View the video of today’s In Session here. Let me know if you have trouble accessing it.

I signed up for the comcast bundle and was given an install date. The sign up was this online chat thing that took two hours as the rep was obviously “chatting” with ten people at once. I took the day off and stayed at home and waited. Noone showed. I called comcast and the automated line said the install was a week later. I thought maybe I made a mistake. Next week, again no show. I called and the date is now a week later. I stayed on the line and talked to a rep. They said that it took 5-7 days to “port” my old phone number from At&t to comcast. But it was now almost a month later. I asked why noone had bothered to notify me about the change in appointment. They said that an “automated call” was sent out, but I received no call. And the fact that this happened twice indicates to me that in fact no call was generated. They said they would try and get someone to come out that day. At the end of the day they called and said someone would come the next day. I again stayed home the next day. I called the automated service and the message said that the appointment was a week away. I got a rep on the line who assured me that they were coming between 11-2 that day. At 2, noone had showed up. I called back and they said my appointment was for a week later. I explained that I had been assured they were coming that day. They said someone would call back within the hour. No call. I called to cancel my subscription and was asked why? I explained the situation and they said they would get someone out there that day. I also asked if they would connect my Tivo or if they had DVR. and they said I would have to hook that up myself and they didn’t know if the techs had a “Tivo card”. Noone showed up anyway. At the end of the day someone called back and said they would cancel my subscription. Then I got another call asking why I was canceling? So frustrating. I went online and got an appointment for At&T U-verse with an email confirmation with no problems.

Pete Correll, who heads up the Board of Directors of the Grady Memorial Hospital, which provides care for the indigent in Atlanta, GA, was behind the heartless decision to pull the plug on patients receiving dialysis, which is a life saving treatment. When confronted with this at a medical board meeting, when all of the patients were present, he took out a full page ad in the Atlanta Journal Constitution defending himself. Do we detect a note of bad consciouss? You see, he had been tasked with helping Grady “make money”. But Grady is a hospital for the poor. It used to be that doctors saw their role as helping people. But now the hospital and insurance administrators are teaching them to think about making money, and not thinking about the welfare of their patients.

You can see Correll whining about being called a murderer. But what else is he if he pulls the plug on a treatment required for survival. And his comments about making money for a hospital that was established to provide treatment for the poor and indigent are ridiculous.

Let’s get doctors in charge of these boards and organizations. Not heartless former CEOs of organizations.

 

read for yourself and decide based on this ad taken out in AJC after the board meeting.

A couple of months ago I wrote in my post “Another One Bites the Dust” about Hollywood actress Brittany Murphy dying at 33 from a combination of different prescription medications, including hydrocodone, acetominophen, methamphetamine, and chlorpheniramal. That was just one more to drop, after the death of socialite and Johnson & Johnson family heiress Casey Johnson (”wifey of Tela Tequila, who is now in rehab herself with Dr Dr on the Celebrity Rehab TV show. Casey was taking a string of prescription medications, including Oxycontin, Klonopin, Valium, Xanax, and Ativan. She was also using marijuana, cocaine and ecstasy, and had diabetes. She died at the age of 31. Actor Heath Ledger died from prescription medications including OxyContin, Hydrocodone, Valium and Xanax, and the sleep aids Restoril and Unisom. Anna Nicole Smith died at 39 while on choral hydrate, Klonepin, Ativan, Benadryl and Topamax. This occurred just a few months after her son Daniel died from a combination of Zoloft, Lexapro, Serax, Valium, and methadone. And last year I wrote about the death of Michael Jackson, another victim of prescription medications.
These drugs include pain medications (Hydrocodone, Oxycontin), benzodiazepine sedatives used for anxiety or insomnia (Valium, Klonepin, Ativan, Serax, Restoril).

Tonight at 8 pm EST I will be on the Nancy grace show (Headline News) and the topic will include Lindsay Lohan.
Now Lindsay is off to jail, and the worst part of it for her will be that she can’t take her drugs with her. She apparently has been doctor shopping, and is on Zoloft, trazodone, Nexium, Adderall, and dilaudid.

Taking opiates, amphetamine stimulants, and psychotropics, and mixing them with alcohol and cocaine, is potentially a very lethal combination. When you put so many mind altering substances into your system, who nows what will happen. But unfortunately the end result is that these young starlets eventually stop breathing.

href=”http://www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com/index.php/2009/05/28/pharma-giles-writes-the-australasian-journal-of-boneheads-joints/ozziebones_jpg2/”>
A furore has erupted following The Scientist magazine’s revelations that Phoni Pharmaceuticals paid an undisclosed sum to scientific vanity publisher Elsleazier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal but which contained only reprinted or summarized articles, most of which presented data favourable to Phoni products. The journal appeared to act solely as a marketing tool with no disclosure of company sponsorship.

The Australian Journal of Boneheads and Joint Medicine, which was published by Extracta Moneya, a division of Dutch scientific publishing juggernaut Greed-Elsleazier, also contained little in the way of advertisements apart from ads for Formonimax, a Phoni drug for osteoporosis, and Viletoxx, Phoni’s controversial pain-killer.

In a statement provided last week to The Scientist, an eminent Australian physician and long-time member of the World Association of Medical Editors reviewed four issues of the journal that were published from 2003-2004.

“An average reader, such as a doctor, could easily mistake the publication for a genuine peer reviewed medical journal”, he said. “Only close inspection of the journals, along with knowledge of medical journals and publishing conventions, enabled me to determine that the Journal was not, in fact, a peer reviewed medical journal, but instead a marketing publication for Phoni.”

“They’ve done a heck of good job, and it was only when I noticed that some of the names of the so-called “honorary editorial board” appeared to be made up that I became suspicious,” the reviewer admitted.

“Professor Phil. I. Daftwhoofing appears to be an anagram of “Ripping Off Fools Who Read This,” for example. Similarly, Dr. Leon Theophuleet is an anagram of “Pulled The Other One”. And “Gill Ripcheap” seems to be an anagram of Rich Pillager, who I believe is Phoni’s Head of Global Marketing…”

A spokesperson for Elsleazier, however, told The Scientist, “All of our journals are thoroughly peer-reviewed prior to publication, by our accountants. Our company would never publish a journal unless it was guaranteed to make us lots of money. After all, our publications are well-known for the standards they deliver – standards of living for our publishing executives, that is…”

Disclosure of Phoni’s funding of the journal was not mentioned anywhere in the copies of issues obtained by The Scientist. Elsleazier acknowledged that Phoni had sponsored the publication, but did not disclose the amount the drug company paid.

The spokesperson added that Elsleazier had no plans to look further into the matter. “The high prices of subscriptions to our journals are a guarantee of their quality,” he said. “After all, everyone recognises the quality of Australian scientific publications, in the same way that American diplomacy journals or Nigerian accountancy and banking magazines are regarded…”

One of the genuine members of the Australian Journal of Boneheads and Joint Medicine’s “Honorary Editorial Board,” Dr. Táké Bakhandar, a rheumatologist in Australia, said he was delighted to serve on the board, however. Dr. Bakhandar has been on Phoni’s Asian Pacific and international advisory boards since the mid 1990s, as well as the advisory boards of other pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Amgen.

“You get involved in a whole bunch of things at this level,” he said, adding that he had put his name on “quite a few advertorials” for pharmaceutical companies in the past 10 years. “I’m delighted to be able to promote the life-enhancing products of the pharmaceutical industry,” Dr. Bakhandar said.

His colleague and fellow member of the Australian Journal of Boneheads and Joint Medicine’s Honorary Editorial Board, Dr. Pádme Baksheesh, agreed. “My own observations conclusively show that there is a direct relationship between the number of products I plug for pharmaceutical companies, and the degree to which my life is enhanced,” he said.

Rich Pillager, Head of Global Marketing for Phoni Pharm. Inc. was also unrepentant.

“The Australian Journal of Boneheads and Joint Medicine” is an important tool in Phoni’s CME (Continuing Medical Education) programme,” he said.

“After all, we’ve been putting out advertorials for years. Everyone remembers our series of children’s books that were designed to promote the use of Phoni’s SSRI Saloadatat in children, for example,” Pillager notes, referring to the controversial “Mr. Bipolar” book based on the UK “Mr. Men” franchise.

“Our competitors have been doing exactly the same thing, only we’re aiming our latest fairy tales at the adult market. I can’t see what the problem is,” he frothed rabidly.

[this was a spoof piece but unfortunately the quote
"You get involved in a whole bunch of things at this level,"
was real, and the fake journal was real as well]

For more of Pharma Giles work see his hilarious children’s book ‘The Story of Modern Medicine’.

originally posted here on May 28 2009

Yes, I got an award for best muckraking blog, from the Health and Life blog, but they said I had to dance with a sweaty person, and those of you in the loop know what this is all about. Here’s my badge.

The Fastest Growing Religion on Earth

Chapter 27

In 1823, an 18-year-old boy from Palmyra, New York, was visited by an angel, who told him of some magical gold plates. Armed with special glasses, he was able to translate them into a book that told about how the lost tribe of Israel was visited by Jesus in the Americas hundreds of years ago. In 1831, he started a church in Kirtland, Ohio.

He later said that church members could act as proxies for deceased persons, baptize them, and “seal” them into family clans that would be reunited in Heaven. His successor wrote about “the perfect mania” that possessed some of his followers as they started “to get up printed records of their ancestors.”

Over the next 168 years, 113 million people were introduced, after death, to the church.

Members of his church, called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, commonly known as the Mormons), are worried that their ancestors who lived before the beginning of the church won’t be able to join them in heaven. But in order to get them into the church, they have to figure out who they are first.

That makes them some pretty damn good genealogists.

They’ve got a vault carved into the solid granite of a mountain 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, Utah, where they store information about the births, marriages and deaths of over 2 billion people, the largest single database on the details of the human race in the world. Buried 600 feet into the mountain, protected by two nine ton and one 14 ton doors built to withstand a nuclear blast, the Granite Mountain Vault isn’t going anywhere soon. Five billion documents are stored on 1 ½ million rolls of microfilm and 1 ½ million microfiche. 25,000 volunteers are currently working to scan and index all of these documents as well as put them on the internet so that one day soon you can access all of this data while sitting in your kitchen in your slippers with a laptop on your lap.

Ancestry.com, a subscription based service started by members of the LDS church, has 900,000 subscribers, and is growing. Ancestry put millions of documents online, including 5 billion names. They have census records for all of the US from the past 200 years, birth, marriage and death records, and more. In May of 2007 they dumped the military records of all of the soldiers who fought in all of the US wars, 90 million of them, online.

Genealogy is now America’s #1 hobby. Millions of documents are being put on line so that subscribers can sit in their kitchens rather than traipsing across the country in search of obscure church and governmental archives.

As the fastest growing church in the world, you have to wonder if the Mormons are onto something. That connecting with the nodes of your family, those linked to you by sperm and eggs and DNA, looping simultaneously backward and forward through space and time, like the drooping lines connecting the electricity towers that move through mowed swaths of forest in the rural parts of America, will lead you to paradise?

Who am I to say no?

for #teaser tuesday @Madison_Woods

Chapter 2.

Tony and I drove from the hospital in my BMW convertible. As we drove up along GA I-75/85 the drone of a million frogs drowned out the sound of the mechanized vehicles that slid along the 16 lane mechanism of death. Giant billboards declared the benefits of eating chicken over beef in pidgeon English. Another one burst out the details of the Georgia Tech football game in electronic bursts of light.

Walking into the Buckhead bar “Cheetos” with Tony the music hit us like a blast of hot air on a hot Georgia night. I walked up to the bar with Tony, checking out some of the hot blondes and trying to remind myself that I was officially married.

After ordering we grabbed beers from the bar and headed for a booth. The loud noise of the music made it hard to talk. The gyrating bodies of some of the women on the dance floor was distracting.

“So how’s Carletta?” Tony said.

“Oh, you know. The usual thrills of married life.”

“Ever think about branching out?”

“I couldn’t do that. I am married, after all.”

“They’ve got these hot chicks that look like they want to get banged, no strings attached.”

“Can’t you get off this already?”

“Are you hung up?”

“What’s with you?”

“Is your marriage satisfying?”

“What are you, some kind of fucking psychoanalyst?”

“I mean, do you do it with her? Like… ever?”

“Not lately.”

“So how long has it been?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

“Like… weeks? months?”

“Probably longer than weeks.”

“Hey, look, man! There’s Carletta on her home and garden show! On the TV!”

We sat back and watched Lulu on the TV. The music was blaring, so all you could see was her face and animated gesticulations as she went on about some potted plant. As I sat and watched her I felt oddly detached, like this was some kind of media celebrity that had nothing to do with me.

“Let’s get out of here, man,” I said.

As we rose from the booths everything seemed to slow down. I could see the sweaty gleaming off the backs of the young people dancing to the booming music. The darkness from outside seemed to pour into the club and permeate everything with its general message of death. I guess we all have to die sometime, but I didn’t want to think about it right now.

I moved out to the street. I could smell the sweat coming off of the backs of the younger club goers. Each one was different. But it all merged into one. I pushed past the sweaty backs into the night air. The brunt weight of the Georgia night with its warm and fluid air hit me like a policeman’s batton in the face. I took it in stride and moved slowly along the sidewalk with Tony. We breathed in the must of the young people as they waited in line to be let into the club. I wondered if any of the younger females would find me attractive. They didn’t pay me much attention, though, and we moved on to the parking lot.

I said good bye to Tony, and drove home.

If you got an email from my saying I was mugged and to wire money, ignore it. Someone hacked into my yahoo account and is sending spam.

I recently posted some thoughts on the case of Mark Becker, who killed his ex-football coach while suffering from the delusion that he was Satan and was trying to control the children of his town. Some people took exception to the fact that I called him a “psychotic killer”, apparently believing that all case of schizophrenia are caused by psychological trauma, a belief that is a revival of the “schizophrenogenic mother” theory advocated decades ago by my former professors at Yale, Theodore Lidz and Steven Fleck. An idea which has fortunately been dropped into the trash bins of psychiatric history, BTW.

Now we can all agree that Mark Becker killed someone, and that he was psychotic at the time, unless you want to convince me that football coaches are actually Satan and that you can use teddy bears to hypnotize people. Why calling him a “psychotic killer” is therefore offensive is therefore beyond me. Whether or not he was traumatized by his family, I have no idea, since I never interviewed them, but to assume that he was is my opinion fairly lame.

What gets me is that these posters feel like that since I am a psychiatrist they can throw whatever rocks they feel like. I mean, just because you are suffering from mental distress, or a mental disorder, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t mean that you can act like a troll. This isn’t the first time this has happened, so I am calling them out. This is no excuse to act like a mean person.

In their post, they took advantage of the fact that I had previously written about my mother, who died when I was four and a half years old, an event that was deeply traumatizing for me. They said that my experiences, in comparison to the trauma that all schizophrenics suffer, apparently at the hands of their families and the mental health system, were “trifling” and insignificant” in comparison. Why they had to bring my mother into this, I don’t know. But All I have to say is …

Leave my mother out of this.

Making comments like that is dehumanizing and insensitive. There is no excuse for that. You can’t judge my experiences and what I feel. I’m sorry if you are angry at the mental health system. But I am not responsible for whatever happened to you. If you don’t like what I write, don’t read it.