{"id":38889,"date":"2013-08-01T22:54:03","date_gmt":"2013-08-02T02:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=38889"},"modified":"2013-08-07T20:46:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T00:46:38","slug":"all-better-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/01\/all-better-now\/","title":{"rendered":"all better now?…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Time to Re-Engage With Pharma?<\/a><\/div>\n
From the President<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
Psychiatric News<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
by Jeffrey Lieberman<\/div>\n
August 01, 2013<\/div>\n

Drug companies aren’t held in high esteem by the public these days. There are many reasons for the companies’ poor showing, including high drug prices, aggressive marketing practices and direct-to-consumer advertising, efforts to buy influence with physicians, and, perhaps most egregiously, the suppression of data on drugs’ dangerous side effects. Couple these issues with the fact that innovative drug development has slowed to a crawl, and it’s not easy to muster much defense of the pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n

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But let’s face it, they need us and we need them. We must recognize the important, beneficial role that drug companies have long played in all areas of medicine. While not minimizing problems, we simultaneously must remember how products have improved the quality of health care and quality of life in our society, and their funding has helped to advance research, public outreach, and training. As a point of comparison, the pharmaceutical industry is not the tobacco industry. Were Big Tobacco companies to disappear tomorrow, the negatives of lost tax revenue and wages would likely be far more than offset by improved public health and reduced health care costs. But if drug companies were forced out of business, where would we be? Where would we find the new interventions to reduce disease morbidity and mortality? Who would invest in the production and distribution of medicines, vaccines, and medical devices? And for the field of psychiatry, how would much of the essential treatment development research be funded now that the National Institute of Mental Health is focused increasingly on genetics and basic research? [Indeed, President Obama’s recent announcement of the $100 million Human Brain Mapping Initiative, which will fund the development of nanotechnology for brain research, exemplifies the federal government’s de-emphasis of clinical research]…<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
You get the drift, "…let’s face it, they need us and we need them<\/em>" as in, So can we just put the last twenty-five years behind us and move on. It’s all better now.<\/em> I think that technically the word re-engage<\/em> means that one has disengaged<\/em> from something, and now it’s time to re-engage<\/em>. In this case, I missed the disengagment<\/em> altogether – particularly in psychiatry. From where I sat, a major segment of psychiatry at its highest level has been deeply engaged with the pharmaceutical industry. And then I belatedly realized along with many others that it was an unholy alliance. And only in the very recent past has that unholy alliance been clear enough for all of us to see. When did anybody in psychiatry disengage<\/em>? Either I missed it or it didn’t happen [I’m going with didn’t happen<\/em>].  Says Dr. Lieberman:<\/div>\n
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Indeed, APA immediately and drastically reduced its relationships with the pharmaceutical industry. We adopted the strictest ethics policy of any professional association for members participating in key programs such as the development of practice guidelines and the revision of DSM<\/em>. At our annual meeting, “industry-supported symposia” for CME are no longer included in the program. We now are moving forward with careful vigilance in ways that recognize the value of industry relationships. Under the auspices of the American Psychiatric Foundation [APF], interactions with industry are helping to restore important relationships. I recently attended an APF Corporate Advisory Council meeting at which representatives from 14 companies were present. It was clear that they desired re-engagement with physicians and researchers, and, most importantly, they understood that all such interactions must be transparent, rigorously monitored, and without conflict of interest. I know that talking about relationships between psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies makes people nervous. But speaking for myself, I believe that the rules and models for informational, educational, and research engagement can and should be developed and applied in ways that allow for our optimal engagement with companies. Doing so would not only help us learn from the mistakes of the past; it would help us improve the future for our profession and our patients.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Laudable words, but I’m less interested in his assurances that PHARMA is on the true path to sainthood. I want him to address the behavior of the psychiatrists who are still in bed with PHARMA. The drug companies are going to do whatever they can to maximize their bottom line, no matter what they say. The ethical onus is on physicians, psychiatrists, academic psychiatrists. What is the position of the APA on guest authorship? ghost authors? PHARMA whores who author articles or give interviews about drugs they’ve only read about? Conflicts of Interest? Speaker’s Bureaus? Lieberman’s article doesn’t address the you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours<\/em> style that has characterized the last twenty five years of engagement between psychiatry and PHARMA. In fact he institutionalizes it. <\/div>\n

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Jeffrey, it’s just not all better yet…<\/div>\n
hat tip to Uri<\/strong>   <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time to Re-Engage With Pharma? From the President Psychiatric News by Jeffrey Lieberman August 01, 2013 Drug companies aren’t held in high esteem by the public these days. There are many reasons for the companies’ poor showing, including high drug prices, aggressive marketing practices and direct-to-consumer advertising, efforts to buy influence with physicians, and, perhaps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-38889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38889","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=38889"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39038,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38889\/revisions\/39038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}