The ‘Influence’ of Pharmaceutical Companies

I have reprinted a letter from Basil Miller to the Irish Times below.

Read this and then read the prior blog which I put up ten minutes ago.

Notice the common thread?

The giant pharmaceutical companies lurk at the centre of a world wide web of deception and corruption.

Not only so called mental health advocacy groups, but ‘respected’ psychiatrists are pocketing money for acting as fronts for Big Pharma.

From: The Wellbeing Foundation <wellbeing@wellbeingfoundation.com>

Date: 23 October 2009 14:15:56 GMT+01:00

To: lettersed@irish-times.ie

Subject: Antidepressants and homicide

Madam, — Like Dr Orla O’Donovan (Letters, 22 Oct: Antidepressants and homicide) I am astonished by the intervention of the eight professors of psychiatry in respect of the Clancy/Creane tragedy. What astonishes me is their degree of wilful ignorance of the side effects of the drugs they espouse, prescribe and, presumably, enjoin their students to prescribe.

As Dr O’Donovan indicated, the scientific literature is replete with studies establishing a clear link between the use of SSRI antidepressants and similar drugs and self-harm, suicidality, aggression, hostility, mania and other induced behaviour; the word ‘hostility’ being used in this context to embrace all kinds of violent thoughts and actions, including the terminal hostility of homicide.

Dr O’Donovan cited the study by Professor David Healy et al, which is important in the present instance because it starts from a conservative position and carefully explores the medico-legal problems arising from the use of these drugs. If I may quote the summary in its entirety:

Recent regulatory warnings about adverse behavioural effects of [SSRI] antidepressants in susceptible individuals have raised the profile of these issues with clinicians, patients, and the public. We review available clinical trial data on paroxetine and sertraline and pharmacovigilance studies of paroxetine and fluoxetine, and outline a series of medico-legal cases involving antidepressants and violence.

Both clinical trial and pharmacovigilance data point to possible links between these drugs and violent behaviours. The legal cases outlined returned a variety of verdicts that may in part have stemmed from different judicial processes. Many jurisdictions appear not to have considered the possibility that a prescription drug may induce violence.

The association of antidepressant treatment with aggression and violence reported here calls for more clinical trial and epidemiological data to be made available and for good clinical descriptions of the adverse outcomes of treatment. Legal systems are likely to continue to be faced with cases of violence associated with the use of psychotropic drugs, and it may fall to the courts to demand access to currently unavailable data. The problem is international and calls for an international response.

I am astonished that all eight professors of psychiatry whose letter you published on Monday 19 October publicly profess ignorance of this important area of study in their field. These eight people have enormous authority; they are responsible for the training and education, and ultimately the graduation, of thousands of psychiatrists into our health services, not to mention the psychiatric component of GP training. Yet they deny that their drugs of choice for both their medical specialism and for GPs in treating depression can impel violent and aggressive behaviours.

There are many, many more peer-reviewed studies showing clear and irrefutable links between this generation of antidepressants and violent ideation and behaviour, too many to list here. Is it not only astonishing, but also potentially dangerous, for the leading lights of psychiatric education in this country to be unaware of this literature, or to dismiss it out of hand as they appear to do?

Perhaps they are taking the word ‘cause’, which they used in their letter, in the same sense as the tobacco industry used it for several generations to deny that smoking and cancer were linked, and to avoid the serious questions about risk and benefit which hang over the equally aggressively marketed SSRIs and SNRIs.

Let us have no chilling of the essential public debate on the role of these drugs in the case of Sebastian Creane and Shane Clancy — if there is any such chilling or stifling of debate, the sure result will be to leave the door open to another such tragedy. — Yours, etc,

BASIL MILLER

The Wellbeing Foundation

2 Eden Park

Glasthule

Co Dublin

N.A.M.I. Exposed by New York Times

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a supposed advocacy group, turns out to have been in the pocket to Big Pharma to the tune of millions over the years.

It seems like all the corruption across the spectrum is coming into view at the same time in America.

____________

Drug Makers Are Advocacy Group’s Biggest Donors

By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: October 21, 2009

WASHINGTON — A majority of the donations made to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one of the nation’s most influential disease advocacy groups, have come from drug makers in recent years, according to Congressional investigators.

The alliance, known as NAMI, has long been criticized for coordinating some of its lobbying efforts with drug makers and for pushing legislation that also benefits industry.

Last spring, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent letters to the alliance and about a dozen other influential disease and patient advocacy organizations asking about their ties to drug and device makers. The request was part of his investigation into the drug industry’s influence on the practice of medicine.

The mental health alliance, which is hugely influential in many state capitols, has refused for years to disclose specifics of its fund-raising, saying the details were private.

But according to investigators in Mr. Grassley’s office and documents obtained by The New York Times, drug makers from 2006 to 2008 contributed nearly $23 million to the alliance, about three-quarters of its donations.

Even the group’s executive director, Michael Fitzpatrick, said in an interview that the drug companies’ donations were excessive and that things would change.

“For at least the years of ’07, ’08 and ’09, the percentage of money from pharma has been higher than we have wanted it to be,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.

He promised that the industry’s share of the organization’s fund-raising would drop “significantly” next year.

“I understand that NAMI gets painted as being in the pockets of pharmaceutical companies, and somehow that all we care about is pharmaceuticals,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said. “It’s simply not true.”

Mr. Fitzpatrick said Mr. Grassley’s scrutiny, which he described as understandable given the attention paid to potential conflicts of interest in medicine, had led his organization to begin posting on its Web site the names of companies that donate $5,000 or more. And he predicted that other patient and disease advocacy groups would be prodded by Mr. Grassley’s investigation to do the same.

“Everyone I talk to wants to have more balanced fund-raising,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.

In a statement, Mr. Grassley praised the alliance for its disclosures. “It’d be good for the system for other patient groups to do what NAMI has done,” he said.

Mr. Grassley’s scrutiny has been unnerving for patient and disease advocacy groups, which are often filled with sincere people who are either afflicted with serious illnesses themselves or have family members who have been affected. Many join the groups in the hope of making sense of their misfortune by helping to find a cure or raising awareness of a disease’s risks and frequency.

Drug makers are natural allies in these pursuits since cures may come out of corporate laboratories and the industry’s money can help finance public service campaigns and fund-raising dinners. But industry critics have long derided some patient organizations as little more than front groups devoted to lobbying on issues that affect industry profits, and few have come under more scrutiny for industry ties than the mental health alliance.

For years, the alliance has fought states’ legislative efforts to limit doctors’ freedom to prescribe drugs, no matter how expensive, to treat mental illness in patients who rely on government health care programs like Medicaid. Some of these medicines routinely top the list of the most expensive drugs that states buy for their poorest patients.

Mr. Fitzpatrick defended these lobbying efforts, saying they were just one of many the organization routinely undertook.

The close ties between the alliance and drug makers were on stark display last week, when the organization held its annual gala at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on Constitution Avenue in Washington. Tickets were $300 each. Before a dinner of roasted red bell pepper soup, beef tenderloin and tilapia, Dr. Stephen H. Feinstein, president of the alliance’s board, thanked Bristol-Myers Squibb, the pharmaceutical company.

“For the past five years, Bristol-Myers has sponsored this dinner at the highest level,” Dr. Feinstein said.

He then introduced Dr. Fred Grossman, chief of neuroscience research at Bristol-Myers, who told the audience that “now, more than ever, our enduring relationship with NAMI must remain strong.”

Documents obtained by The New York Times show that drug makers have over the years given the mental health alliance — along with millions of dollars in donations — direct advice about how to advocate forcefully for issues that affect industry profits. The documents show, for example, that the alliance’s leaders, including Mr. Fitzpatrick, met with AstraZeneca sales executives on Dec. 16, 2003.

Slides from a presentation delivered by the salesmen show that the company urged the alliance to resist state efforts to limit access to mental health drugs.

“Solutions: Play Hard Ball,” one slide was titled. “Hold policy makers accountable for their decisions in media and in election,” it continued.

The alliance’s own slides concluded by saying, “We appreciate AstraZeneca’s strong support of NAMI.”

Mr. Fitzpatrick said that the alliance frequently had such meetings and that the organization would fight for better access to mental health drugs “even if we had no relationship with pharmaceutical companies.”

Tony Jewell, an AstraZeneca spokesman, said that the company was “committed to improving health through partnerships with nonprofit organizations” and that “includes striving to ensure people can access our medicines through formularies managed by state Medicaid agencies.”