{"id":22579,"date":"2012-04-25T13:34:54","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T17:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=22579"},"modified":"2014-10-28T11:40:36","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T15:40:36","slug":"suddenly-last-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/25\/suddenly-last-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"suddenly, last summer…<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Are future psychiatric treatments doomed?<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a>
Be careful what you ask for…you just might get it.<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a><\/sup>
NEI Blog<\/font><\/strong>
Neuroscience Education Institute<\/font><\/strong>
by Stephen Stahl
August 23, 2011<\/div>\n

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Nobody likes drug companies these days. Worse than tobacco companies and big oil companies! Supposedly they have ruined CME and have corrupted psychiatric experts as consultants, lecturers and research grant recipients! Drug companies only engage in expensive patent extension gimmickry and offer no true innovations! Let’s criminalize the marketing of psychiatric drugs, levy billions in fines to Pharma, force out their CEOs and even make them and their Pharma collaborators take the “perp walk” on their way to court in chains and orange jumpsuits and in front of the cameras! Get out of our professional societies! Get out of our journals! Get out of our medical centers! Good riddance!!!…<\/p>\n

…the anti-psychiatry community, lights up the antipsychiatry blogs [e.g., Carlat] who attract the Pharmascolds, scientologists and antimedication crowd who believe either there is no such thing as mental illness, that medication should not be used, or both. Did you know that psychiatric illnesses are pure inventions of Pharma and their experts to treat patients that do not exist with drugs that are dangerous and do not work with the purpose only of profiting themselves? Stop the profits! Make mental illness go away by legislation and committee! Treat human mental suffering with love and peace and all will be well! Who needs mental health professionals and their diabolical drugs anyway?…<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Last summer we were treated to Dr. Stahl’s rant for all times<\/em>. It was my introduction to Dr. Stahl, a psychopharmacology evangelist extrordinaire. The premise of the article itself was absurd – that a group he called "pharmascolds" was responsible for the fact that PHARMA was pulling out of CNS [their term for psychiatric medications]. The latter point [PHARMA’s exodus] was news to me at the time. A month later, Stahl wrote<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a>:<\/div>\n
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I am blogging today from Paris at the ECNP [European College of Neuropsychopharmacology] meeting, having attended the Royal Society of Medicine meeting outside of London last week to discuss the future of new drug development in psychiatry, paid by the taxpayers of the UK and charities, not Pharma. This meeting involved US colleagues Tom Insel [head of the National Institute of Mental Health], David Kupfer [head of DSM V rewrite], and several academic experts and industry executives from the US and the UK and was covered by the BBC and a report of it aired on UK television…<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
At the same time, Tom Insel made a speech in London about PHARMA bailing out [Brain circuitry model for mental illness will transform management, NIH mental health director says<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a>]. In his post below, Dr. David Healy mentions a speech by British Neuropsychopharmacologist, Dr. David Nutt<\/font><\/strong>, at the Royal College of Psychiatry in June 2011 that antedated this flurry of lamentations [No Psychiatry Without Psychopharmacology<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a>] – a speech that vilified Dr. Healy in an opening slide:<\/div>\n
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Healy’s response is priceless… <\/div>\n
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Scaremongerers of the World Unite<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a>
Mad in America<\/font><\/strong>
by David Healy
April 17, 2012 <\/div>\n

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At a meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Brighton in June 2011, Dave Nutt, a professor of psychiatry at Imperial College London issued a call to arms to his audience at a plenary lecture to defend psychiatry which in Dave’s view meant defending psychopharmacology. On a slide entitled ‘No Psychiatry Without Psychopharmacology’<\/em> he outlined the threats from treatment deniers like Irving Kirsch and Joanna Moncrieff whom he claimed argued drugs don’t work. Psychiatry is also apparently threatened by illness deniers who claim that addiction or shyness are just lifestyle options. Then labeling and libeling me a Scaremongerer, he claimed psychiatry was threatened by me. The first point to note is that I was not held to deny the reality of illness nor held to say that treatments don’t work.<\/p>\n

As regards the risks of drugs, pharmaceutical companies are quick to sue people who claim that treatments have risks if they cannot back up their claims with evidence. As we have seen in the first post in this series almost everything I write or say at meetings is scrutinized with a view to suing me. Calling someone a Scaremongerer, as a matter of logic, should be all but an oxymoron – such a beast cannot exist. The only risks that can be mongered are ones that are real. If these risks are real, should they be regarded as scares? If the argument is that it is fear that is being mongered, pharmaceutical companies monger fear the whole time. Leave your child’s depression untreated and she will grow up to be alcoholic, a drug abuser, will have a failed career and marriage and ultimately commit suicide. Leaving your anxiety or depression untreated while pregnant and your child is likely to be born with a birth defect. If medicine is going to save itself, if it is going to remain a profession, it is time to embrace the duties given it in 1951 and again in 1962 when drugs were made available on prescription-only. Doctors warn people about the risks of over-the-counter products – like patent medicines or tobacco. Prescription-only medicines are prescription only precisely because they are riskier than over-the-counter drugs. If they are no riskier than alcohol or nicotine, which people can manage on their own, why have them on prescription-only. Doctors are there to quarry information out of pharmaceutical companies about these risks – not to be a risk-denying conduit for drugs.<\/p>\n

Dave, who I used to think of as a friend or at least a colleague, has form in this area. He has instigated investigations of me by the General Medical Council, aimed it would seem at getting me debarred from practice. After this lecture, I sent an email asking for the slide branding me a scaremonger – it’s one to treasure – but he didn’t respond. Dave has another role which is agitating on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry – making regulations less onerous and the environment more company friendly so companies don’t move jobs elsewhere… The thrust of a series of recent posts here … is that if doctors cannot be identified as the people who know about the risks of drugs, they are likely to go out of business. They should be scaremongerers in other words.<\/p>\n

Now is the time for doctors to come out of the closet. We urgently need to develop Scaremonger Pride to match Black, Gay and Mad Pride. I’m open to nominations for a Dave Nutt Prize for most effective Scaremongering of the Year for 2011 and would urge everyone to keep track of possible nominees for 2012. You can nominate the person who in your opinion did the most to alert others to a hitherto unknown or poorly recognized substantial risk from some treatment. Anne-Marie or Rosie Meysenburg would be good candidates for 2011.<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My blog title, Suddenly, Last Summer<\/font><\/strong><\/a>, obviously popped into my head because we were suddenly told in a flurry about PHARMA’s retreat from CNS last summer – but when I thought about it, it’s the title of a favorite Tennessee Williams southern gothic play [later made into a movie with Katherine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, and Elizabeth Taylor]:<\/div>\n