This paper by L. McHenry has been published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. The abstract says:
“The marketing of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in the psychopharmacological industry presents a serious moral problem for the corporate model of medicine. In this paper I examine ethical issues relating to the efficacy and safety of these drugs. Pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to disclose all information in their possession bearing on the true risks and benefits of their drugs. Only then can patients make fully informed decisions about their treatment.”
The paper begins:
“Now more than ever the moral and scientific integrity of psychopharmacology deserves close scrutiny. A behemoth pharmaceutical industry has created corporate psychiatry along with industry sponsored clinical research, direct to consumer marketing of antidepressants, ghost writing for medical journals and a major war for the market share. All the trappings are in place for marketing the disease rather than the cure. An illness intervention industry with no serious ethical commitment to health care threatens the most basic imperative of the medical art—’first, do no harm;—and demonstrates the weakness in the corporate model of medicine …”
You can read more from here.
