions, the previous Scottish Executive imposed a target of reducing the increase in anti-depressants being prescribed to zero by 2009. But while there were some signs that prescription rates were levelling out, there was scepticism over the SNP's manifesto commitment to cut them by 10% over the same period.

Dr Dorothy Muir, chair of the QIS clinical outcomes group, said that, though there were signs prescription rates were levelling, it was "probably unlikely" they could be reduced.

Dr Geraldine Bienkowski, lead clinician for psychology at NHS Education for Scotland, said there was "limited" evidence that providing alternative therapies led to a cut in prescription rates. But there was also evidence that, in some situations, increasing the provision of psychological therapies had a knock-on effect of increasing the rate of prescriptions, as it increased awareness of depression among GPs, she said.

Prescription rates for anti-depressants are strongly linked to deprivation, with Greater Glasgow having the highest rate in the country, according to QIS's figures.

Women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and the condition was most common in the 25 to 44 age group, its figures show.

However, research undertaken by Glasgow University has found wide variations in prescribing levels between GP surgeries and that factors such as deprivation, gender, and age only account for 50% of these.

Dr Philip Wilson, a Glasgow GP involved in the research, said that different prescribing cultures within GPs surgeries may account for some of the variation. He also questioned whether simply cutting levels of prescriptions was in patients' best interests.

"There's a lot of evidence that people's depression relapses if they stop them too soon. In the case of a second or subsequent episode of depression the guidelines are now telling us we should be prescribing for a period of two years," he said.

Shona Neil, chief executive of the Scottish Association for Mental Health, said the figures betrayed a medical culture in which there was a "pill for every ill". She said: "People are being prescribed these pills for problems which are far beyond mental health issues. If you're living in poverty, are unemployed and without a good social support network, a pill isn't going to improve any of that. We have pathologised suffering to a level that isn't helpful."

Dr David Steel, chief executive of NHS QIS, defended the use of a target but conceded it was unlikely the new goal could be met. He said: "One of the great advantages of a target like that is it gets us talking about it, even if we don't meet it."

Shona Robison, Health Minister, said the Scottish Government was committed to the previous administration's goal of "levelling off" the prescription of anti-depressants and had invested £4.5m in developing alternative treatments for people with depression.

But she made no mention of the SNP's previous manifesto commitment. "We are striving to drive down the prescribing of antidepressants by offering a range of other effective interventions," she said.

Last night a Scottish Government spokeswoman denied that the manifesto commitment had been dropped saying it was "still committed to the reduction over the next two years".

An Interesting Collection of Quotes

As seen on this webpage

The quotes start from the near present, and go back in time.

These are quotes by prominent psychiatrists (including the co-founder of the World Federation of Mental Health). This is how Psychiatry views the subject of Education (even to this day, as proven by their own current documentation).
________________________________

“Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future.”

– Psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, Address to the Childhood International Education Seminar, 1973


“We have swallowed all manner of poisonous certainties fed us by our parents, our Sunday and day school teachers, our politicians, our priests, our newspapers, and others with a vested interest in controlling us. 'Thou shalt become as gods, knowing good and evil,' good and evil with which to keep children under control, with which to impose local and familial and national loyalties and with which to blind children to their glorious intellectual heritage… The results, the inevitable results, are frustration, inferiority, neurosis and inability to enjoy living, to reason clearly or to make a world fit to live in.”

–G. Brock Chisholm, President, World Federation of Mental Health


Teaching school children to read was a “perversion” and high literacy rate bred “the sustaining force behind individualism.”

–John Dewey, Educational Psychologist


The school curriculum should “…be designed to bend the student to the realities of society, especially by way of vocational education… the curriculum should be designed to promote mental health as an instrument for social progress and a means of altering culture…”

–Report: Action for Mental Health, 1961


“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished … The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at: first, that influences of the home are 'obstructive' and verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective … It is for the future scientist to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

–Bertrand Russell quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte


“We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine.”

–Dr. John Rawlings Rees, “Strategic Planning for Mental Health”, June 18, 1940


“—through schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government – one that will embrace all of the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interests of all people.”

–Harold Rugg, A John Dewey disciple


“Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know – it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”

–National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) sponsored report: The Role of Schools in Mental Health


“This is the idea where we drop subject matter and we drop Carnegie Unites (grading from A-F) and we just let students find their way, keeping them in school until they manifest the politically correct attitudes. You see, one of the effects of self-esteem (Values Clarification) programs is that you are no longer obliged to tell the truth if you don't feel like it. You don't have to tell the truth because if the truth you have to tell is about your own failure then your self-esteem will go down and that is unthinkable.”

–William Coulson, explaining Outcome Based Education (OBE)


“Men are built, not born…. Give me the baby, and I'll make it climb and use its hands in constructing buildings of stone or wood…. I'll make it a thief, a gunman or a dope fiend. The possibilities of shaping in any direction are almost endless….”

–John B. Watson, psychologist, founder of “Behaviorism”


“Of course, Behaviorism 'works.' So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public”.

–W.H. Auden


“Despite rapid progress in the right direction, the program of the average elementary school has been primarily devoted to teaching the fundamental subjects, the three R's, and closely related disciplines… Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements, are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language, and history include content that is intrinsically of little value. Nearly every subject is enlarged unwisely to satisfy the academic ideal of thoroughness… Elimination of the unessential by scientific study, then, is one step in improving the curriculum.”

–Edward Lee Thorndike, Pioneer of “animal psychology”


“Psychology, and child-study stand first in order among the required subjects of technical nature… The course of child-study is supplementary to the prescribed courses in systematic and applied psychology.”

–1899 Teachers College Course


“The educational system should be a sieve, through which all the children of a country are passed. It is highly desirable that no child escape inspection.”

–Paul Popenoe, Behavioral Eugenist
Asked whether the resignation of Rumsfeld signaled a new direction in the war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,800 U.S. troops, Bush said, “Well, there's certainly going to be new leadership at the Pentagon.”

Thought Police: How Brain Scans Could Invade Your Private Life

From Popular Mechanics, snippets from a three page article. Important because of the human rights angle, especially considering that various executives are not always ethical in the use of technology.

[...]“Our ability to guess what a person is thinking about binary decisions is not super dramatic,” he says. “But we’re doing it with really crude image resolution of samples from the brain. If we could access every neuron, and spent long enough analyzing the data, we could figure out in great detail what a person is seeing or thinking.”

[...]

If they’re right, then there may come a day when others—the government, employers, even your spouse—might turn to technology to determine whether you are a law-abiding citizen, a promising new hire or a faithful partner. But skeptics say that talk of mind-reading machines is nothing more than hype.

“They’re marketing snake oil,” says Yale University psychiatry professor Andy Morgan. “We’ve been really skeptical of the science. But even if it works, it raises interesting questions about Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. Is [an involuntary fMRI scan] illegal search and seizure since something was taken from you without your permission? And how do you protect your right not to incriminate yourself if people have a way of asking your brain questions, and you can’t say no or refuse to answer? These are some serious questions we have to begin to ask.”

[...]

In the wake of Sept. 11, the potential for fMRI to distinguish liars from truth-tellers generated particular interest as the U.S. government sought more reliable ways to extract information from detainees in the global war on terror. The Pentagon’s Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment at Fort Jackson, S.C., formerly the Polygraph Institute, has financed over 20 projects aimed at developing improved lie detectors. DARPA, the Pentagon’s high-tech research arm, also jumped into fMRI work. “Researchers, funded by the Department of Defense,” a recent article in the Cornell Law Review noted, “have developed technologies that may render the ‘dark art’ of interrogation unnecessary.”

[...]

Even some of fMRI’s most enthusiastic supporters recognize that using the technology in this way could pose gigantic risks to civil liberties. Joel Huizenga, chief executive officer of No Lie MRI, says he anticipates a potential backlash against his firm—and welcomes it. “There should be controversy,” he says. “If I were the next Joe Stalin, I could use this technology to figure out who my friends and enemies are very simply, so I’d know who to shoot.”

[...]

Toxicology report released for psychiatrist in murder suicide case.

From the Santa Maria Times

A San Luis Obispo psychiatrist who shot and killed his wife and 7-year-old daughter and then turned the gun on himself had no evidence of drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the killings, according to the San Luis Obispo Police Department.

Complete toxicology reports released from the County Coroner’s Office on Tuesday indicate there were no drugs or alcohol found in John Rivard’s blood, police said.

Police found John Michael “Mike” Rivard, 48, Barbara Rivard, 44, and their daughter Olivia Rivard, 7, dead in their home in the 1700 block of Frambuesa Drive in San Luis Obispo shortly after 7 a.m. Oct. 3. All three died from gunshot wounds.

An investigation revealed that Rivard beat his wife with a metal flashlight before shooting her once in the head, after she argued with the couple’s daughter, Olivia.

Rivard also shot Olivia once in the head and then turned the gun on himself.

The couple’s two other children, a 5-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy, were found unharmed inside the Rivard home.

The Anti-Depressant Fact Book - What Your Doctor Won't Tell You About Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and Luvox

A book review by Douglas A. Smith via Susan Clark's blog

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book because it says so clearly and convincingly what I have believed for a long time about the myth of biologically caused depression and about so-called antidepressant drugs and so-called electroconvulsive "therapy" (ECT).

Of the idea of biologically caused depression, the author, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, says "It is a mistake to view depressed feelings or even severely depressed feelings as a 'disease'" (p. 14) and "There is still no reason to define grief, dejection, or melancholia as a 'disease' simply because it is severe or lasting" (p. 19). He says "...in psychiatry, none of the problems are proven to originate in the brain" (p. 169) and that "Depression is never defined by an objective physical finding, such as a blood test or brain scan. ... Attempts have also been made to find physical markers for depression, the equivalent of lab tests that indicate liver disease or a recent heart attack. Despite decades of research, thousands of research studies, and hundreds of millions of dollars in expense, no marker for depression has been found" (pp. 18 & 22).

Of the theory behind the so-called SSRI or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor "antidepressants" Dr. Breggin says "In reality, science does not have the ability to measure the levels of any biochemical in the tiny spaces between nerve cells (the synapses) in the brain of a human being. All the talk about biochemical imbalances is sheer speculation aimed at promoting psychiatric drugs. ... science has almost no understanding of how the widespread serotonin system functions in the brain.

Basically, we don't know what it does." (pp. 21 & 42).

Of drugs used to "treat" this nonexistent disease called depression he says "The term 'antidepressant' should always be thought of with quotation marks around it because there is little or no reason to believe that these drugs target depression or depressed feelings" (p. 14). He says "Impairing our emotional awareness and our intellectual acuity with psychoactive drugs such as SSRI antidepressants [including Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft] tends to impede the process of overcoming depression" (p. 26). About the foolishness of the beliefs of most people about psychiatric drugs he says:

Overall, we're a rather sophisticated citizenry with a fairly high index of suspicion about the products we buy and the corporations that influence our lives. But something happens to us when we are dealing with companies that make prescription medicines. Perhaps it's the aura of FDA approval. Perhaps it's the passage of these drugs through the trusted hands of our physicians. Perhaps it's the cleverness of the ad campaigns. Perhaps we just can't believe that anyone would sell poison as if it were a miracle cure. [p. 2]

That's right: He said "poison." Psychiatric drugs are poisons. In a chapter titled "Damaging the Brain with SSRI Antidepressants," Dr. Breggin says "the evidence is piling up that SSRIs cause permanent brain damage" (p. 38). Let's stop concealing or minimizing this truth as we do when we call psychiatric drugs "medications" or say they are merely "ineffective" or "harmful" or even "neurotoxic." Lawyers trying to defend us from outpatient commitment laws (as they are called in the USA) or laws authorizing "community treatment orders" (CTOs) (as such laws are called in Canada) should stop accepting the terminology of those advocating forced psychiatric drugging. Lawyers trying to defend us from forced psychiatric drugging should not go into court and say the so-called patient should not be ordered "to take his medication." Because psychiatric drugs are poisons, and because most that are administered by force cause permanent brain damage, lawyers representing people threatened with forced psychiatric drugging should tell it like it is and say, "Judge, the question presented for your decision today is whether my client should be ordered to swallow poison - poison that is known to cause permanent brain damage."

Letting advocates of forced psychiatric treatment get away with calling brain-damaging poisons "medications" is hurting our cause. It has been said: Whoever controls the language controls the perceived reality of those who have it. Let's not let the advocates of forced psychiatric "treatment" and those who would persuade gullible people to take harmful drugs win because they use deceptive semantics.

In the Introduction Dr. Breggin reveals why pharmaceutical companies would do something as evil as hoodwink people into believing poisons are in fact miracle cures. He says: "In the previous year [1999], Prozac had generated more than one-quarter of the company's [Eli Lilly & Company's] $10 billion in revenue" and that "Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil are among the top-selling drugs in the United States, with total sales exceeding $4 billion per year" (p. 1). We apparently can't expect pharmaceutical companies to bypass enormous profits just because the drugs they sell are hurting people.

Throughout this book Dr. Breggin points an accusing finger at the USA's Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is given the responsibility of keeping harmful drugs off the market in the USA. After reviewing how the FDA had to accept misleading, manipulated data to approve SSRI antidepressants as safe and effective, and after reviewing the harm done by these drugs, he says "If the FDA had been more responsible, these continuing tragedies could have been avoided. ... When I began my review of FDA documents as a medical expert in product liability suits against Eli Lilly and Co., I was shocked and disillusioned by what I found. Until that time, I had not fully confronted the willingness of the FDA to protect drug companies, even at the cost of human life." (pp. 78-79). He says "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has forsaken its watchdog role. Instead, FDA officials climb like puppies into the laps of drug company executives who might some day hire them at enormous salaries" (p. 181).

One of the reasons I like this book is in it Dr. Breggin is as bold as he has been in any of his previous books when describing the pseudoscience called biological psychiatry and the harm done by its so-called treatments. For example, speaking of psychiatric drugs he says -

* "If a drug has an effect on the brain, it is harming the brain. Science has not found or synthesized any psychoactive substances that improve normal brain function. Instead, all of them impair brain function. ... antidepressants are typically prescribed in doses that cause a wide variety of adverse effects in most patients and significantly harm a great many people" (p. 168).
* "FDA approval by no means indicates that a drug is truly effective. ... the combined efforts of the drug company and the FDA could not come up with even one good study that unequivocally supported the value of Prozac in comparison to placebo" (p. 151).
* "Overall, the results suggest that placebo is actually much better than an antidepressant" (p. 145).
* "If anything, as I've already indicated, antidepressants worsen severe depression and suicidal tendencies" (p. 170).
* "Nothing reinforces depression more than having your brain befuddled by psychiatric drugs, unless it is having your mind befuddled by false ideas about the biological or genetic origin of your suffering" (p. 189).
* "Lithium, for example, is a toxic element that suppresses over-all brain function..." (p. 125)
* "There are so many potential hazards involved in taking SSRIs that no physician is capable of remembering all of them and no patient can be adequately informed about the dangers without spending days or weeks reviewing the subject in a medical library" (p. 107).

Of electroconvulsive "therapy" (ECT) he says -

* "Damaging the brain to impair brain function lies at the heart of all the physical treatments in psychiatry. Shock and lobotomy are merely the most egregious examples" (p. 155, italics in original).
* He deplores "the willingness of psychiatry to defend its treatments no matter how obviously damaging to the brain" (ibid).
* "In my clinical and forensic experience, patients and their families are never told the truth about how dangerous shock is; otherwise they would not consent to it. Shock advocates tend to tell patients that memory loss is temporary and surrounds the treatment time only, when in reality the memory loss can wipe out years of educational and career knowledge. ... Nurses, teachers, and other professionals may never again be able to function in their jobs. Like head injury patients from other causes, such as automobile accidents and lighting strikes, general mental function is often impaired for the rest of their lives. Advocates [of ECT] ignore this by chalking it up to the patient's 'mental illness.'" (pp. 160-161).
* "Electroshock treatment causes brain damage and, in my clinical experience, can cause lasting depression" (p. 141). This of course is in contrast to psychiatry's claim that by some unknown means ECT relieves depression.
* "The question is not 'Does shock treatment cause brain dysfunction and damage?' A series of shocks to the head sufficient to cause convulsions will always produce brain dysfunction and damage. The real question is 'How completely can a person recover from shock?'" (p. 162).
* Advocates of shock claim that newer methods make it safer. ... Instead, it's more dangerous. ... modified ECT requires the use of higher amounts of electrical charge than were used in the early animal experiments that showed brain damage and cell death" (p. 163).
* "In my clinical experience, the brain damage [caused by electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT] makes people feel more hopeless and resentful, and hence more suicidal" (p. 164).
* "Several state legislatures have passed laws banning shock treatment for children. It's now time to ban it for adults a well" (p. 165).

This book is a fairly short (200 page), recent (2001) book that neatly summarizes many of the best arguments against biological psychiatry. I recommend it highly.

Perky blonde psychologist paid £500 a day to give convicted sex offender head massages, among other things.

From the Daily Mail, another example of a shrink milking the system.

Sitting beside Barry George in the dock is a blonde psychologist who has become one of his most trusted supporters.

Dr Susan Young ensures the convicted sex offender is relaxed, attentive and stress-free during proceedings.

For George, her 'specialist techniques' - which include massaging his temples - are an invaluable aide to his powers of concentration in the courtroom.

But her services do not come cheaply to the taxpayer. Already, she has run up a bill of around £30,000 helping George 'cope' with various court proceedings over the past six years.

She was at his side during his ten-week trial in 2001 when she sat in the well of the court monitoring whether George suffered any 'petit mal' minor epileptic fits which meant he could not follow the case.

In his cell below Court Number One at the Old Bailey, Dr Young also conducted regular 'relaxation exercises' - such as massaging his head. The £500-a-day psychologist was also in close attention during his failed appeal attempt in 2002.

Yesterday, the pair were reunited when Dr Young, 50, was again allowed to sit next to George.

He passed several notes to his psychologist and they had numerous whispered exchanges behind the wrought-iron bars.

George's QC William Clegg explained Dr Young's presence to the court by saying his client had learning difficulties and 'intellectual functioning in the borderline range'.

'He has epilepsy and severe cognitive impairment. He has a tendency to fantasise and is on record as claiming to be related to Freddie Mercury and having served in the SAS. Neither was right. At his trial Dr Young sat with him and, with the court's leave, does again today.'

Jail sources say George is 'clearly delighted' to have Dr Young in such close proximity.

"He certainly perks up when she is around," said one.

Their friendship goes back to 2001 when Dr Young told the Old Bailey that giving evidence would be a devastating experience for George and that he should not be discriminated against for staying silent.

She said she worried whenever she saw him drifting off and her expert opinion was accepted by the court and supported by two eminent psychiatrists.

Her notes for one 'fit' as George sat in the dock read: 'He looks spaced out, unfocused. He looks out of it.'

But psychologist Dr Caroline Logan, called by the prosecution, said she believed George feigned illness in the hope of influencing the case.

Prosecutor Orlando Pownall told the Old Bailey that on one occasion George brought up a blue liquid claiming it was bile, only for it to turn out to be washing-up liquid.

Last week Dr Young appeared in a controversial BBC Panorama programme on the case, in which she claimed George was not capable of carrying out Miss Dando's murder.

"He wouldn't have had the wherewithal that he needed to have to plan and execute this crime," she added.

Top 10 most bizarre medical experiments

From a longer article in the Guardian, includes some psychiatric classics

Top 10 most bizarre experiments

Elephant receives massive dose of LSD to see if it induces temporary madness.
Conclusion: LSD is fatal to elephants

Aircraft passengers told they are about to die in crash make more mistakes in written test.
Conclusion: Extreme stress harms cognitive ability

Two-headed dogs created by Soviet surgeon, above, but die within a month.
Conclusion: Tissue rejection makes animals incompatible

Psychologist begins experiments on son to test if laughing is spontaneous when tickled.
Conclusion: Laughing is an innate response to tickling

A room of nail-biting boys is played a recording or spoken announcements to break the habit while they sleep.
Conclusion: Sleep learning is possible. Others prove otherwise

To test if people can sleep through anything, volunteers have their eyes taped open and bright lights shone in their eyes.
Conclusion: The men dozed off in 12 minutes

People asked to smell ammonia, put hands in a bucket of frogs and watch porn.
Conclusion: Disgust has no single expression.

Doctor rubs vomit from yellow fever patients into open wounds and drinks it.
Conclusion: Mistakenly claims it is not infectious

Animal corpses placed on seesaw to restart circulation and bring them back to life.
Conclusion: Two animals survive with blindness and brain damage

Fake female turkey dismantled limb by limb to find minimum that a male will mate with.
Conclusion: Male turkeys aroused by a head on a stick, but not a headless body

Three out of five women would prefer advice from Bob Vila, the home-improvement expert, than from talk-show psychologist Dr. Phil

From this report, edited for clarity

Three out of five women would prefer advice from Bob Vila, the home-improvement expert, than from talk-show psychologist Dr. Phil, according to a 2004 survey by Sears, Roebuck and Co.

That doesn't surprise Teresa Follmer, a designer with Home Depot in Mesa who hosts many weekend workshops on home improvement.

The lessons from Vila or other home-improvement experts could raise a woman's sense of well-being and self-esteem.

"You get a lot of satisfaction knowing that you can accomplish something yourself," Follmer said. "It's a great feeling knowing you don't have to ask for help or pay someone to do it for you."

Many women even have the correct do-it-yourself tools at their fingertips, though they don't know it.

"What I've learned from teaching the (basic home-repair) class is that many people already had the tools, the power tools especially, they just didn't know what they were for or how to use them," said Greg Christy, the Chandler-Gilbert Community College instructor on home repair and a True Value manager in Sun Lakes.

More women are tackling small fix-it jobs and home-improvement projects, and more want to learn.

"Look at the stats. This is a trend," said Eden Jarrin, co-creator of BeJane.com, a home-improvement Web site for women, and column contributor to newspapers and online media. "Women are owning more homes, and they want to take care of those homes so that they reflect who they are."

Fannie Mae, the largest guarantor of home mortgages, reported that by 2010, there will be 32 million female homeowners, compared with today's 17 million. In addition, 9 percent of homeowners in 2005 were single men, and 21 percent were single women. The do-it-yourself domain has taken notice and spawned an industry of women-friendly tools, books, television shows and Internet sites.

As a result, more women are dropping in on Home Depot repair and project workshops.

[...]

Victoria MD wins prize for theories on megavitamins

From the Victoria Times Colonist

A retired Victoria psychiatrist who helped develop a mega-vitamin therapy for schizophrenia and other illnesses half a century ago was recognized with a $125,000 prize in alternative medicine this week.

"I was really quite surprised," said Dr. Abram Hoffer, 90. "It was like the Oscars. I had no idea I was going to win."

The judges of the first Dr. Rogers Prize for Excellence in Complementary and Alternative Medicine wrote: "His stubborn pursuit of non-toxic orthomolecular [megavitamin] approaches to mental and physical disorders has helped thousands of patients with conditions ranging from schizophrenia to cancer."

Hoffer, who worked with mega doses of niacin and vitamin C, attracted praise but says his relationship with the College of Physicians and Surgeons "wasn't friendly." Hoffer recalls being attacked in journals and the media by skeptical medical colleagues, although his hypothesis that mega-doses of vitamins could help treat the symptoms of schizophrenia was later advanced by Nobel Prize-winning physician Dr. Linus Pauling.

Although he no longer practises medicine, the author of about 30 books and 600 papers in medical journals says he is still busy consulting, writing and researching.

One of six children, Hoffer was born on a Saskatchewan farm in 1917 and completed his first degree in agricultural chemistry. His master's and PhD in biochemistry were based on research into the vitamin content of cereals, and his focus soon shifted to human nutrition.

Armed with a medical degree from Toronto, he became director of psychiatric research for Saskatchewan in 1950.

He'll never forget his time practising at three psychiatric hospitals in Saskatchewan. "It was absolutely awful and once you got in, you never got out," he said in a phone interview yesterday.

Half the 5,000 mental patients in Saskatchewan were schizophrenics, and at the time, experts blamed the illness on a host of causes, including homosexuality, masturbation, colon infection and more.

Hoffer was given the job of director of psychiatric research, and with a "free hand," spearheaded the use of mega-vitamin therapy.

He was joined by British-born research psychiatrist Dr. Humphrey Osmond, and the two became psychedelic pioneers -- and guinea pigs -- bent on discovering why hallucinogens created symptoms resembling schizophrenia.

The team's first breakthrough came when they developed a theory that people who undergo stress sometimes produce excess adrenaline, which oxidizes into adrenochrome. The latter chemical has psychedelic properties they suggested could induce schizophrenia.

Next, he theorized that niacin (vitamin B-3) could counteract the oxidation of adrenaline into adrenochrome, protect brain receptors and reduce adrenaline stress. B vitamins are now commonly referred to as stress-busters, but back then, the theory was revolutionary. Hoffer himself has taken three grams a day for 50 years.

"It keeps me alive, active and busy," he said, noting the amount of niacin in the average multivitamin is insignificant.

Hoffer then came up with the idea of combining niacin and the antioxidant vitamin C.

Hoffer will share a $250,000 prize pot with Dr. Alastair Cunningham of Toronto, creator of The Healing Journey, a non-profit program that helps cancer patients use relaxation and mental imagery to cope with the disease.

The two were selected from a field of 57 nominees by an independent jury of international medical experts.

While the judges had hoped to settle on a single winner, Hoffer said his prize should be shared with all the colleagues who worked with him throughout the years and the patients who allowed him "to get them well using vitamins."

Dr. Phil psychoanalyzes kid who started So. California wildfires before a studio audience: arsonist, or just a mischievous 9-year-old boy?

A satire from the Spoof website

American's favorite country psychiatrist, Dr. Phil, volunteered to psychoanalyze kid who started Southern California wildfires to determine if he is in fact an arsonist or just a mischievous 9-year-old boy who should not have been playing with matches during fire season and in especially high winds. The diagnoses took place on a Burbank studio back lot before a live audience of the Dr. Phil Show taped for later broadcast.

"Well, I can tell you it is my professional opinion, as a licensed and fully accredited psychiatrist, that the boy is no arsonist," said Dr. Phil to an applauding studio audience.

"Now, normally I would recommend hundreds of billing hours worth of psycho therapy that would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars paid out to me," continued Dr. Phil. "But the boy's folks are dirt poor. So this is what I'm going to recommend to y'all is that I take the boy out behind the shed I had especially had constructed just for this occasion right here on our Burbank studio lot for a good old fashion whipping. In fact, with the parents consent, I'm going to do that right now. Now where did I put my switch?"

At that point, the 9-year-old boy bolted from the stage and into the studio audience with Dr. Phil in hot pursuit.

"That's right, you better run boy!" said Dr. Phil. "Because I'm your worst nightmare, a licensed and fully accredited psychiatrist with a signed and notarized waiver from your parents that says I can give you a whipping for starting that fire."

Audience members then joined Dr. Phil in chasing the boy throughout the studio until he ran outside.

It was dusk by then so Dr. Phil and his studio audience took a moment to light up their torches he prescribes to his studio audience members as parting gifts to remember his show by and use back at their villages to burn witches or storm any nearby castle that houses any enlightened well reasoned out thought.

Dr. Phil paused to caution his studio audience on the uses of his prescription torches while he lit his up.

"Now remember, 'said Dr. Phil while lighting his torch. "Y'all are only supposed to use these patent pending medically subscribed 'Dr. Phil Soothing Menthol Scented Medical Torches' of mine in a state of panic, or when you take leave of your senses, or during thoughtless moments filled with rage. Not emotional outbursts or when you're think you're not thinking rationally. We got drugs for that. No. These prescription torches are for mindless mob action only. Y'all got that. Good. Now someone lend me there lighter, mine's all out of fluid."

At last reports, the boy was headed to the Hollywood Hills with Dr. Phil and his studio audience in pursuit, still with torches in hand and a camera crew in tow.

Psychiatrist banned around the world is finally suspended from British NHS

From the Sunday Times Also see this report

A South African doctor employed by the NHS despite falling foul of the medical authorities on three continents has been suspended after an investigation by The Sunday Times.

Maurice Saadien-Raad, who has been working as a psychiatrist treating vulnerable patients, was told by the General Medical Council (GMC) last Friday that he would not be allowed to practise for 18 months while it investigates his practice in Britain.

Saadien-Raad, who is 59 and lives in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, has previously been threatened with removal from the medical register in South Africa for “disgraceful conduct” and banned from practising in Tasmania.

His record also earned him a reprimand by the GMC in Britain in 2004. The council has declined to disclose what Saadien-Raad did in South Africa or what led to his suspension in Britain.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has reported that he carried out a series of botched surgical procedures before he began to specialise in psychiatry.

The case has raised concerns among health workers and patient groups that the NHS is failing to check foreign doctors adequately.

Katherine Murphy, director of communications for the Patients Association, said: “The NHS has a responsibility to the people it is providing a service to.

“If it is as easy as this to get a job working as a doctor in Britain then we should not be surprised that there are so many problems with patient safety.”

Saadien-Raad was employed as a locum psychiatrist by Bradford District Care Trust between November 2006 and July 2007 working with patients with learning disabilities and mental health problems. As a locum, he would also have worked for other trusts.

The Sunday Times began investigating Saadien-Raad after being alerted by a former colleague of his concern that he was practising in Britain.

Saadien-Raad has been in Britain since 2002. After a series of disciplinary hearings in South Africa, he later lied about his record to register as a doctor in Tasmania.

He was forced to leave when his deceit was uncovered after complaints about his medical competence.

Saadien-Raad said: “It is ridiculous they are raising this now. This happened a long time ago and it has been dealt with. It is finished and it is wrong to go over it again now.”

Bradford District Care Trust declined to comment.

Bipolar Rates Are Increasing As Long As You're Willing To Call Everything Bipolar

While we do not agree with everything the Last Psychiatrist says, He sometimes has some useful information, as seen here:

In 1994, there were 20,000 visits for pediatric (under age 19) bipolar disorder. In 2003, the number was... 800,000. The diagnosis, therefore, was 25/100,000 in 1994, and now it's 1000/100,000. In other words, 1% of the population.

To compare: for adults the rates were 905/100,000 in 1994, to 1679/100,000 in 2003. In other words, 0.9% up to 1.7%.

I've heard this justified as a step forward. While visits isn't the same as incidence or prevalence in a population, it makes sense as a proxy. The adult rate is about 1-2%, consistently. Bipolar was severely underdiagnosed in 1994, and it's better diagnosed today. Since bipolar is a biological disorder with a strongly heritable component, it only makes sense that the child rate should be the same as the adult rate, assuming good diagnostic skills. So the diagnosis rate has simply risen to match the adult rate.

The only problem is this: in 2003, 2/3 of the children visiting were males. But 2/3 of the adults were females.

So you have some options:

1. The male children have a disorder that is actually different than the adult females have, i.e. one of them is not bipolar.
   
2. The male children with bipolar got cured during puberty.
   
3. Bipolar disorder turns boys into women sometime around age 19.

The ridiculousness of this increase in diagnosis is only exceeded by the potential harm such an increase is actually causing. Forget about the safety or lack of safety of bipolar medications in kids, which is worrisome enough.

A problem few seem to want to talk about is the impact of a bipolar diagnosis on a person, for the rest of his life. Let's say, for the sake of argument, pediatric bipolar is overdiagnosed. Then all those people who were misdiagnosed are, in fact, not bipolar; however, they have no way of ever finding that out. They have to carry this with them for the rest of their life.

When they're 30 years old, and they're asked on routine checkup if they've ever had a psychiatric diagnosis, they have to say, "well, pediatric bipolar, but I think that's not right." Sure it isn't. When that 30 year old guy has kids, and those kids grow up, they'll be asked, do you have a history of major psychiatric illness in your family? Hmm. "Maybe bipolar... but my Dad told me he thinks that wasn't right." Oh, ok. Did your Dad have a temper? "Well, he did yell a lot when he was mad." I see. Did he go without sleep? "Oh my God, when we were kids-- lots of times." Then it's settled.

If pediatric bipolar is being accurately diagnosed, then either psychiatrists are now more sensitive to its detection-- a unlikely possibility since the diagnosis has been around for a long, long time-- did we suddenly develop a better test for it? Or else something has changed in the world to cause it to be more frequent (a toxin in bottled water? MySpace? Iraq?)

[...]

Psychiatrist Accused Of Assaulting Boy

More on this troubling case from TMJ TV Channel 4 in Milwaukee

He went in for counseling, but a boy claims a psychiatrist sexually assaulted him instead. The boy says it happened a few years ago in Brookfield.

The suspect is Eric B. Schwietering. He worked at the Cornerstone Counseling Center.

Schwietering remains in custody at the Waukesha County jail on a $50,000 cash bail. This isn't the first time he's been charged with a crime involving children.

Back in May, he pleaded guilty and went to jail for possessing child pornography. This time, the charges are even more shocking: he's accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy.

Even more disturbing, the boy, who is now 14 and living in Iowa, says the assault happened at Cornerstone Counseling Center where Schwietering was his psychiatrist.

Schwietering specialized in child and adolescent therapy.

The boy told police he was at a therapy session when Schwietering abused him.

According to a criminal complaint, the victim told police that he did not tell anyone about the abuse that allegedly happened for almost a year and a half because he says the suspect told him if he did tell anyone, he would hurt him really bad.

"The victim had indicated and you can tell by the complaint that he was absolutely petrified of what might happen because of threats that had been made to him," Barbara Michaels from the district attorney’s office said.

Cornerstone Counseling Services says they fired Schwietering last year after he was charged with possessing child porn.

They didn't talk on camera, but did say: "This is news to us. Our focus is going to be on taking care of our patients."

No one was home when we went to Schwietering's downtown Milwaukee condo to get a comment, but Brookfield residents had plenty to say.

"When someone goes in, and gives them their trust on being treated for a certain disease, and then they get violated, I think he should be reprimanded," Steven Gray said.

Schwietering faces up to 40 years in prison if he's convicted.

Feds investigating NW Georgia Regional Hospital

From the Rome News Tribune

Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital is under investigation by the Department of Justice, officials at the facility have confirmed.

Superintendent of the state run mental health hospital Karl Schwartzkoph confirmed Thursday morning that the federal investigators were at the facility.

Schwartzkoph said the investigation was a result of recent statewide news reports.

Recent reports have focused on alleged deficiencies in Georgia’s mental health treatment centers.

Also, in October a psychiatrist employed at the facility —Dr. Mohammad Uzair Qureshi, 45 — was arrested on charges of sexual battery and sexual assault by a practitioner of psychotherapy against a patient. Around a dozen patients have claimed Qureshi fondled them during sessions.

“They are there to look at the hospital system to determine if any areas need to be improved,” said Department of Human Resources Spokeswoman Kenya Bello. “They feel like there are areas to look into at this point, they haven’t decided if there are any problems.”

Bello said these investigations are not unique to the Rome facility

The Political Use of Psychiatric Drugs in Deportation Proceedings

From the Dallas News

The federal government would like to forcibly sedate and deport an immigrant-restaurateur who resisted his removal last August with repeated screams because of fears he'd be murdered back in his native Albania.

But an unlikely champion from East Texas has penned a private bill in Congress that would allow 32-year-old Rrustem Neza to stay in the country until early 2009 – and give him time to receive a full rehearing of his political asylum case.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, who sits on the House judiciary subcommittee on immigration, is opposed to loosening immigration. But he believes the government's treatment of Mr. Neza is "intolerable" and "callous."

Mr. Gohmert, a former district court judge, spoke to President Bush about the case this week, a staff aide said.


"I am a strong believer in following the laws regarding immigration," Mr. Gohmert said in a written statement. "However, we have laws to allow people to remain here based on asylum and the need to protect their lives."

Mr. Neza fears he will be killed back in his homeland because of his knowledge of a political assassination of a democracy leader in Albania, a European country of 3.6 million that fought off communism in the late 1990s.

Two of his brothers have won asylum. And two of his cousins were killed in Europe because of the knowledge they had regarding the assassination of Azem Hajdari, said Mr. Neza's Dallas attorney John Wheat Gibson.

The Gohmert bill could effectively stall Mr. Neza's deportation until early 2009.

Private bills have been issued before on behalf of individual immigrants. But the Gohmert measure is unusual because immigration now stirs such quick rancor.

Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman in Dallas, said he couldn't comment on the Neza case because of litigation in Los Angeles over the policy – "on rare occasions" – of forced druggings for certain deportees.

Such medications had been administered to deportees "for their own safety and the safety of people on the plane," he said. In the past, Mr. Rusnok has noted that Mr. Neza came into the U.S. using a false Italian passport and has an order for deportation against him.

On Aug. 8, at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Mr. Neza repeatedly screamed, "I am not a terrorist," when immigration agents tried to board him on a flight.

Airline officials refused Mr. Neza's passage after he told them he was being "illegally deported," according to documents in a federal district court in Abilene.

Though Mr. Neza was denied political asylum, there are two pending appeals. And a judge is expected to make a decision on whether immigration officials can sedate him.

"My main concern is to prevent the deportation," said his attorney, Mr. Gibson. "The drugging is just one more mean thing they are doing to this guy to deliver him into the hands of the assassins. My ultimate goal is to keep him out of hands of the assassins."

Others see it differently.

Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that wants tough enforcement of immigration laws, said it's "unwise for someone to go over the heads of those who have adjudicated the case."

As for the possibility of sedation, he added, "We cannot allow policy to exist that if someone yells and screams all bets are off and the laws are not enforced. Otherwise, we'll have a lot of kicking and screaming."

Due process

But such druggings by federal immigration agents are stirring controversy.

In early October, the ACLU filed a motion in federal court in Los Angeles to stop U.S. immigration authorities from forcibly drugging deportees about to board commercial flights.

The ACLU is seeking class action status for its suit, which stems from the forced drugging of an Indonesian minister and a Senegalese man with anti-psychotic drugs.

The issue of forced druggings gained prominence during the nomination hearing of ICE chief Julie Myers on Sept. 12. In her testimony, Ms. Myers said current ICE policy prohibits sedation without a court order, and, thus, the court order provides the deportee due process under the U.S. Constitution.

ACLU attorney Ahilan Arulanantham said the practice raises serious questions.

"Immigrants are not animals, and you cannot forcibly drug them," said Mr. Arulanantham, who has also been in contact with Mr. Gibson, the Dallas attorney for Mr. Neza.

At Cornell Law School, immigration law specialist Stephen Yale-Loehr said the "case raises serious concerns about when the government can forcibly sedate a person to carry out a deportation order."

"A court should review the allegations carefully to make sure Mr. Neza's due process rights are not violated," Mr. Yale-Loehr said.

Arguing safety

In the interim, U.S. government attorneys Scott Frost and Tracy Short argued in a court pleading that "there is exceptionally strong public interest in the enforcement of duly enacted laws of the United States."

Drugging Mr. Neza with a sedative by a psychiatrist employed by the U.S. Public Health Services will have multiple beneficial effects, the attorneys argue in their pleading. "It will prevent Neza from committing assaultive acts against others, it will allow the United States to enforce its immigration laws, and it will ensure the safety of Neza and others during the removal."

The federal government cites a 1996 Texas case involving a deportee with the surname of Bechara, who threatened to bring down the plane if he were forced on the plane.

But Mr. Gibson counters that Mr. Neza made no such threats.

Mr. Neza was apprehended after filing a liquor license application for his Lufkin restaurant, called Joe's Italian Grill.

The government, in court documents, also notes that a state application for a liquor license stated Mr. Neza was a U.S. citizen. False claims to citizenship can result in permanent bars from the country.

No charges have been brought against Mr. Neza, Mr. Gibson said. And the false claim to U.S. citizenship wasn't made by Mr. Neza but by someone filling out the application, Mr. Gibson said in court documents.

Psychiatrist as marketing drone, advocates more 'Off Label' use of prescriptions

Wasn't there a new law passed to address the long term aspects of drug safety. Didn't we recent read about the perils of drug companies encouraging off label uses of drugs for a variety of uses? With a fine of over half a TRILLION (with a T) dollars? Yet here we have a psychiatrist claiming that not only does this not really happen, but that we need more of it. Sounds like a marketing drone to me.

Overly restrictive intellectual property laws devalue the "repurposing" of existing medications for new uses, slowing their availability as life-saving treatments, a Portland researcher contends.

S. Paul Berger, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience in the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine and the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center, writes in a letter appearing in the current issue of the journal Nature that "economics and patent laws" keep pharmaceutical companies from finding new uses for old drugs.

Instead, drug companies "reinvent the wheel" by spending millions of dollars to develop new drugs for diseases that existing drugs have already been shown to be effective against in off-label uses, Berger believes. As a result, new drugs take years to reach consumers who need them as they undergo lengthy testing in clinical trials required by the Food and Drug Administration, and the development costs are passed on to consumers.

[...]