Quack Medicine Falls on Sword

[bob_jones]

Dr Frances was chair of the DSM-IV Task Force and of the department of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC.

He is currently professor emeritus at Duke.

Vince


Emphasis added - Vince



http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1541615?verify=0



Psychiatric Times



DSM5 and "Psychosis Risk Syndrome:" Not Ready For Prime Time


By Allen Frances, MD | March 19, 2010


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Among all the problematic suggestions for DSM5, the proposal for a "Psychosis Risk Syndrome" stands out as the most ill--conceived and potentially harmful. It aims to solve a pressing problem in psychiatry-- the need for early identification and preventive treatment. Psychotic episodes create tremendous short-term impairment and may impact negatively on long-term prognosis and treatment efficacy. It would save great suffering if we could get there early and do something useful to reduce the lifetime burden of illness before too much damage is done.


But good intentions are not enough. The whole concept of early intervention rests on 3 fundamental pillars-- being able to diagnose the right people and then providing them with a treatment that is effective and safe. "Psychosis Risk Syndrome" fails badly on all 3 counts:
1. It would misidentify many teenagers who are not really at risk for psychosis.
2. The treatment they would most often receive (atypical antipsychotic medication) has no proven efficacy, but. . .
3. It does have definite dangerous complications.


First, let's deal with the misidentification problem. Even in the most expert of hands (ie, in very highly selected research clinic settings), at least 2 of 3 people who get the diagnosis do not go on to become psychotic. Of great counterintuitive interest, the longer the research clinic operates, the lower its rate of correct identification becomes. With time and spreading reputation, the clinic attracts increasingly heterogeneous referrals-- so that it is more difficult to discriminate from among them those who are truly at risk for psychosis.


What would be the misidentification rate once the diagnosis became official and was applied in the real world? No one can say for sure, but two-thirds is certainly a lower limit of misidentification. There are several reasons to believe that the ratio of wrong diagnoses would actually be much higher:


o The raters in general practice would be much less expert than specialists in research clinics
o The "patients" would be closer to normal and harder to discriminate
o Drug company marketing would influence parents and clinicians to be especially alert to any strangeness in teenagers.
It has been estimated that the false-positive rate would jump from about 70% in specialty clinics to about 90% in general practice. This means that as many as an astounding 9 in 10 individuals identified as "risk syndrome" would not really be at risk for developing psychosis.


Those supporting the diagnosis for DSM5 have attempted to fix this overwhelming problem by inserting a definitional criterion that the person must be seeking treatment. They hope this requirement would both reduce the rate of false-positives and ensure that those who are misidentified will need some form of treatment. Their preferred treatment for "risk syndrome" is cognitive/behavior therapy which might be helpful (and is unlikely to be harmful)-- even for those who have been misidentified.


This fix fails badly on both counts-- ie, in reducing false-positives and in guaranteeing safe treatment. Under the best of circumstances, the overwhelming majority of "treatment seekers" will still be false-positive. Once the diagnosis is official and marketed, the problem will get much worse as a new army of "treatment seekers" is brought in by family members. Their perceived "strangeness" may come from many causes other than psychotic risk, including drug use; adolescent developmental issues and rebelliousness; culturally dystonic creativity; stable schizotypal personality; or normal eccentricity. A far more efficient signal to noise filter would have been to require that the individual must also have a close family member who has experienced psychotic episodes.


Then we get to the worrying treatment issues. It is the height of unrealistic wishful thinking to assume that most of the misidentified patients will get cognitve therapy. Cognitive therapy is in short supply and largely unavailable--especially for this population. On the other hand, antipsychotic medications are fairly ubiquitous and already frequently given for off-label indications-- particularly to kids on Medicaid. It has not yet been established that antipsychotic medications are effective in preventing psychotic episodes or in improving the life course in those who would meet the criteria for "risk syndrome." This is an area that to date has received little study and the few existing findings are equivocal.


In contrast, the harmful effects of atypical antipsychotics are extremely well established and frightening. Teenagers starting at an average weight of 110 pounds gained an average of 12 pounds in 12 weeks-- and one of the antipsychotics caused an 18-pound weight gain in this period. This raises the risk for diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and a shorter life span.

To sum up:


1. The "risk syndrome" would misidentify many (somewhere between 3 and 9) kids for every one correctly identified
2. The treatment most likely to be offered has no proven efficacy, but can have extremely dangerous complications.
This is a clearly the prescription for an iatrogenic public health disaster.

The goal of early identification and proactive treatment in psychiatry is laudable-- but elusive and not currently attainable. Prevention requires having a happy combination of accurate identification and effective and safe treament. Instead, we now have the opposite dangerous combination-- wildly inaccurate identification with a likely ineffective but definitely risky treatment.


The people who developed the "risk syndrome" suggestion for DSM5 are smart and have no conflict of interest motivation. How can they be promoting such a bad idea? The answer is that, like most experts, they have a blind spot when it comes to understanding the huge gulf between the real world and their rarified research experience. Perhaps in their hands, the false-positive rate can be kept to 2 out of 3 and the cognitve treatments given will be safe and generally helpful. It has been difficult for them to appreciate just how differently and destructively their pet suggestion would play were it to become prematurely official.


"Psychosis Risk Syndrome" belongs in the DSM appendix reserved for new diagnoses that deserve further study-- but that are not ready for prime time.

[Editor's note: This commentary also appears on the website of Psychology Today.]

[mark1963]

Thank you Bob.

[bob_jones]

Literary review of the above article

by Robert Alexander Jones wouldbe journalist.

It is about time the industry showed some insight into their fallibility at deception and contrition in their ability to fool people into paying them for so called medicine while causing obvious affliction and suffering.

Don't be fooled by the modesty of this article; if they thought they could get away with it; they would endorse this fraud and that is the only thing that stops them trumpeting this new wonder diagnosis and going out and finding and epidemic of it in order to stimulate the profits of mass prescription, just as they are proven to have done with the bi-polar diagnosis and the ADHD diagnosis.

These people think that their education puts them above scrutiny and makes them too clever to get caught, hence the need to mostly section the less well educated and gullible members of society.

The victimisation selection of their so called biological chemical imbalance of the brain disease for compulsory treatment is sociological in its explanation.

They go for the lower classes of society that can not afford to fight back, never important people that could cause trouble.

Get the black guy!!!

Ever wandered why it is exactly the same group of medicines that are prescribed for ever diagnosis they have dreamed up to put in the definition manual (DSM)?

All these different chemical imbalances are cured by addition of the same group of so-called medicines they claim.

Of course they also want to include obesity in their new DSM too, what a joke, as this too will be treated with the same atypical anti-psychotics that are the fashion after a huge bribery effort by the industry to replace the less profitable and just as harmful typical anti-psychotics.

And what do they do?

You got it, make you fat!!!

The typical kill rate for an atypical antipsychotic is 1 in 400, that means they kill off 1 in 400 of their victims in the name of getting them well, another sick joke from a sick joke of a profession.

"Those that can't teach teach PE, those that can't cure the sick practice psychiatry."

- Robert Alexander Jones adds to the old Woody Allen Joke.

[bob_jones]

Just like Himmler declared Germany was in a state of Total War in 1943,Tony Blair may aswell have declared Britain in a state of Total Fraud in 1999, a War on Truth that is still going on today.

Fraudulent Psychiatric Drugs

I graduated with a degree in chemical engineering form Swansea University in 1997. My first job a chemical engineer was a Nipa Laboratories in Llantwit Fardre near Pontypridd in the South Wales Valleys.
My main responsibility was to run the P2 methanol recovery Column. This was to distil a mixture of 10% methanol 90% water into a top product of 99% methanol and not more than 1% water and produce a waste product of 99% water and not more than 1% methanol that was sent to the effluent storage tank before being tanked away by Welsh Water for treatment before it could be put in the dirty water drainage system of the country.
During my job interview I was warned by the Technical Director Gareth Vokins that the site was dirty as most of the chemicals had no pharmacological tests done on them. As the months went by I came to appreciate the serious illegality of this. Garth Vokin's God son the Healthy and Safety Officer Glyn Cox told me that there were no safety trap doors around the ladders on the three story high distillation column because he had bribed the Health and Safety Executive £800 for them to pass the safety certificate to allow them to being production at the commissioning stage of the life of the distillation column. The law requires any ladder of over three meters in height to have safety trap doors at the opening at the top or safety gates so that workers can not fall to their potential death by stepping into the opening around the top of the ladders. For pulling of the job off bribing the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) he told me he was given £400 by Gareth Vokins. Glyn Cox told me how it was an on going thing to give bribes to the HSE and that the man from the HSE that inspected the column was not interested in it at all but was keen to come up to the office to pick up his cheque for £800.
One day there was a chemistry problem with the development of the process for a new product and Gareth Vokins was losing his temper as he frequently did as he had earned the nick name "The Viper".
I walked into the laboratory part of the factory and was confided in by a Scots man that worked there. He told me that he did not know why the Viper was shouting at him because he was not a chemist but a psychologist and that he was only pretending to be a chemist for cover for his real job at Nipa Laboratories.
He went on to tell me that Nipa laboratories did not make that much money from producing and selling chemicals but that he had been secretly assessed at Swansea University while doing his degree in psychology for criminal tendencies before being offered his job at Nipa. He told me that they had taken the chance that he would not mind being a criminal to earn lots of money and were right. He said that he had paid off the mortgage on a three story house in King Edwards Road in Swansea only two and a half years after graduation for doing his secret job at Nipa Laboratories.
He explained that his job was to do medical research for the institute of psychiatry in London, the professional body governing psychiatrists. He told me that I too had been secretly assessed at university for criminal attributes and that his job was to write research notes on the workers claiming that the chemicals that they were illegally being exposed to were having beneficial effects on their mental health.
He told me that he had me down as being a little bit mentally ill when I left university but having been exposed to chemicals at Nipa Laboratories I was better.
He confided that the typical profit on a psychiatric drug is 4000% and so he had to write research notes claiming that the chemicals at Nipa were having anti-psychotic effects on the workers. He admitted that he made this up entirely but said that he had to do it because that is what made the money.
He told me how the notes he made were sold as research to the institute of psychiatry in London and they would sell them on to pharmaceutical companies at a profit with the assurance that they would make sure their members the psychiatrists would all say the chemical was an anti-psychotic if they developed it onto the market as a psychiatric drug.
This was except for the reprographic printing ink. They were not making any money on the printing ink business as they could be manufactured more cheaply in the Far East and so they were keeping that one for themselves as it was being developed as an anti-psychotic medication that was going to produce an 8000% profit.
He said that at first he never thought he would get away with it but the man that did secondary research for them thought it was a really good anti-psychotic and he was getting good results by testing it on humans that were meant to be mentally ill.
This was developed, I believe, by BTP and is now on the market as an A-typical anti-psychotic called Respiradone marketed by Janssen and is sold to the NHS for £120 per injection. It causes permanent lactation in women so they have to change their bras every day and I have heard that it causes the face to tingle. It needs an extra large nozzle for injection as the particles of soot are squashed by the small hole in a normal hypodermic needle.
He told me that he could not believe that it was taken to be a cure for mental illness as he had made up the claims that it was having any beneficial effect on the mental health of the workers at Nipa Laboratories entirely.
He also told me that the biocide facility was been used for chemical weapons research by the Ministry of Defence and that if anyone ever tried to blow the whistle on it that they would be assassinated by the Ministry of Defence.
The law requires that any chemical in production has pharmacological tests done on them as they must be submitted to the Health and Safety Executive so that they can use the toxicity data etc to set an occupational exposure limit.
However none were done on the vast majority of chemicals at Nipa Laboratories so that it was not even legal to expose worker to the smell of these chemicals. As no occupational exposure limit had been set as this sets out the maximum level in the air that a worker can be exposed to for 8hrs per day six days a week and 52 weeks of the year.
The maintenance manager Roy Rixon was in charge of sacking people that became ill due to exposure to chemicals at Nipa Laboratories. He would tell them that they were complacent and that their hearts were not in the job because they had come out in a big red rash or become pale as a sheet and lacking in energy.
I was sacked by Roy Rixon for this reason on 28/01/98.
Nipa laboratories were part of BTP plc with their headquarters in Cadishead in Manchester. The share price slumped in 1999 despite the police corruption they had funded to re-butt the truth about their corrupt and illegal practices. They would regularly send out spies to community meetings about the smells coming from the factory to make sure that Friends of the Earth were not onto them for covering the local hosing and woodland with chemicals with no pharmacological tests done on them.
During February and March 2000 the share trading firm Potam managed a take-over by Swiss owned chemical giant Clarient as they are no listed on the stock exchange and so did not need a reputation for honest accounting and so on.
So now the whole of what was BTP is called Clarient Chemicals and so there is a Clarient Chemicals in Llantwit Fardre between Llantrisant and Pontypridd.
The accountant told me to stop collecting data on the P2 methanol recovery column because he was going to include more overheads to make it look more profitable.
Written by Robert Alexander Jones on 22/09/07 revised 12/12/07

[bob_jones]

Blackmail and Psychiatry


On Wednesday the 16th of August 2000 Robert Alexander Jones was arrested under suspicion of blackmail.
He had been in a mental hospital for a while earlier that year. He was previously arrested on 18/01/00 in Llanelli town precinct for refusing to clean a slogan off a wall that he had written in coloured chalk.
The slogan was not complete when the police arrived and was going to read:-
NIPA VIAGRA FRAUD MONEY BRIBES PRIME MINISTER
There was no complaint of criminal damage by the owners of the wall and so the arrest for criminal damage was by definition unlawful. The police were keen to take the local celebrity “psychopath” off the streets as a previous precinct chalking stunt had made the BBC Wales news the previous November and had upset the Home Secretary.
Robert Alexander Jones was discharged from hospital on 10/03/00 having been tortured with the strongest and most soul destroying chemical tortures.
They had accused him of being delusional about being called a psychopath and were keen to take bribes from the police to give opinions and make accusations that were grossly defamatory, baseless and malicious.
Robert had not been the sort of person to be taken in by the frauds of psychiatry and so was not going to allow the state to get rich with corrupt and illegal payments at the expense of his career and liberty.
So Robert made a reasonable approach to the hospital for damages.
The demands for money were clear. Robert Alexander Jones wanted damages of £21,000 for the false imprisonment, deformation of his character and a complete and utter withdrawal of the slanderous and malicious allegation of hyper mania.
The hospital had a familiar tactic of making a criminal allegation in order to achieve an arrest so that access could be gained with a pre-determined plan to place Robert under section of the mental health act.
So on Wednesday the 16th of August 2000 the hospital contacted the police; to tell them that there were being blackmailed and made a complaint.
The police arrested Robert and took him to the police station.
Robert was immediately sent to see the doctor as the police had no intention of perusing the complaint of blackmail and had made the arrest on entirely false premises.
However the corrupt social worker that was part of the ambush did not get her way.
The doctor was satisfied that Robert Alexander Jones was fit to be interviewed and so after Robert had put the heavies on Inspector Lindsey and found the police to have told lies about the theft of four pieces of A4 paper from his bed-sit, the police reluctantly had to interview Robert about the very serious criminal allegation that had been made.
During interview under suspicion of making unreasonable and unwarranted demands for money with menaces Robert Alexander Jones took control and did most of the talking.
It was pointed out to the police that the menaces are that I say the hospital have made false and malicious allegations of mental illness and it is obviously true that the allegations of mental illness were indeed false and malicious or the hospital would never have perceived my assertion of that fact to be a threat.
It is thereby and only thereby that my demands for money are both reasonable and warranted.
It was pointed out that if the allegations of mental illness are not false and malicious then the demands for money are neither reasonable nor warranted and Robert was guilty of a very serious offence and the police must press charges.
It was accepted by the police that the allegations of mental illness were indeed false and malicious and thereby the demands for money were both reasonable and warranted and it was therefore accepted that Robert Alexander Jones was not guilty of the offence of blackmail and was released without charge.
There is no way Robert could have been released without charge unless the allegations of mental illness were indeed false and malicious because that is what made Robert’s demands for money both reasonable and warranted.
However Llanelli police were not to be defeated by logic and rational argument and so as soon as Robert was released in the lobby of the police station he was immediately re-arrested under section 136 of the mental health act and forced to under go psychiatric assessment.
This was a blatant unlawful arrest as the police had been comprehensively defeated in their attempts to present a gross defamation as fact and had no logical basis to make any utterance whatsoever.
By this time the time was getting late and the corrupt social worker had gone home and so the assessment under the mental health act was done by professional that had not been given corrupt and illegal payments.
Robert Alexander Jones was declared to be not sectionable and so had to be released from custody again with the promise that he would go and see a general practitioner to get something to take the edge of like Valium for example.
By this time Robert had missed his date and so did not have the fun he was intending to have that day.
The general practitioner was under whelmed by Robert when he sat down in his office a few days later.
Robert told him he needed something to take the edge off and was ordered out of the surgery immediately for wasting the doctor’s time.
This was the art of logic applied to a bogus medical system that claims to have medical products that promote rational thinking.
And yet anyone with a basic grasp of the concept of logic will accept that Robert Alexander Jones had proven that the allegations of mental illness were indeed false and malicious in the first place.
The slanderers were confounded by rational thinking and didn’t like their quackery being shown up for the fraud it really is.
To this day they can not accept that they lost big time. But it is not them that I seek concurrence with and so again they are devalued and discredited for the frauds and irrational oppressors that they really are.

VICTORY ROBERT ALEXANDER JONES

[bob_jones]

Just been reading the mephadrone (or whatever) thread, reminded me of the free market ideas about drugs.

You can't sell one single psychiatric drug on the black market, every single one must be forced on people (or given to liars) sometimes with physical restraint.

Now the right will say governments are bad and the market is good.

So there is no place in the free world for any psychiatric drug because no-one would go to the doctor and pay for some.

Think I will start a thread on the East Vs West models of heath care corruption (there is no model without corruption in the world).

Do you want to pay a bribe to see a doctor? (East)

Do you want the doctor paid a bribe by the drug company to give you their product? (West)