STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

The 21st Century New Financial Criminals: The DSM and the “Psychiatrist Pimps” For Big Pharma. 

Before I begin this blog , I would like you to remember a few names of psychiatrists whom I knew personally and are the poster children for creating ‘dangerous diagnoses’ for controlling  ‘irregular’ childhood behavior and are paid by Big Pharma to specifically create these new,  nonexistent ‘psychotic’ and ‘bipolar’ childhood diagnoses. 

The most important poster-boy for being Pimp-of- the –decade is Professor Alan Schatzberg.  Next in importance is Dr Fred Goodwin.  Then  former Dean of Emory University Professor  Dr Charles Nemeroff.  And last but not least is an ex-friend and someone I had admired Dr Steven Sharfstein, Director of Sheppard Pratt Health Systems and Former President of the infamous, incorrigible corrupt American Psychiatric Association.

Let me tell you up front, my dear readers, that this is not an easy blog for me to write. This is a blog which involves issues that I have had to deal with for four or more decades and have alienated me from my original psychiatry base and many of my psychiatric friends with whom I had trained at Massachusetts Mental Health Center ---  the primary psychiatry teaching center for the Harvard Medical College. I was there from 1971- 74 on a National Institute of Mental Health Fellowship Award which allowed me to attend both my psychiatric program and at the same time attend MIT to receive a PHD in Political Science/International Relations.

  I tell you this information  not as a point of honor but as a fact. The only reason I could accomplish both formidable goals was not that I was so talented but as you will later see, Mass Mental Health [Harvard] was markedly deficient in the training  program . They were oriented primarily to psychodynamics and admittedly attracted the ‘best and brightest’ of the psychiatric residents in the country.  In that institution were two very bright, eager, and committed psychiatrists by the name of Alan Schatzberg and Steven Sharfstein.  The latter was in fact , Chief  Resident of one of the attending services.  At the time, I could honestly say they were ‘nice jewish boys’ who in another world would have been very successful rabbis.  But otherwise they were not especially, in any way, innovative or creative.  They were ‘obedient’ and ‘ambitious’.  Nothing wrong there!

  The reason I went to MIT was that I immediately recognized that Mass Mental Health and Harvard College could not provide me with the necessary instruction and creative thinking that an engineering institute like MIT could.  (Some background: with both an NIMH Fellowship and The GI Bill I had served already two years at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington DC where I had treated more schizophrenics,  bipolars,  psychotics, borderlines and other categories of mental illness than any of the professors at Mass Mental Health would ever see in their collective lives.)  Therefore, the only reason I went to Mass Mental was to get a degree –literally a piece of paper stating that I had gone to Harvard.

Why is this important?

 Because from the very beginning in the 1970’s I already realized that there was at best a field called ‘psychiatry’.  At worse, it would become a nightmare of imaginative thinking,  speculations  and collective mind sets that had to find a way to make their ‘ersatz’ profession---legitimate and commoditized. 

  The issue of how to make money in psychiatry haunted the field for decades.  For the early part of the 20th century,  psychiatry was imbued by the fanciful writings of a cocaine addicted neurologist called Sigmund Freud.  Most of you know his ideas and can spout out the ‘flaky theories’ that even he did not really believe.
 As a side bar, in later years, I had the privilege to meet and discuss with Anna Freud many of her father’s writings and what she and I talked about would be quite devastating to the field of psychoanalysis. 

Back to how psycho-analytically trained psychiatrists could make a living? They charged by the hour.  Just like a taxi driver or a prostitute [believe me the similarity with the latter becomes more and more eerie].  Anyway, I left Mass Mental Health Center with two of their most prestigious research awards called the Harry Solomon Award. I say this only to enforce the notion that none of the other so-called ‘great researchers’   like Sharfstein or Schatzberg –who would both make their living promoting ‘innovative’ research were barely eligible for those awards.   I had no intention to become a ‘researcher’. 

  Let’s jump to the next phase of my career.
I became a Board Certified Examiner in Neurology and Psychiatry as well as being assigned the prestigious position of being a Board Examiner in both fields. 

In short, I was slated to be a ‘golden boy’ in the field of psychiatry.  In 1975 I was the Special Assistant to the Director of NIMH and then the following year I became the Director of International Affairs for NIMH.  There I encountered both Sharfstein and Schatzberg.
The more memorable of the two was Schatzberg.  In Yiddish, we have a term called “schnorrer”.  It’s basically a bum who never stops ‘sucking up to his superior’  and ‘asking for favors’.   At the time, he wanted one or another thing.  Very early on, I realized that he could cut corners.  To get an idea of what I mean,  watch a movie called “Duddy Kravitz’ the story of the poor Canadian jew who hustled his way to the top screwing over everyone he loved and cared about.  Well, Schatzberg is my “Duddy Kravitz". 

  Alan became the Director of Psychiatry which to me was a joke.  But unfortunately the ‘joke’ was played on the hapless public and the ignorant,  arrogant psychiatrists who avidly read his contrived, and falsified studies on ’psychotic depression’ and mifepristone.   Of course, when I was able to find him, remember ‘shnorrers’ are afraid to confront the truth or anyone who challenges their veracity,  I told him that he had been funded in his research by drug companies, received speaking fees from drug companies and had his pension funds in the same drug companies who had funded his ‘major studies’.

  His textbook which he co-wrote with another ‘goniff’ also indicted by our great Senator Grassley for kick-backs,  named  Dr Charles Nermeroff, called  “Textbook of Psychopharmacology”  is a paean to heuristic concepts required to receive funding from corrupt institutions like NIMH,  Pfizer, Lilly,  Galaxo –Smith, etc.  When I reported his ‘criminal activities’ to the Ethics Committee of the American Psychiatric Association their response was to make this indicted criminal the President of the APA!  So the schnorrer became the goniff  all because he was too eager for notoriety and money.  Welcome the New Shylocks of the 21 Century! 

What I forgot to tell you was that I had been present over forty years ago at the APA with Dr Melvin Sabshin when the discussions were initiated for the development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,  an innovative way to create money for a field that had been dominated by ‘talking therapy’.  The idea was proposed to ‘create diseases’.  I immediately protested  the formation of that manual.  Several years later, I was to resign from the APA . 

 At the time of my resignation,  I told the quiet, pleasant but completely ineffective ex-friend of mine,  Dr Steven Sharfstein that both the DSM and the APA were dysfunctional and corrupt.  Other issues were also involved.  But unfortunately,  I was disappointed to find out later that under Senator Grassley’s investigation Dr Steven Sharfstein was also indicted -running a private mental health system and having signed contracts with Eli Lilly & Co, Merck and Janssen Research Foundation.
Alan had a 6million dollar conflict of interest with drug developer Corcept Therapeutics at the same time that he was principle investigator in an NIH funded Stanford-based study of Corcept’s drug mifepristone.  Alan had co-founded Corcept I 1998 and extended it’s corporate involvement with NIH and other drug companies.  

A real “Pharmaceutical Duddy Kravitz! “

Then to top off the list of Pharmaceutical “DuddyKravitz “ is Dr Charles Nemeroff,  former Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory before Senator Grassley indicted him for ‘corruption’ , ‘tax evasion’ , and other felonies.  This guy is a real piece of work. I was asked several years ago about his future appointment to a second rate medical school called the University of Miami Medical School and what I thought of his becoming the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry. I explained to the egregious Board Member that if you want ‘crooks and criminals’ and a ‘second rate psychiatry department’, you could not miss with the ‘already indicted Nemeroff’.  Well,  in keeping with the corrupt ways of Miami, the Board Members were true to their  nefarious ways and appointed him Chairman.

 Well,  at least this “Duddy Kravitz” was not passed off to the Ivy League Schools because , he like Alan, was never really bright enough to make it honestly. 

  In fact , as I recount his misdeeds , even I who worked in the grey zone of the national security world, was quite amazed.  Here are some past facts about this other  “21^st Century Pharmaceutical Shylock”.  From 2000 to 2006,  Nemeroff received over $960,000 from GalaxoSmithKline [GSK} but only disclosed $35,000 to Emory.  Between 2000 and 2007, Nermeroff earned more than 2.8million dollars from various drug companies but failed to report at least 1.2 million dollars. In 2006, he stepped down as an editor of ‘Neuropsychopharmacology’ after publishing a favorable review of the vagus nerve stimulation [VNS] device manufactured by Cyberonics for which he was a consultant. 

 You get the idea!!! Corrupt beyond corrupt.  There are a few more “Pharmaceutical Shylocks’ –Bernie Madoff’s clones in psychiatry--- Dr Joseph Biederman, Chief of the Program in Pediatric Psychonpharmacology, Massachusetts General Hospital. 

[ A sidebar—when Mass Mental Health went under which I had predicted thirty years before, Harvard cleverly shifted their academic chicanery into biological psychiatry at Mass General, less reputable and less intelligent , but equally corrupt]

Dr Biederman, a truly voracious Shylock,  received fifteen Pharmaceutical grants to study various pediatric problems.  He received 1.6million dollars on consulting fees, between 2000 to 2007 but surprisingly this ‘goniff’ did not report all of this income to Harvard University officials.  But this  ‘doctor’ really hit the apex of corruption and dishonesty when his ‘marketing’ of the ‘bullshit theory’ that children have ‘bipolar’ attributes requiring the drugs for which he was ‘pimping’ resulted in this amazing , disturbing fact---- that thanks to him, Schatzberg, Nemeroff, Goodwin , Sharfstein, Melissa DelBello, and many others in the ‘bordello’ called the ‘APA”, ---2.5milion children have been placed on one or another type of anti-psychotic of bipolar drug. 

But the story does not end here—unfortunately.

Here are some more names for you the reader to ponder over :

Lets take Dr Frederick Goodwin,  a man with whom I am well acquainted.  This is what I can tell you,  he had been former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health [A job I had turned down].  But as Director of NIMH, he had received illegally at least 1.3million dollars between 2000 to 2007 for giving marketing lectures to physicians on behalf of drug—makers , a fact he did not reveal to his audience,  broadcaster or producers on his 10 year run National Public Radio Show,  called “The Infinite Mind”.  NPR removed the show.  But Fred,  never one to miss a political opportunity to ingratiate himself in the Republican power base, was ‘helpful ‘ in the nomination of the less than adequate’ Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with his alleged ‘sexual assault’ allegation by one of his clerks.  Fred was easily someone we could have  recruited in the ‘tricky dick’ or ‘sly willy’ administrations to do whatever was needed without conscience or moral rectitude.  But who can fault a non-Jewish Opportunist? Not I!

 Anyway, by now, you , my readers,  should be completely exhausted by the litany of corruption, distortions, lies, and greed pervading our academic , public, and private institutions [ Harvard, Emory, Stanford, Miami, Brown, University of Texas SouthWestern Medical Center, Dartmouth, etc],  National Institutes of Health, The National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychiatric Association, and of course, the most disingenuous of the groups—National Alliance for the Mentally Ill [received  $26million from drug companies between 2006-2008]. 

Once again, I have tried to expose the corruption endemic to our present day society called America.  Before we talked about celebrities, CIA, Presidents, governments, civil institutions, but now we have a major problem with my chosen profession—medicine and psychiatry.  If not for the bravery of Senator Charles Grassley –{R-Iowa] and the collective media—the NYTimes, The Wall Street Journal, other content on the internet, very little of these crimes would be exposed. 

So what are we to do? 

We need a full investigation by congress and most importantly the FBI.  Unlike the Wall Street Bankers, one of the aforementioned ‘Pharmaceutical Pimps’, should and must go to prison for a long time. 

This crime unlike Bernie Madoffs’ and Goldman Sachs, are committed intentionally to control, subjugate and if ‘unintentionally’ kill young children.

If there is such a thing as pharmaceutical genocide then I have coined the term now so that the drug companies and the “Pimps of Pharma’ must be held accountable before the genocide becomes a pandemic of ‘autogenocide’.