GK Chesterton and then later Mark Twain said that Truth is Stranger than Fiction – it has to be because Fiction has to make Sense.
But Fairy Tales are also Stranger than Fiction. Most of what we call Fairy Tales began life as Moral Tales – where the story might be incredible but the Truth lay in the Moral.
For a century we have felt these tales when given to children need to be cleaned up. Few people know that the original Red Riding Hood tale did not end with a rescue. She was gobbled up. See
But in a marvellous twist of fate, a few years ago GSK restored the original horror story – aimed at scaring adults rather than children – into getting all their vaccines – See Reds under the Bed.
The video-clip in the Reds and Beds post is wildly unreal but from GSK’s point of view conveys an important truth – for your survival (aka our survival as a business) you need to get every single one of our vaccines.
Who knew that the original Goldilocks was not a cute little girl who luckily escaped but an interfering busybody older lady with white hair – who did not escape. The Bears caught her and tossed her up in the air so that landing she was impaled on the Spire of a Cathedral. A cautionary tale about not interfering in the affairs of others.
In today’s world, it is difficult to get a better example of interfering in the affairs of others than the formal or informal treatment mandates we now have for a growing range of interventions.
I’m not sure what the original Jack and Beanstalk story was but it offered a marvellous opportunity to redo the current for kids fairy tale in much the way GSK did Red Riding Hood – in Jen and the Genestalk.
On an even bigger canvas, Gaia has been a heroine for the Green movement for a long time. Attempts to replace her with Pandora has so far not had much traction. Unlike Eve who was a Spare Rib, in the earliest Greek accounts, the Gods recognized Pandora as an extraordinary creation – more interesting than men.
Pandora could give Gaia linked movements a more human face and body than Gaia does and above all could bring healthcare into the frame. Gaia in contrast threatens human’s with extinction. See
Vincent van Gogh’s life has become a set of stories, fairy tales, morality tales. Our desperation to get the story to have a happy ending has led to an interweaving of fiction and morality tales that get in the way of working out what the truth might have been.
There were apparently 4 quite different sunflower paintings of which two were lost. One was destroyed in Japan on the day the US bombed Hiroshima – see Martin Bailey’s The Sunflowers are Mine.
It can’t be only down to Vincent but it used to be almost impossible to pass by a field of sunflowers in France, as in the image that opens this post, without being cheered up by the sight. A fitting epitaph for the man?
Perhaps – if it was still true. Travelling through France now you are more likely to see fields of sunflowers being grown for seeds – as in the birdseed a growing number of us eat these days. And these industrially grown sunflowers look pretty miserable.
This picture doesn’t convey how miserable and depressing they look. My inspiration for this comment comes from another Vincent – Romain Schmitt’s father – who drew my attention to our growing craze for birdseed diets that I am as guilty of as anyone else. This is transforming sunflowers into a symbol of misery.
Mad in America
Next weekend there is a Mad in America Webinar on Antidepressants and Homicide.
This will cover ground that links to last week’s Iatrogenic Insanity post stimulated in part by Vincent Schmitt’s comment that we have reached such a crazy state that perhaps all these suicide and homicide helplines need to be closed down as they are likely increasing rates of suicide and homicide rather than achieving their aim of helping people out of a bind.
It will also cover ground I covered 25 years next month in a lecture at a University of Toronto celebration conference. See
The key point put to the audience that day was:
I believe antidepressants can cause suicide and homicide but I know many or most of you will not think that. The problem we both share is that I have seen documents and data you have not seen and I cannot show you. Scientifically and Morally this is wrong. This makes it impossible for us to have the kind of meeting of minds that is central to science, to good clinical care and justice.
This obvious point led to me being fired from a job at the University – the U of T caved into a dude called Charlie Nemeroff who insisted they get rid of Healy. He didn’t tell them he was set to be an expert witness on the opposite side to me in an SSRI and Homicide case.
My understanding is there will be a lot of interested parties in attendance at this Webinar, many likely anonymous. 
These are documents 103 and 104 from a set of documents that came to me as a result of a Freedom of Information request to Eli Lilly in 2005.
Thank you for this post, and for the imminent webinar : Antidepressants and Homicide -Understanding Automatism Spectrum Disorders.
How much lifelong suffering, misery and bereavement might have been avoided had you been able to achieve the greatly needed “meeting of minds that is central to science, to good clinical care and justice” twenty five years ago?
A tragic missed opportunity for invaluable public health intervention.
This comment came in from Annie Bevan
The Sowing of Sunflower Seeds…
A Field could be filled with the amount of column inches on Paxil/Seroxat/Deroxat Paroxetine
Special report: the Seroxat scandal
The government has said it will tighten regulations on reporting of clinical trials following an investigation into the antidepressant, paroxetine (Seroxat).
The Nursing Times: Government legal experts have ruled that there will be no criminal charges against the drug’s manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline.
The UK drugs regulator, the MHRA, had been monitoring the safety of paroxetine since it was first licensed in the early 1990s.
An investigation by the BBC programme Panorama in 2002 highlighted public concerns about suicidal behaviour among children being treated with the drug, sparking a series of meetings between the MHRA and GSK.
In February 2003 GSK submitted clinical trial data to the MHRA claiming there was no link between paroxetine and suicidal ideation. The trial data merged adult and paediatric trials.
In May 2003 the data from clinical trials in children were demerged, but GSK still claimed there was no link between paroxetine and suicidal ideation and behaviour. The company were still planning to submit an application for the drug to be licensed for use with children – as they had done in the US getting FDA’s approval.
Linsey McGooey has written on all this in Seroxat and the Suppression of Clinical Trial Data: Regulatory Failure and the Uses of Legal Ambiguity
She evaluates the MHRA announcement, in March 2008, that GSK would not face prosecution for deliberately withholding trial data, which revealed not only that Seroxat was ineffective at treating childhood depression but also that it increased the risk of suicidal behaviour in this patient group. The decision not to prosecute followed a four and a half year investigation and was taken on the grounds that the law at the relevant time was insufficiently clear. This article assesses the existence of significant gaps in the duty of candour between drugs companies and the regulator, and reflects upon what this episode tells us about the robustness, or otherwise, of the UK’s regulation of medicines.
Extraordinarily we now have rapidly escalating rates of antidepressant consumption among adolescents and young people in Britain and Europe leading to escalating suicide rates and disability claims which threaten to bankrupt countries – and the deaths of young people like Romain Schmitt.
There must be a Moral to this Tale
Who could forget that cover for The Economics of Neuroscience that styled Charlie Nemeroff as the “Boss of Bosses?” Like the guy is some kind of Mafia Kingpin.
Check the dates – Nemeroff in Britain June 13, 2013 and GSK fined $3Billion June 2, 2012
Honoured in Britain, the US psychiatrist who took $1.2m from drug companies
Professor’s invitation to give prestigious lecture in London causes outrage among peers
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/honoured-in-britain-the-us-psychiatrist-who-took-1-2m-from-drug-companies-8654535.html
Britain’s premier institute for the study of mental illness has become embroiled in a damaging row over its decision to invite a disgraced US academic to give the inaugural lecture for a new research centre.
The decision by the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College, in central London, Europe’s largest psychiatric research organisation, to invite Professor Charles Nemeroff, an expert in the treatment of depression, has split the psychiatric profession and been attacked by members of the institute itself. Professor Nemeroff, a leading authority on the biological causes of mental illness, is one of the highest profile doctors to have been exposed for concealing large payments from pharmaceutical companies.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/glaxosmithkline-plead-guilty-and-pay-3-billion-resolve-fraud-allegations-and-failure-report#:~:text=Global%20health%20care%20giant%20GlaxoSmithKline
Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in U.S. History
Global health care giant GlaxoSmithKline LLC (GSK) agreed to plead guilty and to pay $3 billion to resolve its criminal and civil liability arising from the company’s unlawful promotion of certain prescription drugs, its failure to report certain safety data, and its civil liability for alleged false price reporting practices, the Justice Department announced today. The resolution is the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history and the largest payment ever by a drug company.
For those of you who want to see the ‘Mafia Boss’ image – see the Burn Baby Burn post linked in this post
D
Summer 2013: Professor Carmine Pariante invites Professor Charles Nemeroff to give an inaugral address for the Institute of Psychiatry. I made this wee film about Prof Nemeroff. It needs to be watched:
https://holeousia.com/2024/10/01/sailing-blithely-paid-opinion-leaders-in-psychiatry/
A decade on and paid opinion leaders continue to sail blithely.
aye
Peter Scott-Gordon
Scotland
Aye, Peter
Peter’s comment to Peter Simons – Mad in America responses…
Dear Peter,
Thank you for writing such a clear exposition and vitally important account of scientific fraud. The scale of harm resulting from this fraud like this is now being revealed as lives, like mine, are ruined by drugs like Paroxetine.
Thank you for writing this and for showing that scientific narrative is as important as any other form of evidence.
Etc.
The Whistleblower and Penn:A Final Accounting of Study 352
Nemeroff would become first author on the paper. And when Amsterdam read these letters, he realized that the only investigator in the trials who saw most of the drafts, and was at least slightly involved in analyzing the results, was Gyulai. In 2001, Amsterdam had thought that Gyulai might have been the principal culprit in claiming authorship for work that he had not done, but it was now clear that Nemeroff and Evans were much worse offenders.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/12/the-whistleblower-and-penn-a-final-accounting-of-study-352/#:~:text=An%20investigation%20of%20a%20whistleblower's
Study 352 – Paxil & Bipolar Documents Released
Dozens of newly-publicised documents now give the full story of GSK’s ghostwriting campaign for a Paxil (paroxetine) clinical trial report on Study 352.
https://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2020/04/study-352-paxil-bipolar-documents.html#:~:text=What%20is%20Study%20352?%20A%20Double-Blind,
Charles “Bling Bling” Nemeroff
‘ethically Challenged’ ? – What a Shoo-in
Getting Stuck into Miami. – ‘Nemeroff’s perceived ability to raise money’
UoM – the ‘blunders’ – $$$$$$$$$
How An Ethically Challenged Researcher Found A Home at the University of Miami
Paul Thacker
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulthacker/2011/09/13/how-an-ethically-challenged-researcher-found-a-home-at-the-university-of-miami/#:~:text=A%20renowned%20chairman%20of%20psychiatry%20at
At my new job with the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a government watchdog, I have continued to study the cozy relationships between physicians and corporations. I also observed as Nemeroff left Emory for a new job at the University of Miami which has a medical school operating under financial strain. But why would this school snatch up a physician with such a history?
Safely ensconced at his new home, in mid-December, Nemeroff emailed his contacts at PharmaNeuroboost, thanking them for meeting with him in Florida.
You will recall that thus far as chair of the SAB, I have received only $10,000 of the promised $40,000 due to the limitations I had during my affiliation with Emory University. You can, however, now go ahead and remunerate me for the remaining $30,000….
I expect most people know of the TRUTHFUL statement that made bioethical history – and re-routed the direction of your professional life. I certainly hadn’t read the whole speech – ‘speech’ – because it was and is a political statement. Even more relevant almost a quarter of a century later.
These moments resonated in particular:
‘And out of the same test tubes and laboratories from which chlorpromazine came, came LSD and the psychedelics, Valium and the benzodiazepines and other drugs. These were not drugs that restore people to their place in the social order. These were drugs that had the potential to transform social order.
The era of Depression that we have lived through in the 1990s in the West has arguably been a politically and economically constructed era that bears little relationship to any clinical facts.
The world changed. Both psychiatry and anti-psychiatry were swept away and replaced by a new corporate psychiatry.
Far from this being a science that worked in the interests of patients, it led onto megadose regimes of neuroleptics. No longer answerable it seems to how the patients in front of us actually looked, following the science we moved on to these megadose regimes that may have caused as many brains to be injured as were ever injured with psychosurgery. Science won’t necessarily save us, it must be applied with wisdom .
Within the studies that are reported, data such as quality of life scale results on antidepressants have been almost uniformly suppressed. To call this science is misleading. ‘
PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY & THE GOVERNMENT OF THE SELF DAVID HEALY
It’s literally mind-boggling that Charlie, aka ‘The Open Handbag’, managed to derail this vision. But then, you said it, psychiatry was and still is corporatised, along with the rest of medicine, academia and politics. Not sure about The Law, nor The Church (your forte).
Companies are demonised – but, in a way, they are just doing what they are designed to do, maximise returns to investors. I hold the ‘holier than thou’ institutions more accountable. Carl Elliott nailed it in ‘The Occasional Human Sacrifice’, when he quoted Irving Janis:
“The force of social conformity is especially powerful in institutions that are driven by a sense of moral purpose. In academic health centers, that moral purpose is embedded in the dogma that medical research saves lives. Since our groups’ objectives are good, any means we decide to use must be good.”
As Peter Gordon, another brave campaigner for TRUTH, has just shown – plus ça change.