by Jim Edwards
BNET August 30, 2010
The NYT Sunday magazine crowned Dr. Joan Luby as the queen of preschool depression this weekend, but failed to mention that Luby has taken cash from Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Shire (SHPGY) and AstraZeneca (AZN) to study using atypical antipsychotics in young children. The article is significant because of the outsize role that the Times magazine plays in creating and naming new social trends. (Remember when you suddenly figured out that carbs make you fat but fatty meat doesn’t? That was the NYT mag.)
In this case, the phenomenon is depression in children as young as three years old, and the trend is to treat it with drugs such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Adderall and Seroquel. The article, by Pamela Paul, provides a useful roadmap into how parenting will be medicalized by Big Pharma:
“The idea is very threatening,” says Joan Luby, a professor of child psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, … “In my 20 years of research, it’s been slowly eroding,” Luby says of that resistance. “But some hard-core scientists still brush the idea off as mushy or psychobabble, and laypeople think the idea is ridiculous.”
The “ridiculous” layperson who first pointed out that Luby had written medical journal articles urging the use of antipsychotics on preschool children without declaring her drug company payments was me. Luby was a paid speaker for AstraZeneca in 2003-2004 (AZ makes Seroquel); she received $2019 in a for a consultancy from Shire in 2004 (Shire makes Adderall and Vyvanse); and prior to 2006 she received grant/research support from Janssen, the unit of J&J that markets Risperdal. Luby is also a member of a group of scientists who want greater study of potential new uses for psychiatric drugs in young children. That group has ties to 16 different drug companies. Some of these drugs have dangerous side effects.
The Archives of General Psychiatry (published by the American Medical Association) said it would investigate how Luby failed to disclose her past ties when it published “Preschool Depression,” a study she did on 3- to 6-year-olds. Joseph Coyle, the editor of the AGP, did not immediately respond to an email requesting an update on its Luby probe. (The American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the American Journal of Psychiatry, has chosen to ignore the issue.)
Read the rest of this article here: http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/meet-the-queen-of-8220preschool-depression-8221-8212-and-her-drug-company-backers/5595
To read about other pharma funded psychiatrists promoting a psycho/pharma agenda read Shrinks For Sale – The Corrupt Alliance of the Psychiatric-Pharmaceutical Industry by CCHR http://www.cchrint.org/cchr-issues/the-corrupt-alliance-of-the-psychiatric-pharmaceutical-industry/
Also read DSM Panel Members Still Getting Pharma Funds by CCHR http://www.cchrint.org/2010/05/21/dsm-panel-members-still-getting-pharma-funds/