PSYCHO-PHARMA FRONT GROUPS: Children and Adults with ADHD (CHADD).
Pharma-funded front groups masquerading as “patient advocates”
These groups are not what they appear to be. Yet their influence over legislation, lobbying, drug regulation (or lack thereof), and public relations campaigns is substantial and can seriously impact society.
Big Pharma has aggregated and sometimes co-opted patients into lobbying groups for high-priced drugs.
These are groups operating under the guise of advocates for the “mentally ill,” which in reality are heavily funded psychiatric-pharmaceutical front groups—lobbying and working on state and federal laws which effect the entire nation—from our elderly in nursing homes to our military, pregnant women,etc
The pharmaceutically funded “patient’s rights group” CHADD, received $1.2 million in pharmaceutical funding in 2008 alone…
In 1987, members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) voted to include ADHD as a mental disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The same year, CHADD was formed. The financial relationship between CHADD and Ciba Geigy (then manufacturer of Ritalin) was formed…
As early as 1995 the International Narcotics Control Board (INC raised the alarm over the ‘patient’s rights group’ CHADD (Children and Adults with ADHD) actively lobbying for the use of methylphenidate (Ritalin) for children labeled with ADHD while being funded by Ciba Geigy’s (now Novartis), the manufacturer of Ritalin. INCB said that this promotion of sales of an internationally controlled substance could be identified as covert advertising in contradiction of the provisions of the 1971 Psychotropic Drugs Convention.
The same year, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) added its concerns that “the depth of the financial relationship with the manufacturer was not well known to the public” and that a spokesperson for Ciba had stated, “CHADD is essentially a conduit for providing information to the patient population.”
Please read the full article here: https://www.cchrint.org/issues..../psycho-pharmaceutic
