Fuck Doctors

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:45 am

eyeno, my father was surgically cured of melanoma, one of the fastest spreading and deadly cancers known. This was some 45 years ago and before chemo therapies were available.

Not being offensive, but honest constructive criticism offered here: please refer no longer to "mute" points; the term is 'moot,' not 'mute.' Thank you.
User avatar
Iamwhomiam
 
Posts: 6572
Joined: Thu Sep 27, 2007 2:47 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby eyeno » Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:56 am

Iamwhomiam wrote:eyeno, my father was surgically cured of melanoma, one of the fastest spreading and deadly cancers known. This was some 45 years ago and before chemo therapies were available.

Not being offensive, but honest constructive criticism offered here: please refer no longer to "mute" points; the term is 'moot,' not 'mute.' Thank you.



I'm happy for you and your father. I truly am. Mine just died with a big dose of chemo in his belly.

Typos happen. Sorry.
User avatar
eyeno
 
Posts: 1878
Joined: Wed Nov 24, 2010 5:22 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Jan 30, 2012 3:38 am

From my heart, I am most sincerely sorry and saddened for your loss.

My father developed Alzheimer's before it was known to most, and was institutionalized in a state mental hospital where he was kept in a locked ward and fed tranquilizers. Consequentially, he was starved to death in a matter of months. (1979) I accurately diagnosed him myself while fighting the legal system trying to remove him to a safer and more nourishing environment. He died the day before the judge assigned a guardian, which at the time had been called a committee.

I became a legislative liaison for the Federation of Parent's Organizations for New York State Mental Institutions. In this position, while trying to organize de-institutionalized former patients I first learned how some parents punished their children by institutionalizing them and of the harm that was not only done to their psyche, but also of the damage they physically suffered from being administered an assortment of psychotropic "medicines."

It didn't go so well with the former patients, perhaps victims would be a better description, but probably the best would be "guinea pigs." The mistrust was genuine and well founded, and sadly so. We strove for legislative protections and an end to warehousing and were somewhat successful. This was the impetus and origination of "Community Health Centers." I spent 10 years, 10 angry years, trying to better the treatment of individuals with true "mental illnesses."
User avatar
Iamwhomiam
 
Posts: 6572
Joined: Thu Sep 27, 2007 2:47 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Hammer of Los » Mon Jan 30, 2012 8:15 am

...

God bless you for your compassion Iamwhomiam.

Truly you are boddhicitta.

For thus you demonstrate the union of compassion and wisdom.

Thank you very much for all your valuable contributions to this forum.

I for one appreciate them.

...
Hammer of Los
 
Posts: 3309
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2006 4:48 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Grizzly » Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:00 pm

CBS Sixty Minutes of corporate America: Treating Depression: Is there a placebo effect?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-5 ... l#comments
(CBS News)

Do antidepressants work? Since the introduction of Prozac in the 1980s, prescriptions for antidepressants have soared 400 percent, with 17 million Americans currently taking some form of the drug. But how much good is the medication itself doing? "The difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people," says Harvard scientist Irving Kirsch. Will Kirsch's research, and the work of others, change the $11.3 billion antidepressant industry? Lesley Stahl investigates.


The following script is from "Treating Depression" which aired on Feb. 19, 2012. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Richard Bonin, producer.

The medical community is at war - battling over the scientific research and writings of a psychologist named Irving Kirsch. The fight is about antidepressants, and Kirsch's questioning of whether they work.

60 Minutes Overtime
How the powerful placebo effect works »

Kirsch's views are of vital interest to the 17 million Americans who take the drugs, including children as young as six and to the pharmaceutical industry that brings in $11.3 billion a year selling them.

Irving Kirsch is the associate director of the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School, and he says that his research challenges the very effectiveness of antidepressants.

Irving Kirsch: The difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people.

Lesley Stahl: So you're saying if they took a sugar pill, they'd have the same effect?

Irving Kirsch: They'd have almost as large an effect and whatever difference there would be would be clinically insignificant.

Stahl: But people are getting better taking antidepressants. I know them.

Kirsch: Oh, yes.

Stahl: We all know them.

Kirsch: People get better when they take the drug. But it's not the chemical ingredients of the drug that are making them better. It's largely the placebo effect.

Irving Kirsch's specialty has been the study of the placebo effect: the taking of a dummy pill without any medication in it that creates an expectation of healing that is so powerful, symptoms are actually alleviated.

[Kirsch: This is the placebo response...]

Kirsch, who's been studying placebos for 36 years, says "sugar pills" can work miracles.

Kirsch: Placebos are great for treating a number of disorders: irritable bowel syndrome, repetitive strain injuries, ulcers, Parkinson's disease.

Even traumatic knee pain. In this clinical trial some patients with osteoarthritis underwent knee surgery. While others had their knees merely opened and then sewn right back up.

Kirsch: And here's what happened. In terms of walking and climbing, the people who got the placebo actually did better--

Stahl: Come on. Kirsch: --than the people who got the real surgery.

Stahl: No.

Kirsch: And that lasted for a year. At two years after surgery, there was no difference at all between the real surgery and the sham surgery.

Stahl: Is it all in your head or--

Kirsch: Well, it's not all in your head because the placebos can also affect your body. So if you take a placebo tranquilizer, you're likely to have a lowering of blood pressure and pulse rate. Placebos can decrease pain. And we know that's not all in the mind also because we can track that using neuro-imaging in the brain as well.

He says the doctors who prescribe the pills become part of the placebo effect.

Kirsch: A clinician who cares, who takes the time, who listens to you, who asks questions about your condition and pays attention to what you say, that's the kind of care that can help facilitate a placebo effect.

He says he got into researching the effect of antidepressants by accident.

Kirsch: I was interested in evaluating the size of the placebo effect. I really didn't even care about the drug effect because everybody, including me, knew it worked. I used to refer patients to get prescriptions. I didn't change the focus of my work onto looking at the drug effect until I saw the data from our first analysis.

What he saw was that it almost didn't matter what kind of pill doctors gave patients.

Kirsch: We even looked at drugs that are not considered antidepressants: tranquilizers, barbiturates. And do you know what? They had the same effect as the antidepressants.

Stahl: Come on.

Kirsch: Really.

Kirsch was so surprised by his initial findings, he decided to do a second study - using data not only from the drug companies' clinical trials that had been published in medical journals.

This time he got data that weren't published but had been submitted to the FDA, which he got through the Freedom of Information Act.

Kirsch: These are the studies that showed no benefit of the antidepressant over the placebo. What they did is they took the more successful studies, they published most of them. They took their unsuccessful studies and they didn't publish them.

Stahl: So when you did your study, you put all the trials together?

Kirsch: That's right.

Stahl: You're looking at patients who took the real drug and patients who took the placebo.

Kirsch: Yes.

Stahl: Did they get equally better, or did the ones who took the pills get even a little better?

Kirsch: If they were mildly or moderately depressed, you don't see any real difference at all. The only place where you get a clinically meaningful difference is at these very extreme levels of depression.

Stahl: Now look, psychiatrists say the drug works.

Kirsch: Right.

Stahl: The drug companies and their scientists say the drug works. Maybe you're wrong.

Kirsch: Maybe. I'd add to that, by the way, patients say the drugs--

Stahl: Patients say the drug works. Kirsch: --work. And, for the patients and the psychiatrists, it's clear why they would say the drug works. They take the drug; they get better. Our data show that as well.

Stahl: You're just saying why they get better.

Kirsch: That's right. And the reason they get better is not because of the chemicals in the drug. The difference between drug and placebo is very, very small; and in half the studies non-existent.

Kirsch and his studies have triggered a furious counterattack - mainly from psychiatrists, who are lining up to defend the use of antidepressants like Dr. Michael Thase, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who has been a consultant to many of the drug companies.

Stahl: Irving Kirsch says that depressants are no better than placebo for the vast majority of people with depression, the vast majority. Do you agree with that?

Michael Thase: No, no. I don't agree. I think you're confusing, or he's confusing, the results of studies versus what goes on in practice.

He says that Kirsch's statistical analysis overlooks the benefits to individual patients.

[Thase with patient: Have a seat.]

And while he agrees there's a substantial placebo effect -

[Thase: Have you been keeping track of your depression scores?]

Especially for the mildly depressed, using a different methodology, he finds that the drugs help 14 percent of those moderately depressed, and even more for those severely depressed.

Thase: Our own work indicates pretty convincingly that this is a large and meaningful effect for a subset of the patients in these studies.

Stahl: But even by your own numbers more people, maybe twice as many people, are having a placebo effect than are actually being helped by the drug.

Thase: That's correct.

Stahl: In the moderate range?

Thase: That's correct.

Stahl: And this isn't troubling to you?

Thase: I wish our antidepressants were stronger. I hope we have better ones in the future. But that 14 percent advantage over and above the placebo is for a condition that afflicts millions of people, that represents hundreds of thousands of people who are better parents, who are better workers, who are happier and who are less likely to take their life.

Since the introduction of Prozac in the 1980s, prescriptions for these drugs have soared 400 percent -

[Commercial: I used to be happy, I remember being happy...]

-- with the drug companies having spent billions over the years advertising them.

Stahl: I don't know about you, but I'm seeing more women running through daisy fields after looking morose than ever before.

Dr. Walter Brown: Absolutely. There's a lot of hype out there. Dr. Walter Brown is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University's Medical School. He has co-authored two studies that largely corroborate Kirsch's findings.

Brown: The number of antidepressant prescriptions over the last decade has increased and most troublesome, the biggest increase is in the mildly depressed, who are the ones who are least likely to benefit from them.

He says they're getting virtually no benefit from the chemical in the pill. Like most experts, he says these drugs do work for the severely depressed, but he questions the widely held theory that depression is caused by a deficiency in the brain chemical called serotonin, which most of these pills target.

Brown: The experts in the field now believe that that theory is a gross oversimplification and probably is not correct.

Stahl: And the whole idea of antidepressants is built around this theory?

Brown: Yes, it is.

To approve any drug, the Food and Drug Administration merely requires that companies show their pill is more effective than a placebo in two clinical trials - even if many other drug trials failed.

Brown: The FDA for antidepressants has a fairly low bar. A new drug can be no better than placebo in 10 trials, but if two trials show it to be better, it gets approved.

Stahl: Does that make sense to you?

Brown: That's not the way I would do it if I were the king. But I'm not.

Dr. Tom Laughren, director of the FDA's division of psychiatry products, defends the approval process.

Stahl: We're told you discard the negatives. Is that not right?

Tom Laughren: We consider everything that we have. We look at those trials individually--

Stahl: But how are you knowing that the two positives deserve bigger strength in the decision?

Laughren: Getting that finding of a positive study by chance, if there isn't really an effect, is very low. I mean, that's basic statistics and that's the way clinical trials are interpreted. A separate question is whether or not the effect that you're seeing is clinically relevant.

Stahl: Okay. Is it clinically relevant?

Laughren: The data that we have shows that the drugs are effective.

Stahl: But what about the degree of effectiveness?

Laughren: I think we all agree that the changes that you see in the short-term trials, the difference between improvement in drug and placebo is rather small.

Stahl: It's a moderate difference.

Laughren: It's a small, it's a modest difference.

It's so modest - that in Great Britain the National Health Service decided to dramatically revamp the way these drugs are prescribed. It did so after commissioning its own review of clinical trials.

Tim Kendall: We came to the conclusion that for mild to moderate depression, these drugs probably weren't worth having.

Stahl: At all.

Kendall: Not really. Dr. Tim Kendall, a practicing psychiatrist and co-director of the commission that did the review says that like Irving Kirsch - they were surprised by what they found in the drug companies' unpublished data.

Kendall: With the published evidence, it significantly overestimated the effectiveness of these drugs and it underestimated the side effects.

Stahl: The FDA would say that some of these unpublished studies are unpublished because there were flaws in the way the trials were conducted.

Kendall: This is a multibillion dollar industry. I doubt that they are spending $10 million per trial to come up with a poor methodology. What characterizes the unpublished is that they're negative. Now I don't think it's that their method is somehow wrong; it's that their outcome is not suitable from the company's point of view.

Because of the review, new public health guidelines were issued. Now drugs are given only to the severely depressed as the first line of treatment. For those with mild to moderate depression, the British government is spending nearly half a billion dollars training an army of talk therapists.

[Instructor: If you wanna go a little faster, you can.]

Physical exercise is another treatment prescribed for the mildly depressed.

Kendall: By the end of 10 weeks, you get just as good a change in their depression scores, as you do at the end of 10 or 12 weeks with an antidepressant.

None of the drug companies we spoke to was willing to go on camera, but Eli Lilly told us in an email that drug trials show antidepressants work better than placebos over the long term and that "numerous studies have shown that patients on placebos are more likely to relapse" back into depression. The industry's trade association, PhRMA, wrote us: "antidepressants have been shown to be tremendously effective."

But if Irving Kirsch has his way, the drug companies will have to completely rethink their $11.3 billion business.

Stahl: You're throwing a bomb into this. This is huge what you're saying.

Kirsch: I know that. The problem is that you can get the same benefit without drugs. I think more are beginning to agree. And I think things have begun to change.

Everyone in this story says that if you're depressed, you should see your doctor, and if you're already on these powerful drugs, you shouldn't stop taking them on your own.


“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Stephen Morgan » Fri Mar 02, 2012 7:20 am

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
User avatar
Stephen Morgan
 
Posts: 3736
Joined: Thu Apr 19, 2007 6:37 am
Location: England
Blog: View Blog (9)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Inkwhyring » Fri Mar 02, 2012 6:00 pm

It's ok for them to push drugs in THAT way,even knowing the risks/side effects on users,but By God,walk into a doctors' office,or emergency room,with even one little bit of a non-prescription drug in your system,and see how the Hypocritic,oops,I mean,Hyppocratic is forgotten!I have seen it,and it made me sick. :x
Inkwhyring
 
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2012 3:59 pm
Location: OR
Blog: View Blog (4)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Grizzly » Thu Mar 15, 2012 11:57 am

70% of Psychiatrists who produce The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Known as the DSM) are Financially Tied to Drug Companies. This is the go-to text for diagnosing every mental disorder known to man and has led to widespread medicating of the population.

http://naturalsociety.com/70-of-dsm-psy ... z1p9Eko6tn

The psychiatric bible, known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is hailed by psychiatrists and psychiatry supporters alike. The 5th edition of the manual, scheduled for publication in May of 2013, is stirring up massive controversy. Being the go-to text for diagnosing every mental disorder known to (and created by) man while ultimately leading to widespread medicating of the population, the 900-page bible is now being pegged for financial conflicts of interests.
Psychiatric ‘Bible’ Pegged for Conflicts of Interest

In 1994, DSM-4, the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, was published. Shortly following the publication, the American Psychiatric Association implemented a new policy which would force expert advisors to divulge any ties with drug industries in order to cut down on potential conflicts of interests. Despite the newly instituted policy, an astonishing 70 percent of the panel members of the newest edition, DSM-5, reported having financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies. About 57 percent reported ties in the previous edition.

“Organizations like the APA have embraced transparency too quickly as the solution…Our data show that transparency has not changed the dynamic.” said Lisa Cosgrove, associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and lead author of the study.

Ultimately leading to millions of people being labeled as ‘mentally ill’, the DSM-5 is also criticized greatly for the addition of new, quite startling diagnoses. With the new criteria, the following situations would cause someone to have a mental or psychiatric disorder.

Grief following the loss of a loved one
Mild memory loss in the elderly
Frequent temper tantrums in kids

“They’re [the new diagnoses] at the boundary of normality…And these days, most diagnostic decisions are not made by psychiatrists trained to distinguish between the two. Most are made by primary care doctors who see a patient for about seven minutes and write a prescription…” said Frances, who is professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University. He also states that the new additions would ‘radically and recklessly’ expand psychiatric boundaries.

As decades pass, the number of diagnosable disorders has gone up by the hundreds. In the past, homosexuality was even battled for inclusion, describing people as having a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” Later, it was replaced with a disorder called “ego-dystonic homosexuality,” a problem specifically surfacing from a source of distress.

As the DSM editions continue to be released, the criteria for labeling a person for many disorders becomes much lower. Psychiatrists, the pharmaceutical industry and all of their ties love these changes, as medications are prescribed with even less effort on the medical establishment’s part — thus feeding the destructive disease machine severely impacting much of the population. With a few simple strokes in this book, every single person in the country could soon be labeled as having a disorder, whether caught by medical “professionals” or not.
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Saurian Tail » Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:41 pm

^^^

I'm reminded of the famous saying: "If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail." So if you sell pharmaceuticals, everything must have a pharmaceutical solution or you don't make the sale.

There is a corollary that goes something like "When bowling, people try to knock down all the pins." So your drone must get smaller, more stealthy, and more lethal with each new iteration.

This narrowing of focus creates a feedback loop with both positive and negative outcomes. What is normally missing is something akin to wisdom.
"Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him." -Carl Jung
User avatar
Saurian Tail
 
Posts: 394
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2011 12:30 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Saurian Tail » Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:50 pm

Déformation professionnelle

Déformation professionnelle is a French phrase, meaning a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession rather than from a broader perspective, and from self-interest rather the public's interest. It is a pun on the expression formation professionnelle, meaning "professional training". The implication is that professional training, and its related socialization, often results in a distortion of the way one views the world.[1]

The adage, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" characterizes this phenomenon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Déformation_professionnelle
"Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him." -Carl Jung
User avatar
Saurian Tail
 
Posts: 394
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2011 12:30 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Grizzly » Fri Mar 16, 2012 12:25 pm



Joe Rogan Speaks The Truth <strike>About School</strike>
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Grizzly » Sat Mar 17, 2012 3:28 am

Don't Drug my Child or I'll Shoot

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby Grizzly » Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:57 am

Just ran across this from 2010...

Dept of Justice snared in fraud over Pfizer prosecution: ‘Too big to nail!’
http://coto2.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/d ... g-to-nail/

Last September, we reported “Pfizer slapped with $2.3 billion fine for illegally dealing drugs.” No one went to jail and Pfizer paid a tiny portion of its profits from illegally dealing Bextra from 2001 thru 2005. In 2005 alone, Pfizer made $1.7 billion on that drug. Now, CNN has revealed that the Department of Justice allowed Pfizer to set up a dummy corporation to take the rap, so that Pfizer could maintain its Medicare and Medicaid contracts.

On April 2nd, CNN reported, “when it came to prosecuting Pfizer for its fraudulent marketing, the pharmaceutical giant had a trump card: Just as the giant banks on Wall Street were deemed too big to fail, Pfizer was considered too big to nail.

“Why? Because any company convicted of a major health care fraud is automatically excluded from Medicare and Medicaid. Convicting Pfizer on Bextra would prevent the company from billing federal health programs for any of its products. It would be a corporate death sentence.”

Money trumps law, public safety

“Prosecutors said that excluding Pfizer would most likely lead to Pfizer’s collapse, with collateral consequences: disrupting the flow of Pfizer products to Medicare and Medicaid recipients, causing the loss of jobs including those of Pfizer employees who were not involved in the fraud, and causing significant losses for Pfizer shareholders.”

No wonder Shakespeare said, “First, let’s kill all the lawyers.” When did federal prosecutors gain the legal right to take monetary consideration into mind when laws have been broken? ‘Too big to nail’ is as bogus as is ‘too big to fail.’

More Pfizer fraud revealed in its genetically engineered AIDS-like virus program

In another stunning legal matter, Pfizer recently lost an employment claim when scientists became infected with a genetically-engineered AIDS-like virus, reports Raw Story. Pfizer supervisors threatened to falsify an employee’s reviews if she didn’t keep quiet about safety violations, eventually firing her.

“Becky McClain, [an award-winning] molecular biologist from Deep River, Connecticut, filed a lawsuit against Pfizer in 2007, claiming she had been wrongly terminated for complaining about faulty safety equipment that allowed a ‘dangerous lentivirus’ to infect her and some of her colleagues.”

In one instance, reports Steve Zeltzer, the virus was left “on a counter outside the lab where workers ate and drank.”

“If a worker in a plant as sophisticated as Pfizer is becoming infected with a genetically engineered virus, then I think the potential is everywhere,” said Jeremy Gruber, president of the Council for Responsible Genetics,” reports Hartford Courant.

McClain was awarded a paltry $1.37 million, plus punitive damages yet to be announced.

Honest citizens have to wonder about any corporation with this propensity for fraud being allowed anywhere near our health care system. We have yet another example that the US federal government is run by criminal interests.


Many embedded links..
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby justdrew » Sun Nov 16, 2014 10:41 pm

I'm adding this to this thread, due to the primary enablers, but there's plenty of other parties at fault to...

The most popular drug in America is an antipsychotic — and no one really knows how it "does what it does"
AlterNet | 16 Nov 2014 at 20:58 ET
(headline originally said, "works" but works implies some benefit)

Does anyone remember Thorazine? It was an antipsychotic given to mentally ill people, often in institutions, that was so sedating, it gave rise to the term “Thorazine shuffle.” Ads for Thorazine in medical journals, before drugs were advertised directly to patients, showed Aunt Hattie in a hospital gown, zoned out but causing no trouble to herself or anyone else. No wonder Thorazine and related drugs Haldol, Mellaril and Stelazine were called chemical straitjackets.

But Thorazine and similar drugs became close to obsolete in 1993 when a second generation of antipsychotics which included Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Geodon and Abilify came online. Called “atypical” antipsychotics, the drugs seemed to have fewer side effects than their predecessors like dry mouth, constipation and the stigmatizing and permanent facial tics known as TD or tardive dyskinesia. (In actuality, they were similar.) More importantly, the drugs were obscenely expensive: 100 tablets of Seroquel cost as much as $2,000, Zyprexa, $1,680 and Abilify $1,644.

One drug that is a close cousin of Thorazine, Abilify, is currently the top-selling of all prescription drugs in the U.S. marketed as a supplement to antidepressant drugs, reports the Daily Beast. Not only is it amazing that an antipsychotic is outselling all other drugs, no one even knows how it works to relieve depression, writes Jay Michaelson. The standardized United States Product Insert says Abilify’s method of action is “unknown” but it likely “balances” brain’s neurotransmitters. But critics say antipsychotics don’t treat anything at all, but zone people out and produce oblivion. They also say there is a concerning rise in the prescription of antipsychotics for routine complaints like insomnia.

They are right. With new names and prices and despite their unknown methods of action, Pharma marketers have devised ways to market drugs like Abilify to the whole population, not just people with severe mental illness. Only one percent of the population, after all, has schizophrenia and only 2.5 percent has bipolar disorder. Thanks to these marketing ploys, Risperdal was the seventh best-selling drug in the world until it went off patent and Abilify currently rules.

Here are some of the ways Big Pharma made antipsychotics everyday drugs.

Approval Creep

Everyone has heard of “mission creep.” In the pharmaceutical world, approval creep means getting the FDA to approve a drug for one thing and pushing a lot of other drug approvals through on the coattails of the first one. Though the atypical antipsychotics were originally drugs for schizophrenia, soon there was a dazzling array of new uses.

Seroquel was first approved in 1997 for schizophrenia but subsequently approved for bipolar disorder, psychiatric conditions in children and finally as an add-on drug for depression like Abilify. The depression “market” is so huge, Seroquel’s last approval allowed the former schizophrenia drug to make $5.3 billion a year before it went off patent. But before the add-on approval, AstraZeneca, which makes Seroquel, ran a sleazy campaign to convince depressed people they were really “bipolar.” Ads showed an enraged woman screaming into the phone, her face contorted, her teeth clenched. Is this you, asked the ads? Your depression may really be bipolar disorder, warned the ad.

Sometimes the indication creep is under the radar. After heated FDA hearings in 2009 about extending Zyprexa, Seroquel and Geodon uses for kids–Pfizer and AstraZeneca slides showed that kids died in clinical trials–the uses were added by the FDA but never announced. They were slipped into the record right before Christmas, when no news breaks, and recorded as “label changes.” Sneaky.

And there is another “creep” which is also under the radar: “warning creep.” As atypical antipsychotics have gone into wide use in the population, more risks have surfaced. Labels now warn against death-associated risks in the elderly, children and people with depression but you have to really read the fine print. (Atypical antipsychotics are so dangerous in the elderly with dementia, at least 15,000 die in nursing homes from them each year, charged FDA drug reviewer David Graham in congressional testimony.) The Seroquel label now warns against cardiovascular risks, which the FDA denied until the drug was almost off patent.

Dosing Children

Perhaps no drugs but ADHD medications have been so widely used and often abused in children as atypical antipsychotics. Atypical antipsychotics are known to “improve” behavior in problem children across a broad range of diagnoses but at a huge price: A National Institute of Mental Health study of 119 children ages 8 to 19 found Risperdal and Zyprexa caused such obesity a safety panel ordered the children off the drugs.

In only eight weeks, kids on Risperdal gained nine pounds and kids on Zyprexa gained 13 pounds. “Kids at school were making fun of me,” said one study participant who put on 35 pounds while taking Risperdal.

Just like the elderly in state care, poor children on Medicaid are tempting targets for Big Pharma and sleazy operators because they do not make their own medication decisions. In 2008, the state ofTexas charged Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen with defrauding the state of millions with “a sophisticated and fraudulent marketing scheme,” to “secure a spot for the drug, Risperdal, on the state’s Medicaid preferred drug list and on controversial medical protocols that determine which drugs are given to adults and children in state custody.”

Many other states have brought legal action against Big Pharma including compelling drug makers to pay for the extreme side effects that develop with the drugs: massive weight gain, blood sugar changes leading to diabetes and cholesterol problems.

Add-On Conditions

It’s called polypharmacy and it is increasingly popular: Prescribing several drugs, often as a cocktail, that are supposed to do more than the drugs do alone. Big Pharma likes polypharmacy for two obvious reasons: drug sales are tripled or quadrupled—and it’s not possible to know if the drugs are working. The problems with polypharmacy parallel its “benefits.” The person can’t know which, if any, of the drugs are working so they take them all. By the time someone is on four or more psychiatric drugs, there is a good chance they are on a government program and we are paying. There is also a good chance the person is on the drugs for life, because withdrawal reactions make them think there really is something wrong with them and it is hard to quit the drugs.

Into this lucrative merchandising model came the idea of “add-on” medications and “treatment-resistant depression.” When someone’s antidepressant didn’t work, Pharma marketers began floating the idea that it wasn’t that the drugs didn’t work; it wasn’t that the person wasn’t depressed to begin with but had real life, job and family problems—it was “treatment-resistant depression.” The person needed to add a second or third drug to their antidepressant, such as Seroquel or Abilify. Ka-ching.

Lawsuits Don’t Stop Unethical Marketing

Just as Big Pharma has camped out in Medicare and Medicaid, living on our tax dollars while fleeing to England so it doesn’t have to pay taxes, Pharma has also camped out in the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs. Arguably, no drugs have been as good for Big Pharma as atypical antipsychotics within the military. In 2009, the Pentagon spent $8.6 million on Seroquel and VA spent $125.4 million—almost $30 million more than is spent on a F/A-18 Hornet.

Risperdal was even bigger in the military. Over a period of nine years, VA spent $717 million on its generic, risperidone, to treat PTSD in troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet not only was risperidone not approved for PTSD, it didn’t even work. A 2011 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the drug worked no better than placebo and the money was totally wasted.

In the last few years, the makers of Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa have all settled suits claiming illegal or fraudulent marketing. A year ago, Johnson & Johnson admitted mismarketing Risperdal in a $2.2 billion settlement. But the penalty is nothing compared with the $24.2 billion it made from selling Risperdal between 2003 to 2010 and shareholders didn’t blink. The truth is, there is too much money in hawking atypical antipsychotics to the general population for Pharma to quit.
By 1964 there were 1.5 million mobile phone users in the US
User avatar
justdrew
 
Posts: 11966
Joined: Tue May 24, 2005 7:57 pm
Location: unknown
Blog: View Blog (11)

Re: Fuck Doctors

Postby identity » Sun Feb 05, 2017 8:39 am

https://www.painscience.com/microblog/spectacularly-unreliable-mri-results.html

Spectacularly unreliable MRI “results”
I already knew MRI is misleading — everyone knows that, if they know anything about medical imaging and back pain. But it may be worse than I thought…

kims-loose-screw-m.jpg

CT scan of a literal loose screw in my wife’s titanium spinal implants… which the radiologist missed. He also missed the other one.

If you send the same patient to get ten different MRIs, interpreted by ten different radiologists from different facilities, apparently you get ten markedly different explanations for her symptoms. A brave 63-year-old volunteer with sciatica allowed herself to be scanned again and again and again for science. The radiologists — who did not know they were getting the “secret shopper” treatment — cooked up forty-nine distinct “findings.” Sixteen were unique; not one was found in all ten reports, and only one was found in nine of the ten. On average, each radiologist made about a dozen errors, seeing one or two things that weren’t there about missing about ten things that were.

That’s a lot of errors, and not a lot of reliability. The authors clearly believe that some MRI providers are better than others, and that’s probably true, but we also need to ask the question: is any MRI actually reliable?

I’ve seen some startling examples of imaging shenanigans personally, like that one time a radiologist missed literal loose screws — two of them — embedded in my wife’s back. I found them myself. And I’ve heard of many more. I’m not blaming radiologists (I think), because detecting clinically significant things with magic machines is a super hard problem to solve (signal detection theory and all that). But Jebus! For all my cynicism, what Herzog et al found was way worse than I would have predicted. Clearly we need to take all MRI “results” with a brick-sized grain of salt. MRI has now been added to my growing list of examples of unreliable diagnostic methods.

original abstract

BACKGROUND CONTEXT: In today’s health-care climate, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is often perceived as a commodity-a service where there are no meaningful differences in quality and thus an area in which patients can be advised to select a provider based on price and convenience alone. If this prevailing view is correct, then a patient should expect to receive the same radiological diagnosis regardless of which imaging center he or she visits, or which radiologist reviews the examination. Based on their extensive clinical experience, the authors believe that this assumption is not correct and that it can negatively impact patient care, outcomes, and costs.

PURPOSE: This study is designed to test the authors’ hypothesis that radiologists’ reports from multiple imaging centers performing a lumbar MRI examination on the same patient over a short period of time will have (1) marked variability in interpretive findings and (2) a broad range of interpretive errors.

STUDY DESIGN: This is a prospective observational study comparing the interpretive findings reported for one patient scanned at 10 different MRI centers over a period of 3 weeks to each other and to reference MRI examinations performed immediately preceding and following the 10 MRI examinations.

PATIENT SAMPLE: The sample is a 63-year-old woman with a history of low back pain and right L5 radicular symptoms.

OUTCOME MEASURES: Variability was quantified using percent agreement rates and Fleiss kappa statistic. Interpretive errors were quantified using true-positive counts, false-positive counts, false-negative counts, true-positive rate (sensitivity), and false-negative rate (miss rate).

METHODS: Interpretive findings from 10 study MRI examinations were tabulated and compared for variability and errors. Two of the authors, both subspecialist spine radiologists from different institutions, independently reviewed the reference examinations and then came to a final diagnosis by consensus. Errors of interpretation in the study examinations were considered present if a finding present or not present in the study examination’s report was not present in the reference examinations.

RESULTS: Across all 10 study examinations, there were 49 distinct findings reported related to the presence of a distinct pathology at a specific motion segment. Zero interpretive findings were reported in all 10 study examinations and only one finding was reported in nine out of 10 study examinations. Of the interpretive findings, 32.7% appeared only once across all 10 of the study examinations’ reports. A global Fleiss kappa statistic, computed across all reported findings, was 0.20±0.06, indicating poor overall agreement on interpretive findings. The average interpretive error count in the study examinations was 12.5±3.2 (both false-positives and false-negatives). The average false-negative count per examination was 10.9±2.9 out of 25 and the average false-positive count was 1.6±0.9, which correspond to an average true-positive rate (sensitivity) of 56.4%±11.7 and miss rate of 43.6%±11.7.

CONCLUSIONS: This study found marked variability in the reported interpretive findings and a high prevalence of interpretive errors in radiologists’ reports of an MRI examination of the lumbar spine performed on the same patient at 10 different MRI centers over a short time period. As a result, the authors conclude that where a patient obtains his or her MRI examination and which radiologist interprets the examination may have a direct impact on radiological diagnosis, subsequent choice of treatment, and clinical outcome.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
We should never forget Galileo being put before the Inquisition.
It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the Inquisition.

Richard Smith, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal 1991-2004,
in a published letter to Nature
identity
 
Posts: 707
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2015 5:00 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 44 guests