I Think I’ve Got That New Disease I’ve Seen Advertised

I Think I’ve Got That New Disease I’ve Seen Advertised
By Kieron Mcfadden

To: Lucifer Beelzebub, CEO, Grimm Reaper Pharmaceuticals.
From: Ruth Less, CEO. Ruth Less Disease Promotions Inc

Dear Mr. Beelzebub,

Are you looking for a way to monetize the green goo your research labs concocted last year but no-one has yet found a use for?

Well, have no fear because here at Disease Promotions Inc, we have the solution!!

If you have several tons of nondescript fluid taking up space in the warehouse, don’t rush to dump it because you may well be dumping a fortune in easy profits. The good news is, you can recycle your green goo into greenbacks! All you need is some intelligent marketing and single-minded dedication to the art of making money from old rope.

Let us package, promote and market your goo for you, using the latest breakthrough in pharmaceutical marketing: ADE, the Animal Disease Epidemic.

TIME: Why Antidepressants Don’t Live Up to the Hype

Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons pointed out an article on TIME magazine’s web site and provided commentary.

I won’t be commenting on it, just providing publicity. Although the staff at TIME has expressly forbidden me to promote their magazine or be their spokesperson, they didn’t say anything about promoting their articles.

Alison Bass: Brown psychiatry chief Martin Keller to step down in June…

The latest from the blog of Alison Bass:

Alison Bass: Brown psychiatry chief Martin Keller to step down in June…

[...]
While Brown officials insist that the decision to step down was Keller’s, my understanding from several sources is that the university has been under pressure to take action ever since Side Effects was published last June and Sen. Charles Grassley began investigating Keller’s undisclosed conflicts of interest in July. Keller is the latest psychiatry kingpin to fall. In recent months, Stanford’s chief of psychiatry Alan Schatzberg and Emory University’s chief Charles Nemeroff were forced to step down after reports that they too failed to disclose years of lucrative financial payments from the pharmaceutical industry.
[...]
In addition, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the pre-eminent journal of the profession, just published a review of Side Effects,[...]

Alison Bass: Brown psychiatry chief Martin Keller to step down in June…

Treating Borderline Personality Disorder with Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Posted by Andy Alt / http://mentaldimensions.wordpress.com

January 11, 2009

A few minutes ago I stopped doing nothing long enough to pick up my most recent copy of TIME magazine. The following are some excerpts from an article about Borderline Personality Disorder (Click the link below to read the full article). BPD is one of the things I have been told I have.

According to this article, it’s common for antidepressants to be ineffective with patients who have Borderline Personality Disorder.

[..]
Borderline patients are often overmedicated–partly because therapists see them as difficult–but for Lily, as for most borderlines, the meds did little. “Drug treatment for BPD is much less impressive than most people think,” Paris writes in Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder.
[...]

My desire to promote psychiatric medication and their positive effects

By Andy Alt / Mental Dimensions

March 1, 2009

It may seem strange reading this on my blog, but I wanted to take the time to write about all the good that medications can do, and their positive effects. Some people may think that my brain has been affected by subliminal messages in the manufacturers’ advertisements, but because I’m currently consuming and withdrawing from all of these pharmaceutical drugs outlined below, I’m reasonably confident that my head is clear and my mind as sane as it ever was.

Effexor effectively treats my symptoms, and is effective at treating everything the manufacturer claims it can treat.

Wellbutrin makes me feel well, generally speaking.

Ambien surrounds me with a pleasant ambience, so I feel calm and relaxed, allowing me to sleep normally and naturally at night.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Pharmaceutical Advertisements

FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs (http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/23-fda-complicit-in-pushing-pharmaceutical-drugs/)

While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) turns a blind eye, drug companies are making false, unsubstantiated, and misleading claims in their advertising, often withholding mandated disclosure of dangerous side effects. Though companies are required to submit their advertisements to the FDA, the agency does not review them before they are released to the public. A Government Accountability Office report released November 2006 found that the FDA reviews only a small portion of the advertisements it receives, and does not review them using consistent criteria.
[...]

[ Project Censored ]

See Also: Pharma kickbacks and corruption (http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/pharma-kickbacks-and-corruption/) (February 25, 2009)

Do you believe I’m a Scientologist?

Posted by Andy Alt on January 11, 2009

The following is a comment I wrote on the post at Antidepressants, physical dependence, and semantics. To read the full discussion, visit the preceding link.

daedalus2u:

A lot of the bias against antidepressants is by people who have never been depressed and have no clue what it is actually like.

Based on that statement, it’s clear you didn’t read much, if any, of the discussion on this page. It includes comments from people who are “biased” against medication.

It is a form of bullying; an attempt to deny effective treatment to people who are depressed so that the depressed person is easier to bully and exploit. This is why scientologists are so against it. Depressed people are much easier to lure into their cult and exploit.

Drugs and the Public’s Right to Know

Posted by Andy Alt on January 8, 2009

Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption By Marcia Angell, MD, Editor-in-Chief New England Journal of Medicine -

[...]
In view of this control and the conflicts of interest that permeate the enterprise, it is not surprising that industry-sponsored trials published in medical journals consistently favor sponsors’ drugs—largely because negative results are not published, positive results are repeatedly published in slightly different forms, and a positive spin is put on even negative results. A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies were published.[8] But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. It is not unusual for a published paper to shift the focus from the drug’s intended effect to a secondary effect that seems more favorable.
[...]