[W]e medicate increasing numbers of children with potentially harmful psychotropic drugs, a trend fueled in part by questionable and under-regulated pharmaceutical industry practices. In the early 2000s, for example, drug companies withheld data suggesting that such drugs were more dangerous and less effective for children and teenagers than parents had been led to believe. The law now requires “black box” warnings on those drugs’ labels, but regulators have done little more to protect children from sometimes unneeded and dangerous drug treatments.
Universities should consider whether their medical faculties include people who, either through involvement in corporate ghostwriting, conflict-of-interest shilling for the pharmaceutical industry, or questionable experimental practices, are contributing to this vile trend by lending an impression of research neutrality to it. Don’t let your university be used in this way. As with the Joseph Biederman fallout at Harvard, it will ultimately hurt your school.