Big Pharma Worse Than I Thought

And I already thought it was pretty bad. More from Furious Seasons about a great Slate article exposing another group of doctors and scientists that are on the take from Big Pharma companies like Glaxo Smith Kline, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and Novartis.

What's most disturbing is that these guys structure the DSM, which determine diagnoses and recommended treatments for mental illnesses. And their influence is huge - WNYC's "Infinite Mind" recently aired a show called "Prozac Nation Revisited" with its host, Fred Goodwin. The goal of this show was for Dr. Goodwin and his guests to quell the "overblown" fear that there is a link between antidepressants and suicide. Here's the disturbing part:

"All four of the experts on the show, including Goodwin, have financial ties to the makers of antidepressants. Also unmentioned were the "unrestricted grants" that The Infinite Mind has received from drug makers, including Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of the antidepressant Prozac."

"The second guest on "Prozac Nation," Andrew F. Leuchter, is a professor of psychiatry at UCLA who has received research money from drug companies including Eli Lilly Inc., Pfizer, and Novartis. The third guest, Nada Stotland, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, has served on the speakers' bureaus of GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. None of Leuchter and Stotland's ties to industry was revealed to listeners—instead, each was introduced as a prominent academic."

How can it be this bad? It's just getting harder and harder to trust scientific experts anymore. I know I must sound like a creationist here, but the science community has really been showing its holes lately. It is as susceptible to bias and corruption as politics. The danger of that is that science is supposed to be this impenetrable fortress of truth. And while it's the closest thing we have to that, it gets consumed by the public as unquestioned gospel. We seem to exist in an age of scientific zealotry - just quote a peer-reviewed study, and theory becomes fact.

It's a tricky gray area because it leaves established and monumentally important truths like evolution vulnerable to attack by indoctrinated religious thinkers. But when it comes to amorphous ideas like depression and consciousness, the "facts" are very malleable and susceptible to manipulation - especially when it's part of the mutli-billion dollar antidepressant industry.

It just doesn't seem like the standard, reductionist approach towards a true understanding of human consciousness and mental illness is going to suffice. For now, mental illness is just a ripe marketplace for corporate interest. Not to say there haven't been advances - there are some great therapists and psychiatrists out there (though few and far between it seems). Otherwise, we've just been grasping at straws (or ice picks). The solution to this problem is in dire need of a paradigm shift.

Major kudos to the writers of the Slate article, Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer.

(Interesting tidbit, I can't find Infinite Mind on WNYC)

Blindness Movie

I'm going to see the crap out of this movie - from the director of Constant Gardener about an epidemic of blindness and its effect on society. Seems to have similar themes to Children of Men - one of the best I've ever seen.

Some Uplifting Poetry

(via Mind Hacks)

Survivor
by Roger McGough

Everyday,
I think about dying.
About disease, starvation,
violence, terrorism, war,
the end of the world.

It helps
keep my mind off things.

(me too)

The Singularity Is Coming

And sports will be the stage for its entrance. Great ESPN article on how prosthetics and physical enhancements will, and already are changing the face of sports.

South African sprinter, Oscar Pistorius was banned from the Olympics because tests found his prosthetic limbs (called Cheetah Flex-Foot legs) are too effective. They're actually more efficient than human legs, and since running on these prosthetics requires less oxygen than regular legs, it provides him with an unfair advantage. I guess I didn't see this coming in my lifetime - amputee athletes banned from sports because they're too good.

The debate about how to handle the evolving bionic abilities of athletes is pretty mind-blowing and will be hard to regulate going forward as advances in biological enhancements continue to explode. It seems for pro sports, they will likely need to create a standard for strength, speed, flexibility, etc and adjust the prosthetics accordingly ensuring a level playing field.

As I watch him run, it reminds me a bit of what it's like to swim with flippers on. You work equally hard, but you go twice as fast. Not sure where I come down on this one yet, hard not to root for this guy...

Charting The Uncanny

The Uncanny Valley is starting to take over my life slowly but surely. Ever since I heard of it a few days ago, things have been popping up, like this post from Mind Hacks. Vaughan collects the Youtube links for a video lecture by Karl MacDorman on how we interact with robots as their human likeness increases.



The clip from 30 Rock that got this ball rolling in my mind, which is based on the heady idea Tracy Jordan has to create a porn video game:

Illusion Times!

Hoping this guy's good on his promise to show a cool new illusion each week. This is the contrast/motion illusion, also known as "lucy in the sky" (note: you do not need acid to see the illusion).

The title of his blog is awesome:

"Illusion Sciences: why are we surprised by only some of the things that we see?"

So cool - always hard to remember that everything in our consciousness is being drawn up and processed by our brains at every second of every day. But there are mistakes everywhere, and the more we see the holes, the better we'll see reality.

Throwing Babies

Lilterally. It makes them grow up strong and healthy...or if they miss, a paraplegic. Seems worth it...