PSYCHIATRY - "NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS" THE SMELL THAT WON'T GO AWAY
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PSYCHIATRY - "NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS" THE SMELL THAT WON'T GO AWAY
Certainly not looking at this subject from the beginning - but picking it up in the 18th Century, psychiatry adopted the man is an animal dogma and attempted to approach the problem of behavior from a stimulus response basis. Some psychiatrists like Freud branched away and attempted to focus on a single thrust - sex. Neither approach achieved broad scientific or public approval nor could the psychiatrists agree on a standard way of going about them and both approaches suffered from their inability to isolate the true causes.
Due to chasing wrong answers and other inherent problems with being antisocial in nature, psychiatrists traditionally have been shunned by medical doctors, who unlike psychiatrists, had their own "real diseases" with scientifically and physically identifiable causes like bacteria and viruses.
Insurance companies have historically resisted paying for psychiatric treatment, as psychiatric diagnosis was subjective and psychiatry had no provable diseases or cures.
In the US in the 40s psychiatrists were relegated to exterminating the insane and getting money from governments for running state hospitals and went about their business shocking patients with electrodes, torturing them with "hose downs" and straightjackets, and lobotomizing with ice picks.
When Nazi psychiatrists filtered over to America after WWII, they brought along their ties to the German pharmaceutical industry, and the era of Biological Psychiatry came into existence. Now came a promise of a much more "civilized" way of dealing with insanity: "chemical lobotomies." This quickly came heavily into fashion. As for effectiveness, these treatments were just as deadly, resulting in grotesque nervous disorders and hard-to-predict toxic levels, which conveniently produced rapid death from overdose. During the period of the Vietnam War, here in the US more than a quarter of a million died in psychiatric hospitals. That made one's chances of dying in a psychiatric hospital during the Vietnam War about eight times more likely than if one were on the front lines in Vietnam.
Up to this point, however, psychiatrists had not figured out how to break into the "real populous" and practice like "regular" doctors without having to sit there and do psychoanalysis which was not only ineffective and had no end point but required one to sit there and deal with people.
During the 60s, psychiatrists, armed with a combination of shock and the new incapacitating drugs sold their wares to intelligence agencies showing them how they could help them modify troublesome social elements. Still not what one could call a mainstream product.
Then in the late 60s, a major turning point occurred. The pharmaceutical companies brought the Madison Avenue advertising and PR machine heavily into the marriage. It was a marriage made in heaven for the psychiatrists and hell for the rest of the planet. Up until this point, psychiatry had made little inroads into the mainstream as they were constantly reminded by the medical doctors and critics that there was no scientific basis to any of the labels they had arbitrarily placed on various deviant behaviors and had no cures or causes, and embarrassingly, had a horrific death rate from "treating" "illnesses" that were not supposed to kill people.
But the Madison Avenue advertising boys and PR firms knew just what to do - first thing was to get rid of all of those dead bodies. Solution - make a policy that no one dies in a psychiatric hospital. I am not kidding here. Critics had attacked for years on the matter of psychiatric hospital deaths being actually murder, as mental illness is not fatal. The PR boys knew the answer: turn the motion to your advantage. The solution? "It is hereby policy that no one can die in a psychiatric hospital." Since mental illness does not produce death, if someone is dying, it is a medical problem, so any critically-afflicted person is to be immediately shipped to a medical hospital emergency room. From then forward no one "died" in a mental hospital. "Guy OD's or hangs himself - looks dead - who are we to say? - put him in an ambulance - oh - dead on arrival." And the problem becomes some medical hospital's statistic. You still think I am kidding.
BREAKING INTO MAINSTREAM
As the world of advertising had already learned in a groundbreaking PR campaign to sell fluoride to America for their water systems, all that was needed to make people clamor for poison was some good "positioning" and a multi-vectored PR campaign utilizing mainstream media, scientific committees, some "reputable" scientific research, a ton of money to bring a heavy lobby effort on legislators, and a flanking attack team of legal/invest/PR professionals to squelch any naysayers.
This multi-vectored drill had successfully marketed toxic waste to America as an additive to their drinking water and toothpaste, and was so successful that cities demanded to have toxic waste put into their water systems and anyone who objected was successfully positioned as an insane reactionary seeing communists everywhere.
The Madison Avenue marriage to the psychiatrists had brought together the deadly combination of suppression sold through a high communication level and aesthetics. As for little details like no scientific basis for their diseases, treatments or for that matter the entire subject, the American Psychiatric Association took the course to rise above the earlier back off and just not let the lack of any evidence of the existence of any disease stand in the way, create enough doubt to justify existence of treatment and squelch any resistance. On the legal front, the strategy was to not let anything get to a final court decision - allow no judgment - and let the pharmaceutical companies buy their way forward at any price. People had behavior didn't they? There was no denying that. Who was going to prove it was not caused by mental illness?
In a parallel to the insurance codes established for payment of medical treatment, the American Psychiatric Association invented the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. This book was a list of mental illnesses and their symptoms, which were determined by a raised-hands vote of an APA committee. The first major hurdle here was how to get more than one psychiatrist to agree on what the mental illnesses were. After persisting through weeks of chaos, the results were then turned into a codified published text, with named diseases and symptoms.
Now FDA approved treatments could be gotten through the pipeline and insurance companies forced to pay for the treatments by highly bankrolled legislative lobby efforts. As for getting the drugs approved to treat these "diseases" (which of course were merely statements of various behavior) - this was a cinch. The groundwork had already been laid with the "lobotomy" drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies already had brought, or bought, the FDA into the marriage. The pattern was already in place - do drug tests for safety and efficacy. If the results come in as you want, you submit to the FDA. If they don't, you don't. How is this gotten away with? Well, the test results being funded by the pharmaceutical company are "proprietary information." If the tests come out bad, then the results are the property of the company and therefore do not have to be disclosed. Tests interpreted as positive in changing the behavior in question are deemed effective treatment and are passed onto the FDA who does not have to show anyone the results of the tests, as the information is "proprietary." As no one is funding drug research testing besides the drug companies, no contrary findings reach the FDA or any medical journal. Tests can be repeated as many times as necessary to achieve the desired results.
FDA members are already in the groove, as the approval board is composed of ex pharmaceutical researchers themselves - all past employees or benefactors of grants of the pharmaceutical companies - and each one assured a supreme paying research or university position once their stint is complete as FDA approval person. By the time widespread mainstream psychiatric drug treatment hit America, the "client" for the FDA had long since shifted from the American public to the drug companies.
Madison Avenue meanwhile set out to convince the American people of the existence of such diseases as Hyperactivity and ADHD and amphetamine drugs were approved for treatment as being "safe and effective." Remember the sequence on drug research is - produce a drug and see what effect it has and then get bright on what it could be justified to treat. Not, come up with a treatment for something.
In this case - researchers found that some children, like many adults, like to get high on amphetamines, as the drugs produce a drug euphoria and a manic level of increased attention and some children, like adults, would clamor to get high on them. Some children's nervous systems would get overwhelmed by the drugs and shut down making them more "manageable." Ahah! Studies were ordered on the subject of making children manageable and assistance to study.
As is now known from recent disclosures from whistle blower researchers involved in "fen-phen" diet pill scandal, the drill goes like this: PR ghostwriters touch up the test results and prestigious doctors sign off the final copy after a short review. Bad results don't make it and good ones do. Individuals who drop out of tests are discounted whether they had adverse effects or not. PR does its part touting the "workability" of drug treatment.
In the case of using amphetamine type drugs on kids, PR was on the spot to quickly vector the issue off of, "What are you doing giving schedule II narcotics (same class as cocaine) to little children?" and put it onto "Isn't it fascinating, the drugs have a paradoxical effect in children as it slows them down and makes them more focused." This message netted instant understanding from parents who grew up in the 60s, by "positioning" the drug against something they well knew - the "effect" of amphetamines. But critics kept pulling the skeleton out of the closet and would say those horrible words, "There is no scientific basis to the existence of the diseases you are treating." Oh that again!
Then from out of the minds of America's finest public relations and advertising firms came a new positioning model - the drugs were handling a "chemical imbalance." It had no scientific basis but it was just so understandable - marketing positioning at its best. Researchers scrambled to catch up to PR, doing research aimed at showing any kind of "chemical imbalance," whatever that was. One study looked at a group of children who had been on amphetamines and found that their brains had shrunk. AH! said researchers - we have discovered that children with Attention Deficit Disorder have shrunken brains which proves that ADHD is a biological malady! None succeeded in showing any chemical imbalance producing inability for children to sit in chairs or learn or any other behavior.
But this did not stop the PR message. By then the campaign had caught on like wildfire. Parents promoted to their friends that it was not Johnnie's fault that he could not study, he had a chemical imbalance and the amphetamines were just correcting it like you would give diabetic insulin.
Psychiatric front groups headed by "helped parents" with salaries paid for by grants from pharmaceutical companies chanted praises of the affects of amphetamines on their children. Under the direction of Pro PR's paid by pharmaceutical companies to be "advisors," these ADHD advocates marched their praises of drug treatment on kids through the halls of Congress and created national TV ads paid for by government grants. National media also did "documentary" type "hard news" pieces giving antidotal successes of drug-released children with wide grins that loved their medication.
Critics screamed: "But you are not even testing for any chemicals? What chemicals are you talking about???" No answers came. "Hired gun" journalists jumped in line on the gravy train and put out an avalanche of paid "puff" pieces and orchestratively vectored the controversy off of: no scientific basis, existing hard evidence of brain damage, dramatically escalating teen suicide rates, brain shrinkage, stunted growth, heart attacks in children, higher crime rate, permanent nervous disorders, escalated levels of long-term drug dependency on to "It's so effective, some experts are worried it is being over-prescribed."
And the researchers lined up for their grants - bad results in the trash, positive ones in the journals. Drug companies laundered their own in-house studies, getting them published in prestigious medical journals by paying PR firms to ghostwrite reviews and get noted research doctors to sign them off. Slight of hand became standard operating procedure. Dropouts from studies were eliminated from results despite existence of adverse effects. If model groups produced the "desirable effect" they were considered "effective" even if the placebo (sugar pill) control group had the same or higher "effective" rate. No problem - no one could see the results unless submitted to the FDA and then only with a Freedom of Information Act request as the test results were "proprietary information."
Medical doctors who had historically shunned marketing of their own products and had criticized psychiatry for their utter absence of "science" now saw the light: patients now indoctrinated by media to their or their children's "brain disorder" came to doctors demanding treatment. An army of medicos who earlier attended lunch and dinner "briefings" by drug companies in medical school in order to get free gourmet meals now obediently followed the advice that drugs sell people. Bought off for lunch and dinner, pens, paper, calculators, paper organizers, and every school supply imaginable at medical school, doctors jumped on the bandwagon.
Millions of children turned on to amphetamines. Drug companies grossed billions and parents, children, aunts and uncles bought lock stock and barrel that inability was a product of chemicals in their brain.
A lot more could be said about the drugging of 20 million or so school children over three decades and the turning of the educational system into a social control vehicle and why teachers so rapidly jumped on the bandwagon to drug down children who could not learn and were so annoying, but let's quickly see what happened with the SSRI's.
After doing some tests on a new drug group called SSRI's (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) researchers found in the individuals taking the drug that their moods would lock into a sort of no-high no-low type of disassociation. Ahah! A treatment for sadness.
Prozac broke out with full marketing. Baselessly, the drug was touted as being "effective" in treating depression in 80% of the cases. Horror stories filled women's magazines of individuals committing suicide following depression. Ads covertly blamed loved ones for not seeking safe and effective treatment in time. Critics loudly brought forth the glowingly gruesome obvious - there was no scientific basis for any disease called depression - only symptoms were being treated and the treatment was now tied to an alarming number of people who were committing the most hideous of violent acts.
In 1991 relatives of suicide victims and murder victims of patients gone into violent psychosis after taking Prozac petitioned the FDA for an open hearing. The FDA approved the hearing and Dr. Kessler, then head of the FDA and the review board listened to two days of horror stories and testimony. The board then passed its findings: no evidence linked the drug to the incidents, and left the drug on the market. Legal had to step up the game plan, and suit after suit never made it to a judgment with all concerned silent from buyout.
The same pattern ensued: research did its part, FDA stood up to the attacks, mainstream media vectored the issue of violent behavior, no scientific basis, escalating suicide and onto praising the Nobel Prize winning (no kidding) breakthrough that helped doctors explain how chemicals in the brain work.
KEY PLAYERS START TO CRACK
Now as you remember from a the letter I sent last month, two noted psychologists in July of this year using the Freedom of Information Act forced the FDA to cough up the approval test results submitted to the FDA on the last five or so SSRI drugs over the last few years. Lo and behold, truth comes out - results like 24% of the of those who took the drug had diminished depression symptoms and in the control groups 32% of the people who took sugar pills had diminished depression symptoms and 24% of the people who took hogswart herb got diminished depression symptoms. And these were the results for the drug minus the test dropouts, which did not count even if they had adverse reactions.
Why now, after years and years did two psychologists break the code of silence and crack? If one were a bit jaded it might be noted that the psychologists have had an ongoing war over the right to prescribe psych drugs and this exposure by these two psychologists may and probably was a very hardball message saying, Let us in on drug prescription business or we will blow the house of cards sky high." Some internal hardball so to speak. But nevertheless, it was the start of more shake up.
This week a noted researcher after coming under attack for tests he reviewed on a "fen-phen" diet drug, which later was connected to a fatal heart disease in users and resulted in a payout to 11,000 people of 4.83 billion dollars in damages, really shook things up with the exposure that the FDA test review presentation document he submitted was altered to eliminate his warnings on the drug. Data also came to view that the FDA long had data on the damaging effect of the drug before pulling the drug off the market.
Then one of the doctors who signed off a study published in a prestigious medical journal that touted the safety of the "fen-phen" diet drug said he did not know the tests results he reviewed came from the drug company and thought the drug companies PR ghostwriter was a representative of an independent research firm. Nine other ghostwritten submissions from the drug company were found to be laundered by a PR firm through a prestigious doctor into medical journals.
Then also this week, the now ex-head of the FDA, Dr. Kessler started to crack and said the FDA might have lost sight of who its "client" was, openly intimating the FDA has been working for the drug companies not the people.
Also last week a Superior Court judge ordered the maker of the SSRI drug Paxil to pull its ads off of TV because the ads were saying the drug was not habit forming. This was the result of a class-action suit brought by 35 people who had withdrawal problems after taking the drug. A few hours later, a US Justice Department spokesman came out with a denouncement of the decision, stating basically that the judge had no authority to overrule a FDA decision. Wooh! The Executive Branch basically challenged the Judicial Branch to war. Unheard of. Someone here really has had to come out of the woodwork and show some cards. The examination of the veracity of the advertising message of the drug companies in the courts apparently is something to be avoided at any cost, no matter what card has to be played.
Next time, I will tell you about the psychiatrists New Final Solution to "We ain't got no scientific basis to our existence" - behavioral genetics.
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