Paxil, Seroxat : Reputations for sale? a review of the PAXIL 329 scandal: Stan Kutcher

Stan Kutcher is the Liberal candidate for office in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Politics aside it is alarming that Kutcher, a co-author of the infamous Paxil 329 study (see links below for background on study 329) does not want the public to know about his connection, to the point of an article being retracted from a local paper. *the article is viewable if click on 'cached'. *also viewable here in this 'scribed' link. The article quotes author Alison Bass: "They essentially distorted the outcome measures, and essentially lied." Alison Bass is author of the book Side Effects and authors a blog.

Hat tip to Bob Fiddaman for noting that this candidate who also works in the Canadian mental health system is one of the Paxil 329 authors.

They buried data showing teens became suicidal on Paxil.

The study is one of the most scandalous in research psychiatry and Kutcher doesn't appear to want the truth out just days before the Canadian elections.

The co-authoring of the Paxil 329 study is a fact, and one Kutcher cannot hide, though local papers retracted the story discussing the study, the study still exists. This is where politics and psychiatry and pharma all intersect, with scandal and corruption as key search terms.
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Article below is from bcc news via news.bbc.co.uk

Reputations for sale?

Fiona Godlee is the editor in chief of the British Medical Journal and has written this article about Secrets of the Drugs Trials.

"Panorama's account of GlaxoSmithKline's successful attempts to market Seroxat for use in children, despite the fact that its own published trial found evidence of serious adverse effects and failed to show benefit, is fascinating but depressingly familiar.

What is even more depressing is that such behaviour is still so widely tolerated within medicine.

There has been no shortage of outcry or official condemnation - including clear statements from the World Association of Medical Editors, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, and industry itself through its Good Publication Practice guidelines - that undeclared conflicts of interest and ghost writing are unacceptable.

But, you might reasonably ask, what use are such huffings and puffings in the face of the individual rewards on offer from drug companies.

Let's be clear what is and is not acceptable. There is nothing wrong with getting help from medical writers, provided they and their source of funding are clearly acknowledged.

Nor is there anything wrong with academics or clinicians working with industry, provided they remain personally accountable for everything they say.

What is clearly wrong is writers, academics, or clinicians concealing under their coat tails an army of company spin doctors intent on distorting the scientific record.
Legislation is not going to happen soon - the powerful industry lobby will make sure of that. Regulation is still inadequate.

So what can we do to change the blind-eye culture of medicine? In the interests of patients and professional integrity I suggest intolerance and exposure.

We shouldn't have to rely on investigative journalists to ask the difficult questions.
So at meetings, why not slow hand clap any speaker who does not begin their talk with a sentence or slide declaring their conflicts of interest?

And if journals discover authors who are guests on their own papers, they should report them to their institution, admonish them in the journal and probably retract the paper.

Reputations for sale are reputations at risk. We need to make that risk so high it's not worth taking."

via news.bbc.co.uk

hat tip to PharmaGossip http://pharmagossip.blogspot.com/2011/04/bbc-news-panorama-reputations-for-sale.html

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From Furious Seasons

Paxil, Lies, and the Lying Researchers Who Tell Them

April 30, 2008

Paxil, Lies, and the Lying Researchers Who Tell Them -Philip Dawdy

"I'd thought it wasn't possible for the infamous Paxil Study 329 to be even more infamous, but I was clearly wrong. A new paper, based upon court documents, is out and, while you need to understand stats more than usual to understand what's going on, it's clear that GlaxoSmithKline and the study's authors were up to some deceptive crap. Not that that wasn't clear before.

For newbies, Study 329 was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2001. It claimed that Paxil was good for treating depression in kids and that patients didn't suffer many adverse effects from taking the drug. The study, however, was one of the most corrupt I have ever seen in all of psychiatry--and that's saying something--and contained all sorts of jury-rigged data, hidden data and, yes, it was ghost written as well. That means many of the big name psych docs such as Martin Keller whose names were on the study didn't have much of an idea of the supporting data. The paper has been thoroughly discredited at this point, but has never been retracted by the journal.

Healthy Skepticism has been questioning this study for years and has a resource page here. "

Continue reading Furious Seasons article here.

Why does Stan Kutcher want to hide this information from the Canadian voters?


Further current reading from a retired Psychiatrist

Article-"Sally's World":

"•Efficacy of paroxetine in the treatment of adolescent major depression: a randomized, controlled trial

by Keller MB, Ryan ND, Strober M, Klein RG, Kutcher SP, Birmaher B, Hagino OR, Koplewicz H, Carlson GA, Clarke GN, Emslie GJ, Feinberg D, Geller B, Kusumakar V, Papatheodorou G, Sack WH, Sweeney M, Wagner KD, Weller EB, Winters NC, Oakes R, and McCafferty JP
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

2001 Jul;40(7):762-72.

This study was supported by a grant from GlaxoSmithKline… The authors acknowledge the contributions of the following individuals:… Editorial assistance was provided by Sally K. Laden, M.S.

Her work with Dr. Keller was poorly received, and Study 329 has become a paradigm for the misrepresentation of science in the psychiatric literature – a legend with its own literature. "
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Update: Why 'The Coast' Pulled the Stan Kutcher Article by Bob Fiddaman links to retraction or lawsuit article.

View the article here at scribed "Kutcher demands retraction may sue the 'Coast' paper".