Opposing Digits

In an Oct. 17, 2005 meeting, Director Charles Currie announced that the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) no longer endorses the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP). Upon hearing this news, the Government Accountability Project and numerous other watchdog groups breathed a huge sigh of relief: Finally. In a nutshell, TMAP embodies everything that is wrong with mainstream medicine and the government's relationship with Big Pharma, and, in the opinion of many, it proves that our government is corrupt at its highest levels.

What's wrong with TMAP? Let's start with the basics: Many patients already feel the negative effects of contemporary, mainstream medicine's detached, objective approach to treatment. As if mainstream medicine were not impersonal enough, TMAP takes the complex, subjective physician-patient decisions necessitated by the nature of mental illness and pars them down into a "decision tree" approach to psychiatric

Follow the money to Big Pharma
Given TMAP's "drug-'em-all" approach to psychiatric treatment, it should come as no surprise that Big Pharma played a major role in its creation. To create TMAP's algorithms, Dr. Shon, nationally known psychopharmacologist Dr. John Rush and the former chair of the University of Texas-Southwestern's psychiatry department, gathered three panels of experts to create "consensus guidelines" for major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. So, what's the problem? Of the 46 members of the three panels, 27 have conducted research on behalf of pharmaceutical companies, served on drug company speakers' bureaus or served as consultants to a drug company, according to a review conducted for Mother Jones by the Center for Science in the Public Interest," reveals reporter Rob Waters in his 2005 article "Medicating Aliah."

However, Big Pharma's sticky grip on TMAP doesn't end there. In spite of Dr. Shon's earlier claims that drug companies only gave $285,000 in funding for TMAP, Austin-based investigative reporter Nanci Wilson reviewed the Texas Department of State Health Service's financial records and discovered that pharmaceutical companies gave the DSHS $1.3 million from 1997 to July 2004, of which at least $834,000 was intended for TMAP.



High-profit psychotropic drugs get top billing
As a matter of fact, TMAP's sponsors produce the pharmaceuticals recommended as "first line treatment" -- Prozac, Risperdal, Adderall, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Buspar, Geodon, Depakote, Effexor, Paxil, Celexa, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Serzone and Remeron. TMAP's financial ties with Big Pharma run into the millions and TMAP's sponsors represent all of the Big Pharma heavyweights, including:



Doctors are strong-armed into prescribing brand-name drugs
Even if some state doctors recognize that these newer drugs are not necessarily the safest or most effective pharmaceuticals to treat a patient, they are not allowed to prescribe a generic drug until at least two, but preferably three, of these newer, patented drugs have failed, according to Jones. In fact, going against TMAP puts a state doctor at excessive liability for the success or failure of the generic medication, an unpredictable factor in any pharmaceutical treatment decision.

# posted by madthumbs @ 9:25 AM