{"id":45143,"date":"2014-03-28T19:37:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-28T23:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=45143"},"modified":"2014-03-28T19:38:43","modified_gmt":"2014-03-28T23:38:43","slug":"under-this-rug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/03\/28\/under-this-rug\/","title":{"rendered":"under this rug…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
"My contacts tell me that a reliable source on the APA Board of Trustees informed members that the APA attorney has declared that there was no conflict of interest, effectively preempting any action by the Assembly."<\/em><\/div>\n
Bernard Carroll – comment<\/a> on <\/em>not a peep… <\/a><\/div>\n

I think it is likely true that the APA attorney declared that there was no conflict of interest in Dr. Kupfer’s actions detailed previously<\/a>. While it’s hard to imagine what legal machinations the Attorney went through to come up with such an absurd conclusion, I’ve had my say about that multiple times. So for the moment, I want to talk about something else. Is a legal standard even appropriate to bring up in this case? We’re not talking about a person charged with a criminal offense going to trial or a civil suit alleging damages of one kind or another. And even in those situations, the opinion of a legal adviser isn’t the final word, it is only an opinion. Those verdicts comes from a Judge or a Jury.<\/p>\n

In this case, the person under question is a high ranking official of the American Psychiatric Association tasked by the Board of Trustees to oversee a $25 M revision of the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, a process over a decade in the making. The question is by what standard should such a person be judged. In the many debates about conflicts of interest over the life of the DSM-5 Revision process, the topic invariably revolved around the ties between DSM-5 Task Force members and the pharmaceutical industry – for example this point<\/a>–counterpoint<\/a> debate in the Psychiatric Times in 2009 involving Dr. Kupfer. The idea that a leader of the DSM-5 Task Force would be part of founding a company that produced screening instruments for things he was also supporting for inclusion in the manual never occurred to anyone. It was too outlandish to consider. But that’s what he did. And in an article about those tests in a peer reviewed journal, he omitted the required disclosure.<\/p>\n

I presume that if we had the APA’s lawyer’s opinion, it would be something like: although the company was named, formed, incorporated in two states, professionally managed, and had a website, it had not yet officially launched its products, so technically that meant it wasn’t a conflict of interest. Something like that. That kind of technicality is well known to us from 20\/20, or Mafia cases. This isn’t about such things. This is about medical ethics and integrity. And it’s not some Monica Lowensky dalliance – it’s in the direct line of duty. I can’t personally find a way to read this story as anything but profiteering. I gasped when I first heard it. Apparently the editor of JAMAPsychiatry did too, measured by the form of the published apology [Failure to Report Financial Disclosure Information<\/a>]. I expect the members of the Board of Trustees at the APA gasped too [at least I hope so]. This wasn’t an ethical lapse. It was an active attempt to get away with something that went awry. No need to look at any rules to know that. Even if they had waited to incorporate their company until after the DSM-5 came out, or Kupfer had declared it along the way, it was still a misuse of his position for personal gain. There’s no piece of this caper that isn’t conduct unbecoming<\/em> the chair of such an enterprise.<\/p>\n

All of that is obvious. If it is indeed true that "the APA attorney has declared that there was no conflict of interest, effectively preempting any action by the Assembly,<\/em>" that does not mean that the APA Board of Trustees must remain silent, because that silence screams indifference or worse. They may be afraid of getting sued for slander by Dr. Kupfer, but they need to be even more frightened of their silence putting the finishing touches on the demise of an already heavily tarnished ethical reputation. They have to speak. There’s just no more room under this rug…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"My contacts tell me that a reliable source on the APA Board of Trustees informed members that the APA attorney has declared that there was no conflict of interest, effectively preempting any action by the Assembly." Bernard Carroll – comment on not a peep… I think it is likely true that the APA attorney declared […]<\/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-45143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45143","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=45143"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45154,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45143\/revisions\/45154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}