This post runs hand in hand with Women and Children First by Peter Selley. Both posts link to a BMJ Consent Article and Vaccine contre la bronchiolite: Pfizer Essais en zone d’ombre by Ariane Denoyel for Blast, a French investigative journalism unit.
Peter Selley first contacted me in April 2020. As I now know Peter has an impeccable background in common sense. He and his practice partner in a rural English Family Doctor practice had run into trouble with the British powers-that-be for prescribing fewer medicines than the norm. Clare, his marital partner, has an even more extraordinary background in making the right kind of difference.
I was struck by the little things that caught his attention. A patient who was a former sportsman had put on huge amounts of weight and become seriously diabetic. Peter laid out the treatment options – pills or diet and lifestyle. The man went away, lost huge amounts of weight and changed his lifestyle, and, without taking a single pill, came back cured. Peter went into the practice computer to remove the diabetes diagnosis, but found the computer refused to allow this.
It looked to me from his early overtures that Peter figured something could be done to dig into clinical trial fraud. He bounced ideas off me and somehow pretty quickly his wondering about doing things slipped into doing them. The Covid pandemic and its vaccines gave lots of scope for engagement.
The New England Journal of Misinformation
Among his many balls in the air in April 2022, Peter mentioned data from a just published article in what we had begun to call the New England Journal of Misinformation paper on a phase 2 trial of Pfizer’s Maternal RSV vaccine.
What caught his attention seemed trivial to me. Pfizer had hidden a neonatal jaundice problem under 5 headings – neonatal jaundice, hyperbilirubinemia, jaundice of the newborn and others.
For anyone used to company trials, this is common – the SSRI induced agitation that causes suicide can be coded under anxiety, hyperactivity, restlessness, tension, nervousness, emotional lability and other headings – leaving companies declaring there was no signal of a problem in their ‘clinical trials’.
Multiple codings for jaundice in infants is a pointer to preterm births – which, as it turns out, has also been hidden under multiple codings like premature birth, premature labor, premature rupture of membranes, pre-term birth etc.
When the issue came up first, as a man and doctor with nothing to do with reproduction, I wondered why the fuss. A shorter pregnancy and lighter baby would probable appeal to many women. I now know it creates lifelong problems – people born prematurely or with low birth weights are likely to die earlier.
The ghostwritten paper was blatantly disingenuous. The abstract stated:
“The incidences of adverse events in the women and infants were similar in the vaccine and placebo groups.”
But in the appendix Peter found there was 3.5 more pre-term births in the vaccinated mothers.
We raised our concerns in a polite letter which avoided telling the NEJM editors that teenagers in high school could have spotted this possibly deliberate attempt to misinform. NEJM editors have belle indifference (hysteria) when it comes to their reputation on matters like this. The dynamics of this state are shaped by the fact that how they are viewed is totally out of their control but very unlikely to change any time soon. See The New England Journal of Misinformation and Eric Rubin Boston Strangler.
Peter at this point was not in the business of attaching his name to his concerns and we persuaded a colleague to be the author of the letter.
NEJM of course didn’t publish – they never engage with adverse events. We had a beyond ridiculous response from Pfizer, including Eric, telling us that and half of children born have some evidence of jaundice and the trial findings were therefore not a matter of concern. See Women, Pregnancy and Clinical Trials.
Exchanges like this left us viewing the NEJM somewhat like an IKEA catalogue – a glossy brochure for healthcare products that are shiny on the surface, standardized and relatively shoddy – or should that be absolutely shoddy?
The British Medical Journalism Journal
On November 16 2023 THE British Medical Journalism Journal (BMJJ) published an article on Pfizer’s Maternal RSV vaccine trial.
Simultaneously Ariane Denoyel published an article on the same issues in Blast, a Parisian investigative journalism unit. The two articles could not be more different. This post is about that difference.
A year earlier in early Dec 2022, Peter had approached THE BMJJ investigative journalism unit with a story about RSV vaccine trials and GSK and Pfizer hiding the problems.
His original puzzlement about the multiple codings for jaundice led him to discover:
- Eric Simoes the lead ‘supposed author’ on this ghostwritten article had several years before been an advocate for breast-feeding as the best way to prevent neonatal infections
- There was no mention of the breast-feeding status of any of the women in either of the Pfizer trials or in the GSK trial.
- A proposed phase 2 GSK trial of an RSV vaccine for children had been refused ethics approval in the UK.
- There had been a phase 3 GSK trial that terminated early because of excess premature births and neonatal deaths.
- That GSK had informed investors in the company of this fact early in 2022, but likely did not inform regulators in detail and told doctors nothing.
- That Eric Simoes was on the Data Safety Monitoring Board for this GSK trial – so there appears to be no way Pfizer could not have been aware of the problem.
- A Pfizer/Advarra/Icon consent form for the trial that told mothers no harm could come to their babies because they, the mother, who was getting the vaccine, not their babies.
This was super-sleuthing of the type that Anne-Marie Kelly has done in respect of SSRIs and alcoholism – See A Medical Triumph – and so many others have done to draw our attention to the sexual, fertility and other effects of SSRIs.
While, single-handedly Peter had uncovered a treasure trove of material, in December 2022 we figured an investigative journalism unit could surely add to what he had found.
Despite expressing an interest, THE BMJJ were slow to engage. We went along with this because if you can’t trust THE BMJJ who can you trust? This delay was almost certainly to Pfizer’s advantage.
Finally BMJJ put us in touch with a healthcare journalist we liked. One of my earliest questions to him was whether he knew why THE BMJJ were using journalists to write accounts about medically important material that doctors, academics and others had discovered and were all too willing to write about – but The BMJJ were refusing to let them. He didn’t offer a view on this.
A THE BMJJ piece came out in late March 2023. It was a great disappointment.
- It contained nothing of any substance beyond what Peter had discovered.
- It omitted the Consent form and other details about the consent process.
- It exemplifies a new form of Ghostwriting, perhaps common to other major medical journals, but definitely the modus operandi for THE BMJJ.
As regards the Consent form story, we were told this had been omitted because of concerns THE BMJJ’s lawyers had. But it would appear. We’re not sure it would have appeared without regular harassment by us. It did on November 16, almost a year after Peter took his discoveries to THE BMJJ investigative journalism unit.
The Nov article contains nothing new. In fact like the previous article not only is there nothing new but the article is stillborn – there are details but little sign of life.
Ghosts in the Magazine
Twenty years ago medical ghostwriting was a matter of concern. Pretty well all the literature on on-patent drugs was written by ghostwriters and there was little awareness of this. Everybody saw distinguished authorship lines and the distinction of the apparent authors sold drugs and concepts.
The only problem many could see with this was the element of deception – the ghost authors were not getting credit. Not many knew that one point behind the exercise was to introduce important commercial messages into the text. Another point was to write articles about negative studies of unsafe drugs in a manner that would ‘take out the good bits and publish them’ as GSK said or would ‘overcome data with spin’ as Sally Laden, one of the most famous ghostwriters put it.
I was recently interviewed by a medical colleague who has solid skeptical credentials, and was interviewing me hoping for a skeptical point of view. When I suggested everything is ghostwritten, she seemed surprised, intimating that all that had been sorted out ages back.
I was surprised in turn and realized that for those focused on the minor element of deceit involved, the problem was easily solved. Acknowledge the ghost’s name in small print at the end of the article. S/he was then no longer a ghost. Problem solved.
Clearly this is far from the case.
We now know Sheena Hunt wrote most of the Pfizer Covid and RSV trials – and did so very persuasively. The problem is these article are not aimed at genuinely representing the results of these studies or informing clinical practice. They are aimed at capturing it. The apparent authors – Stephen Thomas and Fernando Polack and others – make clear they have not seen the data and depend on Sheena to get things right. But she hasn’t seen the data either. No ghostwriter ever does.
In the bad old pharma world, the minor ornamental movement – listing Sheena in small print – removed one concern about ghostly practices.
In both their earlier March article and now in the November follow-up THE BMJJ, however, reverted to old style twentieth century really ‘unethical’ ghostwriting – where there is no mention of the true authors of the piece. No footnote to hint at who generated the material that a journalist has tweaked for his audience.
We raised this first in Are Journalists in the answer to Medicine’s Cause and Effect Problem. This met with, as they say, a deafening silence. None of the many THE BMJJ colleagues we know and some of whom we had got on well with responded. Several researchers on medical ghostwriting expressed dismay at the situation – privately but not publicly. The general view, which we shared, was that having an article written by a journalist – on the issues we were mentioning which were not confined to vaccines, dilutes the cause and effect impact.
THE BMJJ Readers?
Who is THE BMJJ’s audience? From the THE BMJJ branding through to these ghostwritten articles, it is almost certainly not doctors. The new, ex British Medical Journal, enterprise lacks the engagement needed to reach doctors.
After Antidepressants, A Loss of Sexuality, an article on post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) that appeared a few days earlier in the New York Times points up hazards the folk behind THE BMJJ are likely unaware of.
In 2009, I persuaded Philip Fine to ask NEJM about their policy on access to trial data. NEJM told Philip that they didn’t see establishing the integrity of clinical trial data as part of their business. At roughly the same time the NYT was engulfed in a controversy about a reported who had invented stories. NYT made clear that integrity of the data was critical for them – the reporter was fired.
For ages afterwards, I routinely suggested we’d all be a lot safer if our clinical trials were published in the NYJM rather than the NEJM.
A concern for data integrity, however, is one thing but journalistic maneuvering to avoid legal difficulties is quite another.
Some congratulations are owing to Azeen Ghorayshi and NYT for following the BBC earlier this year and mentioning PSSD, which we have known something about for over three decades.
But she, or her editors, felt forced to include an ‘on the one hand and on the other’ section to her article, just as THE BMJJ have felt forced to do for over decade and as they do with all articles written by journalists, but which a doctor would not do without good cause.
In this case, Azeen has Anita Clayton stating she thinks PSSD is just depression. This is shockingly misinformative. The only published diagnostic criteria for PSSD begins with listing genital numbing as the cardinal symptom – no genital numbing no PSSD. The genital numbing can be so clear cut that a patient can rub a hard bristled brush up and down her genitals and feel nothing. There is no disorder in medicine (except perhaps an extremely rare PIEZO2 protein deficiency) that can produce this.
Anita is being disingenuous in the extreme. But Azeen is being investigation averse in the extreme. A quick google reveals Anita is a consultant for Lundbeck who market vortioxetine, an on-patent antidepressant, which she is pushing as the treatment for people who think they have PSSD (but really have depression).
She has featured on a video hosted by the International Society of Sexual Medicine making these claims. There was an outcry when this video first surfaced and the ISSM took it down – See post about The Outcry. One of the extraordinary features of this debacle was that the ISSM has a conflict of interest division headed up by Anita Clayton, no less, who doesn’t mention anything about this in the video. But Anita seems as belle indifferente about these issues as Eric Rubin.
Five years earlier some of us submitted a petition to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) asking them to include PSSD in the label of serotonin reuptake inhibiting drugs. They did. But not for vortioxetine. Asked why not, EMA said they had received no reports of PSSD on this. They didn’t ask RxISK if we had received reports. We have. While the number of vortioxetine reports is only 5% of the number on Zoloft or the number on Citalopram, this is almost certainly because this drug is recent and far less used than others. Our petition perhaps gave Lundbeck time to build up key opinion leaders like Anita to spout the kinds of things Azeen is now reporting.
Vortioxetine’s lesser use is not for want of marketing. Lundbeck have been aggressively pushing it for children. The trials in children were done in the US, Russia and Eastern Europe, South and Central America – everywhere except Denmark (Lundbeck’s home turf). They are also pushing it for people concerned about sexual function but it has no advantages over other drugs – it causes suicidality, homicidality, sexual dysfunction and PSSD and likely will reduce fertility also.
Great Expectations
In the wake of the NYT article, Ed Koehler from FabreKramer, a Texas based outfit who have been trying to get Gepirone on the market for years, got in touch sending me a link to the article, and telling me that they have got FDA approval to launch Gepirone in 2024. Unlike EMA, FDA have so far failed to include PSSD in drug labels – Ed tells me he thinks PSSD should be in the labels of all other antidepressants in the US. That I guess includes vortioxetine.
Gepirone is an old drug. It’s been around for 40 years. Is it worth having it on the market? Possible more useful than having an extra SSRI like vortioxetine. Will it cause PSSD? We don’t know. It is like mirtazapine (Remeron) in not causing the immediate genital numbing SSRIs cause but mirtazapine appears to cause an enduring sexual dysfunction and protracted withdrawal syndromes.
This story casts Lundbeck, EMA, NYT and BMJJ in a bad light. Journalists become superficial experts in an issue for a few weeks but risk being blind to the bigger picture. To the Snooker or Pool game in which they take part that can leave a marketing director for Prozac telling me at one point that I was doing more to sell Prozac than anyone else around the place.
A Bigger Picture
There are several bigger pictures here, one of which involves silencing doctors. All doctors and anyone who thinks having a independent medical profession is important might well download a recent article Silencing Journalists written by journalists about how concerns about strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) litigation is silencing journalists and consider how this might also apply to medicine.
Has an erstwhile medical journal, like THE BMJJ, developed a risk aversiveness to mentioning ghostwriting, lack of access to trial data or any mention of treatment linked adverse effects for fear of lawsuits, perhaps linked to trade deals. We have heard lots about trade deals that enable corporations, usually US corporations, to sue countries who attempt to limit company activities that may be polluting their country. Could something similar be playing a part in neutering a former medical journal?
We’ll only know if some serious investigative journalism tackles this issue – something closer to what we thought we might get by approaching THE BMJJ investigative journalism unit.
In the meantime, are we really saying that a doctor like Peter Selley, who is not telling anyone not to have an RSV vaccine but who draws attention to the mismatch between an absolute benefit that RSV trials point to, of the order of 0.5%, compared with the 84% efficacy the company claims, would not have an independent medical profession standing behind his right to draw tricks like this to attention of other healthcare colleagues?
Our lawyers and insurance companies are supposed to support medical practice, which necessarily involves supporting doctors to take justified risks, just as travel insurance is there to support us to take the risks of travelling. Insurance and legal input operating in this fashion helps make markets rather than inhibits them.
If pharmaceutical companies knew the BMA – a trade association – was almost certain to stand behind medical authors in their exploration of treatment related medical issues, some of which include medical hazards, there would be far less threat of SLAPPs. Perhaps BMA’s lawyers and insurers know that BMA is not likely to do this.
One of the clearest scandals out there is how medical defense union insurers work hard to tell doctors never to implicate a drug in a death of injury – to the point of telling doctors to shut up at inquests. Health ministers, Royal Colleges, Chief Coroners and the Defense Unions themselves show no signs of correcting this perversity. See Morgan v Morgan, Will Medical Insurers Stop Killing People, A Suicide Note and other linked posts. Why not?
Doctors have far more power than they realize. They could refuse to prescribe a newly released drug or vaccine without full access to the data. There are lots of older, cheaper and better drugs than those being foist on them.
These products are not being foist on the people who put pills in their own mouths – they are being foist on doctors. While these products are prescription only, doctors are the consumers and they consume these products by putting them in our mouth. They never suffer an adverse effect unless they take our side in agreeing a product has harmed us. This is a morally hazardous position to be in.
Vastly more marketing dollars are spent on each of these medical consumers than any other industry on earth spends marketing to any of its consumers – except perhaps armament industry spend on the Heads of Defense Forces. The spend leaves companies confident that few doctors have a thought in their head not put there by them or their competitors.
You’d imagine though that even a few doctors like Peter Selley would still be interested to explain that what we call company studies are really assays and doctors, politicians, and academics are making a category error in calling them trials and in calling them evidence rather than hearsay.
Would enjoy pointing out to doctors, politicians and academics that regulators like FDA and EMA are bureaucrats who have no expertise in working out if a drug causes a problem – that’s something doctors are supposed to do.
But companies have THE BMJJ to silence doctors.
Dr Pedro says
HELLO!
Surely if NEJM and theBMJJ accept ghost-written articles, it’s only logical that those articles should be peer-reviewed by other ghost-writers?
Spooky thought
annie says
Ghosts in the Magazine …
Media Manager @KingsIoPPN Stories at #IoPPNInTheNews
Patrick O’Brien
@patch_ob
Well worth buying a copy to read this piece, and so pleased for @ParianteLab to see it in print!
Carmine M. Pariante
@ParianteLab
I am delighted to have my first article in the @NewHumanist: on why the war on #antidepressants is scientifically unsound and is hurting the most vulnerable in our society. You can see the subtitle – “Defending antidepressants” on the top right corner of the cover. twitter.com/newhumanist/st…
https://twitter.com/ParianteLab/status/1725863652492726653
Dan Johnson
@DanJohnsonAB
That’s surprising. In the past, it has seemed that New Humanist respects results and extensive reviews published in scientific journals, rather than promote denial.
New Humanist
@NewHumanist
The winter 2023 issue of New Humanist is here! We’re exploring the future of the family.
‘The baby wars’ –
‘the war on #antidepressants’ –
Not the right ‘Term’
annie says
This is an immensely important write-up.
When journalists were journalists and doctors were doctors.
Bringing my own doctor back in to the frame in 2002/03, she read the BMJ assiduously as it was always next to her laptop on her kitchen table. When I saw it there, it was the first time I had seen a copy of the BMJ. I was impressed that she was taking medicine seriously. She had even quoted in one of her referrals an article she had read saying SSRIs were not efficacious in anxiety. In actuality, whoever wrote that particular piece did me no favours.
Further, as she developed a friendship with me and I was a guest in her main residence on an island, she also as assiduously read The Guardian newspaper.
At this time Sarah Boseley, then Health Editor, was writing copious articles about Seroxat and GlaxoSmithKline, fully researched and not to be minced with. How could she have failed to see these articles.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/jun/14/highereducation.uk
It seems to me that the more distrust there was of clinical trials, with ghostwriting and fraudulent results the more the Medical Journals seemed to feel boxed in to a corner. They would publish study after study decrying fraudulent results, giving a positive spin on matters that we knew to be faulty.
There was quite a lot published on Study 329.
There was quite a lot published on meta-analysis.
When Covid came along, doctors were gagged from speaking out on threat of losing their jobs and this is still going on. All you still hear on the news is the wonderful success of the Oxford vaccine roll out, despite most of Europe halting the Astra-Zeneca because of blood clots in young men under 40.
Despite a Class-Action now taking place against Astra-Zeneca. BBC news is still very guilty of this and David Spiegelhalter is an often times guest. Maybe he’ll be on the A-Z defence team.
“ I do get asked whether individuals should take the vaccine but it is certainly not my job to give personal advice, although I can say that I have had my first dose of Pfizer and would have been happy to have AstraZeneca.
Another reason for the vaccine is to protect others by slowing down transmission. It is only by doing this that we will get back to some normal life. I do feel it is for the good of our society that as many are vaccinated as possible.”
If Doctors were allowed free-vent, then perhaps this could all change but it seems that Medical Journals feel they have a god-given right to suppress and withhold and by so doing leave them out in the cold and with tendencies to lose any bravado they might have possessed.
“So the only safety data regarding the impact of this vaccine on pregnancy comes from animal trials, namely 44 rats. »
– Ariane Denoyel
Only 44 rats…
annie says
Splut…
Journalists –
Awash with Vallance testimony, today at Covid inquiry…
‘Vallance then moved to the private sector, spending over a decade at GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical giant that went on to produce one of the vaccines for Covid, working as head of medicines development, before he moved to become chief scientific adviser.’
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/20/how-patrick-vallance-explosive-diaries-exposed-covid-chaos-inside-no-10
Who was offered a GSK Vaccine for Covid?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53577637
Doctors –
2013-06-14 — The RIAT team sends an email to GSK, Sir Andrew Witty (CEO) and Patrick Vallance (President of Pharmaceutical R&D), notifying them of the RIAT article publication and requesting that if they plan to restore any old GSK trials, they respond as soon as possible.
https://study329.org/correspondence-with-gsk/
History of Romain. Died by suicide, under medication by paroxetine and tercian.
https://www.antidepressantrisks.org/stolen-lives/romain
Sure as eggs, Romain’s daddy would be interested as to why Vallance has escaped scrutiny in respect of Paroxetine?
annie says
“You are our book”
Clinical Details Confuse Expert Doctors
https://rxisk.org/clinical-details-confuse-expert-doctors/
Mediapart
https://romainschmitt.wordpress.com/
Antidepressants in Adolescents: The Risk of Suicidal Too Often Neglected
Faced with the malaise of the youngest, the remedies are sometimes worse than the disease. Antidepressants should be reserved for the most severe cases. In children and adolescents, they are less effective and cause more serious side effects, up to and including the risk of suicide.
Rozenn The Saint
Read more for 1 euro
Let Them Eat Meds by Dr David Healy
Conf David Healy 2023.06.15 Voiron Conf + débat ENG
https://romainschmitt.wordpress.com/2023/07/27/let-them-eat-meds-by-dr-david-healy/
https://vimeo.com/839693381/5c3fb0609f?share=copy
“A little bit of light” …
Spruce says
https://youtu.be/Ukd28UP3Icc?si=TzvgjeFT10OF05Er
Sometimes I feel like Bishop from Aliens 3 at the end of this clip; when he says he would rather be nothing, than not be in his prime; when I think about the 16 years of youth I lost to PSSD, and the emotional numbing.
Dr. David Healy says
Roy
You and Simon and a few others have done an amazing job helping get PSSD really on the map and something that can no longer be ignored. I’m not sure there is any justice in this world though – Have you thought about writing about it – perhaps if a few of you got together and told your stories book or extended podcast form
David
David
Roy (formerly Spruce) says
I have thought about writing a book about it actually.
About the 16 years, and youth I lost to PSSD; and the awful treatment I received by the medical profession; and all the denial, and gaslighting.
Perhaps at some point I will write a book.
For the moment I will do what I can to help through the PSSD network.
We have a few ideas going at the moment, and we are hoping to do more videos, and podcast episodes soon.
Not to sound defeatist, but if I don’t recover, my life already feels like it’s over; so I don’t really feel I have much to lose anymore.
I will do what I can to help.
Dr. David Healy says
I thought you were great to feature in the NYT article. What did you think about Anita Clayton? What do you think of the BMJJ and NYT taking an approach where they feel they have to show both sides of an argument?
Seems like everyone has lost their nerve.
David
Roy (formerly Spruce) says
Well Anita Clayton just sounds ridiculous really.
Thousands of people complaining of persisting signature SSRI side effects, such as genital numbness, and pleasureless orgasms, and she is trying to blame it all on depression.
Depression doesn’t cause genital numbness, and/or pleasureless orgasms.
SSRI’s, do!
Quite a lot of those with PSSD, weren’t even prescribed the drugs for mental health reasons, so how is she going to explain that?
It’s very disappointing that some prominent people within psychiatry, are intent on denying PSSD to the bitter end.
The level of self delusion at the reality of the situation, is quite concerning.
Let’s hope we get the physical evidence in the near future, so the matter can no longer be disputed.
Dr. David Healy says
I wonder is it prominent people in psychiatry or in this case a company – Lundbeck – who used to pride themselves on being different to other companies – We’re a Foundation not a Company – we have higher standards – there are things we won’t stoop to but in fact their trials of Vortioxetine in children appear very cynical to me and when EMA exempted Vortioxetine from a requirement to mention PSSD in its label – that looked like a behind the scenes deal.
One of many problems is most doctors are too busy, and most people who might end up on an SSRI have too many other things on their mind at the time, to notice things like this
David
Mike says
Dr Healy here’s another thing that proves Anita Clayton wrong is that many men with PSSD complain about having watery semen ever since they took an SSRI. For me personally ever since I took Vortioxetine my semen is now watery and looks translucent. Someone should ask Anita does depression turn men’s bodily fluids watery? Watery semen is common complaint with men on the PSSD reddit group.
Dr. David Healy says
M
Clayton is clearly wrong. There is almost no need to argue this. But what do you think is going on when she comes out with these almost self-evidently wrong statements? She claims to have been among the first to put the issue of sex of antidepressants on the radar – this also is entirely wrong. But Unless we think she’s stupid, is it because:
She is being paid by Lundbeck and she’s is lying?
She now has a different point of view for which Lundbeck pay?
Who is more to blame – Clayton or Lundbeck?
Do you blame the New York Times for running the Clayton element to the story?
Why do you suppose they did so – is it to protect their advertising revenue?
Why do medical journals like BMJ copy the NYT and do journalism rather than Science?
Is it because their lawyers are scared of Pharma?
Do you have sympathy for BMJ having to operate in a world of threat from Pharma companies?
How do we solve these problems?
Finding a test that nails down the cause of PSSD – will help with PSSD but won’t sort out the power-play here?
How do we restore Care to Medicine?
David
Bernard says
The questions are not addressed to me but here is what I think.
Anita Clayton is clearly spreading misinformation and receives money for it, but it’s not only the corrupt experts and pharmaceutical companies who profit from it. Mainstream psychiatrists who prescribe SSRIs to patients (who are generally in a good health and not at risk of harming themselves) can do so thanks to the reputation of SSRIs (regarding the safety and efficacy). Pharmaceutical companies and corrupt experts are the ones producing the “science” backing antidepressants as a first line treatment for depression. If the hidden facts about SSRIs were made known to the public, many psychiatrists (not the ones who take care of patients who are actually mentally ill) would become irrelevant as it would become clear that the average depressed or anxious person does not need to (and should not) take medication. Keeping the misinformation alive is key for the whole system, not only for Lundbeck or Clayton. If the depression market is a cake, Anita Clayton and Lundbeck are doing the dirty work to make the cake as big as possible and take a large cut for themselves but thousands of psychiatrists eat from that cake also. Lundbeck and Clayton misinform psychiatrists but they are all on the same side. If journalists and former patients can understand how it works, mainstream psychiatrists should be able to understand it too. They should all be held accountable equally.
The reason why the NYT does interview people like Clayton is (I think) because when they decide to write an article on a topic like PSSD, they don’t understand that PSSD is the tip of the iceberg (the iceberg being antidepressants being a morbid scam). Many things such as the inefficacy of SSRIs for depression, sexual dysfunction, PSSD, suicidal ideation or withdrawal would likely lead a large proportion of prospective patients not to consider SSRIs as an option to feel better. NYT journalists probably do not understand the full picture. Mainstream psychiatry is not objective at all to comment on the risks and benefits of SSRIs. I think it must come across naturally for the NYT journalists to ask psychiatrists about SSRIs since they prescribe them everyday, but they don’t know that telling the truth about SSRIs would be a professional suicide for many psychiatrists.
The NYT (or any other newspaper) should shed light on how SSRIs were put on the market, how the fake science around them is fabricated, what former patients say etc. like the BBC did earlier this year. The problem here is that it is risky to call out doctors or a whole branch of medicine. When journalists show abusive practices of corporations, financial institutions or governments, it never happens that executives, bankers, lawyers or politicians says “we are the experts, you are putting people’s health at risk and are not able to understand our complex science”. Doctors can easily use their authority or fake science to discredit solid accusations against their practices. Not to mention that many patients or former patients do believe that antidepressants “saved their lives” (not knowing that clinical studies show that they would probably have felt the same would they have taken a placebo).
The marketing of SSRIs is probably the scam of the century, but unfortunately for us, the PSSD story is very hard sell for journalists. Causing PSSD to someone is probably the least sensational crime imaginable as the responsibility is spread between health authorities, doctors, pharmaceutical executives and corrupt experts. A thousand PSSD sufferers is less sensational than one person being stabbed on Time Square. The victims cannot prove that what they go through is real, they are often isolated from other victims and ashamed to speak. On the other side, you have pharmaceutical companies, psychiatry and former patients who are enthusiastic about SSRIs. The former are powerless, the latter can crush you.
To solve this problem, PSSD sufferers should keep the pressure as long as it takes before PSSD makes the headlines and becomes the public scandal it should have been for decades.
Mike says
I completely agree and Clayton herself clearly knows that PSSD is real but she doesnt want to admit it and in my opinion there are financial reasons why she keeps denying its existence.
annie says
You have to realise that the world has sold out to pharmaceutical companies.
The ‘drugs’ keep the ‘masses’ quiet.
This isn’t some sort of giant occlusion or a homespun web of intrigue, it is what happens when the innocents think they are doing us all a favour. If it wasn’t for the legals ie Baum Hedland things couldn’t and wouldn’t move along.
Terrible but true, the legals force the issue in to the legal minefield.
It is terrible but true, that that Wessely, Pariante, Appleby, et al, have sucked the lifeblood out of patient experience and the only force of reason lives with the legals.
We have all been there, and now the PSSD people are there too.
I don’t really buy this Conflict of Interest, its a spin-off of altruism.
As has been said a thousand times, nobody listens.
They didn’t listen decades ago and they don’t listen now.
I have said countless times, once the narrative, with legions behind it, is the most common voice.
There are a few who are relentless, Scottish Neil Oliver, sex slouch Russell Brand, Robert Kennedy Jr., Edward Dowd, the running Brook, Malhotra, Norman Fenton, et al. Giving in to Pharma is not their option.
Mark Steyn is one of the best, and GB news cauterised the voice of him, yet persist with Neil Oliver. It was Naomi Wolf who led to him becoming an outcast, with the word ‘murder’.
Yet, he rose from the ashes and his prose is very worthy and he is not gone.
It is all a question of wills, and how much the narrative will swing.
Anita Clayton is but a small pawn in the game and if success is on the horizon, then gird the loins and listen to who you want to listen to.
Baum Hedland faced it head on, and we all have to face it head-on.
Head on…
annie says
In case you missed it
The ‘Marbles’ defending, want to keep the ‘Marbles’, they are”up there with the Vaccine Covid Vaccine Scientists”,they said.
How ‘Marbles’ is that.
“I need this lawsuit like I need a bi-monthly AstraZeneca shot. But someone has to push back against the ever tighter bounds of state censorship: The UK media are like 007 when he’s trapped in one of those elevators where the walls and the ceiling are closing in on him.”
Ofcom have twice “ruled” against me for The Mark Steyn Show’s coverage of the Covid “vaccines” – a medical product that around the world has crippled and killed in sufficient numbers to warrant total withdrawal under any previous regulatory standard. Lord Grade’s first pseudo-conviction against me was issued earlier this year, and we promptly filed suit in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court. My second pseudo-conviction was therefore entirely predictable: it was because of an interview with my friend, the fearless Naomi Wolf, on what she has discovered in the documents Pfizer attempted to hide from the public for most of the remainder of this century. God bless the judge who threw that self-serving racket out of court.
You can see my conversation with Naomi in full here at SteynOnline. You will never see it again on UK television – and, indeed, if Michael Grade and Dame Melanie gain the jurisdiction over the Internet that the woeful faux-Tories are minded to give them, you are unlikely to be able to access it from a UK-based laptop or mobile telephone. This level of state censorship is now treated as perfectly normal by the London media.
https://www.steynonline.com/13666/the-illegal-acts-of-ofcom
And even in the UK the government that shamefully showered knighthoods and damehoods on the creators of “the great British success story” has quietly withdrawn the AstraZeneca vaccine from the market, and its sales are now precisely zero.
UPPERDATE! As our friend Vikki Spit puts it this very morning:
So.
They’ve stopped selling their vaccine because it isn’t safe.
They insists the side effects are very rare.
They made 4.4 Billion pre-tax profit.
They haven’t offered a penny to support those they killed or injured.
Who keeps the ‘Marbles’ …
ANON says
We are all complicit to a tyrannical relentless system which bears no accountability for the harms it induces.
It takes guts and courage to stand up for one’s beliefs and values.
There are good people who will fight for what is right. We always have to be grateful for those beings who create the tiniest ripple in flawed infrastructures that have no benefits to the human race.
annie says
Eeeesht…
Dr Clare Craig reposted
Dr Aseem Malhotra
@DrAseemMalhotra
‘What I see all around the world are people who care about looking good whilst doing evil. F**k them!’ You hit the nail on the head @elonmusk
this is what happens when people become corporatised at their core, even sociopathic. Time to fight back for humanity
https://twitter.com/DrAseemMalhotra/status/1730134388761928060
The unequivocal disparity between those who have it, and those who don’t
Dan Johnson
@DanJohnsonAB
·
4h
It’s the perfect spot. The cemetery is across the river.
https://amazingdexterjohnson.com/
Dying ideation (marketing operation of “antidepressant SSRIs” that skillfully exploits the indication of social anxiety disorder)
https://romainschmitt.wordpress.com/blog/
“For example, the drug Paxil is particularly popular in the United States and has a large number of lawsuits. Since the launch of Paxil in 1992, there have been three types of lawsuits filed against GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for breach of care, including birth defects, suicide, and addiction. As of December 4, 2009, the average settlement of approximately 150 suicide lawsuits was $2 million and that of approximately 300 suicide attempts was $300,000. In addition, 3,200 lawsuits related to addiction caused by Paxil were settled with GSK paying $50,000 each. The pharmaceutical giant also paid about $400 million in a trial of allegations of antitrust, deception and conspiracy. Since it entered the market in 1992, GSK has spent nearly $1 billion on the Paxil lawsuit.” There is. I would like to introduce another sentence from Satoshi Utsumi’s book. In an article titled “The Corruption Structure of Pharmaceutical Companies and Doctors” by Dr. Marsha Enziel, senior manager of The New England Journal of Medicine, Barry Brand, product manager at Paxil, said: “It’s a marketer’s dream to dig up and expand a customer market that no one is aware of yet, and that’s what we’re doing with social anxiety disorder,” in other words, the psychiatric society and pharmaceutical companies are all trying to make the sick sick the unsick.
Dying ideation
Annonnn says
Dr Healy I have a question this question does not really relate to the topic of this particular blog post you posted. But my question is would an over the counter anticholinergic like benadryl help my PSSD because unfortunately I can’t get benztropine it is very difficult to get medication in Ireland unless you have the illness that the medication is mainly used for I tried getting benztropine but they won’t give me it. Also there is something I need to get off my chest earlier this week I had an appointment in a mental health centre but it’s impossible to talk about PSSD I spoke to the psychiatrist there and they refused to believe PSSD is real I tried showing them the Irish Independent newspaper which featured you but the psychiatrist in question refused to even look at the article. I bought 3 of these newspapers a few months ago hoping the psychiatrists in the mental health center would believe PSSD is real. I then tried showing them a leaflet of an SSRI which a family member takes (unfortunately) the leaflet has the text that the EMA put there in 2019 but the psychiatrist was unwilling to even look. They said my problem is psychological and mentioned all of their qualifications in psychiatry implying that they know better than I do. And then shockingly enough they asked me would I be interested in taking an SNRI for my depression. I know I’m probably going on a tangent but it’s heartbreaking being told my sexual dysfunction is all in my head. I hope one day the Irish mental health services are willing to take PSSD seriously but at the moment the experiences of PSSD sufferers in our country is no different than any other country.
Dr. David Healy says
A
Unfortunately this is an all too common experience and getting to be more and more the norm. Few people realise that medicine is going backwards.
Re Benadryl – its serotonin reuptake inhibiting so unlikely to help and not really anticholinergic. There are a lot of other anticholinergic drugs on prescription other than benztropine.
D
Annonnn says
Thank You for the reply
Well hopefully things will change I have seen a few doctors in hospital that said that they have just discovered what PSSD is so awareness is spreading however there are others who are un-willing to learn about this condition. I will just have to stay positive and not let this get me down.