Medical Detox Programs in a stress-free environment

A federal judge recently said Lilly could be ‘barely’ liable under RICO for off-label marketing practices, and now Merck Schering-Plough is accused of “indictable” RICO offences in a civil suit filed by a New York county government.

The Shearlings Got Ploughed blog reports that the local Suffolk County, NY, government has filed a civil suit in New Jersey federal court against Schering-Plough and its joint venture with Merck, among others, that “takes important new strides in alleging RICO pattern activity — calling Schering’s and Merck’s conduct here ‘indictable’.”

Although there have been other RICO putative class action cases against Schering-Plough and Merck over its cholesterol drugs Zetia and Vytorin, the new Suffolk County complaint is significant because it “represents a new level of gravitas in the ENHANCE litigation maelstrom now besieging Schering-Plough and its executive leadership,” the blog says.

It’s more serious, the blog suggests, because “a local-governmental agency is now effectively swearing that Schering has committed RICO-indictable pattern racketeering by concealing the results of ENHANCE research for almost two years — while the good people of Suffolk County, New York were forced to pay greatly-inflated prices for a drug that was no more effective than those much cheaper statins.”

Click here to see a marked-up copy of the relevant page in the complaint.

The suit alleges consumer protection, false advertising, securities and other violations in connection with the ENHANCE study delays and non-disclosures, various statements by the company and executives, that relate to the drugs’ effectiveness.

With similar charges being suggested against Lilly over Zyprexa, and all the other legal problems Big Pharma continues to face, it’s obviously time for pharmaceutical execs to get out of the huddle with PR flacks and sit themselves down in front of a mirror. Crafting evasive media statements for investors, doctors, patients, employees, and all the rest is not cutting it.

The abandonment of psychotherapy by thousands of psychiatrists in favor of prescription drugs tells us that psychiatric ‘talk therapy’ never worked. And since drugs don’t provide any answers either, and in fact carry enormous risks, what has psychiatry ever really done for anybody?

An article in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry reports that the use of anti-depressants is replacing psychotherapy for a significant number of psychiatrists. Thousands of them, the article says, are dropping ‘talk therapy’ in favor of the quick prescription, and it’s an expanding trend.

Financial incentives, the author suggests, have brought about the switch from talk therapy to drugs, motivated by reductions in insurance payments for psychotherapy, increases in the number of ‘managed care’ patients (HMOs and PPOs), and rapid growth in ‘psychopharmacology’.

Study author Dr. Ramin Mojtabai of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore said insurance company reimbursements for a 45-minute psychotherapy visit are now less than an equivalent amount of time consumed by three 15-minute ‘medication visits’ — patient pit stops for a quick prescription.

And don’t forget the thousands of patients who seldom, or never, see their doctor again after the first visit, depending instead on phone-in prescription renewals.

Meanwhile, the number of psychiatrists studying psychotherapy as a specialty is also dropping, the article says, with a corresponding increase in pharmacotherapy specialists. This portends that even more legal drug-pushers will soon be hanging out their shingles.

These developments clearly say what most of us have always known or suspected:

Psychotherapy, and basically, let’s admit it, that means psychiatry itself, is no more than a failed experiment.

Many cogent arguments also exist, beyond the scope of this blog, that detail how psychiatry, in general, has done more harm than good, and continues to do so at an accelerating rate through its complete devotion to drugs. The gallop, nay the stampede, to push drugs on a troubled population instead of helping it find the answers it needs is among the most telling of those arguments.

We already know — come on, everyone knows — that psych drugs, or any drugs, provide absolutely zero answers to the meaning of life and one’s place in the scheme of things. And these are answers that almost anyone with a functioning mind needs and wants.

Plus, psychoactive drugs bring with them the constant risk of dependency, and a list of side effects as long as your arm — everything from feeling plain lousy to taking an arsenal to school and murdering a dozen or two classmates.

If psychotherapy had ever actually worked, psychiatrists’ medical ethics would have led to demands for adequate compensation from insurers. It’s called the Hippocratic Oath. There was no effective demand, and that speaks volumes about psychotherapy.

And psychiatry hasn’t just abandoned psychotherapy, it has abandoned its very raison d’etre — to help mankind achieve a higher level of existence by actually explaining life and solving his problems. That never happened either, which says everything.

I think psychiatry acknowledged its failure a long time ago, when it found, or was found by, Big Pharma. Either way, it was a match made in, well, somewhere. And for both of them it’s been the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and a leap from the frying pan into the fire for anyone else who buys into the psych drug lie.

With Big Pharma as its supplier, psychiatry has become the biggest drug cartel in history. Under its malevolent care, and with the approval and encouragement of educational, health care and governmental institutions, everyone from the cradle to the grave is persuaded to bury their questions about life in an impenetrable pharmaceutical fog, forever.

That is not a higher level of existence by anyone’s reckoning.

Most appalling has been how psychiatry has gathered unto itself an almost unlimited god-like power and clout. With few if any successes, and many would argue no statistics at all to back up its claimed omniscience, it’s clear that psychiatry’s power is utterly unwarranted.

As the child in the old fable said, ‘Look, the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!’

The Senate Finance Committee has looked into funding of academic psychiatry, but now it wants the American Psychiatric Association to reveal all psychiatric funding from Big Pharma.

Antipsychotic and antidepressant medications are pretty much newsworthy any day of the week. That’s usually because someone taking them has either committed a violent crime, has committed suicide, or has just plain up and died — it’s pretty much the nature of the drugs. And meanwhile, Big Pharma and the psychiatrists rake in billions.

No wonder, then, that Rep. Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is spearheading an investigation into the Niagara of cash flowing into the psychiatric community from Big Pharma. Psych drugs are news, cash-hungry psychs are news, and the news is where politicians like to be, especially in an election year.

But in this case, we’ll ignore any political ambitions, and hope for some real action. We need see an end to Big Pharma’s buckets-of-cash influence on the practice of all medicine in this country, and particularly its grotesque support of psychiatry.

We recently blogged about Grassley’s probe into three Harvard psychiatrists who received nearly $3 million from Big Pharma for “research” and other psychiatrists whose financial ties to pharma cast doubts on clinical judgment or independence of research findings.

Now, says the New York Times in a must-read article for anyone interested in health care costs and the independence of the American health system, Grassley is demanding that the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the shrinks’ professional organization, reveal its own sources of financing.

“I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of nonprofit organizations that purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions,” Mr. Grassley said in a letter to the APA.

Amen, say I.

The Times says that in 2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, Big Pharma accounted for about 30 percent of the association’s $62.5 million in financing. About half of that money went to psych journal drug ads and annual meeting exhibits, the other half sponsoring “fellowships, conferences and industry symposiums at the annual meeting.”

The psychiatry association’s board met behind closed doors this weekend to discuss “how to respond to the increasingly intense scrutiny and questions about conflicts of interest,” the Times said.

Meanwhile, read the APA’s letter to its membership announcing Grassley’s demands, reprinted in Ed Silverman’s Pharmalot blog. APA president Nada Stotland tells members that a work group has already been formed to provide “options for ending pharmaceutical support.”

Now that is something we’d like to see. Big Pharma’s cash should be flowing into research, testing and safety, not into the pockets of academic or practicing doctors.

Boehringer Ingelheim updated the label for Mirapex in 2005 to warn of impulse control disorders and compulsive behaviors, but it came too late to help this New York man.

There are drugs that are addictive, and drugs to treat addictions. But a former Wall Street banker claims in a suit against the makers and marketers of Mirapex (pramipexole), a drug developed to treat Parkinson’s and now also prescribed for Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS), caused his addiction to gambling.

According to a New York Daily News article, Randolph Simens, a retired executive at Prudential, says he became a compulsive gambler and lost $3 million after he began taking Mirapex for his Parkinson’s.

The man has filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court against Boehringer Ingelheim and Pfizer, claiming his “pathological” gambling addiction was caused by the drug, and there was no warning from the drug companies that side effects could include compulsive behavior.

The drug makers “had a duty to provide adequate warnings and instruction for Mirapex, to use reasonable care to design a product that is not reasonably dangerous to users, and to adequately test their product,” the lawsuit says.

“It ruined me,” he said. “I became like a robot and I was just pissing away money.”

Simens began taking Mirapex in 2002, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He says he didn’t find out about the compulsive behavior side effect until 2006 by reading an article about a film director who blamed his gambling on Mirapex. But by then he was unable to control his visiting casinos, making risky stock plays, and even raiding his kids’ bank accounts.

The drug makers say the compulsive side effects didn’t surface until long after the drug was on the market, and they acted responsibly. Label changes did come in 2005, an added caveat that reads:

“Patients and caregivers should be informed that impulse control disorders/compulsive behaviors may occur while taking medicines, including pramipexole, to treat Parkinson’s disease and RLS.”

The wording is fascinating — “…while taking medicines, including pramipexole … etc.”, clearly suggesting that all Parkinson’s and RLS drugs cause the side effect.

If that isn’t true, then it’s a lie. And probably an attempt to create wiggle-room for lawsuits like this one.