Saturday, November 22, 2008
http://bipolar-stanscroniclesandnarritive.blogspot.com/2008/11/another-of-big-names-in-psychiatry.htmlAnother of the Big Names in Psychiatry "Doctor Goodwin" just went down the tubes for his corruption and greed! Who is next on the list?
Friday, November 21, 2008Has psychiatry become so corrupt and filled with greed that Big Pharmaceutical has everyone bought and paid for now? From the FDA, to All the Major University research programs and clinical trials, and then you add in almost every well known and influential psychiatrist in the business!We can look at a long list of the people Dr. Fredrick K. Goodwin has provided intros, endorsed, and wrote books with!Manic-Depressive Illness: Frederick K. Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison: Minkoff and Robert E. Drake, Jossey Boss, 1991Manic-Depressive Illness - Fredrick K. Goodwin, M.D., & Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., Oxford; 1990Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You... That You Need to Know by John McManamy endorsed on the cover by Fredrick K. Goodwin.This barely even touches the surface of his endorsements, influence, and the power he wielded within the psychiatric community.We read almost every week about about Harvard's Baderman, Emory's Dr. Nemornuts, the FDA's psychiatry products chief Thomas Laughren, and the list just goes on and on, one bad apple after another dropping from the same tree of greed and influence by Huge Multi-Billion Dollar Mega Corporations called the Pharmaceutical Industry!So that puts everything in Question now doesn't it!The whole medical model and drug treatments are put into question? Since other options that were never explored because of people like Goodwin were in the pocket of Good Old Big Pharmaceutical! Isn't this unfolding stacked deck of cards just wonderful! NOT!Now you can understand why I say you cannot trust any mental health professional in psychiatry in these times, because they have all scratched each others backs to get to where they are. They have had it driven into their heads and bank accounts that drugs are the way and only way to treat mental health issues; and if they had their way we would be handing out more and more drugs all the time with Fantasy Diagnosis like Childhood Bipolar and a slew of other fallacies waiting in the pipeline for Corrupt Doctors and Big Pharmaceutical to jump all over.The Mental Health Nightmare Puzzle is starting to come together and it's looks extremely ugly and scary for the mental health community as a whole; but especially for the millions upon millions of patients that have fallen victim to this giant hoax!Dr. Goodwin perhaps the most influential researcher and writer in the world of bipolar disorder--and the well-known radio show "The Infinite Mind."The New York Times just reported that National Public Radio will finally kick psychiatrist Fred Goodwin off the air after more than a decade of his shows promoting the mental health system.Why?Because Congress discovered that Dr. Goodwin was one of many well known psychiatrists who took huge pay offs from psychiatric drug companies without disclosing it.By coincidence, Dr. Goodwin was reassuring radio listeners of low side effects of a drug on the very same day he received one of his pay-offs from the drug's manufacturer.Thank you MindFreedom, Senator Grassley, and Congress for finally stepping forward and actually doing something for the American people and those with Mental Health issues.(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
Posted by Justice Lover at 9:43 PM 0 comments
Children Antipsychotics_Douglas Kennedy--FOX News TRANSCRIPT
VERACARE
Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 1:57 AM
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTIONPromoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountabilityhttp://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.comFYIFOX News is to be congratulated for airing a hard hitting report by DouglasKennedy who pulled no punches by shedding light on the FDA official who ismost responsible for giving the green light that opened the floodgates forthe prescribing of increasingly toxic psychotropic drugs for children.Mostly healthy American children are being forced to ingest antipsychoticdrugs that alter their brain chemistry, interfere with normal development,and induce (iatrogenic) chronic diseases such as, diabetes, and metabolicsyndrome.An FDA advisory panel earlier in the week criticized the FDA's failure toprotect children from these toxic drugs.Featured in the news report was Philadelphia attorney, Stephen Shellerrepresenting children harmed by antipsychotics, including boys who grewbreasts after ingesting Risperdal, hit the nail on the head: "the reasonthey [antipsychotics] are prescribed so much is that there are a very goodprofit center for the drug industry."How many millions of previously healthy American children will be rendereddisabled by FDA-approved toxic drugs?.Below is a transcript, but you can still catch the FOX evening News reportclip at http://tinyurl.com/69k9dzContact: Vera Hassner Sharavveracare@ahrp.org212-595-8974(Emphasis by Justice Lover)http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=130&DateTime=11%2F20%2F2008+5%3A57%3A15+PM&LineNumber=&MediaStationID=130&playclip=True&RefPageFox News - U.S. NationalAmerica's News HQFNC 11/20/2008 5:57:15 PM:...jon: should children be prescribed pills that treat conditions that theydo not even have?how about drugs that have already killed kids nationwide?Adding to the argument of the overmedication of america's children, an issuethat our guest has been falling, douglas kennedy, the first nationalreporter to link anti-depressant medications to childhood suicide andviolence. that prompted action.>> for years, they ignored the side effects of anti- depressants, and now,it seems they're doing the same thing with antipsychotics, drugs that somesay are seriously hurting our nation's youth.One young woman on youtube describing what happened to her on the drugresperdal.>> it affects my moods, makes me depressed. >>She is one of the many videographers complaining about the side effects ofanti- psychotic drugs, including seroquel and zyprexa, drugs whose usagehave increased fivefold in the last years, despite there is no scientificbenefit to using them.>> this is a huge industry. >>Now, an independent group of doctors and scientists convened by the food anddrug industry itself agrees, criticizing them for being prescribed tochildren.Stephen Sheller an attorney in Philadelphia: <>>> the reason they are prescribed so much is that there are a very goodprofit center for the drug industry.anytime you come into a doctor's office and say, ""my kid is a problem inschool"" or ""he is acting out,"" they come up with the diagnoses of bipolaror attention deficit disorder or other vague diseases. Sheller representspatients damaged by anti-psychotic drugs, including these boys who had tohave mastectomies because they grow breasts on rispserdol.He and others point the finger directly at Thomas Laughren, director of theDivision of Psychiatry Products whom has been turning a blind eye to theside effects.>> He has been accused of major conflicts of interest, ghostwritingarticles, supporting new diagnoses to use these drugs, and he is notprotecting the public health. he is protecting the profit of the drugindustry....>>The FDA said Dr. Laughren was unavailable for commentSee the video:http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=130&DateTime=11%2F20%2F2008+5%3A57%3A15+PM&LineNumber=&MediaStationID=130&playclip=True&RefPage
Posted by Justice Lover at 10:08 AM 0 comments
http://3rdplutocracyordirectdemocracy.blogspot.com/
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"It's time to stop tinkering with a failed system"by Benjamin MerhavWhat humanity needs is not a "plan B", as the author of the article below concludes.What we all need right now is not the continuation of the "democracy" circus, as the bosses of the USA ruling class continue to do by replacing the former circus chief clown with a new one. What we all need now is the urgent replacement of the capitalist system by a direct and participatory democracy, a genuine democracy !POWER TO THE PEOPLE NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE !http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21280.htmThis Is Not A Normal Recession
Moving on to Plan B By Mike WhitneyNovember 20, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- - "The Winter of 2008-2009 will prove to be the winter of global economic discontent that marks the rejection of the flawed ideology that unregulated global financial markets promote financial innovation, market efficiency, unhampered growth and endless prosperity while mitigating risk by spreading it system wide." Economists Paul Davidson and Henry C.K. Liu "Open Letter to World Leaders attending the November 15 White House Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy" .The global economy is being sucked into a black hole and most Americans have no idea why. The whole problem can be narrowed down to two words; "structured finance".Structured finance is a term that designates a sector of finance where risk is transferred via complex legal and corporate entities. It's not as confusing as it sounds. Take a mortgage-backed security (MBS), for example. The mortgage is issued by a bank (the loan originator) which then sells the mortgage to a brokerage where it is chopped up into tranches (pieces of the loan) and sold in a pool of mortgages to investors that are looking for a rate that is greater than Treasurys or similar investments. The process of transforming debt ("the mortgage") into a security is called securitization. At one time, the MBS was a reasonably safe investment because the housing market was stable and there were relatively few foreclosures. Thus, the chance of losing one's investment was quite small.In the early years of the Bush administration, Wall Street took advantage of the gigantic flow of capital coming into the country ($700 billion per year via the current account deficit) by creating more and more MBSs and selling them to foreign banks, hedge funds and insurance companies. It was real gold rush. Because the banks were merely the mortgage originators, they didn't believe their own money was at risk, so they gradually lowered lending standards and issued millions of loans to unqualified applicants who had no job, no collateral and a bad credit history. Securitization was such a hit, that by 2005, nearly 80 percent of all mortgages were securitized and the traditional criteria for getting a mortgage was abandoned altogether. Subprimes, Alt-As and ARMs flourished, while the "30 year fixed" went the way of the Dodo. Lenders were no longer constrained by "creditworthiness"; anyone with a pulse and a pen could get approved. The mortgages were then shipped off to Wall Street where they were sold to credulous investors.The disaggregation of risk--spreading the risk to many investors via securitization--was as much of a factor in the creation of "the largest equity bubble in history", as the banks lax lending standards or Greenspan's low interest rates. By spreading risk throughout the system, securitization keeps interest rates artificially low because the real risks are not properly priced. The low interest rates, in turn, stimulate speculation which results in equity bubbles. Eventually, credit expansion leads to crisis when borrowers can no longer make the interest payments on their loans and defaults spiral out of control. This forces massive deleveraging and the fire-sale of assets in illiquid markets. As assets lose value, prices fall and the economy enters a deflationary cycle.There are many types of of structured instruments including asset-backed securities (ABS), mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) all of which provide a revenue stream from loans that were chopped into tranches and turned into securities. There are many problems with these complex securities, the biggest of which is that there is no way to unravel the individual pools of loans to isolate the bad paper. That's why subprime mortgages had such a destructive affect on the secondary market, because--even though subprimes only defaulted at a rate of roughly 5 percent--MBS sales slumped nearly 90 percent. Why? Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill explained it like this: "It's like you have 8 bottles of water and just one of them has arsenic in it. It becomes impossible to sell any of the other bottles because no one knows which one contains the poison."Exactly right. So why weren't these structured debt-instruments "stress tested" before the markets were reworked and the financial system became so dependent on them?Greed. Because the real purpose of these exotic investments is not to provide true value to the buyer, but to maximize profits for the seller by increasing leverage. That is the real purpose of MBS, CDOs and all the other bizarre-sounding derivatives; higher profits with less capital. It's a scam. Here's how it works: A mortgage applicant buys a house for $400,000 and puts 10 percent down. His mortgage is sold to Wall Street, chopped into pieces, and stitched together in a pool of similar loans. Now the brokerage can use the debt as if it were an asset, borrowing at ratios of 20 or 30 to 1 to fatten the bottom line. When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken into conservatorship by the government, they were leveraged at an eye-popping 100 to 1. This shows that nearly an infinite amount of debt can be precariously balanced atop a paltry amount of capital. This explains why the $4 trillion aggregate value of the 5 big investment banks and the $1.7 trillion value of the hedge funds is now vanishing more quickly than it was created. Once the mighty gears of structured finance shift into reverse, deleveraging begins with a vengeance pulling trillions into a credit vacuum.It all started when two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted in July 2006 and there were no offers for their MBS and other structured investments. Panic quickly spread to every corner of Wall Street as the alchemists of modern finance began to see that their worst nightmare might be realized, that trillions of dollars of Frankenstein investments could be worth nothing at all.Since the Bear Stearns funds fiasco, there have been huge explosions in the financial markets. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Indybank, AIG, Lehman Bros and other industry giants have either gone under or been forced into shotgun weddings by the FDIC. The stock market has plunged over 40 percent and suffered wild gyrations not seen since the 1930s. The entire Wall Street landscape has changed completely. Investment banking is no longer a viable business model; the Big 5 have either vanished or transformed themselves into holding companies to escape short sellers. The hedge funds have been deleveraging with a ferocity that has sent sent stocks and commodities crashing. In one day last week, the stock market plunged 300 points in the morning only to bounce back 550 points a few hours later; a whopping 850 point-spread in one trading day! No one but a madman would dabble in this market. Cautious investors have pulled up stakes and moved to the safety of Treasurys. Meanwhile, the financial tsunami is roaring through the real economy where consumer confidence has plummeted, unemployment is soaring and retail sales have fallen to historic lows. The downdraft from the financial markets has flattened Main Street and set the stage for a humongous $500 billion stimulus package to be delivered in the first few months of the Obama administration. The meltdown appears to be playing out much like Henry Paulson anticipated. According to Bloomberg News : "Shortly after leaving Wall Street as Goldman Sachs' CEO, Henry Paulson was at Camp David warning the president and his staff of "over-the-counter derivatives as an example of financial innovation that could, under certain circumstances, blow up in Wall Street's face and affect the whole economy." (PAUL B. FARRELL, "30 reasons for Great Depression 2 by 2011", MarketWatch)So far, the Federal Reserve has provided nearly $2 trillion through its lending facilities just to keep the financial system upright. The Treasury is currently distributing $700 billion to key banks and other financial institutions that are perceived to be "too big to fail". In truth, the "too big to fail" mantra is a just public relations hoax to conceal the web of counterparty deals that make it impossible for one institution to fail without dominoing through the rest of the system and wreaking havoc. That's why AIG is still on life-support with regular injections of taxpayer money; because it had roughly $4 trillion of credit default swaps (structured "hedges" that are not traded on a regulated exchange) for which AIG does not have sufficient capital reserves. In other words, the taxpayer is now paying the debts of an insurance company that didn't set aside the money to pay its claims. (As yet, No SEC indictments for securities fraud) In fact, the Fed and Treasury are now providing a backstop for the entire structured finance system which is frozen solid and shows no sign of thawing any time soon.This is not a normal recession, which is a downturn in the business cycle and "a period of reduced economic activity" usually brought on by a mismatch between supply and demand. (that ends in two quarters of negative growth) The present situation is much more grave; it is the utter destruction of a system that was developed fairly recently and has proven to be thoroughly dysfunctional. It cannot withstand the effects of tighter credit or adverse market conditions. This is not a cyclical downturn; the structured finance system has collapsed leaving behind a multi-trillion dollar capital hole that is bringing the broader economy to its knees.One by one, we have seen the structured instruments fail; mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps (CDS), commercial paper (CP), auction rate securities. Now we are seeing investors boycott anything related to structured investments. This is from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis:"There were NO sales of bonds backed by credit-card payments in October, the first time since 1993, when the asset-backed securities market was in its infancy. Yields on top-rated credit card bonds relative to benchmark interest rates reached a record high of 525 basis points more than the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, last week, according to Bank of America Corp. data."Wall Street has turned off the faucet for securitized investments. That market is toast. The only reason that Libor and the other gauges of interbank lending have normalized is because the Fed guaranteed money markets and commercial paper. It has nothing to do with trust between the banks themselves. There is no trust. Even so, the banks are not capable of making up for the vast amount of credit which was produced by the now-defunct investment banks and hedge funds which are constrained by losses of nearly $3.5 trillion; half of their total value. In the best case scenario, bank credit will only shrink 15 or 20 percent, which will put the US on track for a deep "18 month to 2 year" recession rather than another Great Depression.Paulson's attempt to divert $30 billion to non-bank financial institutions to revive loan securitization when there is no appetite among investors for such structured junk is pure folly. More troubling, is that neither Paulson nor Bernanke have a Plan B; an alternate scheme for rebuilding the financial markets on a solid, sustainable foundation rather than low interest rates and pools of debt. Everything they have done so far, suggests that they are focused on one thing alone; inflating another equity bubble. "Inflate or die", as the saying goes; and Bernanke intends to achieve this objective using the same tools that brought us to the brink of catastrophe. Here's a clip from a recent speech by Bernanke which shows his determination to prop up the broken system:"The ability of financial intermediaries to sell the mortgages they originate into the broader capital market by means of the securitization process serves two important purposes: First, it provides originators much wider sources of funding than they could obtain through conventional sources, such as retail deposits; second, it substantially reduces the originator's exposure to interest rate, credit, prepayment, and other risks associated with holding mortgages to maturity, thereby reducing the overall costs of providing mortgage credit."Sorry, Ben, the funding has dried up and the banks have shown no interest in going back to the days of conventional "30-year fixed" mortgages. It's a dead letter. The Fed and Treasury need to stop looking for ways to reflate the bubble and work to restore confidence in the markets by increasing regulation and reducing the amount of leverage that's allowable to 12 to 1. After all, it's no coincidence that AIG, Fannie and Freddie, Lehman Bros, General Motors, General Electric have all fallen off a cliff at the very same time. They are all victims of the same low interest, easy money finance swindle which allowed them to roll over huge amounts of short-term debt at artificially low cost. When Bear blew up; lending tightened, demand weakened, and credit was flushed from the system at an unprecedented pace. Borrowing short for long-term investments is not feasible when credit becomes scarce, but it's not because the banks aren't lending. That's just another myth that keeps the public from seeing what's really going on. As Jon Hilsenrath points out in his Wall Street Journal article, "Banks Keep Lending, but that isn't easing the crisis", that is not the case:"Banks actually are lending at record levels. Their commercial and industrial loans, at $1.6 trillion in early November, were up 15% from a year earlier and grew at a 25% annual rate during the past three months, according to weekly Federal Reserve data. Home-equity loans, at $578 billion, were up 21% from a year ago and grew at a 48% annual rate in three months....The numbers point to one of the great challenges of the crisis. The credit crunch is surely real, but it is complex and not easily managed. Banks are lending, but they're also under serious strain as they act as backstops to a larger problem -- the breakdown of securities markets..The worst of the credit crisis is being felt not in banks but in financial markets..."The banks are not to blame. There is a generalized contraction of credit in the non-bank financial system where structured finance has blown up and taken half of Wall Street with it. It's the end of an era. Here's how economist Henry C. K. Liu sums it up in his "Open Letter to World Leaders attending the November 15 White House Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy":"Neoliberal economists in the last three decades have denied the possibility of a replay of the worldwide destructiveness of the Great Depression that followed the collapse of the speculative bubble created by unfettered US financial markets of the 'Roaring Twenties'. They fooled themselves into thinking that false prosperity built on debt could be sustainable with monetary indulgence. Now history is repeating itself, this time with a new, more lethal virus that has infested deregulated global financial markets with 'innovative' debt securitization, structured finance and maverick banking operations flooded with excess liquidity released by accommodative central banks. A massive structure of phantom wealth was built on the quicksand of debt manipulation. This debt bubble finally imploded in July 2007 and is now threatening to bring down the entire global financial system to cause an economic meltdown unless enlightened political leadership adopts coordinated corrective measures on a global scale."Rome is burning. It's time to stop tinkering with a failed system and move on to "Plan B" before it's too late.(Emphasis added - B.M.)
Posted by Justice Lover at 9:53 AM 0 comments
Friday, November 21, 2008
November 20, 2008, 9:00 pm — Updated: 6:57 pm -->
Tough Choices for Tough Children
By Judith Warner
It was disturbing to read in The Times this week that the “atypical” antipsychotic Risperdal, a tranquilizing whopper of a drug with serious, sometimes deadly side effects, is now being widely prescribed to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
This despite the fact that Risperdal, which is used in children mostly to treat bipolar disorder, isn’t approved for A.D.H.D., and apparently doesn’t work for treating it at all.
So why, according to new Food and Drug Administration data on doctors’ prescribing practices, were 16 percent of the pediatric users of Risperdal over the past three years children with A.D.H.D.?
The simple answer is to point fingers at the drug companies, whose aggressive efforts to promote off-label use of this problematic new class of drugs have resulted in a spate of lawsuits, including one recently filed by the Arkansas attorney general that accuses Risperdal’s manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, of having “engaged in a direct, illegal, nationwide program of promotion of the use of Risperdal for non-medically necessary uses” — like the treatment of A.D.H.D..
But I think the truth is more complicated than that. I think that what’s happening is that children with big problems are being given big, bad drugs because no one really knows what to do with them.
The biggest controversy in the controversial field of psychiatry these days (“the only field where the doctors are more stigmatized than the illness,” as Thomas R. Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, described it to me last week) is the issue of pediatric bipolar disorder, which many child psychiatrists now say is being grossly overdiagnosed, with a spike in incidence that dovetails suspiciously well with the introduction of atypical antipsychotics in the early and mid-1990s. At the heart of that controversy — the human heart, you might say — is a group of children who are really difficult: chronically irritable, extremely aggressive, prone to explosive outbursts and out-of-control rages.
Many doctors, influenced by the work of Dr. Joseph Biederman at Harvard Medical School (whose ties to industry were detailed in The Times in June), say these symptoms are signs of mania, and call these children bipolar. Others label them with “extreme A.D.H.D.” or Oppositional Defiant Disorder or “severe mood dysregulation,” a diagnosis that’s been proposed by Dr. Ellen Leibenluft, chief of the section on Bipolar Spectrum Disorders in the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program at the National Institute of Mental Health.
For the past five years, Dr. Leibenluft has been tracking 100 children she believes have severe mood dysregulation, studying the course of their illness and the outcome of their treatment.
Sixty percent of these children were diagnosed with bipolar disorder — mistakenly, she believes — before she met them. Ninety percent of them meet the criteria for diagnoses of A.D.H.D. or O.D.D. Sixty percent suffer from serious anxiety. Twenty-five percent had an episode of major depression before they turned 12.
“The severely mood dysregulated children are as sick as the bipolar children. They’re severely impaired,” she told me this week. “You can see easily why people would feel you need to use medication. But what medication? We don’t have the data to see what medication because we don’t yet know how to think about these children diagnostically.”
It may well be these kinds of children — these diagnostic orphans — who, at least in part, are showing up now as the “A.D.H.D.” patients being treated with Risperdal.
The issue of what to call these children is a hot one and will heat up further in the near future as discussions take place over whether a new or changed diagnostic category for them should be put in the D.S.M.-V, the long-awaited updated version of the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual.
And it isn’t just a matter of semantics.
Category change could mean treatment change. Children who are diagnosed as bipolar, even if they have attention issues, anxiety or depression, often aren’t treated with stimulants (the first-line treatment for A.D.H.D) or antidepressants, because some prominent child psychiatrists have argued that they make bipolar children much worse. So physicians who suspect children are bipolar instead try the much more powerful atypicals, which have much more serious side effects. But severe mood dysregulated children wouldn’t necessarily have to go the atypical route. And there is also data to indicate a real role for non-drug therapy.
In other words, thinking hard about these kids — instead of merely moralizing about them and their psychotropic drug use — may well lead to a situation in which atypical use can be greatly reduced.
This will not satisfy the critics of today’s biological psychiatry for whom no drug use is good drug use, nor the critics of today’s culture of parenting who are sure that all the aggression, irritability and out-of-control behavior that psychiatrists call mental illness is actually nothing more than a state of “toddlerhood in perpetuity” caused by ineffective parenting practices, as the conservative family psychologist and writer John Rosemond and his coauthor have asserted in his new book, “The Diseasing of America’s Children.”
It won’t solve the problem of the drug companies’ predatory marketing practices, or of thought leaders in psychiatry renting out their minds for the sake of fancy vacations and top-flight meals. But the fact that efforts are being made, in a concerted way, to figure out what lies behind the scary-sounding statistics about drugs like Risperdal argues, I think, for hope. After a period in which drug companies have had way too much power in determining how children with psychiatric issues are treated, the pendulum may be swinging back.
(Emphasis by Justice lover)
Posted by Justice Lover at 8:32 PM 0 comments
Thursday, November 20, 2008
CURRENT PSYCHIATRIC CRIMES AGAINST AMERICAN CHILDREN IN NEVADA USAby Justice LoverNevada Travesty--Foster Children Subjected to Brain CT Scans Then DruggedThu, Nov 20, 2008 at 7:19 AMALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTIONPromoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountabilityhttp://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.comFYILas Vegas Now reports (below) that Dr. Mark Collins, director of theMontevista Hospital and contracts with several residential treatment centersis ordering brain scans for foster children prior to their being prescribedhighly toxic psychotropic drugs.According to a legal complaint by Children's Attorneys Project, submitted onSept. 5, to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, fosterchildren in Nevada are being overdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, on thebasis of a dangerous brain scan.http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/spect_complaint.pdfPrior to the brain scan children are injected with radioactive material "toilluminate blood flow in their brain."Medical cowboys in Nevada are evidently undeterred by the risk ofradiation-induced cancer--when they order investigational brain scans forchildren in foster care. The use of these investigational scans to justifythe prescribing of highly toxic drugs for children is an example of themisuse of experimental scientific tools. Their use as a diagnostic tool isbogus.Even The American Psychiatric Association does not accept the use of brainimaging for the clinical diagnosis of children, in part, according to itsliterature, because of children's sensitivity to radiation and to risk ofradiation-induced cancer.Medicaid does not cover investigational procedures, like brain specs.However these claims slipped through to the tune of more than $33,000. Thestate has not yet decided whether to seek repayment and has issued a memoreiterating its policy.Nevada does not have a psychiatric care provider for children, so the statecontracts out with a Florida for-profit mental health provider. TheChildren's Attorneys complaint includes case histories of young children whowere bounced around from Montevista Hospital to Willow Springs ResidentialTreatment Center as well as other residential treatment agencies.The complaint indicates "there appear to be conflicts of interest amongservice providers and hospitals..." For example, in addition to hisposition as director of Montevista Hospital, Dr. Collins has contracts withfor-profit residential treatment facilities to which Nevada foster childrenare being placed--so there is an obvious (to us) conflict of interest.See: http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/spect_complaint.pdfContact: Vera Hassner Sharavveracare@ahrp.org212-595-8974http://www.klas-tv.com/global/story.asp?s=9354731&ClientType=PrintableColleen McCarty, Investigative ReporterI-Team: Lawyers Question Medical Tests on Foster KidsNov 15, 2008This is a story about an eight-year-old boy in foster care. A boy we'venever met. He exists for us only as a name on a letter questioning hismental health treatment. But his lawyer Janice Wolf wants us to rememberNathaniel is real."Some of the things our kids have gone through, you and I could only imaginein our dreams, or nightmares."Nathaniel described vivid nightmares according psychiatric records obtainedby the I-Team. During his first of two hospitalizations at Montevista, Dr.Mark Collins ordered a procedure called a brain spect. It requires theinjection of radioactive material to illuminate blood flow in the brain.Read the legal complaint:http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/spect_complaint.pdfIn a report to the family court, Collins writes the scan confirms Nathanielhas "severe bipolar disorder.""I think my concern is that our foster kids are getting not just the bestpsychiatric care, but proper psychiatric care -- that they're not beingmistreated, or experimented on, or used as investigational tools," saidWolf.The American Psychiatric Association does not accept the use of brainimaging for the clinical diagnosis of children, in part, according to itsliterature, because of children's sensitivity to radiation and to risk ofradiation-induced cancer.Read a statement from the county about the procedures:http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/county_spect_statement.docDr. Collins likens the exposure to a common CT scan, "To not look at achild's brain who's had multiple treatments and is not getting better, itwould be like if you had a heart attack and I'm saying, 'you know what,you've had a heart attack before. We know you have a bad heart. I'm notgoing to do an electrocardiogram on you.'"Collins argues the scans are a valuable tool to aid in the diagnosis of hissickest patients and insists not everybody gets a spec scan.A recent Medicaid review by the Nevada State Department of Health and HumanServices identified 96 Montevista patients who underwent brain imaging. Themajority, according to the state, were kids in the juvenile justice or childwelfare systems."I've been doing enough of them I see the utility in this. I see howimportant it is to take a look at these kid's brains. If I was not seeingthe benefit, I would not continue to do it," said Dr. Collins.Wolf however questions the benefit and again points to Nathaniel. Acourt-ordered psychiatric evaluation of the eight-year-old challengedCollins' diagnosis and noted, "Spect scanning is not yet an accepteddiagnostic method. Although it is interesting, it is not yet reliable."Read a statement from Nevada Medicaid:http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/memo%20spect.pdf"We are hoping that at least by raising the concern and raising the issuethat others will look also, that people responsible for our kids will take alook at what it is and hopefully support us," said Wolf.And support kids like Nathaniel whose stories come to life from the pages ofa foster care case file.Only a caseworker stands between a child and a controversial procedure.Collins insists he receives no payment related to the scans. He insistsbrain imaging will soon be accepted by the psychiatric community. There iscertainly evidence he may be right but for now, it remains investigational.Medicaid does not cover investigational procedures, like brain specs.However these claims slipped through to the tune of more than $33,000. Thestate has not yet decided whether to seek repayment and has issued a memoreiterating its policy.(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
From: cadkison@emory.edu
Activists and health workers in South Africa celebrated outside the Cape Town parliament building last night after the news that Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has been replaced as South Africa’s Minister of Health by Barbara Hogan, one of the few African National Congress (ANC) Members of Parliament who spoke out openly against AIDS denialism in former president Thabo Mbeki’s government.
Barbara Hogan supported the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) early efforts to get the government to provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the public health system.
In addition, Dr Molefi Sefularo was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Health. As MEC of the Northwest Province, Dr Sefularo supported the roll-out of PMTCT and ART and helped write the National HIV and AIDS and STI Strategic Plan for South Africa, 2007-2011.
“We believe that the period of politically supported AIDS denialism has ended with the appointment of the Minister of Health,” a TAC press release declared.
The change of government in South Africa
The cabinet changes were announced yesterday, after the newly appointed South African President Kgalema Motlanthe was sworn in to replace Thabo Mbeki ,who was recalled by the ANC last weekend after a prolonged power struggle with ANC party President, and former Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
President Motlanthe, is a well-respected veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle who until recently has kept out of the spot light. Seen as belonging to neither camp within the divided ANC, he was selected as a consensus candidate to lead the country, at least until elections next year, when Zuma is expected to run for President.
Already being seen as a bridge builder, President Motlanthe appointed a mix of Zuma and Mbeki supporters into government, as well as other respected politicians who have remained above the fray. Dr Tshabalala-Msimang, a staunch Mbeki ally, will actually remain in government, occupying President Motlanthe’s former position as Minister in the Presidency. Though this is something of a promotion, it may not be a long-lasting one.
What is important is that Dr Tshabalala-Msimang has effectively been transitioned out of the Health Department.
The inglorious career of Dr Tshabalala-Msimang
During Dr Tshabalala-Msimang’s tenure as Minister of Health over two million South Africans died of HIV.
Sometimes called Dr Beetroot, for promoting a diet of beets, African potatoes, garlic and lemon as a remedy for people with HIV, she initially resisted the roll-out of treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) and of ART in the country. Instead, she supported the right of AIDS denialists such as Dr Matthias Rath’s to sell high-dose vitamin ‘cures’ without scientific evidence of benefit.
Even after the government moved to begin introducing appropriate HIV care through the public sector (partly as the result of legal action by the AIDS Law Project and TAC), she has been accused of trying to stall it.
South Africa’s current HIV programme got underway in earnest while she was on a leave of absence to have a liver transplant. It was during this period, while the Deputy Minister of Health Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge was in charge of the Department, that the National Strategic Plan was drafted. When the Minister came back to duty, they are reported to have clashed, and Dr Tshabalala-Msimang declined to deliver an invited address at a national AIDS conference because she reportedly felt that the Deputy Minister had a more prominent position in the conference programme. Shortly afterward, Mbeki fired the Deputy Minister. Yesterday, however, in an interesting turn of fortune, Madlala-Routledge was elected the new Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly.
Infighting within the department has been typical of the former administration’s management style and there are many reports that morale in the department of health is extremely low.
Treatment activists have long called for the Minister’s removal. At the first South African TB conference in July this year, activists conducted a silent protest during a plenary talk by Dr Tshabalala-Msimang, holding up signs saying that “South Africa needs real leadership in the fight against TB and HIV.”
The new Minister
Minister Hogan does not come from a health background. She too is a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, joining the ANC after the 1976 riots. She was arrested for treason by the apartheid government, tortured and imprisoned for eight years (with one year in solitary confinement).
Since release, she has been deeply involved in the ANC, and served for a time in Mbeki’s government as Finance Portfolio Chairperson, until she was dismissed by Mbeki in part for her stand on HIV/AIDS (according to the TAC press release).
But she has continued to play a role in the fight against HIV, serving on the board of the Amandla AIDS Fund (AAF) established in 2003 with a $2.5 million donation from Carlos and Deborah Santana. AAF provides ART, care, treatment and prevention services to people and children with HIV. Serving with her on the board are Archbishop Desmond Tutu, TAC’s Zachie Achmat and Luyanda Ngonyama, Head of the AIDS Law Project Mark Heywood, Dr Jerry Coovadia, and Dr Fareed Abdullah.
In an interview with News24.com, she said the biggest challenge for the Department of Health “is HIV/AIDS and all the strains that it places on the health system. I would thoroughly endorse the roll-out of antiretrovirals and any way we can accelerate that, the better.”
Minister Hogan said she welcome’s the opportunity to work with TAC. “I'm not saying we will always agree but I've always had a good relationship with the TAC and NGOs involved in that sector and I think you need to mobilise every possible sector of society at the moment, from the private sector to the NGO sector to the government sector, to improve our health services.”
TAC joyous
For their part, TAC is clearly eager to work with Minister Hogan. In fact, about 50 of the activists serenaded her outside her flat in Cape Town’s City Bowl last night.
According to an report in the Star, she came down to greet the activists. Fatima Hassan of the AIDS Law Project hugged her and announced that it was “the happiest day of her life.” (Also see this report).
But TAC acknowledges there will be tremendous challenges ahead.
“Hogan's biggest challenges will be to meet the treatment and prevention targets of the HIV/AIDS National Strategic Plan, integrate TB and HIV treatment, develop a feasible human resources plan for health workers and undo the considerable legacy of AIDS denialism left by her predecessor. The TAC will do all that it can to assist her and the Department of Health to meet these challenges.”
