Nominee for FDA Commissioner Has Strong Industry Ties

Remonstrance

OK. Darth Vadar may have over the top; out of curiosity and penitence, I googled the items you suggested and here is my two cents worth: the studies you cited don’t qualify Dr. Cardiff to be a barracuda of consumer protection in this era of rampant greed and corruption.

1) NIMH study…..I have to take it on faith that the TADS study had industry support as you inferred because the funders are not listed on the version I saw. I also have to take it on faith that Mr. Cardiff had anything to do with it because the author/director was not listed either. Most importantly, there was plenty to like about this study from industry’s perspective. Talk about dodging a bullet! If I were a Prozac salesperson, I could spin this study so quick it would make your head spin.
The TADS study appears to provide evidence for what anyone with a modicum of lived experience knows as it relates to clinical practice (how psychiatric drugs are routinely prescribed and how patient outcomes are monitored). As one would have predicted, combination therapy—pharmacology in conjunction with CBT—is the safest short term treatment option over pharmacology monotherapy presumably because talk therapists have something useful to provide clients that prescribers don’t, i.e. they are trained to establish trust, they are less likely to use force and coercion, they are trained to observe and report behavioral changes, and they are less likely to be know-it-alls as to the origins of their client’s behavior (especially distress) a state which lends itself to open discourse and patient disclosure, things that are vital for safety.
This is hardly the kind of study that elevates an academic researcher into being a champion of consumer safety capable of protecting people from psychiatric harm. Rather this study qualifies him to be the champion of more funding for complimentary industries that can ameliorate psychiatric harm after the fact.
From this study, one could spin a fairly tepid policy recommendation that psychologists be involved in treatment teams to do the gumshoe work that psychiatrists usually will not or cannot do. One could also use this study to recommend to politicians that we should increase taxes to pay for CBT for all children and adolescents who are prescribed SSRI’s so that the protective factor of having a psychologist or counselor involved won’t be limited to all but the most privileged families. But you and I both know that currently, the mental health pie is divided with the lion’s share going to big Pharma; and the only thing that will change that is when expected corporate losses (liability) are in excess of anticipated corporate earnings resulting in a massive pull outs. Corporations pulling support for research and development of new psychiatric drugs who are aware of the long term negative impacts of psychiatric drug addiction will sell their sinking ships to other corporations, possibly resulting in some changes in the field. By then, however, it will be like mining companies who leave Super fund sites in their wake. By the time, the profits have been safely migrated out of the industry, the cost of psychiatric harm the extent of the corruption of the FDA will be evident but there will be no one to be held liable.
Additionally, since the study was limited to 36 months, it does nothing to reveal the long term harm of stigmatizing of adolescents whose depression may have nothing to do with a chemical brain imbalance and have everything to do with bullying at school, dysfunction at home, unhealthy body image from advertising, etc. By the time the adolescent enters adulthood, the situational factors that may have been primary factors in the development of ‘major depression’ may have been so discounted or ignored in light of seeking remedies for the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory, that they may be forgotten entirely. After all is much easier for families to embrace the chemical imbalance theory of the diagnosed family member since it requires no work on the part of families to understand why little Johnny didn’t get the emotional support he needed to thrive. By the time five to ten years roll by, little Johnny may be on polypharmacy, always searching for just the right tweak to his cocktail as opposed to seeking alternative ways of coping with distress. The latter part of Johnny’s life will be chasing a phantom chemical brain imbalance or dealing with protracted withdrawal from multiple psychiatric drugs.
The fittest candidate is someone who is not only willing to mitigate harm, but prevent it in the first place and holding corporations liable for future harm. By prevention I mean someone who favors policies to make it illegal to patent and market harmful drugs to treat vulnerable individuals, especially children, who are sad or depressed when safer evidence based alternatives exist. Even the TADS study shows that the CBT monotherapy ‘catches up’ with pharmacology monotherapy and combo therapy. It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out which approach is safer in the long run but it takes a barracuda to win the information war that is necessary to put safety first.
Too bad, the adolescents who received only CBT were not followed for twenty years. I’d put my money on them having better long term outcomes, which is what really counts, especially now that the baby boomers—arguably the first generation of individuals psychiatrized for life starting in adolescence—are rapidly aging and we can see, first-hand, within our own circle of family and friends, which of us end up being the first to die—those who have been psychiatrized and medicated for life and those of us who, due to the grace of God, dodged this bullet.

2) Per the study Duke did on St. John’s Wort (taking it on faith again that Dr. Cardiff was the lead author/director) I am not too impressed. Launching grenades against herbal supplements is a safe target for academia as it provides relatively low yielding fruit while pissing off very few financial investors. There is no reason that dietary supplements shouldn’t be held to the same vigorous testing standards as pharmacology, but I suspect that they are being held to an even higher standard, if measured by the amount of corporate media attention given to this study v.s. the amount given to the numerous studies in which SSRI’s that performed equally as bad as hypericum perforatum against placebo.
Perhaps the focus of the study should have been which does the least amount of harm? When my adult son met most of the criteria for major depression after being discharged from the hospital for a suicide attempt, he did take St. John’s Wort and was greatly assisted by doing so. What my son did differently, (which Duke study participants probably did not) was he harvested his own St. John’s Wort in the field and produced his own hypericum perforatum tincture in our kitchen.
The supplement didn’t have a huge effect either way but it did give him a sense of purpose, a stake in his own recovery, some sweat equity, an opportunity to be outdoors, and greater attention to his diet in general. Better than lying in bed all day waiting for a magic pill to take effect.
Do you see the difference? The point of using herbal supplements is that individuals who are willing to pay out of pocket (they can be quite substantial in cost) or formulate their own, are more likely to make lifestyle shifts and accept greater responsibility for things within their control, such as diet. Good luck getting people to put sweat equity into their recovery once a psychiatrist fraudulently claims that they have a chemical brain imbalance that will be ‘fixed’ once they find the right cocktail of drugs. Why bother to make any effort to change if one is the passive victim of a disease, and why bother to complain about side effects if a psychiatrist thinks it’s all in your head or the only solution to obtain additional prescriptions and the original symptoms such as lethargy or agitation or irritability become indistinguishable from the side effects including compounded lethargy, agitation or irritability? Once an adolescent is in the snare of psychiatry, they are at risk of being consumers for life.

3) Per Dr. Cardiff’s role in a major study involving noetic therapies (a term which I wasn’t familiar with until today) I couldn’t read about it because the study was behind a pay wall. And I don’t have time to read up on the benefits of public input. If the literature put out by pseudo organizations such as NAMI is any measure of the intelligence of the ‘general public’ then there is very little to be gained from public input, as the public has already been the victim of a massive fraud, subjected to decades of direct to consumer advertising and marketing campaigns instilling the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness deep into our psyche and duping us into believing in the safety of psychiatric drugs. Until the public has been educated to the contrary, there is very little to gain from public input.