Bad News on the Election Front

For those looking for relief from the Obama-Clinton tiffs, I unfortunately have some bad news about the American Psychiatric Association election: Alan Schatzberg beat Donna Norris.

As I covered in a prior post, Norris heads the task force charged with scrutinizing the conflicts of interests of potential DSM-5 committee members. Schatzberg, on the other hand, is a great champion of industry-funded CME. He is on the clinical advisory board of "neuroscienceCME," a new MECC portal owned by CME Outfitters. This company produces a blizzard of CME in different formats, each funded by a single drug company whose product shines more brightly than its competitors in the neuroscienceCME version of reality. Schatzberg is also the editor-in-chief of the new journal, "The International Journal of Sleep and Wakefulness," which is produced by the MECC CECentral, funded entirely by Cephalon, and is a blatant full journal advertisement for Provigil. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Schatzberg is co-chair, along with star hired gun Charles Nemeroff, of a series of fancy CME meetings traveling across the country on behalf of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Otsuka, makers of Abilify. Entitled Current Concepts and Approaches in Treatment Resistant Depression, these meetings were created in order to highlight recent data showing that Abilify has some mild effectiveness as an augmenter of antidepressants.

But the election news was not all bad. David Fassler was elected as the secretary-treasurer and Dilip Jeste as trustee-at-large. Neither of them accepts industry money and Dr. Jeste made a conscious decision one year ago to sever his industry connections because of his concerns regarding industry influence.

Donna Norris for President (of the APA)

These days, when you think politics, you are probably picturing the likes of Obama, Clinton, or Huckabee, but at least for the next few weeks, think Donna Norris.

Yes, it's time for all good psychiatrists to open that official APA ballot and check off their choices for who will make crucial decisions about the American mind over the next couple of years (the actual term is one year, but there is a preparatory "president-elect" year). Rarely have the distinctions between the candidates been more stark.

In one corner, we have Donna Norris, M.D., a child and adolescent psychiatrist who has been active in APA governance for 25 years. She is currently the secretary-treasurer of the APA, chair of the Ethics Appeals Board, and a past speaker of the APA Assembly. More to the point, she is concerned about the pharmaceutical industry's influence on our profession. She chairs a special task force in charge of screening all potential members of the DSM-5 committee for commercial conflicts of interest. On a more personal note, she receives no financial compensation from drug companies, depending on her private practice for all of her income.

By contrast, Alan Schatzberg, M.D., has no APA governance experience, although he once served as vice president of the Northern California Psychiatric Society. Even more troubling, he was involved in what many consider an ethical breach in 2002, when he wrote an article endorsing mifepristone for psychotic depression without disclosing the full extent of his financial involvement in Corcept, the company that has tried to develop the drug for this purpose. At that time he owned 3 million shares; the current value of these shares is about $12 million. Currently, Schatzberg is the editor-in-chief of a journal entitled the "International Journal of Sleep and Wakefulness" which is funded wholly by Cephalon, a pharmaceutical company that sells Provigil. The purpose of this pseudo-journal appears to be to convince readers that sleepiness is a huge public health problem and that Provigil is the mainstay of treatment.

I sent both Dr. Schatzberg and Dr. Norris a series of questions exploring their views on conflict of interest, and Dr. Schatzberg ignored me (Dr. Norris responded promptly).