New info on NYU's "Ransom Notes" perpetrators
First, I'm afraid I'm being a tad "spammy" with this entry, and for that I apologize. But I think this tale needs to be told, post haste.

By now, many of you know about NYU's Child Study Center, headed by Dr. Harold Koplewicz, and their repugnant "Ransom Notes" campaign. And some of you have probably signed ASAN's petition calling for the campaign to be scrapped:

http://www.petitiononline.com/ransom/petition.html

(Thanks Ari!)

Well, just a few hours ago, I was browsing the list of recent signatories, and this entry caught my eye:

486. [name omitted]: comment: I live in Raritan Twsp. NJ = My daughter almost died from Paxil. a drug Dr. Koplewicz helped promote off-label

Yeah, Paxil, and its lavish "off-label" uses -- one of my old pet peeves. So on a whim, I googled the string "Koplewicz + Paxil" ...and a moment later, "the other shoe dropped."

First, it turns out that the ad agency, BBDO, which produced the "Ransom Notes" campaign also represents both Pfizer and the notorious Glaxo Smith Kline, maker and aggressive pusher of Paxil. Shocker.

But among the top hits in the search came this seemingly unremarkable blog entry:

Many Angry At Childhood Mental Illness "Hostage" Ad Campaign
http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2007/12/many_angry_at_childhood_mental_illness_hostage_ad_campaign_1.html

The entry, like so many others, tells of the NYU debacle, but then drops this bombshell:

"As it turns out ... Koplewicz is one of the co-authors of the infamous Paxil Study 329 ...

"Study 329 basically asserted that Paxil beat placebo in treating depression in teens when, in fact, it did not. In addition, there were instances of suicidality in this study which Glaxo somehow managed to deep-six."

And from the Alliance for Human Research Protection website comes this repost:

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/03/25.php

The Times quotes Dr. Harold Koplewicz, indicating only that he is the director of the NYU Child Study Center: "The fear I have about this warning is that many teenagers will not get the medicine because it will build resistance among their parents, and that is really a tragic outcome."

Dr. Koplewicz, not only is one of the staunchest promoters of psychotropic drugs for children, he was a co-investigator and co-author of a major Paxil study (329) in which he and the pillars of American child psychiatry claimed to have found that Paxil was "well tolerated and effective" for adolescents. The article has now been discredited by the FDA. Furthermore, an internal 1998 memo by the manufacturer of Paxil indicates that only the positive data from study 329 would be published, but the negative findings would not.

Readers trust the New York Times, believing that the experts selected by the Times for their views, are objective unless identified as having a financial interest in the product/ company or have taken a position. The Times failed to disclose any of the relevant background information that demonstrates a decidedly biased point of view. The Times article also failed to disclose the very substantial financial ties to the drug industry of either Dr. Koplewicz or the NYU Child Study Center ...

And so on.

Obviously, this connection needs to be investigated further. At the moment, I don't feel up to the job of deciding how relevant this information is to NYU's ongoing "Ransom Notes" disgrace. But I felt compelled to bring it to your attention.

Please spread the word.