According to concerned citizen Barbara Becker, "TeenScreen and similar projects are nothing more than a stealth trolling of the general population for drug consumers."
"The roots of these projects," she says, "grow straight from the drooling over additional excessive profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry, with the blessings of too many ever-grateful politicians who also profit from it through enormous pharmaceutical political contributions."
In all fairness, it should be noted that Big Pharma has managed to cozy up to a few Democrats as well. For instance, Senator Joe Lieberman has been known to pal around with lobbyists representing drug companies that provide large contributions to his campaign.
"The legendary lobbying and P.R. firm," Mr Conason explains, "hired her as a "senior counselor" in its "health and pharmaceuticals practice."
One of the firm's clients is GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of flu vaccines, as well as many other drugs, and Mrs Lieberman joined the firm in March 2006.
"In April 2005," according to Mr Conason, "Mr. Lieberman introduced a bill that would award an array of new government "incentives" to companies like GSK to produce more vaccines-notably patent extensions on other products, at a cost of billions to governments and consumers."
Mr Conason noted that the bill drew a critical commentary from Mr Lieberman's hometown newspaper, the New Haven Register, titled, "Lieberman Crafts Drug Company Perk."
The newspaper described the bill as being even more generous to the industry than a similar proposal by Republicans. "The government can offer incentives and guarantees for needed public health measures," the Register said. "But it should not write a blank check, as these bills do," it read, "to the pharmaceutical industry that has such a large cost to the public with what may be an uncertain or dubious return."
In return for industry support, lawmakers have been very generous when doling out tax dollars to fund marketing schemes like TeenScreen. On September 21, 2005, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced grants of over $9.7 million in funding for the implementation of the TeenScreen Program.
"The Columbia University TeenScreen Program," the press release said, "provides early identification of mental health problems, such as depression, that can lead to suicide."
TeenScreen uses a voice computer version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC ), and claims it can show signs of 30 disorders, according to an article by Reuters on October 13, 2003.
On March 2, 2004, TeenScreen's Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, testified at a congressional hearing and said that in the screening process, "youth complete a 10-minute self-administered questionnaire that screens for social phobia, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, major depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicidality."
The goals mentioned are obviously being reached because kids are "flunking" TeenScreen all over the country. According to Anne Yates, from Colorado, when the program was piloted at two sites in that state, at the high school, "a whopping 50% were found to be at risk of suicide."
"Figures from a homeless shelter," she reports, "were even more outrageous: 71% of the youth screened were found to have "mental disorders."
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