How you get the words "pervasive corruption" out of that talk is beyond me. It would suggest corruption runs rampant through the whole field.

He suggests that "pharmaceutical companies create the you that you think is you" huh???

He says that "nervousness and depression are real, and biology is involved, and that pharmaceutical companies didn't create these problems." Well thats good to know.

But then he goes on to imply that the APA wrote the DSM 3 to redefine and come up with disorders tailor made to fit big pharmas drugs. Like panic disorder and benzodiazapines. He implies that OCD and PTSD are not real disorders. Just make them up so that we can get Paxil approved for OCD. Cmon? Have you ever watched the show hoarders? If you don't think OCD is real watch that show. Talk to a woman who has been repeatedly raped and beaten about PTSD. I am not being extremist, he is suggesting these things are made up. Social anxiety is just being shy.

Of course if someone walks in and says I am shy and get a little nervous in crowds they should not be given a benzo. Marketing campaigns that try to influence us and docs to buy their meds is nothing knew. I don't think there are a ton of people who really want to go on psyche meds if they don't have a real problem just cuz they saw it on tv. Although I agree docs hand them out way to easy when it isn't warranted.

I guess the old freudian way of looking at all disorders under the label neurotic that were somehow caused by sexual fantasies about our mothers was serving us well. Cmon? Freud had his place but we certainly needed more precise definitions because we have a better understanding than Freud.

It is certainly true that big pharma withheld info from the FDA and influenced the FDA on what studies got published and what didn't. And tried to influence experts into putting their names on papers reviewing those studies. I think he gave two examples. One of which he was involved with. Hardly pervasive evidence of corruption of a whole field. This isn't new news. There have been many law suits. There are black box suicide warnings. Many papers written on withdrawal. Patent laws haven't changed in their favor. If anything there has been a crack down on them in recent years.

So big pharma markets their products. True. I think TV ads should be illegal but they are legal.

They have influenced the APA to make up stuff in the DSM for their benefit. Make up some new anxiety disorders. I don't buy it. He said they wanted to market SSRI's as anti anxiety meds but because benzos had a bad rap they did it as anti depressants. Actually SSRI's were developed as anti depressants. Most anyone here will tell you they are useless for anxiety. They were actually a big break through in psyche meds because it was the first time one was rationally designed to act by a specific mechanism at a specific site and they are just as effective as TCA's but without the side effects those had. Previous to that they were all discovered by accident.

They aren't even players in anxiety and depression anymore. The last anti anxiety med, Buspar, was approved in 1986. The benzo's have been around since the 60's. Nothing new since. Not really a novel anti depressant since Prozac except Wellbutrin.

If you look at the history of prescription medications in all areas, most of them were discovered totally by accident. A company may spend a billion dollars in research in animal models and initial human clinical trials to get it approved but really very little is known about it until it has been on the market for ten years. The initial clinical trials are short and small even if they are expensive. We don't really know until it gets out there in the real world and many follow up studies are done. This is the way it has always been. It is not nearly as much that way in other areas of medicine in recent years because of huge advancements. It is still that way with psyche meds.

All this stuff is old news. I am interested in the latest and greatest cutting edge research by good reputable researchers. Stanford is one example.

http://www.benzo.org.uk/librium.htm
http://www.preskorn.com/books/ssri_s2.html

Heroin, cocaine, opium, bromides, barbiturates, thorazine, librium.......trial and error.