I know I’m bouncing around a lot, but it’s all a reaction to Harvard finally acting on their investigation of Dr. Joseph Biederman [bipolar kids: harvard acts…] which, in turn, brought up the bipolar child story. So for the last several weeks, I’ve been preoccupied with Dr. Biederman’s pet topic – bipolar disorder in children. It’s a little hard to get far enough away from his personal arrogant style to look carefully at his science. But, I must say that the science is so suffused with his pharmaceutical connections that he doesn’t make it easy. None-the-less, I think that while I’ll spot him that bipolar illness may be more common in kids than previously thought, I don’t buy his revision of the diagnostic criteria or his inclusion of large number of difficult kids in the category of ‘bipolar.’ He sure didn’t make his case with me. I was suspicious that he and his group were creating an illness to medicate, rather that looking for a treatment for an illness.
But in looking over the child bipolar literature, I kept running across other names that were familiar from Grassley’s investigations. Dr. Martin Keller from Brown was the PI on a big NIMH study of bipolar kids [COBY]. I knew of him from the infamous ghost-written Study 329 that made claims of efficacy and safety for Paxil, claims that just didn’t wash. Then I stumbled onto another Grassley alumni, Dr. Melissa Delbello, a child psychiatrist in Cincinnati who was also on the bipolar child bandwagon with lots of unreported industry income who was studying treating bipolar kids with Seroquel. When I looked at her work, they mentioned some bipolar child guidelines, and there I found Dr. Karen Wagner from UT Galveston. She was an author of the bipolar guidelines, she was a co-author with Keller on the Study 329 paper, and she was involved with the also infamous TMAP program in Texas, another topic of note.
Maybe everyone else in America had already noticed that 6 of the 11 were child psychiatrists and 5 of the 6 child psychiatrists were studying bipolar children – but I hadn’t realized that.
| Grassley’s Alumni | |||
| doctor | university | specialty | research |
|
|
|||
| Charles Nemeroff | Emory/Miami | adult | depression |
| Alan Schatzberd | Stanford | adult | depression |
| Joseph Biederman | Harvard | child | ADHD, bipolar child |
| Timothy Wilens | Harvard | child | ADHD, bipolar child |
| Thomas Spencer | Harvard | child | ADHD |
| Jeffrey Bostic | Harvard | child | depression |
| Martin Keller | Brown | adult | depression, bipolar child |
| John Rush | UT Dallas/Duke |
adult | depression |
| Karen Wagner | UT Galveston |
child | depression, bipolar child |
| Melissa Delbello | Cincinnati | child | bipolar child |
| Fredrick Goodwin | NIMH/NPR | adult | bipolar adults |
Senator Charles Grassley and Investigator Paul Thacker were targeting academic psychiatrists with pharmaceutical connections and unreported PHARMA income, not people in any particular research area. So the fact that his list contained a who’s who of childhood bipolar research makes a big statement all by itself about where PHARMA was focusing its efforts [and who was willing to take their money].
Yes, those names over and over:
http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/2008/08/fda-loss-of-integrity-and-consumer.html
That post discusses why the FDA calls pediatric bipolar “valid” .
A couple of kibitzes: First, as best I know Keller didn’t start out as a child psychiatrist. His first big thing was the National Collaborative Depression Study of adult patients that began in the late 1970s and is still running followups. His appearance as lead author on Paxil Study 329 was prima facie evidence of ‘fronting’ by GSK.
Second, Fred Goodwin is a bipolar maven – he wrote the modern bible of manic depressive illness with Kay Jamison in 1990 and a second edition appeared in 2007.
http://www.slate.com/id/2190775/
Fred Goodwin part of NPR radio pharma ties scandal
Fred Goodwin
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/health/22radio.html?ref=business
Also, Kay Jamison is on the CABF Scientfic Advisory council…
http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/2010/09/joseph-biederman-and-friends-defend.html
Joseph Biederman and friends defend their agenda: “Pediatric Mental Health Care Dysfunction Disorder?” Letter to NEJM
http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/2008/12/drjoseph-biedermandefends-self-in.html
Biederman writes letter to Boston Globe, defends self, I warn of wide antipsychotic use in children, Dec 2010….
The train has left the station and it’s on a one way track to disaster, the kids are being medicated it has not decreased it has INcreased, what will be the breaking point where Americans see what they’ve allowed to happen to generations of children?
Recommended documentary for viewing is ‘Generation RX’ –great example it’s on Netflix
Typo, I warned of the antipsychotic use in kids in 2008….bear with me this is such a huge topic to me, thanks for writing about it, again!!
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