Many experts are now blaming the Biederman gang for the death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD at the age of 2-and-a half. Her doctor, Dr Kayoko Kifuji, a psychiatrist at Tufts New England Medical Center in Boston, kept her on a 3-drug cocktail that included an atypical, an anti-seizure medication and a drug approved to treat adults with high blood pressure, until her death in December 2006.
In a June 19, 2007, editorial in the Boston Globe, pediatrician Dr Lawrence Diller wrote, "Biederman and his colleagues at Harvard are the professionals most responsible for developing and promoting those standards of care -- which include diagnosing preschool children as young as 2 with bipolar disorder and treating them with multiple medications."
At the October 13, 2007 conference of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, Dr Fred Baughman, author of, "The ADHD Fraud," and a well-recognized expert on psychiatric drugs, discussed the death of the 4-year-old in a presentation titled, "Who killed Rebecca Riley?"
The answer, according to Dr Baughman and many other experts in the field of psychiatry and child development at the conference, is the Biederman gang, due to its promotion of a diagnosis for attention deficit and bipolar disorder in children as young as infants.
Dr Baughman says the aim of the "psycho-pharmaceutical cartel" in the 1990s was not to increase the market for psychiatric drugs, "it was to invent a market out of thin air."
About a month before Rebecca's death, on November 23, 2006, Dr Biederman defended the prescribing of multiple drugs to children in the New York Times by comparing it to doctors prescribing multiple drugs to treat heart disease, diabetes, cancer and aids. "Child psychiatry is not any different," he said. "These drugs have revolutionized how we treat severe psychopathology in children."
A report in the June 17, 2007 Boston Globe by Scott Allen, revealed that Dr Biederman has received research grants from 15 drug makers and serves as a paid speaker or adviser to seven, including Lilly and Risperdal maker Janssen.
Dr Kifuji is apparently a fan of the Biederman gang, judging by Mr Allen's report, in which her attorney, J W Carney Jr, states, "They are by far the leading lights in terms of providing leadership in the treatment of children who have disorders such as bipolar."
The legal filings in Rebecca's case show that Dr Kifuji also diagnosed the other two Riley children, ages 6 and 11, with ADHD and bipolar disorder and placed them on the same drug cocktail, with the cost of all mental health services and drugs covered by Medicaid.
Former Federal fraud investigator, Allan Jones, says the atypical makers were able to turn the schizophrenia drugs into cash cows by influencing the doctors and state officials involved in the approval of formularies that specify the drugs that can be used by persons covered by public health care programs.
Each state has an approved formulary and "before a drug can be prescribed for a patient on Medicaid it has to be on the list," he explains.
Evidence to support this claim came on August 21, 2007, when the Associated Press reported that drug companies had spent a lot of money on two members of the Minnesota panels who helped select the drugs covered by Medicaid. Dr John Simon earned $354,700 from drug makers between 2004 to 2006, and Robert Straka, a University of Minnesota pharmacy professor, was paid $78,000 while he served on the panel, the AP said.
And on August 27, 2007 the Pioneer Press reported that Dr Simon earned the most money from Lilly, "whose antipsychotic drug Zyprexa is the most costly each year for Minnesota's fee-for-service health program for the poor and disabled."
Lilly's financial disclosure records show payments to Dr Simon of $91,854.95 in 2004 alone. On October 17, 2007, the Associated Press reported that he had quite the panel.
The corruption of advisory committees has led to criminal charges against a state official who was fired in Pennsylvania. On November 21, 2006, Steven Fiorello, the Director of the Pharmacy Services, and chairman of the formulary committee, was charged with one count of conflict of interest for accepting money from drug companies and one count of failing to disclose income on Statements of Financial Interests.
"Fiorello served on a committee that decided which drugs would be used for mental health treatment in all state hospitals - decisions which guided more than $9 million in annual drug purchases," the state's Attorney General said in a press release.
Lilly's incentive not to readily disclose deadly side affects (up to ten times diabetes risk over non users) is they had billions coming in from state medicaid scripts?
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