{"id":17286,"date":"2011-12-15T06:13:12","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T11:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=17286"},"modified":"2011-12-15T06:13:12","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T11:13:12","slug":"the-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2011\/12\/15\/the-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"the forest&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"justify\">The Whistle-Blower\/State of Texas suit against Johnson&amp;Johnson is approaching &#8211; January 9th, 2012 &#8211; not quite four weeks away. It was filed by Allen Jones in 2003, joined by the State of Texas in 2004, and has been slouching its way towards an Austin Courtroom ever since. I&#8217;ve covered and recovered this ongoing saga here, but it has stayed out of the media for the most part in recent years [scandal fatigue?]. Well today the <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Houston Press<\/font><\/strong> has two comprehensive articles by <span class=\"author\">Craig Malisow<\/span> on <strong><font color=\"#200020\">TMAP<\/font><\/strong> and the coming trial:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.houstonpress.com\/2011-12-15\/news\/down-the-hatch\/1\/\" target=\"_blank\"><u><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Down the Hatch<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.houstonpress.com\/2011-12-15\/news\/down-the-hatch-the-rothman-report\/\" target=\"_blank\"><u><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Down the Hatch: The Rothman Report<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"> While the best resources for understanding TMAP and the coming trial are <u><strong><font><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/AllenJonesTMAPJanuary20.pdf\"><u><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Allen Jones Statement<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a><\/font><\/strong><\/u> and the <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Rothman Report<\/font><\/strong> [<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2011\/06\/15\/detestable\/\"><u><strong><font color=\"#200020\">detestable&#8230;<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a>], Malisow does a good job and adds some new information &#8211; at least new to me.<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" vspace=\"7\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/vvoice.vo.llnwd.net\/e14\/\/7499798.87.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<ul><sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Jones&#8217;s allegations triggered an investigation into TMAP&#8217;s reach into the foster care system by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission&#8217;s Office of Inspector General and the Texas Comptroller&#8217;s Office. The latter turned up some weird stuff, like the case of a  six-year-old who&#8217;d received 60 prescriptions (including antipsychotics  and mood stabilizers) in the course of a year. The child was eventually  admitted to a hospital emergency room and treated for psychotropic  poisoning.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The comptroller&#8217;s investigators were alarmed by the numbers they  crunched for fiscal 2004: 6,913 foster children accounting for 65,469  prescriptions of antipsychotics. The average number of prescriptions for  all psychotropic drugs (not just antipsychotics) for the 686 kids aged  zero to four was 6.7. The number of Risperdal prescriptions alone was  23,812, which cost the state roughly $4.5 million. Clearly, there was a problem. And clearly, something as important as  vulnerable children treated with medication whose safety and efficacy  were in question demanded a serious, thoughtful response.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">What the children got were a set of guidelines, the Psychotropic  Medication Utilization Parameters for Foster Children, developed in 2005  by some of the same people already outed as industry shills. The parameters were overseen by some of the most important acronyms  in state government: the Department of Family and Protective Services,  the Department of State Health Services, and the Health and Human Services Commission. They&#8217;ve been updated periodically, most recently in December 2010.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The acronyms involved have touted the parameters as being responsible  for lowering the percentage of antipsychotics used in foster care. But  among the more astounding things is that the parameters cite some of the  same journal articles that the Rothman report exposed as ghostwritten  and that two respected psychiatrists the Texas AG hired as expert  witnesses in the Janssen lawsuit are critical of the parameters.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Dr. Robert Rosenheck, a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, wrote that &quot;the review seems further unduly biased in favor of risperidone in particular.&quot; The other expert witness, Dr. Bruce Perry, senior fellow of Houston&#8217;s ChildTrauma Academy, and adjunct professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University,  wrote that the group behind the parameters &quot;should provide full  disclosure regarding their current and past relationships with industry,  including direct funds for consultation, speaking, and indirect funds  to support &#8216;education&#8217; or &#8216;research.&#8217; This should also include the  professional groups who are claiming to endorse this.&quot;<\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Besides that lack of financial disclosure, the parameters suffer from  the inclusion of ghostwritten journal articles, something that a rash  of lawsuits against drugmakers have shown is more common than originally  thought&#8230;<\/div>\n<p><\/sup><\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">The full text of the article goes on to document that the liberal use of antipsychotics is still endorsed in the Texas Foster Care Guidelines, even continuing to quote some of the industry ghost-written articles long since exposed. In spite of all the information brought out by this suit, the TMAP practice of heavy medication with Atypical Antipsychotics continues today with the most vulnerable among us &#8211; foster kids.  <\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\">TMAP, launched sixteen years ago, flourished in Texas and was exported to sixteen other states. What makes TMAP so particularly virulent among a lot of other toxic misbehavior by the pharmaceutical industry is that it targeted populations [prisons, Medicaid, foster kids by proxy, chronic mental patients, etc] who had little recourse or voice. Even after exposure nine years ago, many of the practices continued in parallel agencies &#8211; continuing even though the original drugs are going off-patent. This article also acknowledges the contributions of Dr. Joseph Biederman of Harvard whose emphasis on Childhood Bipolar Disorder gave people permission to over-medicate young children by making this [fictitious] diagnosis.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The second article describes the doctors who were central figures in TMAP &#8211; Dr. Steven Shon, Dr. Lynn Crismon, Dr. Alexander Miller, Dr. John Chiles, and Joe Lovelace. It doesn&#8217;t mention Dr. John Rush who headed the program and Dr. Madhukar Trivedi who was focused on the antidepressants rather than the antipsychotics. The problem with the antipsychotics was so loud that we haven&#8217;t heard anything about the antidepressants &#8211; though suspicions are high here in 1boringoldman-land for similar misbehavior. We may never know. <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Reading and writing about these stories frequently, one gets used to them. Parsing out the misadventures, the massaged studies, the omissions, the ghost-writing, the KOLs, etc, it&#8217;s easy to get lost in the trees. At times, it can get monotonous. And then something like TMAP and the medication of Foster Children comes along and gives us a glimpse of the forest&#8230;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Whistle-Blower\/State of Texas suit against Johnson&amp;Johnson is approaching &#8211; January 9th, 2012 &#8211; not quite four weeks away. It was filed by Allen Jones in 2003, joined by the State of Texas in 2004, and has been slouching its way towards an Austin Courtroom ever since. I&#8217;ve covered and recovered this ongoing saga here, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17286"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17294,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17286\/revisions\/17294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}