As industry conflicts of interest at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) come into the spotlight, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) merit special concern.

National Institute on Drug Abuse

While alcoholics or addicts now have “use disorders,” (and people aren’t disabled they have disabilities) NIDA retains the archaic and judgmental “abuse” in its name as in National Institute on Drug Abuse. What? Is this 1960?

Its current landing page says, “There is little scientific evidence to support the stereotype that people who return to use after a period of abstinence inevitably do so at the same intensity” and proposes using less drugs or alcohol as an addiction solution!

Worsening alcoholism or addiction after a relapse is a stereotype? Abstinence can be replaced by “cutting down”?

The assertions confute basic recovery medicine (before Pharma became a player) and almost amount to blasphemy. NIDA’s very charter should be questioned for these medical untruths. 

At the 2010 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in New Orleans, NIDA director Nora Volkow also vowed to find an across-the-board anti-addiction medicine––as ex-NIH director Francis Collins repeated soon after. But her biological construct is anathema to recovery medicine which considers genetics and psychological/social/environmental factors causes of the conditions. Pharma thanks her.

Volkow, who has personally collaborated with five pharmaceutical companies, is even quoted in a newsletter saying, “all addictions can be eliminated if the brain’s receptors can be controlled” –– Brave New World anyone?

National Institute of Mental Health

To sell drugs, drugmakers floated the factoid more than ten years ago that one in four Americans is “mentally ill” and mass media, mainstream medicine and government agencies have picked up the lucrative cudgel. Health “practices” now exist online and in strip malls for no other purpose than to dispense psych drugs while a bad day or mood or job are elevated to “mental illness.”

As the largest funder of research on mental disorders in the world, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is a leader in such mongering, selling major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, ADHD, spectrum disorders and other mental conditions with gusto––conditions which were barely noticed or described until there were drugs for them.

Thomas Insel, former NIMH director, helped. When SSRI risks threatened sales and drugmakers claimed suicides would rise from the presence of black box warnings, he agreed with the expectation and lamented “the focus on risk and a neglect of benefit.”

He demonstrated that an antidepressant worked more quickly than psychotherapy and said children were not overmedicated, they had more serious psychiatric problems than before.

In 2010, Insel was flagged by the medical and academic press for unabashed quid pro quo cronyism. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, he assured the University of Miami medical school dean if Charles Nemeroff were hired, government money would still flow.

Why the assurance? Nemeroff, a disgraced Emory researcher, had an NIH grant terminated after a Congressional investigation probed his unreported drug industry income. Insel, according to published reports. wanted to repay Nemeroff for getting him a job at Emory University when he lost his NIH position in 1994. Nice old boys, revolving door network if you can get it.

Where Does Animal Research Fit In?

Animal research is fundamental to government-funded, university-affiliated medical centers. It is an actual form of government currency with the cat-based researcher knowing he or she is less successful than the primate-based researcher.

But much animal research has gone underground literally and figuratively in recent years. Why? No one––not government-funded researchers, drugmakers or personal care product makers––wants to elicit accusations of redundancy, frivolity, waste and absurdity with no better defense than, “It’s not how it looks” and “You’re not a scientist.” Transparency—not!

For example, Volkow’s grisly cocaine experiment on pregnant bonnet macaques revealed that maternal drug use affects the fetus. Did anyone not know that?

Insel removed newborn monkeys from their mothers within 48 hours of birth, Harlow-fashion, and found the obvious. “As expected from previous studies, monkeys removed from their mother shortly after birth and raised in standard nursery conditions develop a syndrome characterized by decreased affiliation, increased aggression, and increased self-directed, repetitive behavior.” Did anyone not know that?

Insel directed the 142 acre-Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

FRIENDS OF INDUSTRY

Volkow and Insel are not the only government directors with industry loyalties. The former NIH director himself, Francis Collins, received royalty payments from the NIH-grantees ISIS Pharmaceuticals, Specialty Laboratories and other companies, sometimes called kickbacks.

The backlash that has greeted NIH budget cuts and grant terminations––“What about Science? Innovation? Health? a chorus yells––reveals the enormity of industry-funded jobs and research at NIH. Why should taxpayers support the direction and eventual profits of private industry, many ask.

Even Collins’ disappointing National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGR) and the current CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology can be seen as motivated more by industry than concern for patient care.

The move to weed out industry funding and conflicts of interests in government agencies is a long time coming. The financial links don’t support science, they bastardize it.