Old Links, New Links

If you are interested in the relationship between drug companies, flawed research, gigantic profits, and emotional health hit the following links:

for an up to date account of the attempts to reform the relationship between big pharma and doctors see the Carlat Psychiatry Blog. Read the article that made him famous!

Peter Breggin is likely more responsible for our awareness of how dangerous many of the these drugs are. You can link to his Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology here.

You might want to read an appreciative overview of E. Foster Torrey's work. I think he is a mixed bag, but you should know about him.

If, say, Pfizer runs 20 studies on a new drug called "whoknowhowitworxiprine", one of them is bound to be positive, right? Especially if you keep tweaking the group you are using in the study by, say, not counting those people who dropped out due to "side-effects" such as chronic constipation or nervous twitches. But what happens to the other 19 studies that show the drug as being possibly dangerous or ineffective? Down the memory hole with that one! Here's another article on the same subject.

Then there is the rather disconcerting evidence that anti-depressants don't work much better than placebo. Here is one more link regarding the fact that serotonin is not the primary driver of depression.

Finally, speaking of the memory hole- which is an Orwell reference- here's a little big brother for you: that long standing attempt to find a diagnosis for every child, so they might have "access" to the mental health system. Or rather, so the big pharma companies have access to every child.

This is just a run down. Plenty more where that comes from.