Well, next weekend, the American Psychiatric Association Board of Trustees meets in Arlington, VA. This will be their first meeting since APA Speaker Dr. Mindy Young’s letter to the Trustees was published about what has been called the Kupfer Affair [or for that matter, since my Open Letter to the Board of Trustees]. I doubt you need any reminders about what the Kupfer Affair is all about. But if you do need a refresher, you’ve come to the right place:
| 11/09/2012 really?… 08/12/2013 a road to nowhere… 11/21/2013 careful watching… 12/29/2013 insider trading… 01/03/2014 DSM-5 retrospective I… 01/03/2014 DSM-5 retrospective II… 01/03/2014 DSM-5 retrospective III… 01/06/2014 royalty? … 01/11/2014 top down problem… |
01/16/2014 why?… 01/18/2014 when?… 01/19/2014 what!… 01/21/2014 open letter to the APA… 01/23/2014 01/27/2014 no longer a given… 01/30/2014 the future remains in the haze… 02/06/2014 that matters… 02/11/2014 its proper place… |
Dr. Young’s letter concludes…
Dr. Kupfer should have disclosed to APA his interest in PAI in 2012. Dr. Kupfer’s interest in PAI, which came after the decision had been made to include dimensional measures in DSM-5, did not influence DSM-5’s inclusion of dimensional measures for further study in Section 3. Interest in inclusion of these measures in DSM-5 began with conferences starting in 2003. If and when PAI develops a commercial product with CAT, it will not have any greater advantage than the dozens of dimensional measures currently being marketed by others.
… which is bizarre after the first sentence, twisting the issues beyond recognition. If the APA Board simply accepts the letter and does nothing, if that’s the end of that, it confirms the worst case criticisms of the American Psychiatric Association – that it’s little more than the good old boy network many think it is, unable to act appropriately particularly when it comes to the issue of Conflicts of Interest. While Dr. Young’s conclusion that there’s no competitive edge resulting from Dr. Kupfer’s interest in this commercial enterprise is patently absurd, that’s hardly the front-running problem. The fact that he kept his involvement in this project secret all the while reassuring us repeatedly of the strength of the DSM-5’s COI policy is an egregious and conscious breach of any version of the stated DSM-5 ethical declarations that he championed. The Board’s only real choice is to take definitive action. Anything else negates the credibility of the APA and its Board…
At the risk of sounding repetitive, let me add that Dr. Mindy Young’s letter lowballs the frequency of Dr. Kupfer’s failure to disclose his competing financial interest in PAI. He did it twice in JAMA Psychiatry; he did it again in JAMA; he did it in a presentation to the American College of Physicians; and he did it once more in a presentation at The University of Pittsburgh.
So, he cannot airily say the confession (lame and weaseling as it was) that he was forced to make in JAMA Psychiatry was just an unfortunate, one-off slip-up. Is the APA Board of Trustees listening? The 6,000 visitors to my two posts about it sure are listening.
May I point out again that APA elections are decided by only a few thousand voters?