Your Speaker This Evening, Dr. Charles Nemeroff
19 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 6th, 2008 // 4:05 pm
Ever play ‘Whack-A-Mole?’ You know, you smack the little creature on the head whenever it pops up, although it keeps reappearing elsewhere? Well, Emory University’s Charles Nemeroff, who is the latest academic researcher to be investigated by the US Senate Finance Committee for undisclosed conflicts of interest, managed to pop up in all sorts of venues as a speaker over the past few years.
If you look at this schedule, which runs from 2000 to 2006, the nationally known psychiatrist, who until Friday night chaired the Emory School of Medicine psychiatry department, was a fixture on the Glaxo speaking circuit for such drugs as Paxil and Wellbutrin.
There he is at the Bacara Resort & Spa in Santa Barbara, California, talking up Paxil CR. Here him chat at the Peninsula Grill in Charleston, South Carolina, the Monterey Fish Grotto in Pittsburgh or Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Birmingham, Alabama. No destination was too far from Atlanta…because Glaxo was paying.
Putting aside the debate over the use of paid experts to speak at dinners and soirees about medications, there are, in fact, 39 pages listing the various places where Nemeroff appeared talking up Glaxo meds. While some chats were teleconferences, this explains the large sums Glaxo paid him over the years, compared with the smaller amounts that yielded the discrepancies being probed by the Senate committee. It also raises a question - when he did find time to do anything else?
Insider
It reminds me of the story about the Prof of Cardiology who liked the lecture circuit a bit too much. His knickname was ” The British Airways Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine”!
He was asked: “Who looks after your patients when you are away?”
He replied: “The same people who do it when I’m here!”
Justice in MI
Perhaps having dinner is part of resarch and development?
Former BP
Sadly, this is a very, very common occurence. The way that Big pharma effectively bribes “KOLs” and “speakers” is downright disgusting. They are the prostitutes of the industry and many of them earn extreme amounts of money doing it. Go into Harvard, Yale, Duke, Cleveland and you will find many of the esteemed faculty on the Big pharma payroll. It would blow the minds of the public and congress, not to mention the IRS!
Matthew Holford
What was it Brad Pitt said (playing Death), in Meet Joe Black? “The only certainties in life are death and taxes”? I’d like to know what it was that caused Nemotode to think that nobody would notice, eventually? What’s the fallout going to be? And has the IRS pricked up its ears, yet?
So many questions, and so few answers.
Matt
Thom
I didn’t find any speaking engagements at Nobu, Le Cirque or Tavern on the Green? Does this mean that GSK was pimping out Nemeroff on the cheap?
truthman30
The disturbing thing is..
This psychiatrist is but one example of conflict of interest within the psychiatric-pharmaceutical money making machine…
Mental illness is big business..
And like any big business which generates such massive revenues , it is ripe for rot..
People who are mentally unstable, mentally unbalanced, emotionally unwell or “mentally ill” are amongst the most vulnerable demographic in society. They have been exploited by psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry for decades now..
It is a total disgrace…
This one is a high profile case, but similar practices are rampant at every level of the psychiatric profession..
The mentally ill are as disposable as trash in this corrupt system and treated with nothing but utter contempt and condescension…
They are unfortunately nothing more than “statistical road kill”, used abused and drugged to death, maimed and harmed for the pursuit of profit for the pharma’s and accolades for the psychiatric fraud..
Can anyone name me one actual humane achievement by biological psychiatry in the past 50 years?..
Thom
Truthman, I think you are going over the top. There have been achievements by biological psychiatry. We know for instance that many mental illnesses have genetic underpinnings. And people can be helped by these drugs. They are just not the panacea for all our problems as latter day holy men like Nemeroff have preached.
And like all solutions, they have some drawbacks.
Christopher
Truthman - aside from your general complaints about the value of medications for depression and the pharma industry’s role in promoting them, do you have anything specific about this man that would support your comments here, or is this another drive by? I’m pretty sure you don’t know him or have any reason to go after him personally. The many on here who ‘have a go’ know nothing about the man or the physician but simply go after the flaws.
Oh to be perfect…
truthman30
I don’t need to point out the corruption and the flaws of the pharmaceutical industry..
I don’t need to point out the fact that Key Opinion Leaders of psychiatric drugs do so in order to line their pockets at the expense of patient health…
The articles here on pharmalot point those things out regularly, and they do it in spades..
I also don’t need to point out the dangers of Paxil-Seroxat and other dangerous and bogus drug treatments..
A simple google search does that for me..
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=paxil&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=seroxat&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
truthman30
“Truthman, I think you are going over the top. There have been achievements by biological psychiatry. We know for instance that many mental illnesses have genetic underpinnings. And people can be helped by these drugs. ”
Can you back this up with independent research Thom?…
(As in “independent” research, not pharma whore-key opinion leader, pharmaceutical industry funded biased research)
Thom
Truthman, do you and supremacy claus need to get a room together? you seem like flip sides of the same coin.
truthman30
Hmmm Thom..
Nice try at avoiding my questions…
AA
Thom,
As one who has suffered numerous side effects from psychotropic meds, including a hearing loss, I would be interested in the same research that truthman has asked for.
Also, what criteria do you use to define a drug as beneficial?
A major problem is the professional’s definition of beneficial is different from the patient’s. So that is why I was asking.
Matthew Holford
Thom wrote:
“…We know for instance that many mental illnesses have genetic underpinnings…”
No, Thom, we don’t *know* that. That is received wisdom, put forward by people who have a very real (financial) interest in our believing it. It remains a possibility, which may inform our understanding. Nothing more.
However, assuming that the underlying cause of mental “illness” is genetic, I regret that drugs do not appear able to contribute anything to a solution. They don’t appear even to be capable of contributing to palliative care.
The Nematode is a charlatan: he claims massive expertise; expertise that entitles him to exclude criticism, and yet has never fixed anybody. He has been rewarded for his incompetence with large amounts of moolah. I find that grotesque. So do many others.
Matt
J
truthman30,
Here’s what you asked for.
Using SERT as an example:
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry 32 (2008) 1735–1739
Journal of Neurochemistry, 2001, 79, 237-247
JPET 308:679–687, 2004
Neuropsychopharmacology (2005) 30, 2230–2235
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2003, 42, 1210 – 1250
Biochemical Pharmacology 2006,72,1633-1645
J. Mol. Biol. (2001) 307, 357-377
Chem. Rev. 1997, 97, 1359-1472
J. Org. Chem. 2008, 73, 4345–4361
I trust you can put all the pieces together and see the whole picture.
If not, here it is in brief:
The genetic sequence determines the amino acid sequence of proteins which in turn controls protein folding and ligand recognition. Altered genes result in an altered amino acid sequence which can alter the protein tertiary structure and/or ligand recognition. Since neurotransmission is controlled purely by molecular recognition a dysfunction in the sequence of molecular recognition events due to an altered protein, whether a receptor or an enzyme, disrupts neurotransmission and the resulting behavior of the person is then referred to as psychiatric disease. The goal of a pharmaceutical is to make up for this dysfunction. But, it’s not that simple and not every drug works for every person - because of genetics and protein structure. That’s why the future goal is to be able to use genetics to determine which drug will work the best for a particular person based on their genome.
FYI
I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist and I don’t work for a drug company.
Lisa Van S
“J”
“Neuropsychpharmacology”. Board Certification, nope, doesnt exist!! NCAP Members are well payed by the Pharmaceutical Industry. Nemeroff is a great example of their financial ties. Dr. John Mann is another, and I hope he is on Senator Grassley’s radar screen!!
C
J, With all due resect, you still have not asked Truthman30’s question with definitive data or hard evidence.
All I see so far is sci-bable …
C
J, With all due respect, you still have not asked Truthman30’s question with definitive data or hard evidence.
All I see so far is sci-bable …
4ME2C
There is no SOLID evidence that schizophrenia is caused by genes. All the data seems to be “theoretical” or the data “might be a good indicator of…” but nothing ever IS.
Am J Psychiatry 2008; 165:497-506
Schizophrenia Candidate Genes: Are We Really Coming Up Blank?
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/165/4/420
And on the subject of drugs, they just mask problems, like alcohol, but with different side effects. These drugs don’t fix anything. It’s simple really, lets take SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake inhibitors) that help fix a “chemical imbalance”. I’d like to see the “serotonin” readings in my brain before and after I take this drug and what the correct or balanced level is… unfortunately one CAN’T measure the serotonin levels in the brain of a living person. And again if that was a problem then what about the idea of eating foods that effect the serotonin levels in the body? Hmm… something to think about.