A few months ago, I became aware of various articles online that stated “Robert F Kennedy Jr. says 70% of news advertising revenue comes from Big Pharma”. In the articles there is a link to a May 18, 2015 video in which Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota, interviews Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on an episode of Off the Grid. Off the Grid is a talk show on Ora.tv, an online network.
Here’s the RFK Jr. quote from the video:
“I ate breakfast last week with the president of a network news division and he told me that during non-election years, 70% of the advertising revenues for his news division come from pharmaceutical ads. And if you go on TV any night and watch the network news, you’ll see they become just a vehicle for selling pharmaceuticals. He also told me that he would fire a host who brought onto his station a guest who lost him a pharmaceutical account,”
One of the things that’s most striking about pharma-psychiatry is that although it is based on a colossal hoax, and does an enormous amount of harm, it receives little critical attention from the mainstream media. Mr. Kennedy’s comment helps us understand this silence.
Here’s another quote from an article on trueactivist.com, June 1, 2015:
“This deceptive strategy proved to be quite lucrative so the drug companies launched a massive advertising campaign to peddle a wide variety of ineffective and unnecessary drugs to a trusting and ignorant public. This industry actually spends more money on advertising than they do on research and development every single year.”
Pharma, in effect, buys the media’s silence by pumping enormous sums of money into advertising.
But in the last two or three years, we have seen more and more criticism of pharma-psychiatry in the media. Here’s a short list of some mainstream media outlets that have taken pharma-psychiatry to task in recent years:
Scientific American, John Horgan:
Return of Electro-Cures Exposes Psychiatry’s Weakness June 24, 2015:
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New York Times, Alan Schwarz:
Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill June 9, 2102. How young people are getting ADHD drugs by “lying to their psychiatrist”.
The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder, December 14, 2013
Thousands of Toddlers Are Medicated for A.D.H.D., Report Finds, Raising Worries, May 16, 2014
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New York Times Editorial:
An Epidemic of Attention Deficit Disorder December 18, 2013:
“So many medical professionals benefit from overprescribing that it is difficult to find a neutral source of information. Prominent doctors get paid by drug companies to deliver upbeat messages to their colleagues at forums where they typically exaggerate the effectiveness of the drugs and downplay their side effects. Organizations that advocate on behalf of patients often do so with money supplied by drug companies, including the makers of A.D.H.D. stimulants. Medical researchers paid by drug companies have published studies on the benefits of the drugs, and medical journals in a position to question their findings profit greatly from advertising of A.D.H.D. drugs.”
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San Jose Mercury News, Karen de Sá:
Senate panel examines why California foster care system ‘addicted’ to psychiatric drugs
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Washington Post:
Peter Whoriskey
Antidepressants to treat grief? Psychiatry panelists with ties to drug industry say yes, December 26, 2012:
“In what some prominent critics have called a bonanza for the drug companies, the American Psychiatric Association this month voted to drop the old warning against diagnosing depression in the bereaved, opening the way for more of them to be diagnosed with major depression — and thus, treated with antidepressants.”
Shankar Vedantam
Experts Defining Mental Disorders Are Linked to Drug Firms, April 20, 2006
Sandra Steingard, MD
A psychiatrist thinks some patients are better off without antipsychotic drugs, December 9, 2013
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Daily Mail, Peter Gøtzsche, MD:
Prescription pills are Britain’s third biggest killer: Side-effects of drugs taken for insomnia and anxiety kill thousands. Why do doctors hand them out like Smarties? September 14, 2015.
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Wall Street Journal, Ed Silverman (in Pharmalot):
Psychiatrists With Ties to AstraZeneca Resign From Texas State Hospital April 21, 2015
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Huffington Post, Peter Breggin, MD:
Drug Companies Drive the Psychiatric Drugging of Children July 24, 2012
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abc News, Katie Moisse, Health Editor:
DSM-5 Criticized for Financial Conflicts of Interest March 13, 2012
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BBC Panorama, four part Seroxat (Paxil) and GSK documentary, Shelley Jofre, reporter:
The Secrets of Seroxat, October 13, 2002
Seroxat: Emails from the Edge, May 11,2003
Panorama’s two year journey, October 3, 2004;
Secrets of the drug trials, January 29, 2007
For a concise synopsis of all four programs, see truthman30’s July 3, 2015 post All Four BBC Panorama Seroxat Documentaries Now Available To View Online…
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The Guardian
Peter Gøtzsche, MD
Psychiatric drugs are doing us more harm than good April 30, 2014
Will Self
Psychiatrists: the drug pushers August 3. 2013
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Let us hope that this trend will continue, and that the media will increase their scrutiny and exposure of what is arguably the biggest and most destructive hoax in human history. If you see an article critical of psychiatry’s abuses in a newspaper or other media outlet, please consider sending comments of appreciation to the writer and the editor.