Friday, July 24, 2009

Big Pharma Bribes Doctors to Hook Your Kids on Drugs

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141369/big_pharma_bribes_doctors_to_hook_your_kids_on_drugs

Americans must start to question the legitimacy of the exploitative pharmaceutical-industrial complex and the predatory people atop them. Tools
"The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike." –Ralph Waldo Emerson


The wave of evil washes not only the financial-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, the energy-industrial complex, and predatory executives at AIG, Citibank, Halliburton, Blackwater/Xe, Enron, and Exxon. The pharmaceutical-industrial complex has virtually annexed the mental health profession, whose all-star opportunist team is captained by Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, the high-profile doctor most responsible for the explosion of kids on psychiatric drugs, first for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and then for bipolar disorder.


In 2008, Biederman was nailed by Congressional investigators for taking $1.6 million from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 and failing to report most of this loot to his university, a major conflict of interest in violation of the rules. In a February 26, 2009 deposition given by Biederman to several states attorneys (who were claiming that makers of antipsychotic drugs defrauded state Medicaid programs by improperly marketing their medicines), Biederman was asked what rank he held at Harvard.


"Full professor," Biederman answered.


"What’s after that?" asked one state attorney, Fletch Trammell.


"God," Biederman responded.


"Did you say God?" Trammell asked.


"Yeah," Biederman said.


As part of this legal proceeding, Biederman was forced to provide documents relating to his interactions with Johnson & Johnson, the giant pharmaceutical company. These documents included presentations he made over several years summarizing the work of his center financed by Johnson & Johnson. On March 20, 2009, the New York Times reported that Biederman pitched Johnson & Johnson that his proposed research studies on its antipsychotic drug Risperdal would turn out favorably for Johnson & Johnson -- and then Biederman delivered the goods. The Times also reported that in 2005 Biederman