One Example of a Medical WhistleblowerOne of these essential Medical Whistleblowers was Allen Jones who was an investigator for the Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General of the Food and Drug Administration. He wrote an excellent report about a criminal corruption of our governmental processes for the approval of pharmaceutical drugs and their use on vulnerable populations such as the elderly, prisoners, welfare recipients, the homeless, children, teenagers in rehab and the mentally ill. His report as well as other supporting evidence can be seen at this link from the Psychiatric Law Project in Anchorage Alaska - Attorney Jim Gottstein.
Allen Jones ReportThe New Freedom Commission on Mental Health was established by U.S. President George W. Bush in April 2002 to conduct a comprehensive study of the U.S. mental health service delivery system and make recommendations about pharmaceutical treatment. The commission, using the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) as a blueprint, subsequently recommended screening of American adults for possible mental illnesses, and children for emotional disturbances in order to increase the use of highly controversial and inadequately tested pharmaceutical drugs. Many of these drugs were found to be dangerous and had serious long term health effects as well as being so physically addictive that it was almost impossible to take the patient off them after they had been initiated. There are few potential benefits from the Texas Medical Algorithm plan, except increased profits for pharmaceutical companies. There are serious concerns about the potential for unnecessarily causing neurological damage and contributing to increased medical costs, potential substance abuse and pharmaceutical drug dependence.
NAMI and other pharmaceutical industry front organizations are used to compromise of scientific integrity under color of authority. Organizations that protect the civil rights of the disabled look askance at the irony of the use of the word freedom, contending the commission is yet another example of the excesses of drug industry marketing. The effects of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health recommendations are to simply foster drug use rather than the prevention of mental illness and use of alternative treatment modalities.
TMAP, which was created in 1995 while President Bush was governor of Texas, began as an alliance of individuals from the University of Texas, the pharmaceutical industry, and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas. Through the guise of TMAP, critics contend, the drug industry has methodically influenced the decision making of elected and appointed public officials to gain access to citizens in prisons and State psychiatric hospitals.
Allen Jones was the investigator for the Office of Inspector General regarding the approval of psychotropic drugs by the Food and Drug Administration. Allen Jones, was a former investigator in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General (OIG), Bureau of Special Investigations. His very detailed report can be found on the Psychrights.org website.
Many critics contend that the strategy behind the commission was developed by the pharmaceutical industry, advancing the theory that the primary purpose of the commission was to recommend implementation of TMAP based algorithms on a nationwide basis. TMAP, which advises the use of newer, more expensive medications, has itself has been the subject of controversy in Texas, Pennsylvania and other states where efforts have been made to implement its use.
Jones wrote a lengthy report in which he stated that, behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, was the "political/pharmaceutical alliance." It was this alliance, according to Jones, which developed the Texas project, specifically to promote the use of newer, more expensive antipsychotics and antidepressants. He further claimed this alliance was "poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab."
A coalition of over 100 advocacy organizations, united under the banner of Mindfreedom.org in representing the psychiatric survivors movement, has been galvanized by their strong opposition to the New Freedom Commission.
See also articles on this website
http://psychrights.org/articles/articles.htm Opponents of the New Freedom Commission plan have questioned the motives of the commission, largely from a civil liberties perspective, asserting the initiative campaign is little more than a thinly veiled proxy for the pharmaceutical industry, which, in its pursuit of profits, is too eager to foster psychotropic medication interventions. Some opponents contend that its objectives are to foster chemical behavior control of American citizens. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was receiving reports of increased rates of suicide, especially during the first months of drug use and widespread extra label use of these medications in direct violation of their black box warning about potential adverse side effects.
"TeenScreen" which was a program to screen every American shoolchild for mental disease, represented naked pharmaceutical company greed. Even before these New Freedom Commission recommendations were made there were 15 million Americans on Zyprexa (7.4 million) and Risperdal (7.6 million) alone in 2002. Sales of atypical antipsychotic drugs reached $6.4 billion, making them the fourth best selling class of drugs in America. The combined sales of antidepressants and antipsychotics jumped from around $500 million in 1986 to nearly $20 billion in 2004 – a 40-fold increase. (Anatomy of an Epidemic: Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 7, Number I , Spring 2005) The article is available at:
http://psychrights.org/Articles/EHPPPsy ... c(Whitaker).pdf
In April, 2000, AHRP filed a complaint about the experiment, with the Office of Human Research Protection--see:
http://www.ahrp.org/Initiatives/YaleComplaint.phpBut this was not enough profit for the pharmaceutical companies and therefore additional marketing and political pressure were used to create a public mental health policy to screen children and get more of them on atypical antipsychotics. This was the TeenScreen program which was designed to diagnose mental illness in teenagers, but has been shown to be coercive and unreliable. The same political/pharmaceutical alliance that generated the Texas project is behind the New Freedom Commission. Using the marketing strategy behind TeenScreen, this alliance is lobbying to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy and thus force on children and adults expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects. The global pharmaceutical market is forecast to grow to US $842 billion in 2010 (Pharmaceutical Market Trends 2006-2010 by S. Seget)
