At the European Medicines’ Agency meeting held on November 22nd convened to look at the issue of Access to Clinical Trial Data, the pharmaceutical companies came armed with an approach signaled a few weeks earlier by GSK’s Andrew Witty (see Won't get Fooled Again). The industry panelists came from Lilly and UCB along with a representative from EurorDis Francois … [Read more...] about Access To Clinical Trial Data: Privacy rights, property rights and phoney rights
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Access to RxISK Data: Conflicts of Interest
Won’t get fooled again outlined a stunning propaganda coup by GSK. On the back of a campaign for open access to clinical trial data that has drawn its inspiration from efforts by the Cochrane Tamiflu reviewers to get access to Roche’s clinical trial data, Andrew Witty came out and proclaimed that GSK were all in favor of access to clinical trial data. The BMJ threw its hat in … [Read more...] about Access to RxISK Data: Conflicts of Interest
Won’t Get Fooled Again? GlaxoSmithKline and Access to Data
On November 22nd the European Medicines’ Agency (EMA) is holding a workshop on access to the data from clinical trials. While there have been many efforts by many people over the years to make the clinical trial process more transparent, the EMA workshop has come about primarily following the efforts of Peter Gøtzsche of the Danish Cochrane Group and Peter Doshi and Tom … [Read more...] about Won’t Get Fooled Again? GlaxoSmithKline and Access to Data
The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: Protestant Patients, Catholic Drugs
Margot's lover in La Reine Margot was one of the Huguenots who survived the massacre set in train by her brother Charles IX on St Bartholomew's Day in Paris in 1572. There are many politicians, bureaucrats, doctors and others, the Royalists, in a position to make a difference who know that psychotropic drugs can cause suicide or other serious problems but who instead attempt … [Read more...] about The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: Protestant Patients, Catholic Drugs
La Reine Margot: Data access, ghostwriting, suicide and mad reviewers
Another study giving a first hint of the findings in our 2012 Mortality in Schizophrenia paper (See The Madness of Psychiatry) was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2006 - Lifetime Rates of Suicide in Schizophrenia. It took several years and some smuggling to get it into print. In the course of exploring the issues, it seemed useful to touch base with Herb … [Read more...] about La Reine Margot: Data access, ghostwriting, suicide and mad reviewers
Benefit Risk Madness: Antipsychotics and Suicide
Following the posting of The Madness of Psychiatry, there has been a flurry of activity in the twittersphere with Louis Appleby, the UK's suicide czar posting: What makes adolescents act on suicidal thoughts? New paper shows psychotic symptoms increase risk 20-fold. archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?a… You might get the impression from this that all patients have to do … [Read more...] about Benefit Risk Madness: Antipsychotics and Suicide
The Madness of Psychiatry
One hundred years ago patients with psychosis were 4 times more likely than the rest of their contemporaries to be dead at the end of their first 5 years of treatment. The main cause of death was tuberculosis. The asylum was a place where if you had the wrong genetic makeup you were at great risk of catching tuberculosis, particularly if you were a young woman. The advent of … [Read more...] about The Madness of Psychiatry
The Madness of Young People
In 1861 Benedikt Morel, a physician in France, described a terrifying new illness. It involved young people in their late teens or early twenties about to enter what should have been the prime of their lives who instead sank into a profound and seemingly incurable state of what he termed precocious dementia. Morel painted a picture of a terrifying and seemingly close to … [Read more...] about The Madness of Young People
The Madness of Carl Jung: A Dangerous Method
Carl Jung was one of Freud's earliest supporters and in many respects rivaled him in terms of influence. Some of their interactions provide the basis for the story behind the book and recent movie - A Dangerous Method. Just as Freud did, he famously analyzed himself and while doing so apparently became psychotic. His psychosis was however seen as a way to sanity - a forerunner … [Read more...] about The Madness of Carl Jung: A Dangerous Method
The Madness of Childbirth
The North Wales asylum made its way into my life by accident. The history department at Bangor University secured a grant to look at the social impact of the asylum. Looking at the records they collected, it was striking how people declared their madness a century ago – they tore off their clothes and escaped through windows, which they never do now. A quixotic database But … [Read more...] about The Madness of Childbirth