Where are all these Mormons coming from? Between Mitt Romney running for president on a “I’m a conservative like you, just a slightly different flavor” platform and HBO’s Big Love with its pandering after the ups and downs of sex in a multiple wife marriage, it seems like the Mormons [...]]]>

Where are all these Mormons coming from? Between Mitt Romney running for president on a “I’m a conservative like you, just a slightly different flavor” platform and HBO’s Big Love with its pandering after the ups and downs of sex in a multiple wife marriage, it seems like the Mormons are coming out of nowhere. But what most people don’t know is that the Mormons have not just been cooling their heels in Utah for the past 100 years. They have been on a role for quite some time now.
While the Baptists have been struggling to retain members and the Methodist and Episcopalian churches have been shrinking, the Mormon church (known as Latter Day Saints, or LDS, by their members) has been expanding at a rapid clip. In fact, it is the fastest growing religion in the world. There are now far more Mormons outside of Utah than within the boundaries of the beehive state.
What’s the appeal? The Mormons don’t lay a lot of head trips on their members like all that stuff about Adam and Eve and original sin. For LDS we are all on a continuous trajectory from imperfection to a higher plane. God and Jesus are just like us (yes, they are physical beings), they are just farther along on the spiritual journey. Death is not the end, it is just a marker on the journey. And we are all traveling with our extended families. But in order to make sure that their families are coming with them, LDS members have to find out who they are.
You may not know it, but the Mormons have been collecting information on your family for quite some time now. For them, genealogy is a religion. And they believe that advent of the internet (which allows information to be made available to everything through sites like Ancestry.com) was divinely inspired. Having personally experienced the mesmerizing pull of searching for my own ancestors, I think that is a big part of their draw. And as a psychiatrist I think that doing genealogical research on the internet has become like an addiction for many people.

You can read more about my speculations on Mormonism, genealogy, and my own quest to find my missing family in my recently released book The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, available in paperback and also $0.99 Kindle.

You can read the first chapter here and the enthusiastic reader reviews here.

Bremner’s text is a personal narrative and social polemic, both. Finely written, his personal quest to honor his late mother who had died when he was a [...]]]> An indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, “The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg” illuminates the greed and unscrupulous nature of pharmaceutical companies and their market driven interests.

Bremner’s text is a personal narrative and social polemic, both. Finely written, his personal quest to honor his late mother who had died when he was a child is interwoven with his fight as an ethical psychiatrist to expose the dangers which lie hidden in prescription drugs.

Bremner writes the story of his beginnings at Yale Department of Psychiatry , a place of conflict and ruthlessness, frightening in itself to read of. One would expert more from this institute of higher learning and its pursuit of psychiatric public health information. It is this inauspicious beginning which will ultimately lead to an investigation spearheaded by Hoffman-La Roche Pharmaceutical against Bremner.

In an attempt to discredit Dr. Bremner for a study he conducted which found a causal relationship between the acne drug Acutane and brain changes causing depressive and suicidal behavior in teens, this preemptive strike against the doctor and his research is a microcosm of the onslaught of society waged by the aggressive big business of Pharmacology.

Early in the book, we become enlightened: Told by FDA that they trusted drug companies to do their own research, Dr. Bremner asks if this is wise. He tells us that the drug industry obtained legislation, passed by Congress, requiring that the drug companies pay the salaries of FDA employees.

Chilling in its implication, and unsavory in its details, early in this unwinding David and Goliath saga, we sense in Bremner the type of the hero, who is willing to kick against the goads for the ideals of truth and public safety.

Interwoven throughout this social account is Bremner’s personal and spiritual quest involving his dead mother, and his prose reveals a true writer, with its highly perceptive observations of his early childhood and his surroundings:

I remembered the wind blowing through the leaves of the madrona tree at our house on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound. The peeling red bark. Sitting on the beach with a playmate, putting sand in a bottle and eating it. Dancing with my teddy bear to the song, ‘I wanna Hold your Hand’. . . my mother limping around the house, carrying me on her hip….

I highly recommend this text for anyone who wants to read a compelling and spell-binding narrative which fuses the personal and social in a heroic quest conducted by a physician who is a model for our era. Bremner fights and wins – Acutane has since been withdrawn from the market – and the truths he uncovers are personal and and political. In this sense “The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg” is an American story, with the ending we hope for: The victory of the hero we have been rooting for throughout the book’s chapters.

See the original review here.

Follow Susan Marie Kovalinsky on twitter @smkovalinsky or her blog here.

The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg is a historical account of the personal life of Doug Bremner that details his quest to honor his deceased mother with a proper funeral and the simultaneous investigation initiated by Roche Pharmaceutical to discredit Dr. Bremner in retaliation for [...]]]> Review by Jill Littrell, PhD, on Amazon here.

The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg is a historical account of the personal life of Doug Bremner that details his quest to honor his deceased mother with a proper funeral and the simultaneous investigation initiated by Roche Pharmaceutical to discredit Dr. Bremner in retaliation for his study establishing the link between a drug to treat acne and suicidal behavior in teenagers. While the book is essentially about one human being and his family, it has implications for public health. The book details the extent to which the pharmaceutical houses will go in protecting their market share. After reading the book, the reader will appreciate the pressures on individual doctors to buy the propaganda and essentially become sales people for the pharmaceuticals. It explains why few doctors will be willing to tell the truth, ask the right questions in their research, and make an unbiased appraisal of the best treatment for patients.

I am a clinical psychologist with a masters degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. I regularly attend grand rounds in the Emory psychiatry department as well as lectures in Neuroscience at Emory and Georgia State. What fascinates me is how the very smart people in the psychiatry department can totally miss the obvious. In 1994, I published an article contrasting long term outcomes for major depression before and after drugs. About the same time, Giovanni Fava published a paper also documenting the very worse outcomes in those treated with anti-depressants compared to outcomes found before the drugs. I argued that rapid relapse to depression in the medicated reflected drug withdrawal. Fava argued that drugs change the brain in such a way such that an acute condition becomes chronic. As I listen to the psychiatrist at Emory deliberating about genotyping patients to investigate why some people respond to antidepressants while many do not, I wondered why no one is looking at long term exposure to drugs. Drug trials typically last 6-8 weeks. Patients are on drugs for decades. Since the drugs are likely to impact many cells in the body, shouldn’t questions be asked about more than one organ system? Shouldn’t long term effects be investigated? Shouldn’t someone ask how to get people off anti-depressants? (There is a small literature on anti-depressant drug withdrawal, but no studies on how to safely withdraw patients.) I frequently come home from lectures, totally forlorn about the extent to which psychiatrists don’t get it. My husband reminds me that if psychiatrists started asking honest questions, they might be out of a job. It’s just too much to ask of ordinary human beings.

My other hobby is reading books on economics, particularly the subprime lending scandal and the banking crisis of 2008. In Ferguson’s documentary film Inside Job, he details how investment banks corrupted academic economists by giving them big consulting fees and appointing professors to various boards. It worked. The zeitgeist was to extol the virtues of the free-market system. I was struck by the parallels between academic economics and academic medicine. As Marcia Angell, former editor for New England Journal of Medicine, explains in last month’s New York Review of Books academic medicine has been corrupted. Given that health care costs are soaring, how long can America continue to offer treatments which make big profits for drug companies while making people sick? I think Doug Bremner’s moving account helps to diagnose what is wrong with America.

You can find more highlights from reviews and read chapter one of The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg here.

What people are saying about The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg: Accutane – the truth that had to be told.

“Riveting, compelling, fascinating.”

“Frighteningly well written.”

“This is an amazing book, especially since it is non-fiction.”

“I could not put this book down until I got to [...]]]>

What people are saying about The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg: Accutane – the truth that had to be told.

“Riveting, compelling, fascinating.”

“Frighteningly well written.”

“This is an amazing book, especially since it is non-fiction.”

“I could not put this book down until I got to the end… Thankfully, his writing is succinct. It is also quite poignant, surprising, revealing and at times even hilarious.”

“Poignant and heart-wrenching.”

“Frightening, moving, personal and redemptive.”

“A raw, honest, prescient page-turner.”

“A moving account weaving together his personal struggles of loss and shame.”

“A must read for everyone who believes in justice for all.”

“A very important tale stunningly well told.”

“A riveting and excellent read – I read it in one sitting. I highly recommend it.”

***

CHAPTER 1

Palm trees lined the road leading from the Orlando airport. A few puffs of white clouds sat unmoving in the brilliant blue Florida sky. My seven-year-old son, Lucca, played a hand-held computer game in the back seat of the cab. My wife, Viola, and twelve-year-old daughter, Lucia, looked out the window. I rode up front, thinking about how much I would be paid for the lectures I would be giving over the next year or so. The year was 2001.

We checked into the Disney World Hotel and went up to our rooms. Lucca grabbed the room key and ran ahead. He opened the door, ran in and jumped on the bed.

“Is this our room?” he asked, excitedly.

“Get your bags, Lucca,” I said.

When the family was settled, I headed for the courtesy room of the private company that organized medical education events on behalf of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the makers of the antidepressant drug, Paxil. They had invited me to give the kick-off lecture for their initiative to push Paxil into the market for people with anxiety disorders. They called it Psychnet. The plan was for me to give a lecture to a bunch of psychiatrists from across the country, educating them about the benefits of Paxil in the treatment of anxiety disorders, and they would in turn, for pay, fan out across the country giving lectures to other psychiatrists on the same topic. Not only would I get paid for doing this, but I would be tagged as a preferred speaker for their nationwide lecture series for psychiatrists. Over the next year or two, I would give about 15 talks across the country, with the usual price being $2,000 plus travel expenses. However, I learned that many of the speakers canceled at the last moment, so I could squeeze out as much as $5,000 for giving a talk at the last minute’s notice.

I stood for a moment before the door and checked my suit to see if it had any spots on it. Then I knocked.

“Come on in, Dr. Bremner,” an attractive and smiling Asian woman said as she opened the door. “We’re going over your slides now.”

The room was filled with a bunch of good-looking young people hunched over laptops who seemed bright and energetic. A floor-to-ceiling plain glass window looked out over palm trees evenly spaced over a closely cut green lawn with the blue of the Florida sea just beyond.

“How does this look?” The woman waved me over to one of the laptops.

I scrolled through the slides.

“You’ve got some great graphic art support,” I responded. That brought on a spontaneous smile.

“Thanks, Doctor. Any corrections?”

“No, these look great. When do I go out?”

“Your talk is in 30 minutes.”

There was a knock at the door. She walked over and opened it.

Scott Sproul entered the room. We had hung out together at a bar the year before and gossiped about the ups and downs of the pharmaceutical industry. Scott was one of the most up-beat people I ever met. He was now head of the Paxil marketing team.

“Thanks for coming down, Doug.” He slapped me on the back. “How’s the family?”

“They’re doing great.” The attention made me feel uncomfortable.

“Have they ever been to Disney World before?”

“No, this is the first time. Thanks for the invite.”

“Well, it’s great to have you here, Doug. I think you’re gonna really help us get our message out about Paxil.”

“Glad to help.” And I meant it.

“Here’re some tickets for Disney World for you and your family, for the weekend.”

“Wow, that’s really nice of you. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Ready for your lecture?”

“Yeah, OK.”

We walked toward the lecture hall. He opened the door and slapped me on the back.

“Go on out there and sell some Paxil, Doug!”

* * *

A few weeks later I was coming back through the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta after giving an out-of-town lecture, when I ran into Charlie Nemeroff, M.D., Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, where I had just been recruited. He was an energetic and gregarious man who was in constant motion. Nemeroff was known as one of the leaders in the field of academic psychiatry, what we called a “shining light.” A recent magazine article about him was called “Boss of Bosses,” and prominently featured him on the cover, in a white jacket with his arms folded across his chest.

“How’s it going, Doug?” he asked.

“Great. Thanks for the recommendation to be a speaker for the Psychnet program.”

“We take care of our faculty at Emory. Hey, Doug. About that Accutane study you’re doing?”

“Yeah?”

“Make sure you meet with the dean about it. He’s a dermatologist. We don’t want any political hot potatoes. And get the dermatologists involved. They can refer acne patients to you.”

He looked tired. He’d probably been on the road for a while.

“OK, no problem.”

“Well, I’ve got to run. Catching a plane to Fort Lauderdale to give a talk about norepinephrine and depression. Are you interested in norepinephrine, Doug?”

“Yeah, sure.” Nemeroff had done some research on the effects of Paxil on the norepinephrine system. GSK was using that angle to market Paxil as being better than the other SSRI antidepressants. They were eager to get people like Nemeroff out there talking about the science behind it all.

“Ok, catch you later.” He turned and walked off, pulling his rolling suitcase behind him.

I stood there and watched him walk away. While waiting for an appointment with him just after moving to Atlanta, I had seen his curriculum vitae sitting out on a table. It listed work as a consultant for the maker of Accutane, but it didn’t look active, and he was consulting for a gazillion other drug companies, so I figured it was no big deal. Nevertheless, I felt a little uneasy. Whenever there was money involved, you had to be careful.

Don’t worry about it, I thought. Just meet with the people like he asked you to do, don’t make any waves, do what you’re told, and everything will work out fine.

Read all the reviews for The Goose here.

Continue reading THE GOOSE THAT LAID THE GOLDEN EGG on Kindle for $2.99 here or paperback here.

This review is from: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg: Accutane – the truth that had to be told (Paperback)

Dr. Doug Bremner may have made a much larger contribution to [...]]]> By K. Peil – See all my reviews on Amazon

A bigger contribution than he may suspect

This review is from: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg: Accutane – the truth that had to be told (Paperback)

Dr. Doug Bremner may have made a much larger contribution to the field of psychiatry than he suspects. In this raw, honest, prescient pager-turner, he has confronted (both personally and professionally) the major mistake of the modern enlightenment: The Cartesian division between mind and body, and the privileging of reason over emotion. Indeed, his experience can shake any remaining Freudian flapdoodle from the reader’s mind, notions of the dark dangers of emotion, animalistic if not evil unconscious forces to be suppressively controlled by the rational mind. This misassumption is so deeply rooted in our cultural psyche that the entire enterprise of psychiatry itself has been shaped by it, with surgical, electrical, and now pharmacological solutions that seek to suppress – rather than truly understand – emotional processes, a suppression as effective as the politically correct emotional muzzle of his upbringing.

But as his story so poignantly illustrates, the Cartesian divide also severed two aspects of the human psyche, the Jungian anima and the animus, an archetypal dualism perhaps now more accurately reflected in the hemispheric lateralization of the brain. The divide has left us all half-witted, devoid of emotional sensory awareness and it gifts of evaluative, meaningfully moral – indeed spiritual – guidance. But once you’ve ridden the wind atop the Douglas firs of the Fishtrap, there is no turning down the volume of the resonant rhythms of nature, no denying the powerful feelings that bristle our flesh, tingle our bones, and sweep to the very marrow of identity itself. Nor should there be, as it is vital to our very animate existence. His mother, the lovely, multidimensional Laurnell, was the lost voice, his missing aminus, whispering within the windswept rustle of verdant branches, calling him to unity as a fully integrated human being, able to look squarely and courageously at the truth, however painful, to honor it, and to speak it – rather than deny that the Emperor, however powerful, comfy, and socially lofty his stylish shoes, is buck naked.

We need more heroes like Doug, more Davids to Goliaths such as big pharma, false values, vapid materialism, Machiavellian artifice, and social injustice; more beacons for liberty, honesty, emotional integrity, personal empowerment, humanitarian compassion, and spiritual reunification. I hope his story is shared far and wide. My only regret is that Dan Brown had not read The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg before writing The DiVinci Code. Otherwise, he may have had a much more sweeping, spiritually enlightened, and biologically grounded take on the true reclaiming of the “sacred feminine”.

5.0 out of 5 stars Frightening well written, June 28, 2011
By Reader – See all my reviewsThis review [...]]]> The first five six reviews for The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg are all five star and reproduced below. The book is available on amazon now in kindle and paperback editions.

5.0 out of 5 stars Frightening well written, June 28, 2011
By Reader – See all my reviewsThis review is from: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg (Kindle Edition)
The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg is the kind of insider tale which every consumer fears reading and which we all should read. Long shadows have always lain over the pharmaceutical industry and in the deftly written hands of Dr. Bremner the reader comes to realize that just because you are paranoid doesnt mean nobodys following you. Accutane was a hugely popular drug and I wont give a spoiler here because this reads like a thriller but ugh is all the truth and you need to find out for yourself.

For some reason this book brought back memories of the old Johnson and Johnson poisoned Tylenol scandal. Well the pharmaceutical giant Dr. Bremner writes about isnt attacked by some random lunatic who wants to see people die, the bad guys here are fully informed and they are wearing Brooks Brothers. Woodward and Bernstein would love this book I do too.

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of “The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg“, June 28, 2011
By Garry Wilson – See all my reviewsThis review is from: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg (Kindle Edition)
I just finished reading “The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg.” I enjoyed it very much. What a journey Doug had. I should not have been surprised at how many medical and drug company professionals turned a blind eye to a dangerous drug for personal gain; but I was. I think most of us still believe most doctors and especially psychiatrists are altruistic. I guess doctors are not immune from human nature: people are reluctant to “kill the golden goose.” I was also surprised that a major reputable drug company would continue to push a drug that might be leading to suicide. Even if you don’t expect them to take a suspect drug off the market on moral grounds, selling drugs that may be killing people is very bad for business. After all, trust and Goodwill are fundamental to long term success. In this story Doug reminded me of Don Quixote: not a knight by profession, but someone who could not tolerate the way some scoundrels were treating Dulcinea — who, by the way turns out to be much more than a metaphor in this story; but I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Sometimes life presents us with real dragons. Maybe it’s only then we find out what we’re made of.

5.0 out of 5 stars A book to take your breath away, June 26, 2011
By T. Hewtson LE ROUX – See all my reviews
(REAL NAME) This review is from: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg (Kindle Edition)
Having worked for a highly ethical pharmaceutical company who if a single rat died in Asia pulled the drug worldwide immediately, I am nonethless aware of the way pharmaceuticals are marketed which, like all marketing, is a sophisticated way of bending the truth to make it more appealing than it would be warts ‘n’ all.

With chocolate bars or clothing, the high gloss endorsements of movie stars are simply ‘sales puff’, but when it comes down to drugs, burying some uncomfortable truths can actually kill people – in the case of Accutane, maybe even 3,000 or more. The misapplication of drugs is the biggest killer of people from hospital-generated causes in US hospitals, running into hundreds of thousands of deaths a year.

The power of ‘The Golden Goose’ is partly in the story itself, the detailing of the tricks used by one drugs company to bury uncomfortable facts and the purveyors of those uncomfortable facts alongside them, but it is mostly in the searing writing which immediately has you sitting on the edge of your seat wanting to hear more.

It is a very important tale stunningly well told. It also explains some of the motivations of at least this one whistleblower beyond maybe the fame of standing up for the truth to a longstanding burning anger from his childhood as to how maybe the most important truth in his world at the time was witheld from him and even distorted.

A truly fascinating read.

5.0 out of 5 stars Frightening, moving, personal and redemptive., June 30, 2011
By Timothy Murphy, MD – See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg (Kindle Edition)
Dr Bremner has written a moving account weaving together his personal struggles of loss and shame, with the professional struggles he faces in mid-career when a large pharmaceutical firm goes on the offensive to discredit his research, which threatens the profits they are making on Accutane.

As a research physician, I have been lucky to have avoided the pitfalls Dr. Bremner faced. But the profits made on medications are driving the research almost entirely now, and that financial concern will inevitably force patient safety to the rear. I remember a research scientist with a large international firm telling me that the profits associated with the antibiotic I was researching – amounting to some 300 million a year – was “like the money left over in your office coffee fund at the end of the month” in the view of the controlling pharmaceutical company. It was then that I started to grasp the scale of profits that they are interested in and how they make choices about drugs.

When Dr. Bremner started to look into the neurologic changes in the brain associated with Accutane, he met determined resistance from colleagues, and the industry. This then turned into personal and professional attacks on his integrity and his science itself. The extent of the steps that Roche took to ruin his career are stunning, and will serve as a warning shot to any other scientist considering facing them down. The degree of direct and immoral complicity in that attack by members of the academic faculty are equally stunning.

But unlike the movies, where the hero just bravely and boldly takes on the big bad boys (win or lose), this narrative moves instead into a honest account of how terrifying this really is. The honesty in the book is stunningly clear, straightforward and blunt. Dr. Bremner is unsparing in detailing his own personal failings in coping with the stress of being attacked in such a personal and vicious manner.

As he struggles with a tendency to withdraw into fantasy, he begins to connect how his personal struggle in coping with the attacks by Roche is influenced by his unresolved grief over the loss of his mother. He details how he gradually started to look for her story – covered up and denied by his surviving father and step-mother – and how that search finally leads him to a healing place. It is so clear that he had to go straight into his pain, to be able to deal with his marital and professional struggles.

This book details perfectly the personal struggles one would face who had lost a parent at a very young age. It exposes the fraudulent and decadent practices of the high-flying academic physicians who are sometimes in the pocket of Big Pharma. The book details how we can retreat into fantasy to numb our pain, but also how facing it heals our pain. It shows us how poorly families can deal with death and loss, often for the simple reason that they did not know any better – even smart folks like psychiatrists.

This book is a riveting and excellent read – I read it in one sitting. I highly recommend it.

Timothy Murphy, MD
University of Pittsburgh

5.0 out of 5 stars Thumbs Up for the “The Goose”, June 29, 2011
By Neil Shulman MD – See all my reviewsThis review is from: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg (Kindle Edition)
Doug Bremner is a an academic doctor who studied psychiatry and nuclear medicine. He took on a major pharmaceutical company because he did research that demonstrated that a drug used for acne could be causing kids to commit suicide. That drug was making a lot of money, as much as a billion dollars a year, for a pharmaceutical company. Doug tells how the company spent lots of money on lawyers and investigators to challenge his findings which demeaned his character. Doug did not sit on the sidelines, he came out swinging with an ultimate aim to defend the results of his research and to defend his research so that proper precautions could be taken to avoid potential life-threatening side-effects of the medication. This book is a compelling read about what happened after that.

—-NEIL SHULMAN MD, AUTHOR OF “DOC HOLLYWOOD” AND “YOUR BODY’S RED LIGHT WARNING SIGNALS”

5.0 out of 5 stars Stand up and be prepared to fight!, July 7, 2011
By Soooz Burke – See all my reviewsThis review is from: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg (Kindle Edition)
Thank you. Two small words, and I mean them wholeheartedly. Author Doug Bremner made a stand against a ‘Goliath’ he made that stand by exposing his jugular to a huge and powerful drug company. A company that should have been accountable to more than their enormous bank accounts. They were not.

His research was poo-pooed by those Academics who sought to defame and vilify his good name. His journey into exploring the drug and its side effects makes for a breathless read, I had to keep reminding myself that this work is a work of Non-Fiction. NON-FICTION! That makes it all the more compelling. Author Bremner does not paint himself as ‘David’ facing “Goliath” in fact he allows us to see him as a man, a man with fears, hopes, dreams and his own set of nightmares to contend with.

He suffered humiliation at the hands of ‘paid’ so-called experts. He faced ridicule and snide comments from people who had taken the ‘Hippocratic’ oath. People who didn’t have the vaguest intention of allowing that oath to stand in the way of them protecting their overloaded bank accounts.

This book is a must read for everyone who believes in justice for all. The facts don’t lie. Neither does this author.