Remember those “depressed babies” I wrote about? Maybe this will help them..
… get off drugs they’re not supposed to be on in the first place. (Some doctors in Australia were describing antidepressants for infants.) Now there’s a movement for psychiatrists to wean themselves off of pharmaceutical endorsement dollars:
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Dr. Daniel Carlat knows all too well how easy it is for doctors to be seduced by drug industry money.
In 2002, he earned $30,000 in speaking fees to promote Wyeth's antidepressant Effexor XR to fellow doctors.
"I quit doing it because I felt I was beginning to push some ethical boundaries in terms of what I was saying and what I was not saying," said Carlat, a psychiatry professor at Tufts University in Boston who believes doctors need to cut their financial ties with drug companies.
"My own story was really nothing special," he said in a telephone interview. "I made $30,000 for the year, which is less than some of these doctors make in a weekend."
Carlat and other psychiatrists have been studying the issue and have proposed that the American Psychiatric Association cut back on medical education seminars funded by drug companies.
Source: Psychiatrists may cut some ties to drug firms | Health | Reuters