NYT reporter tells half of child abuse story

Duff Wilson of the New York Times (full disclosure: we were in journalism school together over a quarter century ago) has a heart-rending tale of child abuse by pill-prescribing psychiatrists in today’s paper. Not far into the story, there is this telling anecdote about Johnson & Johnson’s marketing of Risperdal, the atypical psychotic many of today’s psychiatrists order for young children prone to temper tantrums.

Even the most reluctant prescribers encounter a marketing juggernaut that has made antipsychotics the nation’s top-selling class of drugs by revenue, $14.6 billion last year, with prominent promotions aimed at treating children. In the waiting room of Kyle’s original child psychiatrist, children played with Legos stamped with the word Risperdal, made by Johnson & Johnson. It has since lost its patent on the drug and stopped handing out the toys. Greg Panico, a company spokesman, said the Legos were not intended for children to play with – only as a promotional item.

Alas, that’s the only element of the story about the marketing of these drugs. It doesn’t mention the systematic effort by J&J and other marketers of atypical antipsychotics to influence state Medicaid programs, for which the Texas Medication Algorithm Project is the poster child (for a complete rundown of the marketing and abuse of these drugs in children and others, search the archives of journalist Philip Dawdy’s excellent blog, Furious Seasons). It didn’t even mention Louisiana’s suit against J&J (the kid lived in Louisiana) for allegedly illegal marketing Risperdal to seniors.

Curious readers would like to know: What’s the latest on the lawsuits by state Medicaid officials against J&J? On a day when the Justice Department’s settlement with Allergan over the allegedly illegal off-label marketing of Botox is in the news, what is the status of whistleblower lawsuits against psychiatric drugmakers? This isn’t just a debate about how psychiatrists treat young kids whose parents can’t deal with extreme behaviors — the ultimate focus of Wilson’s story. When it comes to psychiatric drugs, no story is complete without a full discussion of their marketing. I would like to know if and how every physician mentioned in the story came in contact with the drug industry marketing machine.