TeenScreen - The Law Suits Begin
The scheme concocted by the pharmaceutical industry and pushed forward by the Bush administration to screen the entire
nation's public school population for mental illness and treat them with controversial drugs was already setting off
alarms among parents all across the country. But in the state of Indiana, the alarm just got louder.
Tax payers had better get out their check books because school taxes are about to go up as the law suits against school
boards start mounting over the TeenScreen depression survey being administered to children in the school.
The first notice of intent to sue was filed this month in Indiana by Michael and Teresa Rhoades who were outraged when
they learned their daughter had been given a psychological test at school without their consent.
In December 2004, their daughter came home from school and said she had been diagnosed with an obsessive compulsive and
social anxiety disorder after taking the TeenScreen survey.
Teresa Rhoades always viewed her daughter as a happy normal teenager. “I was absolutely outraged that my daughter was
told she had these two conditions based off a computer test,” said Rhoades.
Attorney John Price, who is representing the Rhoadeses, confirmed that he had sent a notice of tort claim to both the
school and Madison Center, which worked with the school system to administer the test.
This action means that the Rhoadeses are declaring their intent to file a lawsuit against both entities. Price said
state law requires a notice of claim to be sent to any governmental agencies, including schools, before a lawsuit can be
filed against them, according to the June 9, South Bend Tribune.
In the notice, Teresa and Michael Rhoades claim the survey was erroneous, improper, and done with reckless disregard for
their daughter's welfare and that they did not give the school permission to give the test.
The parents allege that when their daughter took the test, she was improperly diagnosed with obsessive compulsive
disorder and social anxiety disorder. That diagnosis, they claim, caused both the teen and her parents emotional
distress, and the family intends to seek the "maximum amount of damages."
The Indiana child was diagnosed with two disorders in one crack but there are many more.
If a teen doesn't like doing math assignments, parents should not worry. TeenScreen may determine that the child simply
has a mental illness known as developmental-arithmetic disorder.
There's also a diagnosis for those children who like to argue with their parents, they may be afflicted with a mental
illness known oppositional-defiant disorder.
And for anybody critical of the of the above 2 disorders, they may be suffering the mental illness called
noncompliance-with-treatment disorder.
No kidding, these illnesses are included in the more than 350 "mental disorders" listed in the American Psychiatric
Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the insurance billing bible for mental disorders.
Tax Dollars Already Being Funneled To Pharma
In addition to lawsuits, tax dollars are already funding TeenScreen and many of the drugs purchased by the new customers
it recruits.
While promoting TeenScreen to Congress, its Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, flat out lied when she told members of
congress that TeenScreen was free and its website statement that "The program does not receive financial support from
the government and is not affiliated with, or funded by, any pharmaceutical companies," is also a blatant lie.
On Oct 21, 2004 Bush authorized $82 million for suicide prevention programs like TeenScreen and a report in Psychiatric
Times said the administration had proposed an increase in the budget for the Center for Mental Health Service from $862
million in 2004 to $912 million in fiscal 2005. TeenScreen is sure to get a cut of those tax dollars.
Federal tax dollars are also being funneled through state governments to fund TeenScreen. On Nov 17, 2004, Officials at
the University of South Florida Department of Child & Family Studies said $98,641 was awarded to expand the TeenScreen program in the Tampa Bay area.
In Ohio, under the governor's Executive Budget for 2006 and 2007, the Department of Mental Health has specifically
earmarked $70,000 for TeenScreen for each of those years, reports investigator Sue Weibert.
On June, 2002 the Update Newsletter published by the Tennessee Department of Mental Health, reported that 170 Nashville
students had completed a TeenScreen survey. The Newsletter said the survey was funded by grants from AdvoCare and Eli
Lilly. Last I knew, Eli Lilly was a pharmaceutical company.
The great news for Pharma was that 96 of the 170 students who took the survey ended up speaking to a therapist which no
doubt resulted in the recruitment of 96 new pill-popping teens.
Tax Dollars Spent On Drugs
Unbeknownst to many, tax payers are already paying an enormous price as a result of marketing schemes designed to get
students hooked on antipsychotic drugs. A list of drugs that must be prescribed for kids is already set up, modeled
after a list used in Texas since 1995 called the TMAP. The list contains the most expensive drugs on the market.
In 2002, national sales of antipsychotics reached $6.4 billion in 2002, making them the fourth-highest-selling class of
drugs, according to IMS Health, a company that tracks drug sales, in the May 2003, New York Times. By 2004, sales had
jumped by over $2 billion with antipsychotics sales totaling $8.8 billion -- $2.4 billion of which was paid for by state
Medicaid funds, according to the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones Magazine.
Here's how this part of the scheme works. The drug companies bribe state officials and donate money in the form of
"educational grants" to the states to approve and implement these TMAP drug programs, and then in return, state Medicaid
programs fund the cost of the drugs with tax dollars.
For instance, in Texas, Pfizer awarded $232,000 in grants to the Texas department of mental health to "educate" mental
health providers about TMAP, and in return, the Texas Medicaid program spent $233 million tax dollars on Pfizer drugs
like Zoloft.
Johnson & Johnson (Janssen Pharmaceutica) gave grants of $224,000 to Texas and Medicaid spent $272 million on J & J antipsychotic drug, Risperdal.
Eli Lilly awarded $109,000 in grants to "educate" state mental health providers and as a result, Texas Medicaid spent
$328 million for Lilly's antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.
The TMAP was approved in Texas in 1995, and by February 9, 2001, an article in the Dallas Morning News, titled State
Spending More on Mental Illness Drugs reported: “Texas now spends more money on medication to treat mental illness for
low-income residents than on any other type of prescription drug.”
In addition to covering nearly 40% of the drugs for Medicaid recipients, the state also spends about another $60 million
a year on "hundreds of thousands of prescription drugs for other state-funded programs at the Texas Department of Mental
Health and Mental Retardation and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,” the paper reported.
By the time the 2002-2003 budget was established, Texas lawmakers had to increase the amount of money allocated to the
department of health and human services by $1 billion with a significant portion earmarked for prescription drugs,
according to Texas officials.
In 1999, Ohio adopted its version of TMAP and by 2002 Ohio's Medicaid program was spending $145 million on schizophrenia
medications alone.
California spent over $500 million on the Atypicals Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroqual in 2003.
In 2002, Missouri Medicaid spent $104 million on three TMAP drugs alone. The three topped the list of all other
medications covered by Medicaid, including HIV, cancer, and heart drugs.
Chickens Come Home To Roost
Pennsylvania taxpayers are now saddled with PennMap, its own version of the Texas list of expensive drugs, for the
treatment of mentally ill, as a result of a the pharmaceutical scheme used to infiltrate public institutions and
influence state officials and treatment practices.
It has since been revealed by whistleblowers Allen Jones and Stefan Kruszewiski that the Pennsylvania officials who
approved the drugs for PennMap were receiving improper or illegal financial rewards from drug companies involved in
promoting the program.
Dr Stefan Kruszewski was hired as a psychiatric consultant for the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Human Services.
He was in charge of the state's mental health and substance misuse programs to protect against fraud, waste, and abuse.
He was fired after he uncovered corrupt relations between Pennsylvania politicians and pharmaceutical representatives
and has since filed a Whistleblower suit against the state.
Allen Jones was an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, and revealed that state officials with
influence over the PennMap program received financial benefits from drug companies that had a stake in getting PennMap
accepted. Jones was fired after he made his discoveries known to the BMJ and the New York Times when his superiors
ordered him to stop his investigation. He also has filed a Whistleblower suit.
Well, it looks like the chickens have finally come home to roost in Pennsylvania.
One of the officials that Jones named was Steven Fiorello. On April 15, 2005 the Associated Press reported that
Pennsylvania's top pharmacist repeatedly took money from Pfizer and other outside sources, violating ethics laws, a
government panel found.
The State Ethics Commission fined Fiorello more than $27,000 and referred the case to the state attorney general's
office for possible criminal prosecution.
The commission cited repeated conflicts between Fiorello's unofficial activities and his official duties, which included
serving on a panel that decides which drugs may be given to patients at the nine state mental hospitals. The report also
cited repeated failures to disclose his income from drug companies, Pfizer and Janssen, and other outside sources.
It seems Fiorello became a member of Pfizer's "advisory council'' around the same time he joined the PennMap panel. The
council held annual meetings, apparently "to solicit input from health-care professionals to help Pfizer define its
commercial strategies for its products," the commission said in the report.
The ethics committee also discovered a "Medical Director's Education Account," which was funded by unrestricted
educational grants from pharmaceutical companies and that Fiorello himself had solicited funds for the account.
It was recently announce that these "educational" grants that have benefited state officials who were in positions to
approve the TMAP lists are finally going to be investigated by a senate committee.
On June 10, 2005, Senators Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus issued a Press Release that said they have asked a number of
large drug makers to explain a marketing practice where the companies give money to state governments and other
organizations in the form of grants. The drug companies call the awards educational grants, but the senators are
concerned that the dollars are more focused on product promotion than education, the release said.
Grassley is chairman and Baucus is ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, which has legislative and
oversight responsibility for the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
In addition, on June 9, 2005, the senators sent a letter to drug companies that states in part, "The Committee seeks
further information on this topic so that it can assess how educational grants are used, in what contexts and for what
purposes, and who receives them."
It was sent to the following drug makers: Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Amgen, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Eli
Lilly, Sanofi Aventis, Eisai, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Schering-Plough Corporation, Hoffman-LaRoche, Forest
Pharmaceuticals, Abbott Laboratories, Genentech, Biogen Idec, Genzyme Corporation, Chiron Corporation, Serono, and TAP
Pharmaceutical Products.
The Senators said their inquiry is based on reports that some companies have awarded these grants to health care
providers as inducements to those providers to prescribe medications the companies produce. In other cases, such grants
to state agencies may have prompted those agencies to develop programs leading to over-medication of patients at the
expense of patient health or to unnecessary expense for taxpayers.
"We need to know how this behind-the-scenes funneling of money is influencing decision makers," Grassley said, "The
decisions result in the government spending billions of dollars on drugs. The tactics look aggressive, and the response
on behalf of the public needs to be just as vigorous."
This committee was needed because Pennsylvania is merely the tip of the iceberg. Many of the same tactics have been used
in other states like Florida with Jim McDonough, Director of the Florida Office of Drug Control, who is listed as an
“advisor” to TeenScreen on its website. TeenScreen gifted McDonough's office with $180,000 to get TeenScreen set up.
However, Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, is now crying foul because she doesn't feel the money has been put to good
use since McDonough failed to get the program in all the schools as promised, in large part because he met his match in
Ken Kramer.
In Ohio there's Mike Hogan, Director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health. He's hooked in with Parexel Medical
Marketing, a front group that takes Pharma money to set "advisory panels" for Pharma. The panel memberships are made up
exclusively of Mental Health, Medicaid and other Directors from the various states. Michael Hogan is listed as an
advisory board member.
The panel members are treated to trips, first class accommodations and other perks in exchange for showing up and
listening to a spiel by Janssen sales personnel who direct the course of the meetings. The same kinds of meetings that
Fiorello attended.
Hopefully will be just a matter of time before the new senate committee disbands this gang of pharma-backed government
pill-pushers.
Trying To Save The Children
Dire warnings against mass mental health screening are coming from every segment of society, including parents,
physicians, academics, journalists, and human rights groups because the influence of the pharmaceutical industry in this
scheme is so patently obvious.
People are particularly worried about saving the children from senseless and dangerous drugging. According to long-time
anti-child drugging advocate, Doyle Mills, "Psychiatry has a long history of abject failure. Psychiatric treatments -
drugs, electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomies - have harmed millions and robbed them of any hope of a normal life."
Expert records researcher, Ken Kramer, has been fighting against child drugging for years has conducted a research
project on child suicides in Florida that determined that medicating kids with the types of dangerous mind-altering
drugs on these lists is causing suicide. He helped defeat TeenScreen's attempt to gain access to schools in 2 of
Florida's largest counties. Ken has a TeenScreen website at http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html
Dr Karen Effrem, a pediatrician and strong opponent of mandatory screening recently warned, "Universal mental health
screening and the drugging of children ... needs to be stopped so that many thousands if not millions of children will
be saved from receiving stigmatizing diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of their lives. America's school
children should not be medicated by expensive, ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and dubious
diagnoses."
In a letter to the editor in the Washington Times on October 31, 2004, Effrem summed up the dangers of using tax dollars
to fund mass mental health screening of children:
"Given the very real problems of already existing coercion, subjective criteria, dangerous and ineffective medication,
and the failure of screening to prevent suicide ... Congress would be wise to withhold the $44 million requested for
state grants."
The nation's first law suit has been filed and let it serve as a warning to other schools across the country to think
twice before allowing the TeenScreen recruitment scheme to zero in on their students.
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Evelyn Pringle epringle05@yahoo.com
(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on corruption in
government)