Psychiatry Revamp? New Psychiatry Manual a Stretch
March 2, 2010
Wall Street Journal
By Edward Shorter
To flip through the latest draft of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in the works for seven years now, is to see the discipline’s floundering writ large. Psychiatry seems to have lost its way in a forest of poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications. Patients who seek psychiatric help today for mood disorders stand a good chance of being diagnosed with a disease that doesn’t exist and treated with a medication little more effective than a placebo.
Psychopharmacology, or the treatment of the mind and brain with drugs, has come to dominate the field. The positive side is that many illnesses respond readily to medication. The negative side is that the pharmaceutical industry seeks the largest possible market for a given drug, and advertises huge diseases, such as major depression and schizophrenia, the scientific status of which makes insiders uneasy.
In the 1950s and ’60s, when psychiatry was still under the influence of the European scientific tradition, reasonably accurate diagnoses still sat at center stage. If you felt blue, uneasy and generally jumpy, “nerves” was a common diagnosis. For the psychotherapeutically oriented psychiatrists of the day, “psychoneurosis” was the equivalent of nerves. There was no point in breaking these terms down: clinicians and patients alike understood “a case of nerves,” or a “nervous breakdown.”
Our psychopathological lingo today offers little improvement on these sturdy terms. A patient with the same symptoms today might be told he has “social anxiety disorder” or “seasonal affective disorder.” The increased specificity is spurious. There is little risk of misdiagnosis, because the new disorders all respond to the same drugs, so in terms of treatment, the differentiation is meaningless and of benefit mainly to pharmaceutical companies that market drugs for these niches.
For those more seriously ill, contemplating suicide or pacing restlessly and saying “It’s all my fault,” melancholia was the diagnosis of choice. The term has been around for donkey’s years.
All the serious disorders of mood were once lumped together technically as “manic-depressive illness”—and again, there was little point in differentiating, because medications such as lithium that worked for mania were also sometimes effective in forestalling renewed episodes of serious depression.
Psychopharmacology—the treatment of disorders of the mind and brain with drugs—was experiencing its first big push, and a host of effective new agents was marketed. The first blockbuster drug in psychiatry appeared in 1955 as Wallace Lab’s Miltown, a “tranquilizer” of the dicarbamate class. The first of the “tricyclic antidepressants” (because of their chemical structure) was launched in the U.S. in 1959, called imipramine generically and Tofranil by brand name. It remains today the single most effective antidepressant on the market for the immediate treatment of serious depression.
To continue reading this report, click here.
Mississippi Looking to Make Cold Medication Prescription-Only To Combat Meth
January 26, 2010
USA Today
Associated Press
Law enforcement officials and other groups in Mississippi are lobbying lawmakers to require a prescription to buy cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine — a key ingredient in methamphetamine — as the state’s drug problem reaches unprecedented levels.
Last year marked the first time meth arrests outnumbered those for crack and powder cocaine, 981 to 608, said Marshall Fisher, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who now heads the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics.
“I’ve been in the middle of this storm for three decades,” he said. “It’s tragic.”
An organization representing drug makers says similar legislation has been introduced in Georgia, Missouri and Washington. Oregon became the first in the nation to pass such a law in 2006, where the number of meth labs busted dropped from 473 to 20 in the first year, Fisher said. Some municipalities in Missouri have adopted similar ordinances for medicines such as Claritin-D and Sudafed.
The pharmaceutical industry has responded with a proposal to create a real-time electronic system that would let law officers track all sales of pseudoephedrine. In fact, opposition to the prescription proposal is so strong the industry has offered to pay for the systems in states with serious meth lab problems.
Many states already require the medicines be held behind pharmacy counters, and photo identification is needed for purchases so the buyer’s information can be logged into a database.
Such systems are already in place in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arkansas, said Mandy Hagan, director of state government relations for Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a group that represents makers of over-the-counter medicines.
She said Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana and Missouri have passed laws and are working on implementation.
“We feel that prescription proposal goes too far, especially for a state like Mississippi that has a high rate of people who are uninsured,” Hagan said Thursday.
About 15 million Americans use products containing pseudoephedrine each year, Hagan said. She said the industry hasn’t calculated the financial impact of prescription legislation.
However, some say the drug makers’ proposed tracking system doesn’t go far enough in preventing meth abuse.
In Kentucky, State Trooper John Hawkins said the state had a record 716 meth lab busts in 2009, a 60% increase from the previous year. He said there’s a limit of nine grams — about three packages — on pseudoephedrine purchases in a 30-day period in Kentucky, and the system won’t let the buyer exceed that amount.
More Than Half the Experts Fighting Pandemic Have To Ties to Drug Firms
January 14, 2010
Mail Online
By Fiona Macrae and Sophie Borland
More than half the scientists on the swine flu taskforce advising the Government have ties to drug companies.
Eleven of the 20 members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) have done work for the pharmaceutical industry or are linked to it through their universities.
Many have declared interests in GlaxoSmithKline, the vaccine maker expected to be the biggest beneficiary of the pandemic.
The disclosure of the register of interests comes just days after a health expert branded the swine flu outbreak a ‘false pandemic’ driven by the drug companies which stood to profit.
The Government is now trying to offload up to £1billion worth of unwanted swine flu vaccine.
Last July, the Department of Health warned of up 65,000 deaths, with 350 a day at the pandemic’s peak. But the death toll now stands at just 251.
SAGE was created to give Ministers recommendations on how to control and treat the virus.
Official documents show some members are linked to vaccine manufacturer Baxter and to Roche, which makes Tamiflu.
GSK, Baxter and Roche stand to make up to £1.5billion between them from Government contracts related to swine flu.
The scientists declared the interests to the Department of Health.
They were not obliged to declare the amounts they earned but they are thought to range from around £500 for a lecture or presentation to more than £100,000 for a directorship of GSK.
Some will simply be heads of university research departments which received funding from companies.
Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb said last night: ‘While there is no evidence that experts acted improperly, the sheer scale of the pharmaceutical industry’s influence is a cause for concern and needs to be looked at.’
However, some researchers said industry experience could only add to the scientists’ knowledge, enabling them to provide the best and the most up-to-date advice.
Leading flu expert Professor John Oxford said it was right to have people with different types of experience.
He said: ‘If you are giving advice about vaccines or anti-viral drugs, you can’t sit in your ivory tower and think you know everything about it.’
One of the biggest earners on SAGE is the former rector of Imperial College, London, Professor Sir Roy Anderson. He is a non-executive director of GSK which also makes Relenza, the Tamiflu alternative for pregnant women.
GSK strongly denied any conflict of interest.
It said Sir Roy was asked to rejoin SAGE, which he had left to join GSK, because of his expertise.
The company said: ‘He has not attended any meetings related to purchase of drugs or vaccine for either the government or GSK.’
Dr Stephen Inglis of the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control has interests in more than 40 drug companies, all connected to the NIBSC rather than himself.
He says: ‘The NIBSC is a centre of the UK’s Health Protection Agency, a not-for-profit public body whose purpose is to enhance and safeguard public health.
It must engage with many pharmaceutical companies and, in some instances, it is appropriate to charge them for products and services.’
The Department of Health said: ‘Committee members do not take part in discussions that may involve a potential conflict of interest.’
But that raises the possibility of more than half of the handpicked advisers being shut out of key discussions.
Click here for the full report
Health Care Bill Is A Huge Tax Heist
December 23, 2009 by Andrew
Filed under Government
December 23, 2009
Prison Planet
By Paul Joseph Watson
A Boston Globe analysis of the health care bill which Democrats are trying to ram through before Christmas illustrates how the legislation is a gigantic tax heist which will further economically cripple Americans already laboring under the worst financial crisis since the great depression.
H.R. 3590 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [2], which is set to be voted on by the Senate on Christmas Eve, contains a raft of pork barrel and tax hikes. The legislation has not even been read in full by many of the representatives eager to make it the law, including fervent advocate John Kerry.
“While it would take days to read the entire bill, my cursory review of the legislation identified at least 19 tax increases,” writes the Globe’s Jamie Downey.
Chief amongst those tax hikes is the one outlined in Section 1501 – Requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage. Individuals who don’t maintain mandatory health insurance will face an annual tax penalty of $750, an amount set to escalate even higher in future.
Section 9013 reduces the amount that can be deducted as expenses for people incurring significant health costs. This will directly impact the living standards of individuals already struggling under the burden of long-term illnesses.
With income taxes already on the increase to pay for the mass looting of the American taxpayer in the form of the multi-trillion dollar bailout, with the highest rate already increasing by 3.6 percent, a further tax on Medicare will be imposed on individuals making in excess of $200,000 and married couples making over $250,000 under Section 9015.
The government will also collect a new 5 percent tax on voluntary cosmetic procedures under Section 9017. Since in other state-run health care systems, such as Canada, “voluntary procedures” is a term also applied to people with life-threatening conditions who sometimes have to wait 18 months to get treatment, the eventual scope of this new tax can only be imagined.
While the new taxes on individuals are bad enough, the penalties imposed on pharmaceutical corporations, health insurers and employers are perhaps worse because the tax hikes will undoubtedly passed on to the general public in the form of higher costs.
Section 9008 imposes an annual fee on branded prescription pharmaceutical manufacturers and importers, which equates to a a $2.3 billion excise tax on the pharmaceutical industry based on market share starting immediately. Prescription drugs, which will not be free for Americans under “free” health care, will soar in cost as a result of this new tax.
Section 9009 imposes a $2 billion excise tax on the medical device industry. This will increase the cost of life-saving technology and equipment, meaning hospitals will buy fewer devices, meaning longer waiting lists for vital treatment and more deaths as a result of these delays.
An annual excise tax of $6.7 billion on health insurance providers under Section 9010 will also jack up prices.
“How can the imposition of $11 billion in excise taxes (section 9008, 9009 and 9010) on the health care industry reduce costs to consumers? Does anyone else suspect these companies will have to pass these costs over to consumers?” writes Downey.
Click here for the full report.
Prescription Drugs Kill More Than Illegal Drugs
December 23, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
On the heels of the sudden death of celebrity actress Brittany Murphy (http://www.naturalnews.com/027781_B…), people are once again raising the question of just how dangerous prescription drugs might really be.
Some are arguing, however, that street drugs are the real danger, not prescription drugs. But the following study demonstrates why prescription drugs are far more dangerous than illegal recreational drugs.
According to a new study conducted by physicians at St. Michael’s Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in Toronto, the number of deaths due to prescription opioid use has doubled between 1991 and 2004. Following the introduction of oxycodone into Toronto’s drug formulary in 2000, there has been a 500% increase in deaths due to the drugs.
Researchers reviewed over 7,000 files from the Office of the Chief Coroner in Ontario and found that between the years of 1991 and 2004, oxycodone prescriptions increased by more than 850 percent, representing about one-third of the opioid prescriptions given in 2006. (This is the largest prescription increase among all opioid drugs.)
Following the addition of this drug into the provincial drug benefit plan in 2000, deaths from opioid usage rose by 41 percent. Shockingly, deaths from prescription opioids like oxycodone were far greater than deaths from heroin. The vast majority of people who died from opioids had visited their doctor and received a prescription for the drug within a month of their death.
The total number of opioid-related deaths in Toronto in 2004 is estimated to be 27.2 per million people. Study authors said they hope to shed light on the tremendous dangers associated with prescription opioid drugs.
Coked up on prescription smack
It’s the dirty little secret of the pharmaceutical industry: More people are killed by prescription opioids than all those killed by heroin and cocaine combined. And that probably even includes all the shootings of gang bangers in northern Mexico.
Prescription drug abuse is now more common than street drug abuse — by far! And yet Big Pharma rakes in huge profits from all the patient addictions to their opioids. And by “opioids”, what I mean is narcotics. They are, in fact, one and the same.
So of all the drug addicts in America today, you can divide them into two camps:
1) People addicted to street drugs.
2) People addicted to prescription drugs.
The people in group #1 (street drugs) are taken to jail where they are given prison sentences. People in group #2 (prescription drugs) are taken to their doctor where they are given prescription refills. It’s all really the same narcotics, it’s just that one group is legal and the other is illegal.
And what really determines whether a particular narcotic is legal or illegal? Whether or not Big Pharma profits from it. If Big Pharma makes money off the narcotics, they’re considered legal.
Big Pharma, you see, earns tens of billions of dollars each year from drug addicts. And just by coincidence, it turns out that their prescription narcotics are extremely addicting, guaranteeing repeat business. The business model is so dang lucrative, you might think they were drug dealers…
Why do you think the main sponsors for the Partnership For A Drug-Free America are the drug companies themselves? It’s because Big Pharma is trying to eliminate the competition. By keeping up the so-called “War on Drugs” front, the pharmaceutical industry can make sure it dominates the market for narcotics. After all, if you’re going to feed narcotics to a nation full of junkies, why not make a hefty profit on it? That’s the thinking of drug companies, it seems, as they have done basically zilch to effectively stem the abuse of their own prescription narcotics.
Much like the tobacco companies, drug companies secretly want people to be addicted to their products.
Click here for the full report.
Former Head of CDC Lands Lucrative Job As President of Merck Vaccine Division
December 22, 2009 by Andrew
Filed under Government
December 22, 2009
Natural News
By: Mike Adams
You’ve heard it before, how the pharmaceutical industry has a giant “revolving door” through which corporations and government agencies frequently exchange key employees. That reality was driven home in a huge way today when news broke that Dr. Julie Gerberding, who headed the CDC from 2002 through 2009, landed a top job with Merck, one of the largest drug companies in the world. Her job there? She’s the new president of the vaccine division.
How convenient. That means the former head of the CDC was very likely cultivating a relationship with Merck all these years, and now comes the big payoff: Heading up a $5 billion division that sells cervical cancer vaccines (like Gardasil), chickenpox vaccines and of course H1N1 swine flu vaccines, too.
So what’s the problem with all this? The problem is that private industry and government health offices such as the CDC or FDA should never be so cozy. When they are, it creates an environment of collusion between Big Government and Big Pharma. We’ve already seen this with the government-led push for swine flu vaccines that are manufactured (and sold) by drug companies like Merck.
You might even say that the CDC already functions as the marketing division of the pharmaceutical industry. It was the CDC that pushed so hard for swine flu vaccines, even amid the obvious realization that swine flu was no more dangerous than seasonal flu. To this day, the CDC still hasn’t bothered to recommend vitamin D for the prevention of either seasonal flu or swine flu. It remains heavily invested in the lucrative vaccine approach — an approach that just happens to financially benefit the very corporations that are hiring ex-CDC employees like Dr. Gerberding.
How to triple your salary by selling out to industry
Getting a job offer from Big Pharma, by the way, is one of the most-desired career paths for many CDC employees (and FDA workers, for that matter). It’s easy to accomplish it, too: Just operate in your government position as if you were a Big Pharma lackey. If you produce enough good business for the drug industry, sooner or later they’ll offer you a lucrative position that doubles or triples your government salary (or even better).
Now, I don’t want to lump all CDC employees in this same pathetic group, because there are indeed a great many bright, honest scientists working at the CDC who do excellent work tracking pandemics and trying to save lives. They are overshadowed, however, by those ambitious profit seekers who see their CDC job as merely a stepping stone for a far better-paying job at a major drug companies. And by any measure, Dr. Gerberding just cashed in big.
Her actual salary at Merck hasn’t been publicly released yet, but given that she’s heading up a $5 billion vaccine industry, it’s probably not chump change. I’d bet she’s now making at least ten times the salary of the President of the United States (and probably a lot more).
Click here for the full report
Tamiflu Studies Revealed to be a Hoax – Antiviral Does Not Work
December 14, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
When it comes to selling chemicals that claim to treat H1N1 swine flu, the pharmaceutical industry’s options are limited to two: Vaccines and anti-virals. The most popular anti-viral, by far, is Tamiflu, a drug that’s actually derived from a Traditional Chinese Medicine herb called star anise.
But Tamiflu is no herb. It’s a potentially fatal concentration of isolated chemical components that have essentially been bio-pirated from Chinese medicine. And when you isolate and concentrate specific chemicals in these herbs, you lose the value (and safety) of full-spectrum herbal medicine.
That didn’t stop Tamiflu’s maker, Roche, from trying to find a multi-billion-dollar market for its drug. In order to tap into that market, however, Roche needed to drum up some evidence that Tamiflu was both safe and effective.
Roche engages in science fraud
Roche claims there are ten studies providing Tamiflu is both safe and effective. According to the company, Tamiflu has all sorts of benefits, including a 61% reduction in hospital admissions by people who catch the flu and then get put on Tamiflu.
The problem with these claims is that they aren’t true. They were simply invented by Roche.
A groundbreaking article recently published in the British Medical Journal accuses Roche of misleading governments and physicians over the benefits of Tamiflu. Out of the ten studies cited by Roche, it turns out, only two were ever published in science journals. And where is the original data from those two studies? Lost.
The data has disappeared. Files were discarded. The researcher of one study says he never even saw the data. Roche took care of all that, he explains.
So the Cochrane Collaboration, tasked with reviewing the data behind Tamiflu, decided to investigate. After repeated requests to Roche for the original study data, they remained stonewalled. The only complete data set they received was from an unpublished study of 1,447 adults which showed that Tamiflu was no better than placebo. Data from the studies that claimed Tamiflu was effective was apparently lost forever.
As The Atlantic reports, that’s when former employees of Adis International (essentially a Big Pharma P.R. company) shocked the medical world by announcing they had been hired to ghost-write the studies for Roche.
It gets even better: These researchers were told what to write by Roche!
As one of these ghostwriters told the British Medical Journal:
“The Tamiflu accounts had a list of key messages that you had to get in. It was run by the [Roche] marketing department and you were answerable to them. In the introduction …I had to say what a big problem influenza is. I’d also have to come to the conclusion that Tamiflu was the answer.”
In other words, the Roche marketing department ran the science and told researchers what conclusions to draw from the clinical trials. Researchers hired to conduct the science were controlled by the marketing puppeteers. No matter what they found in the science, they had already been directed to reach to conclusion that “Tamiflu was the answer.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but where I come from, we call this “science fraud.” And as numerous NaturalNews investigations have revealed, this appears to be the status quo in the pharmaceutical industry.
Virtually none of the “science” conducted by drug companies can be trusted at all because it really isn’t science in the first place. It’s just propaganda being dressed up to look like science.
Sadly, even the CDC has been fooled by this clinical trial con. As stated by author Shannon Brownlee in The Atlantic:
“…the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears to be operating in some alternative universe, where valid science no longer matters to public policy. The agency’s flu recommendations are in lockstep with Roche’s claims that the drug can be life-saving — despite the FDA’s findings and despite the lack of studies to prove such a claim. What’s more, neither the CDC nor the FDA has demanded the types of scientific studies that could definitively determine whether or not the company’s claims are true: that Tamiflu reduces the risk of serious complications and saves lives. Nancy Cox, who heads the CDC’s flu program, told us earlier this year she opposes a placebo-controlled study (in which one half of patients would be given Tamiflu and the other half would be given placebo), because the drug’s benefits are already proven.”
Did you catch that last line? The CDC isn’t interested in testing Tamiflu because “the drug’s benefits are already proven.” Except they aren’t. But this is how the pharmaceutical industry operates:
Step 1) Fabricate evidence that your drug works.
Step 2) Use that fraudulent evidence to get your drug approved.
Step 3) Use fear to create consumer demand for your drug (and encourage governments to stockpile it).
Step 4) Avoid any actual scientific testing by claiming the drug has already been proven to work (and cite your original fraudulent studies to back you up).
This is the recipe the CDC is following right now with Tamiflu. It’s a recipe of scientific stupidity and circular logic, of course, but that seems to be strangely common in the medical community these days.
Even the FDA says Tamiflu doesn’t work
The FDA, remarkably, hasn’t entirely given in to the Tamiflu hoax. They required Roche to print the following disclaimer on Tamiflu lables — a disclaimer that openly admits the drug has never been proven to work:
“Tamiflu has not been proven to have a positive impact on the potential consequences (such as hospitalizations, mortality, or economic impact) of seasonal, avian, or pandemic influenza.”
Even further, an FDA spokesperson told the British Medical Journal, “The clinical trials… failed to demonstrate any significant difference in rates of hospitalization, complications, or mortality in patients receiving either Tamiflu or placebo.”
It’s the same message over and over again, like a broken record: Tamiflu doesn’t work. And the “science” that says Tamiflu does work was all apparently fabricated from the start.
To continue reading this report, click here.
WHO Scientists Suspected of Accepting Secret Bribes
December 10, 2009
WorldNet Daily
by Chelsea Schilling
World Health Organization scientists are suspected of accepting secret bribes from vaccine manufacturers to influence the U.N. organization’s H1N1 pandemic declaration, according to Danish and Swedish newspapers.
Meanwhile, pharmaceutical profits from swine-flu related drugs have soared – with earnings between $10 billion and $15 billion in 2009, investment bank JP Morgan estimates.
As WND reported, the WHO Director General Margaret Chan initially raised the influenza pandemic alert to its second highest level in May – but evidence reveals the agency may have made it easier to classify the flu outbreak as a pandemic by changing its definition to omit “enormous numbers of deaths and illness” just prior to making its declaration.
The world was gripped with fears of swine flu as the alert increased from Phase 5 to Phase 6, the highest level. Immediately, pharmaceutical companies began working to develop vaccines, and countries tailored their responses to address the situation.
Shots frighten you? Be sure to get “SCARY MEDICINE: Exposing the dark side of vaccines”
Danish newspaper Information reported that when Chan raised the level of pandemic alert on June 11, the declaration meant substantial economic benefits for the pharmaceutical industry – especially since many countries have contracts with major drug companies and are required to purchase vaccines in the event of a pandemic. Swedish newspaper SvD echoed Information’s report.
“Many of the apparently impartial researchers the WHO uses, however, are paid by the companies that produce vaccines,” states a translated version of the Information article, “Strong lobbying behind WHO resolution on mass vaccination.”
One expert in a WHO H1N1 advisory group, Dr. Albert Osterhaus, has been subject to a Dutch government investigation. The government convened a crisis meeting after an article in Science magazine indicated that Osterhaus has financial interests in several pharmaceutical companies.
Osterhaus, known as “Dr. Flu,” is the head of the department of virology at the Erasmus MC, University of Rotterdam. According to a European Commission Research website, Osterhaus is co-founder of two biotech companies and promotes vaccines as solutions for pandemics.
Another expert who advises WHO on vaccines, Dr. Frederick Hayden, is described as a flu-research coordinator from the Wellcome Trust in London.
However, according to the report, Hayden also serves as a “paid adviser” for pharmaceutical companies Roche, RW Johnson, SmithKline Beecham and Glaxo Wellcome.
WHO expert Dr. Arnold Monto is also purportedly a paid consultant for MedImmune (a company that produces nasal flu vaccine), Glaxo Wellcome and ViroPharma. However, WHO’s Strategize Advisory Group of Experts, or SAGE, never divulged those ties, according to the report.
The newspaper also states that numerous pharmaceutical companies maintain an active presence during WHO advisory group meetings, with representatives listed as “observers.”
Professor Tom Jefferson, epidemiologist at the Cochrane Center in Rome, told Information he believes the researchers’ dual roles are problematic, and he noted the WHO’s emphasis on drugs rather than proper hygiene habits.
“The WHO’s latest recommendation on the control of pandemic influenza has frequent washing of hands mentioned twice,” he said. “Vaccines and antivirals are, however, mentioned 24 and 18 times. Why would an international public health agency focus on much more expensive interventions, such as vaccines and medication, when it is not proven that they work?”
Jefferson said washing ones hands is the only proven method of flu prevention.
Wolf Dieter Ludwig, head of drug commission of the German Medical Association, told Der Spiegel he has no doubt pharmaceutical companies have been seeking to capitalize off what he called a “non-existent threat.”
Google and Yahoo Asking FDA to Update Guidelines for Web Ads
November 16, 2009
U.S. News
Internet giants Google and Yahoo have lined up with the pharmaceutical industry in asking the U.S. government to draft new rules that would give drug companies more latitude to advertise online.
Current U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations require that any mention of a drug’s benefits must also reveal its risks, including detailed lists of side effects. But drug makers and Web companies attending a two-day hearing this week on online marketing of medical products said the rule hampers them, given online space constraints.
Click here for the full report.
Big Pharma’s Newest Fake Disease: “Restless Vagina Syndrome”
November 3, 2009
AlterNet
by Terry J. Allen, In These Times
It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.
You are among the “43 percent of American women [who] experience some degree of impaired sexual function,” according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties — but only if the woman feels “personal distress” about it.
So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.
By promoting the belief that “normal” women have explosive sex all the time, BigPharma helped launch the disease. However, the FDA has yet to approve a treatment for women who fall short. Until then, they could try the Orgasmatron: a dial-a-delight spinal implant that rarely works — and risks infection and paralysis. Or, for $60/month, pop LexaFem pills — containing (how-could-it-not-work) “horny goat weed extract” in order to “feel like a real woman today.” Its website promises, “You won’t ever feel unhappy again with LexaFem in your arsenal.”
But the big swinging dicks of global FSD marketing (and off-label marketing) are Pfizer — whose stop-gap strategy is selling women Viagra based on the fact that it works for men, and Procter & Gamble (P&G), which, using the same logic, has put its money on testosterone.
Viagra’s failure in trial after trial to work on women has not stopped doctors from writing 1.4 million off-label prescriptions. FSD is “a classic example of starting with some preconceived, and non-evidence based diagnostic categorization for women’s sexual dysfunctions, based on the male model,” said John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute, in an interview with BMJ (British Medical Journal).
No drug follows the male model more literally than testosterone. Despite FDA refusal to approve P&G’s testosterone patch Intrinsa, U.S. doctors wrote 2 million off-label testosterone prescriptions in 2007. Like Pfizer’s little blue pill, the Intrinsa patch doesn’t really work for women. No wonder: Researchers don’t even know what constitutes a “normal” female testosterone level, and women with low levels of the hormone are as likely as those with high levels to be happy with their sex lives. And as filmmaker Liz Canner shows in her excellent new documentary Orgasm, Inc., (www.orgasminc.org), testosterone is usually teamed with estrogen, which increases risks for stroke, cancers and dementia.
The companies and clinics that narrow the range of sexual normality to porn industry standards suffer their own disease. Symptoms include: a compulsion to concoct illnesses and then develop drugs to treat them, and vice versa. Either way, the syndrome is typically accompanied by a rash of conflicts of interest.
