It is fraud: it is Standard Practice

 bonkersinstitute.org

I am biased by my experiences with the publicly funded programs that serve foster children.  The system is a poor substitute for a family---my now adult sons and I are painfully aware of how publicly funded Child Welfare and Mental Health social service systems can become a family's worst nightmare.  I am grateful beyond measure that my family has come through some horrible experiences  intact.  That my son, Isaac, has survived at all, is a miracle many times over---We have been blessed; and I am so aware that not everyone is as lucky as we have been.  That fact has kept me awake more nights than I can possibly count... 

via Wikipedia:

In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud, but there have also been fraudulent "discoveries", e.g., in science, to gain prestige rather than immediate monetary gain. 

Most people would agree that people need to told accurate information about the validity of a diagnosis; including whether or not it is Biological in nature; or if this is a belief based on nothing more than a yet to be validated Hypothesis.  Saying that a psychiatric diagnosis is a disease/chemical imbalance/neuro-biological in nature is a story told to "bust the stigma" and to get people to take their meds; not because it is based on fact. 

Most people would agree that people need to given accurate, unbiased information about the drugs prescribed to them and their children.  Most of us would agree it would be wrong to tell people that they in fact have a disease/chemical imbalance or a neuro-biological condition requiring drugs to treat it; when no imbalance, disease, defect or neuro-biological condition has been identified.  These claims are being made without any physical, neurological or medical examination taking place.  A conversation with the person and gathering information from others about their personal opinions and subjective observation of the patient or 'client' is not an examination; and even a consensus of informed opinions does not make the weakest of 'evidence' scientific or valid; it does not make the psychiatric diagnosis a medical condition either.  

The fact is: no genetic condition, chemical imbalance, or neuro-biological pathology 
has ever been identified in any human being alive or dead; 

that causes any mental illness, or psychiatric diagnosis.

It is important you have accurate information about the risks, the negative effects of the drugs, including lethal risks; and are not simply given biased information about the potential benefits of taking a psychiatric drug. For professionals to ignore their ethical duty to fully inform patients and parents of children about the nature of psychiatric diagnoses, about the potential for harm involved in taking psychiatric drugs is criminal; not just "unethical."  It is, in reality fraud to state the drugs correct a dysfunction; since no physiological dysfunction has actually been identified.  To tell this lie, and then not fully inform people about the serious risks inherent in taking psychiatric drugs as prescribed, is medical consumer fraud.  Failing to give people the very information which is necessary to protect their children and themselves is particularly heinous; despicable really, all things considered.

Since no pathological finding has actually been identified, this particular hypothesis has never been validated.  It is not a valid scientific finding, or a medical disease; it is simply a ploy used to perpetrate fraud in medical practice.  It is used to manipulate and control by misinforming people with the intention of altering their beliefs and their behavior. i.e. to gain cooperation and to maintain 'treatment compliance.'   Told to family members this false claim is used in an effort to enlist their cooperation and participation in coercing a family member to be 'treatment compliant.' This being the case, it is an unethical claim for any psychiatrist or mental health professional to make.  It is dishonest, it is disrespectful and it is evidence of an utter lack of professional integrity.  How in the hell is this not recognized as a root cause of non-compliance, the source of the growing mistrust of psychiatry and the primary reason people have for avoiding psychiatric treatment?  Avoiding people who are dishonest, coercive and abusive is a natural healthy response for a reasonable person to have.

It is fraud to tell a story in order to alter other people's behavior.  People that believe this story pay for appointments, treatments and very expensive drugs; or are on public medical programs we all pay for.  Many believe the drugs are treating a disease, because of the erroneous belief that doctors don't lie to patients.  People take neurotoxic drugs believing that the drugs treat a brain disease they have.  The drugs cause iatrogenic, or 'physician caused' diseases, neurological impairments, and can disable them; and even cause their untimely death.  Many are never told the serious risks involved.

Not one of my once able-bodied and physically healthy friends who are now physically and /or cognitively impaired were informed of the well-documented common effects that have disabled them.  I was not told what could happen to my son by lead researcher who used him as a human guinea pig without consent, informed or otherwise.  Multiple neurotoxic drugs used concomitantly in doses and combinations which are contraindicated and not approved for pediatric use have a traumatic disabling effect on human beings.   Without proper medical help, how can I help my son recover?  The betrayal of trust and the trauma of having my son used in State sanctioned Drug Trials without my permission; in spite of my vehement protests.  I was prevented from protecting my own child from public 'servants' who abused their authority, committed perjury, felony assault and medical neglect in the process of drugging my son into a state of disability with unapproved unsafe neurotoxic drugs known to be particularly harmful to children.

It is fraud.  It is criminal, and it has been done by the eugenicists/psychiatrists and unethical professionals in this country to the 'genetically and/or socially inferior' for decades.  American psychiatrists with a notion of genetic superiority instituted a program of torture as treatment in psychiatric institutions as a social service project to cleanse the gene pool and protect their society from the psychiatric patients; victims they tortured, maimed, and killed.  These ideas and methods were used by German psychiatrists who later helped the Nazis effectively kill millions---pseudo-scientific, pseudo-medical treatment standards that originated here in America and have remained entrenched within standard psychiatric clinical practices and family and child welfare social service programs.  The bio-medical model was and is a means to segregate the 'seriously mentally ill' from the rest of society; "for the good of society."  It has never been an ethical medical treatment provided in the patient's best interest; psychiatric treatment is more often, something done to the patient supposedly for 'society's benefit.'

What was done to my precious son is not unique; it is a consequence of how bio-psychiatry  practices medicine through social engineering.  The willful blindness and hubris of arrogant psychiatrists who have deceived, defrauded, disabled and killed patients is only surpassed by those   psychiatrists and other medical professionals who fail to censure, and discredit the unethical methods used and the people who use them.  It is a passive aiding and abetting of criminal behavior, professionals who do not take a stand against such unethical and illegal behavior became complicit when remaining silent, failing to speak in defense of victims; or even offer them medical assistance.  The criminals are heralded as 'Lead Researchers' consulted by Public Policy Makers, enlisted as 'Scientific Advisers' and more than one of these thugs in white coats have been elected President of the APA.

I am utterly outraged by the lack of action to protect children on Medicaid; particularly those who are  foster children.  The plan is to monitor the ongoing off label drugging which is defrauding Medicaid!  The plan in effect, is to continue to use foster children as human guinea pigs because the ADULTS don't want to be responsible, to DO THE RIGHT THING and to STOP using them as guinea pigs in  Human Experimentation.  It is a gross misstatement to imply that the use of psychiatric drugs is  Evidence Based Medicine; much less imply that prescribing these teratogens recklessly could possibly be in any child's best interest.  I saw no evidence that foster children's fundamental needs, particularly the need to be protected from further harm, was a primary concern ---or even seriously considered in the development of the recommendations for change in "Interstate variation in trends of psychotropic medication use among Medicaid-enrolled children in foster care" published in Children and Youth Services Review.  here  The press release announcing this report hailed it as laying the foundation for the necessary changes needed to better serve foster children, I call that claim an exaggeration. 

The plan is to continue allowing foster children, to be used as guinea pigs.  Continue to conduct seeding trials in an attempt to garner FDA approval for drugs currently used off-label, with ill effect.  Off-label prescriptions without valid evidence of safety or effectiveness for the reason they are prescribed is Human Experimentation, calling it 'off-label' prescribing sure makes it sound innocuous doesn't it?

It is fraud.  

  It is Standard Practice. 

It is criminal. 

Moral: Drugging foster children using diagnostic criteria and treatment protocols based on subjective opinions is acceptable if it facilitates defrauding Medicaid and it enables BigPharma to meet it's marketing goals of increasing already obscene profit margins. Poor children on Medicaid and in foster care are simply a means to an end to exploit; an expendable commodity. 

originally posted 5-11-2012 rewritten 7-5-20112

Who Is Not Fit To Practice Medicine?

via The Alliance for Human Research Protection:

Wednesday, 09 May 2012
At a minimum, the practice of responsible medicine requires that physicians who prescribe drugs whose known severe adverse side effects are likely to cause their patients irreversible harm, requires that those physicians follow monitoring guidelines to ensure their patients' safety.

A British Parliamentary Committee Report deemed Rupert Murdoch "not a fit person" to run a major news reporting company based on his organizations illegal phone hacking activities.

Here is a compelling reason why psychiatrists who prescribe antipsychotic drugs are "not fit" to practice medicine.

At a minimum, the practice of responsible medicine requires that physicians who prescribe drugs whose known severe adverse side effects are likely to cause their patients irreversible harm, requires that those physicians follow monitoring guidelines to ensure their patients' safety.

The second generation neuroleptics (antipsychotics such as Clozaril, Zyprexa, Risperdal, Guiedon, Seroquel, Abilify) are known to cause severe, potentially lethal adverse effects. These include rapid metabolic changes, including acute weight gain, and interference with normal glucose metabolism. These changes lead to increased rates of cardiovascular disease and premature deaths.

In 2003, the FDA required a warning label about the diabetes risk for people prescribed second-generation antipsychotic drugs. The American Diabetes Association and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) recommended glucose and lipid screening and monitoring for all patients starting these drugs.

The drugs are widely misprescribed even for young children, whose safety is at high risk from those drug-induced metabolic changes.

Yet, studies examining monitoring rates for patients--young and old--who are prescribed these drugs, have consistently shown that psychiatrists fail to screen or monitor for either glucose or lipid levels in patients for whom they prescribe these drugs. In 2008, Dr. Dan Haupt of Washington University, St. Louis, found that only 20% of patients prescribed antipsychotics were monitored for glucose levels, and only 10% had their lipids monitored.

The latest such study (Abstract NR7-51) was presented by Dr. Christina Mangurian , a University of California at San Francisco psychiatrist, at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, May 7, 2012. Her findings confirm the lack of metabolic screening and monitoring of patients prescribed antipsychotic drugs by psychiatrists--even as psychiatrists acknowledged that they should be doing the monitoring.

Dr. Haupt suggested that psychiatry suffers from an "identity crisis ," noting that:
"Historically these are people who have gone to medical school but have not viewed themselves as physicians in the same way as an internist would."

1. Metabolic Screening in Antipsychotic Users: Whose Job Is It? by Megan Brooks, Medscape, May 8, 2012

2. ADA: Metabolic Monitoring Guidelines for Antipsychotics Largely Unheeded By Crystal Phend, MedPage Today, June 10, 2008

Vera Sharav read here

hat tip: Justice Lover

photo found at Bonkers Institute

another winner from 1 Boring Old Man

Eagle Nebula from Jean-Baptiste Faure

VIA 1 Boring Old Man

sooner or later…

Posted on Thursday 2 February 2012

a couple  excerpts:

"In response to a request from Senator Grassley, the Government Accountability Office did a survey [12/01/2011] of the medication of Medicaid covered children with psychotropic drugs in five States [Florida, Texas, Oregon, Michigan, and Massachusetts], separating Foster Children and non-Foster Children:

"No matter what your beliefs about ADHD or your thoughts that there are high rates of mental disorder in Foster Children or Medicaid Children, it’s inconceivable that the figures in those tables are justified by any rational medical rationale – particularly those second tables [which should be filled with zeros]. So there’s no question that the GAO findings are consistent with anything that has to do with the practice of sensible medicine. My impression is that this kind of over-medication of kids is largely the result of a subgroup of doctors who prey on Medicaid by seeing tons of these patients. But I don’t really know that in any real way. And those Call-Notes in the Janssen Trial gave me the willies about over-prescribing Atypicals.

"But it’s the APA response that bugs me [below]. This statement, "New research on alleged overuse of psychotropic medications in both nursing-home and foster-care settings signals a need for better training of nonpsychiatric physicians and increased funding to bolster the mental health workforce" puts the blame on others. I expect that there’s plenty of blame to go around but that we psychiatrists and child psychiatrists own a significant share in our own right. And I didn’t care much for this one either, "While APA acknowledged in its statement in conjunction with the Senate hearing that children in foster-care systems experience high rates of mental illness, it voiced support for the GAO’s recommendation that HHS issue formal guidance to state Medicaid and child-welfare agencies on best practices for monitoring the prescription of psychotropic medications for foster children." Medicine has been traditionally self regulating. I don’t hear the APA’s response as having any acknowledgement of that function. It’s a politically correct response with all the forcefulness of a feather.

"The problem here is not that people need just "formal guidance to state Medicaid and child-welfare agencies on best practices for monitoring the prescription of psychotropic medications for foster children." What’s needed is active censure of these practices with consequences from the APA on its members, the Certification Boards on their practitioners, and Licensing Boards on licensed physicians. Chronic, unjustified, overmedication of children is malpractice, not ignorance of guidelines. And, by the way, what is the APA for if not to set the tone for rational practice? If the APA doesn’t do it, sooner or later someone else will [and actually should]. There is outrageous information in this report that needs to be dealt with…"

(emphasis mine)  read here

All I can say is THANK YOU, I knew that I couldn't be the only one who knows that increased 'oversight' will NOT change anything; much less stem the the tide of fraud and malpractice that 'mental health treatment' consists of... And KUDOS to this writer for acknowledging there is plenty of blame to go around, both for the sad facts in the GAO's report and the failure of the APA to regulate it's member's prescribing practices which are harming so very many.  

GOOD JOB!  Thanks again...