Junk Science Promotes the Agenda of Psychiatry and Big Pharma

The absurdity of their junk science should be so humiliating that psychiatrists hide in shame. Here are the latest two studies on schizophrenia and its standard treatment.

Junk science again rears its head in psychiatry. This time, there are two pseudo studies trying to suggest that:

• Schizophrenia is the result of brain changes that could be manipulated with drugs, and
• The use of Big Pharma’s drugs does not cause brain damage.

Both studies, published today, are so flawed as to be laughable, but as ever, they’re published in the most prestigious of medical journals, the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Archives of Psychiatry. They will, therefore, be taken seriously and cited to help enforce the brain disease-pharmaceutical treatment paradigm, in spite of the utter lack of proof documenting that schizophrenia is the result of either chemical or physical differences in the brain.

Comparing Drugs

“Polypharmacy With Antipsychotics, Antidepressants, or Benzodiazepines and Mortality in Schizophrenia” claims that benodiazepines, a group of drugs that act primarily as sedatives and muscle relaxants, increase the rate of death in people diagnosed with schizophrenia, but that antidepressants and antipsychotics do not.  The problem with the study is that it compares the death rate only during the time the drugs are taken. Therefore, long term damage, which is known to exist as a result of both antidepressants and antipsychotics is completely ignored.

All five authors of this study are deep in the pockets of Big Pharma:

• Dr. Tiihonen has financial associations with AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, F. Hoffman-La Roche, Janssen-Cilag, Lundbeck,  Novartis, Organon, and Pfizer.
• Dr Suvisaari has served as a consultant to Janssen-Cilag and has received lecture fees from AstraZeneca.
• Dr Suokas has been in research collaboration with Janssen-Cilag.
• Dr Haukka has been in research collaboration with Janssen-Cilag and Eli Lilly, and has been a member of the expert advisory group for Astellas.
• Dr Korhonen has had research agreements with Abbott, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Orion Pharma, Pfizer, and Sanofi-Aventis.

It’s no surprise that these researchers found exactly what their masters wanted to see.

Blaming Defective Brains

The authors of “Elevated Prefrontal Cortex -Aminobutyric Acid and Glutamate-Glutamine Levels in Schizophrenia Measured In Vivo With Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy” claim to have found deficits in the brains of schizophrenics. They used proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy to measure levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate-glutamine (GLx) in the brain. They examined 20 controls, 16 drugged schizophrenics, and 16 non-drugged schizophrenics. The brains of people diagnosed with schizophrenia showed elevated levels of GABA and GLx, whether in the drugged or undrugged group.

At first, that sounds impressive. The study appears to have discovered a definitive distinction in the brains of people with schizophrenia. After all, they compared people who were taking the pharmaceutical drugs against those who weren’t. There is, though, a flaw in the study that completely negates the results.

The only requirement of the drug-free group was that they be off antipsychotics for 14 days prior to the study. Because we know already that antipsychotics, antidepressants, and methamphetamines (which are often taken illegally by schizophrenics) cause brain damage, the truth is that this study has proven nothing.

Six of the eleven researchers are closely allied with Big Pharma:

• Dr Kegeles has received research support from Amgen and Pfizer.
• Dr Girgis has received research support from Janssen and Lilly.
• Dr Gil has received research support from Pfizer.
• Dr Slifstein has served as a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline and Amgen, and has received research support from Pierre-Fabre.
• Dr Abi -Dargham has received research support f rom GlaxoSmithKline, served as a consultant for Bohringer Engelheim, and been a consultant and speaker for Bristol-Myers Squibb Otsuka.
• Dr Lisanby has received grants from the National Institutes of Health, Stanley Medical Research, the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, Department of Defense, US Army, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems/St Jude, and Brainsway; a patent filed by Columbia University on brain stimulation technology; and received donated medical equipment from Magstim and Magventure

The pharmaceutical company, Janssen-Cilag, helped finance the study.

Seriously?

As is typical of studies that are either directly supported by Big Pharma or are performed by researchers who receive Big Pharma funding in any manner, these studies are meaningless. They will, of course, be cited as proving the otherwise unprovable: that people diagnosed with schizophrenia have a brain disorder that’s either physical or chemical, or both, and that the pharmaceuticals used are either harmless or only mildly harmful.

Both are lies, but as long as there are profits to be made by pharmaceutical corporations and psychiatrists from pushing these drugs, the lies won’t stop. They will trot out these junk studies with a straight face, claiming that they have proof of the unprovable.

If there were one hint of truth behind the claim of brain disease as the cause of schizophrenia, it would surely have been well documented by now. Yet, the best that can be done is studies like the two just described. There has never been any legitimacy behind psychiatry’s most treasured claim. Surely the blatancy of its junk science should dispel that myth now.

Sources:

• Polypharmacy With Antipsychotics, Antidepressants, or Benzodiazepines and Mortality in Schizophrenia, ARCH GEN PSYCHIATRY/ VOL 69 (NO. 5), MAY 2012
• Elevated Prefrontal Cortex -Aminobutyric Acid and Glutamate-Glutamine Levels in Schizophrenia Measured In Vivo With Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, ARCH GEN PSYCHIATRY/ VOL 69 (NO. 5), MAY 2012

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