David Healy describes

… the astonishing marketing power of pharmaceutical companies, which can now effect huge changes in medical culture within months. [To take one] case, a great part of the scientific literature (the primary marketing tool of companies) on the use of antidepressants in pregnancy and on dependence on antidepressants is ghostwritten – just as virtually all literature on giving antidepressants to children was, at one point, company-written. Firms of medical writers are contracted to pharmaceutical companies to place in academic journals articles attributed to, but not actually authored by, university researchers.

Because of this, guideline makers like Nice, which can only go by the published literature, are trapped. Regulators, like the FDA and MHRA, which reflect a professional consensus rather than lead on issues like this, are likewise stuck. Doctors who believe their role is to follow Nice, the MHRA and the scientific evidence are in the same bind.

The process of manufacturing clinical consensus has become so slick that it is now almost impossible to find independent articles from academic physicians with no links to industry that will sound a note of caution about prescribing antidepressants to women of child-bearing years. This is a problem that increasingly applies across all of medicine – from the use of HRT, to drugs for osteoporosis, respiratory or gut problems, pain-relief, as well as all psychotropic drugs.

Where once drugs were seen as poisons to be used judiciously and with caution, they are now treated as fertilisers whose more or less indiscriminate use can only do good. Where once farmers knew to keep their cattle out of fields growing the serotonin reuptake inhibiting weed, St John’s Wort, as it caused miscarriages, under industry influence women have been herded by doctors in exactly the opposite direction.

I lived here, at the beach, all winter, writing on my blog last October, November, and December about the empty beach and the cold water.

Mornings, a few runners in black sweats appeared on the sand, their backdrop huge container ships and contrails.

Afternoons, I scoped out beachstones with calcite lines around them for my collection, now piled in a glass bowl near the piano in Garrett Park. Nights, I trained my binoculars on big orange moons off the balcony.

The quiet was absolute. Somewhere in it, intermittently, I became aware of the tides. Aware of the way I wasn’t aware of them, and of how they calmed me.

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Everyone’s here now, and it’s hot. The smoothed winter sand that made the beach look, from above, like an almond cookie, is pocked with shoveled wells and wetted sculptures. The wind ruffles not only the dune grass, but flags on lifeguard stands and the edges of blue umbrellas.

From our second-floor balcony, we hear constant little inrushes of speech on the boardwalk.

I’m forty-two. I’m done dating. I

He’s not my blood cousin. We can

Everyone’s here, but there’s still the same propofolic effect — calm, just this side of sleep.

It’s a Barnum and Bailey world, just as phony as it can be.

If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans with a diploma mill degree or other form of faked credentials… if you’re actively impersonating someone with legitimate credentials… you know what you need to do: Keep your head down, do the best job you can without any training, and hope no one notices your fraudulence.

But if you’re one of the Americans who has hired one of these birds — if you’re someone like Gerald Weiss, a doctor specializing in pain management who never checked his nurse’s credentials, and who was recently shocked to discover that Betty Lichtenstein used his prescription slips to maintain her pain meds addiction — you’re either a fool or something darker.

Weiss’s nurse — a total fake — was found out when a patient complained to the authorities about some botched and painful needlework she endured from addled pretend Betty. (Did the patient complain to Weiss? If not, why not?)

So – Weiss has a nurse with no credentials. She’s a nurse-impersonator. She’s so incompetent patients complain to the authorities. She steals his prescription pads and forges his name so she can steal 96 Oxycodone pills.

Let Weiss here stand for all the police departments, school systems, national security agencies, and, yes, sometimes universities, that can’t be bothered to check simple online registries or transcripts in order to protect the health and welfare of other people.

Weiss’s negligence is so extreme – comically extreme – that you wonder whether he and Nurse Betty are in cahoots.

Canada’s Robert Fulford goes after ghostly Gloria Bachmann.

Professor Bachmann is being very quiet about all the international attention given to her ghost-writing on behalf of Wyeth pharmaceuticals. So is the university that hired her.

No surprise there. It’s the most corrupt medical school in the United States. UMDNJ. The only medical school, as UD has said more than once on this blog, with rolling prison admissions.

More glory for the state of New Jersey.

… another abortion.

… in this Newsweek article featuring a group of great university professors.

Let’s look at how the reporter introduces the subject. Beginning of first paragraph:

There are few better fixes for insomnia than listening to a professor read her PowerPoint to you, slide by slide. And that can be a good thing, especially if you’ve been up all night playing Rock Band. But discovering a teacher who wakes you up instead of putting you to sleep is one of the most rewarding college experiences you can have…

Hey. I didn’t write it. Turns out I’m not the only one who knows most classroom PowerPoint use sucks.

The first featured professor has a fifty-student class. It’s a discussion class.

[Bob Goldberg] says the key is to let students know you notice them and keep them actively engaged at all times. For him, teaching is a lot like his chosen field of study. “It is really about experimentation,” says Goldberg, 65. He is constantly trying new things to get students involved: asking them to swab their cheeks for DNA analysis, tossing them heads of lettuce and asking, “Is this lettuce in its original form? What about this one?!” …Despite the class size, he wants all his students to know each other and feel comfortable participating in discussions. … Eden Maloney, class of 2012, was intimidated when Goldberg called her up to the front of the class to summarize a previous lecture (a Goldberg classroom staple), but, she says, “I learned not only critical analysis but also how to think clearly under pressure. Those skills are invaluable and go far beyond the classroom.”

This high-energy professor, a lad of 65, puts students on the spot. He calls them up to the front of the room to make presentations.

Another:

[William Flesch’s] goal in the classroom: to get students to argue with him. “If you agree with everything I’m saying, I’ve failed,” he says. He takes that philosophy to heart, baiting his students to get them to debate among themselves and asking them to design their papers in the same manner…

Yet another:

Every week [Kathleen] Canning lectures for an hour, then steps back to allow discussion. “It’s key to listen, to let the students grab the material, work with it, and get as far as they can,” she says.

Small sample, I know. And not all of these people have big classes. None of them have enormous classes, etc.

But what keeps coming across to UD is the human drama of their classrooms — a combination of eager passion on the part of the professor for the subject; an equally eager passion on his or her part for discussion and debate; an ability to set intelligent terms for the discussion through some lecturing; and, finally, what I’d call an instinctive sympathetic interest in the professor’s students.

It’s not that these professors are hams, grabbing people by the lapels; they’re simply energetic organized minds attracted to other minds. They’re sincerely interested in an intellectual connection with their students. They take their students seriously as intellects, that is; they’re not condescending, but rather provocative, demanding, leading them on…

**********

People want to be awakened.

PowerPoint is the opiate of the classes.

UD‘s sunning in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware right now, but faithful readers know she lives in Bethesda, Maryland, a place UD, following her old friend David’s usage, calls ‘thesda.

In UD’s absence, lots has been happening up there. (Is it up? I think it’s across. I think we’re directly east of ‘thesda.) She’ll mention a couple of items here.

First, one of her ‘thesdan neighbors is going to jail because he did the revolving door dance too fast:

A former top NASA official was found guilty Thursday of breaking ethics laws by helping a consulting client get nearly $10 million of the space agency’s funds.

A jury found Courtney Stadd, of Bethesda, Md., illegally benefited a private client while on the agency’s payroll and lied to ethics officials. He faces up to 15 years in prison at sentencing, scheduled for Nov. 6.

Stadd was NASA’s chief of staff and White House liaison from 2001-2003, when he left to start a consulting business — Capital Solutions — that specialized in advising aerospace clients. But he came back for two months in 2005 as the interim No. 3 official at the request of President George W. Bush’s newly installed administrator, Mike Griffin, who wanted to reorganize the agency that was still reeling over the Columbia space shuttle disaster.

During that time, he steered $12 million in agency funds for earth science research to the state of Mississippi. One of his clients, Mississippi State University, ended up with $9.6 million.

… When Mary Cleave, acting director of NASA’s Earth-Sun System Division and a former astronaut, decided to conduct a nationwide search for bids for [an] earth science earmark, officials at Mississippi State were upset that they may not get the funds, according to e-mails introduced as evidence. Stadd’s contact at the university e-mailed him asking if he could “provide some prodding” from inside the agency.

Cleave testified that Stadd summoned her to his office and told her only $3 million should be put out for nationwide bids. The remaining $12 million, he told Cleave, should go to Mississippi because of an agreement between the state’s congressional delegation.

Afterward, Stadd tried to get the university to raise his fee from $7,000 a month to $10,000 a month, citing his help with the funding.

That last bit’s the ‘thesda Touch, The Mighty ‘thesda Touch (to paraphrase Jule Styne)… Now gimme more money…

Oh, and the second ‘thesdan thing … Actually, a Garrett Park thing — Garrett Park being the specific town where UD lives within the ‘thesdan metropolis… It’s about how despite the US Post Office closing hundreds of post offices across the country, they’re not going to close Garrett Park.

As you know, Garrett Parkers like UD do not get mail delivered to their doors. Everyone has a rented box at the post office. We like it that way. We fought to keep it that way. We like taking walks, and we like greeting our neighbors while picking up our mail.

Here’s a photo of the building
our post office is in.

It’s on the lower level. The first floor’s a restaurant (“It’s in the middle of nowhere off of Rockville Pike. I had to keep tapping the GPS to make sure it was working. ‘Uh, I don’t think there is anything to eat around here…’ ” “It is nestled in the woods, next to a train track, on a cul de sac in some cute little town in Maryland. Thank god for dashboard navigation system — otherwise I never would have found it.”), and the upper floor is town offices.

The Gadsden Times:

… Jacksonville State will play the 2009 season under a one-year, post-season ban by the NCAA because … JSU [failed] to meet standards on the NCAA’s Academic Progress Report for a third straight year and the school’s appeal [was] rejected.

“That penalty is historic,” [football coach Jack] Crowe said. “This team is getting penalized for the history of somebody else. These guys that you’re going to see play for us, they all are going to graduate and they’re all on track.”

Being ineligible for post-season play and for the Ohio Valley Conference Championship left the Gamecocks “playing for pride,” said senior nose tackle Brandt Thomas, an OVC preseason all-conference pick.

… “Obviously your goals have to change when the whole APR thing came out, but the attitude and the mood throughout the whole team is every game is going to be the same,” Thomas said. “We’re going to step on the field with the same intention, the same tenacity. We still have a chance to prove that we’re one of the best teams in the country. We don’t need a magazine or a TV station or somebody to tell us that we are or we’re not.”

… Crowe stressed it’s within each player how he handles the season’s adversity of playing under the ban.

… “It’s sort of like we got over it and went on, which is what grown men do,” Crowe said…

Higgledy piggledy
Gloria Bachmann
When asked why she ghosted
Said “Shaddap you face!

I’ve made a big fortune
Postmenopausally
Find your own cashbox
And get off my case.”

Details on this verse form here.

“My spirit soon,” wrote the poet Thomas Shreve, “shall brave the billows, like a trusty bark.”

All of the trustees at the University of Illinois are now in the same bark:

The Illinois Admissions Review Commission panel recommended Thursday in its final report that all trustees should submit resignations. Gov. Pat Quinn will then choose which members of the Board of Trustees to accept.

The Commission recommended that new board members conduct a review of the University’s president, the chancellor of the Champaign campus and other university administrators.

One hundred years ago this month, Freud

traveled from Europe by steamship with Carl Jung and Sándor Ferenczi, the three of them psychoanalyzing one another en route [to the United States]. When they arrived, they spent several days touring Chinatown, Coney Island and other New York sights.

Then Freud went on to Worcester, Mass., where on the morning of Sept. 7 he gave the first of his famous “Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis” at Clark University.

Emma Goldman and William James were in the cheering section.

Peter D. Kramer makes Freud sound very old-fashioned. He “displayed bad character in the service of bad science.” Rather than, like the leading practitioners featured on University Diaries, using bad science in the service of greed.

… by Lee Johnson, based on ten Grateful Dead songs, will be performed at UC Santa Cruz on Sunday, the fourteenth anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s death. 

Last year, the university announced the acquisition of the Dead’s own archives — a sprawling collection of memorabilia featuring correspondence, photographs, fliers, posters, televised interviews, stage backdrops and concert props. The university, which offers well-attended Grateful Dead courses taught by music professor Fred Lieberman (who has also collaborated on two books with Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart) as well as a weekly campus radio show dedicated to the band’s music, will house the collection in a purpose-built room of its new library. 

The samples sound great to old UD, though she knows little Grateful Dead music. A touch of Copland, some Bernstein, some Gershwin. But its own thing. Very nice.

These are quotations from a BBC special on the next edition (it will come out in 2012) of the psychiatric DSM.

The catch-all mental disorder category NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED — which will apparently be abundantly featured in the forthcoming edition — allows UD (and you too) to anticipate lifelong toxic drug treatment for something or other.

*********************

“The relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the American Psychiatric Association” is at the heart of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

“Each edition doubles the number of diagnoses.”

“A seemingly small change in adding diagnostic criteria can create a whole other population to prescribe a medication for… Most of the categories have a not-otherwise-specified diagnosis…. A person is exhibiting some mood symptoms but those symptoms are not that severe. When you have that kind of (NOS) prescription, you are inadvertently pathologizing what could be a normal part of [life].”

“If you create a criteria, and people appear to meet the criteria… well, many kids appear to have the criteria for bipolar pediatric disorder… This leads to treatment with a group of medicines that are among the most toxic in medicine…. Children of one, two, three, are put on these drugs…”

“There are barely short-term studies, let along long-term studies, on childhood bipolar disorder.”

“The majority of DSM panel members have financial ties to the industry. In the panels on mood disorders and schizophrenia, one hundred percent do… These are THE categories for which drugs are the standard treatment.”

“Psychiatry is undergoing a crisis of credibility… Senator Grassley has asked the APA leadership for their financial records…”

“The APA must develop more rigorous COI policies… Unrestricted research grants, for instance, are currently excluded in their COI policy…”

“The DSM decisions are worth $25 billion to the drug industry.”

“This whole business of sub-clinical disorders… will interest the drug industry enormously…”

“This could cause the rates of mental disorder to sky-rocket. … The pharmaceutical industry will be thrilled with broader, more open descriptions of disorders…”

Now UD, let’s calm you down.

**********************************

UD thanks Daniel Carlat.

A class action lawsuit has begun against a now-defunct private Canadian university which

… advertised programs illegally, provided misleading information to the government, exposed students to financial risk, offered inadequate services and kept sloppy student files, including transcripts printed on the back of recycled e-mails.

Doesn’t that last thing, though, make it a Green Campus?

… interviews Florida Atlantic University professors on the subject of PowerPoint, and gets some fascinating responses:

… One FAU professor said PowerPoint can be a crutch for “lousy” teachers who drag out the same old lectures, or, um, PPT’s (PowerPoint Presentations) each year.

Another has gone as far as to request a room change when he was put in a techie FAU business college classroom where he had to write on a small computer pad to have words projected on a screen.

“I said, ‘Oh forget this, just give me some chalk,'” said FAU history professor Stephen Engle, who advocates teaching through telling stories. “I want the oldest classroom on the campus.”

Might make a good rallying cry for the growing PowerPoint Pissoff brigade.

OH FORGET THIS. JUST GIVE ME SOME CHALK.