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>> CITIZENS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTSŪ OF ST. LOUIS, INC.
>>
>>
>>
>> PRESS RELEASE:
>>
>> June 13, 2005
>> Contact: Evelyn J. Pringle
>> epringle05@yahoo.com
>>
>>
>> Teen Screen
>> The Lawsuits Begin
>> By EVELYN J. PRINGLE
>>
>> The scheme concocted by the pharmaceutical industry and pushed
>> forward by the Bush administration to screen the entire nation's
>> public school population for mental illness and treat them with
>> controversial drugs was already setting off alarms among parents all
>> across the country. But in the state of Indiana, the alarm just got
>> louder.
>>
>> Tax payers had better get out their check books because school taxes
>> are about to go up as the law suits against school boards start
>> mounting over the TeenScreen depression survey being administered to
>> children in the school.
>>
>> The first notice of intent to sue was filed this month in Indiana by
>> Michael and Teresa Rhoades who were outraged when they learned their
>> daughter had been given a psychological test at school without their
>> consent.
>>
>> In December 2004, their daughter came home from school and said she
>> had been diagnosed with an obsessive compulsive and social anxiety
>> disorder after taking the TeenScreen survey.
>>
>> Teresa Rhoades always viewed her daughter as a happy normal teenager.
>> "I was absolutely outraged that my daughter was told she had these
>> two conditions based off a computer test, said Rhoades.
>>
>> Attorney John Price, who is representing the Rhoadeses, confirmed
>> that he had sent a notice of tort claim to both the school and
>> Madison Center, which worked with the school system to administer the
>> test.
>>
>> This action means that the Rhoadeses are declaring their intent to
>> file a lawsuit against both entities. Price said state law requires a
>> notice of claim to be sent to any governmental agencies, including
>> schools, before a lawsuit can be filed against them, according to the
>> June 9, South Bend Tribune.
>>
>> In the notice, Teresa and Michael Rhoades claim the survey was
>> erroneous, improper, and done with reckless disregard for their
>> daughter's welfare and that they did not give the school permission
>> to give the test.
>>
>> The parents allege that when their daughter took the test, she was
>> improperly diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and social
>> anxiety disorder. That diagnosis, they claim, caused both the teen
>> and her parents emotional distress, and the family intends to seek
>> the "maximum amount of damages."
>>
>> The Indiana child was diagnosed with two disorders in one crack but
>> there are many more.
>>
>> If a teen doesn't like doing math assignments, parents should not
>> worry. TeenScreen may determine that the child simply has a mental
>> illness known as developmental-arithmetic disorder.
>>
>> There's also a diagnosis for those children who like to argue with
>> their parents, they may be afflicted with a mental illness known
>> oppositional-defiant disorder.
>>
>> And for anybody critical of the of the above 2 disorders, they may be
>> suffering the mental illness called noncompliance-with-treatment
>> disorder.
>>
>> No kidding, these illnesses are included in the more than 350 "mental
>> disorders" listed in the American Psychiatric Association's
>> Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the insurance
>> billing bible for mental disorders.
>>
>> Tax Dollars Already Being Funneled To Pharma
>>
>> In addition to lawsuits, tax dollars are already funding TeenScreen
>> and many of the drugs purchased by the new customers it recruits.
>>
>> While promoting TeenScreen to Congress, its Executive Director,
>> Laurie Flynn, flat out lied when she told members of congress that
>> TeenScreen was free and its website statement that "The program does
>> not receive financial support from the government and is not
>> affiliated with, or funded by, any pharmaceutical companies," is also
>> a blatant lie.
>>
>> On Oct 21, 2004 Bush authorized $82 million for suicide prevention
>> programs like TeenScreen and a report in Psychiatric Times said the
>> administration had proposed an increase in the budget for the Center
>> for Mental Health Service from $862 million in 2004 to $912 million
>> in fiscal 2005. TeenScreen is sure to get a cut of those tax dollars.
>>
>> Federal tax dollars are also being funneled through state governments
>> to fund TeenScreen. On Nov 17, 2004, Officials at the University of
>> South Florida Department of Child & Family Studies said $98,641 was
>> awarded to expand the TeenScreen program in the Tampa Bay area.
>>
>> In Ohio, under the governor's Executive Budget for 2006 and 2007, the
>> Department of Mental Health has specifically earmarked $70,000 for
>> TeenScreen for each of those years, reports investigator Sue Weibert.
>>
>> On June, 2002 the Update Newsletter published by the Tennessee
>> Department of Mental Health, reported that 170 Nashville students had
>> completed a TeenScreen survey. The Newsletter said the survey was
>> funded by grants from AdvoCare and Eli Lilly. Last I knew, Eli Lilly
>> was a pharmaceutical company.
>>
>> The great news for Pharma was that 96 of the 170 students who took
>> the survey ended up speaking to a therapist which no doubt resulted
>> in the recruitment of 96 new pill-popping teens.
>>
>> Tax Dollars Spent On Drugs
>>
>> Unbeknownst to many, tax payers are already paying an enormous price
>> as a result of marketing schemes designed to get students hooked on
>> antipsychotic drugs. A list of drugs that must be prescribed for kids
>> is already set up, modeled after a list used in Texas since 1995
>> called the TMAP. The list contains the most expensive drugs on the
>> market.
>>
>> In 2002, national sales of antipsychotics reached $6.4 billion in
>> 2002, making them the fourth-highest-selling class of drugs,
>> according to IMS Health, a company that tracks drug sales, in the May
>> 2003, New York Times. By 2004, sales had jumped by over $2 billion
>> with antipsychotics sales totaling $8.8 billion -- $2.4 billion of
>> which was paid for by state Medicaid funds, according to the May/June
>> 2005 issue of Mother Jones Magazine.
>>
>> Here's how this part of the scheme works. The drug companies bribe
>> state officials and donate money in the form of "educational grants"
>> to the states to approve and implement these TMAP drug programs, and
>> then in return, state Medicaid programs fund the cost of the drugs
>> with tax dollars.
>>
>> For instance, in Texas, Pfizer awarded $232,000 in grants to the
>> Texas department of mental health to "educate" mental health
>> providers about TMAP, and in return, the Texas Medicaid program spent
>> $233 million tax dollars on Pfizer drugs like Zoloft.
>>
>> Johnson & Johnson (Janssen Pharmaceutica) gave grants of $224,000 to
>> Texas and Medicaid spent $272 million on J & J antipsychotic drug,
>> Risperdal.
>>
>> Eli Lilly awarded $109,000 in grants to "educate" state mental health
>> providers and as a result, Texas Medicaid spent $328 million for
>> Lilly's antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.
>>
>> The TMAP was approved in Texas in 1995, and by February 9, 2001, an
>> article in the Dallas Morning News, titled State Spending More on
>> Mental Illness Drugs reported: "Texas now spends more money on
>> medication to treat mental illness for low-income residents than on
>> any other type of prescription drug.
>>
>> In addition to covering nearly 40% of the drugs for Medicaid
>> recipients, the state also spends about another $60 million a year on
>> "hundreds of thousands of prescription drugs for other state-funded
>> programs at the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental
>> Retardation and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the paper
>> reported.
>>
>> By the time the 2002-2003 budget was established, Texas lawmakers had
>> to increase the amount of money allocated to the department of health
>> and human services by $1 billion with a significant portion earmarked
>> for prescription drugs, according to Texas officials.
>>
>> In 1999, Ohio adopted its version of TMAP and by 2002 Ohio's Medicaid
>> program was spending $145 million on schizophrenia medications alone.
>>
>> California spent over $500 million on the Atypicals Risperdal,
>> Zyprexa and Seroqual in 2003.
>>
>> In 2002, Missouri Medicaid spent $104 million on three TMAP drugs
>> alone. The three topped the list of all other medications covered by
>> Medicaid, including HIV, cancer, and heart drugs.
>>
>> Chickens Come Home To Roost
>>
>> Pennsylvania taxpayers are now saddled with PennMap, its own version
>> of the Texas list of expensive drugs, for the treatment of mentally
>> ill, as a result of a the pharmaceutical scheme used to infiltrate
>> public institutions and influence state officials and treatment
>> practices.
>>
>> It has since been revealed by whistleblowers Allen Jones and Stefan
>> Kruszewiski that the Pennsylvania officials who approved the drugs
>> for PennMap were receiving improper or illegal financial rewards from
>> drug companies involved in promoting the program.
>>
>> Dr Stefan Kruszewski was hired as a psychiatric consultant for the
>> Pennsylvania Department of Health and Human Services. He was in
>> charge of the state's mental health and substance misuse programs to
>> protect against fraud, waste, and abuse. He was fired after he
>> uncovered corrupt relations between Pennsylvania politicians and
>> pharmaceutical representatives and has since filed a Whistleblower
>> suit against the state.
>>
>> Allen Jones was an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the
>> Inspector General, and revealed that state officials with influence
>> over the PennMap program received financial benefits from drug
>> companies that had a stake in getting PennMap accepted. Jones was
>> fired after he made his discoveries known to the BMJ and the New York
>> Times when his superiors ordered him to stop his investigation. He
>> also has filed a Whistleblower suit.
>>
>> Well, it looks like the chickens have finally come home to roost in
>> Pennsylvania.
>>
>> One of the officials that Jones named was Steven Fiorello. On April
>> 15, 2005 the Associated Press reported that Pennsylvania's top
>> pharmacist repeatedly took money from Pfizer and other outside
>> sources, violating ethics laws, a government panel found.
>>
>> The State Ethics Commission fined Fiorello more than $27,000 and
>> referred the case to the state attorney general's office for possible
>> criminal prosecution.
>>
>> The commission cited repeated conflicts between Fiorello's unofficial
>> activities and his official duties, which included serving on a panel
>> that decides which drugs may be given to patients at the nine state
>> mental hospitals. The report also cited repeated failures to disclose
>> his income from drug companies, Pfizer and Janssen, and other outside
>> sources.
>>
>> It seems Fiorello became a member of Pfizer's "advisory council''
>> around the same time he joined the PennMap panel. The council held
>> annual meetings, apparently "to solicit input from health-care
>> professionals to help Pfizer define its commercial strategies for its
>> products," the commission said in the report.
>>
>> The ethics committee also discovered a "Medical Director's Education
>> Account," which was funded by unrestricted educational grants from
>> pharmaceutical companies and that Fiorello himself had solicited
>> funds for the account.
>>
>> It was recently announced that these "educational" grants that have
>> benefited state officials who were in positions to approve the TMAP
>> lists are finally going to be investigated by a senate committee.
>>
>> On June 10, 2005, Senators Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus issued a
>> Press Release that said they have asked a number of large drug makers
>> to explain a marketing practice where the companies give money to
>> state governments and other organizations in the form of grants. The
>> drug companies call the awards educational grants, but the senators
>> are concerned that the dollars are more focused on product promotion
>> than education, the release said.
>>
>> Grassley is chairman and Baucus is ranking member of the Senate
>> Committee on Finance, which has legislative and oversight
>> responsibility for the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
>>
>> In addition, on June 9, 2005, the senators sent a letter to drug
>> companies that states in part, "The Committee seeks further
>> information on this topic so that it can assess how educational
>> grants are used, in what contexts and for what purposes, and who
>> receives them."
>>
>> It was sent to the following drug makers: Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline,
>> Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP,
>> Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Amgen, Wyeth
>> Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly, Sanofi Aventis, Eisai, Boehringer
>> Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Schering-Plough Corporation,
>> Hoffman-LaRoche, Forest Pharmaceuticals, Abbott Laboratories,
>> Genentech, Biogen Idec, Genzyme Corporation, Chiron Corporation,
>> Serono, and TAP Pharmaceutical Products.
>>
>> The Senators said their inquiry is based on reports that some
>> companies have awarded these grants to health care providers as
>> inducements to those providers to prescribe medications the companies
>> produce. In other cases, such grants to state agencies may have
>> prompted those agencies to develop programs leading to
>> over-medication of patients at the expense of patient health or to
>> unnecessary expense for taxpayers.
>>
>> "We need to know how this behind-the-scenes funneling of money is
>> influencing decision makers," Grassley said, "The decisions result in
>> the government spending billions of dollars on drugs. The tactics
>> look aggressive, and the response on behalf of the public needs to be
>> just as vigorous."
>>
>> This committee was needed because Pennsylvania is merely the tip of
>> the iceberg. Many of the same tactics have been used in other states
>> like Florida with Jim McDonough, Director of the Florida Office of
>> Drug Control, who is listed as an "advisor to TeenScreen on its
>> website. TeenScreen gifted McDonough's office with $180,000 to get
>> TeenScreen set up.
>>
>> However, Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, is now crying foul because
>> she doesn't feel the money has been put to good use since McDonough
>> failed to get the program in all the schools as promised, in large
>> part because he met his match in Ken Kramer.
>>
>> In Ohio there's Mike Hogan, Director of the Ohio Department of Mental
>> Health. He's hooked in with Parexel Medical Marketing, a front group
>> that takes Pharma money to set "advisory panels" for Pharma. The
>> panel memberships are made up exclusively of Mental Health, Medicaid
>> and other Directors from the various states. Michael Hogan is listed
>> as an advisory board member.
>>
>> The panel members are treated to trips, first class accommodations
>> and other perks in exchange for showing up and listening to a spiel
>> by Janssen sales personnel who direct the course of the meetings. The
>> same kinds of meetings that Fiorello attended.
>>
>> Hopefully will be just a matter of time before the new senate
>> committee disbands this gang of pharma-backed government
>> pill-pushers.
>>
>> Trying To Save The Children
>>
>> Dire warnings against mass mental health screening are coming from
>> every segment of society, including parents, physicians, academics,
>> journalists, and human rights groups because the influence of the
>> pharmaceutical industry in this scheme is so patently obvious.
>>
>> People are particularly worried about saving the children from
>> senseless and dangerous drugging. According to long-time anti-child
>> drugging advocate, Doyle Mills, "Psychiatry has a long history of
>> abject failure. Psychiatric treatments - drugs, electroconvulsive
>> therapy, lobotomies - have harmed millions and robbed them of any
>> hope of a normal life."
>>
>> Expert records researcher, Ken Kramer, has been fighting against
>> child drugging for years has conducted a research project on child
>> suicides in Florida that determined that medicating kids with the
>> types of dangerous mind-altering drugs on these lists is causing
>> suicide. He helped defeat TeenScreen's attempt to gain access to
>> schools in 2 of Florida's largest counties. Ken has a TeenScreen
>> website at http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html
>>
>> Dr Karen Effrem, a pediatrician and strong opponent of mandatory
>> screening recently warned, "Universal mental health screening and the
>> drugging of children ... needs to be stopped so that many thousands
>> if not millions of children will be saved from receiving stigmatizing
>> diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of their lives.
>> America's school children should not be medicated by expensive,
>> ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and dubious
>> diagnoses."
>>
>> In a letter to the editor in the Washington Times on October 31,
>> 2004, Effrem summed up the dangers of using tax dollars to fund mass
>> mental health screening of children:
>>
>> "Given the very real problems of already existing coercion,
>> subjective criteria, dangerous and ineffective medication, and the
>> failure of screening to prevent suicide ... Congress would be wise to
>> withhold the $44 million requested for state grants."
>>
>> The nation's first law suit has been filed and let it serve as a
>> warning to other schools across the country to think twice before
>> allowing the TeenScreen recruitment scheme to zero in on their
>> students.
>>
>> Evelyn Pringle can be reached at: epringle05@yahoo.com
>>
>> ###
>>
>>
>>
>> Citizens Commission on Human RightsŪ of St. Louis, Inc.
>>
>> P.O. Box 300256
>> St. Louis, MO 63130-9256
>> Office (314) 727-8307
>> Psychiatric Abuse Hot Line (314) 729-2854
>> CCHRSTL@earthlink.net
>> www.FightForKids.org
>> www.cchr.org
>> www.psychcrime.org
>> www.psychassault.org
>>
>>
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