With disturbing links to cronyism, pharmaceutical conflicts of interest, overmedication of children and cruelty to animals--why is this person heading a government institute? Supported by our tax dollars?

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It has been four years since Thomas Insel, M.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health was suspected of pharmaceutical conflictsof interest. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, he assured the dean of the University of Miami medical school that if he hired Charles Nemeroff, a disgraced Emory researcher who had a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant terminated after a Congressional investigation for unreported drug industry income, government money would not be denied to the institution. Insel was leading NIH efforts to stamp out conflicts of interest at the time, says the Chronicle.

Why the largesse? Press reports said Insel wanted to repay Nemeroff for getting Insel a job at Emory University when Insel lost his NIH position in 1994. Nice old boys' network, revolving door work, if you can get it.

Recently Insel was again in the news, this time writing a blog on the National Institute of Mental Health web site that more children are being medicated for emotional and behavioral problems because more children likely have emotional and behavioral problems. Reacting to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that as many as US 10,000 toddlers are on stimulants like Ritalin, Insel wrote that that a "bigger problem" than over-medication of children and toddlers may well be "under-treatment." Ka-ching.

Insel was an early believer in the biomedical model of mental health, reports the New York Times--which is behind drugging children. A passionate animal researcher, Insel directed the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center once he was at Emory, one of the world's largest centers for research on monkeys and great apes, before returning to NIH.

Unlike other animal-based industries like the meat industry, animal research is scrupulously hidden from public view. Scientists say it is because average citizens cannot judge scientific merit, especially when experiments looks cruel. (And even though we are usually subsidizing it with our tax dollars.)

But you do not need a PhD to see the banality and inhumanity of many animal experiments which have less to do with scientific advancement than the government conferring "pork" on academic research centers.

Have you ever heard of Henry Harlow, the infamous primate research who subjected baby primates to "Iron Maiden" mothers and what he shamelessly called the "pit of despair"? Insel's experiments on primates continue the same chilling tradition.

In one experiment, newborn monkeys were "removed from their mothers within 48 h of birth," and subjected to "stressors" (use your imagination) without being "able to use a social companion to buffer their response to a stressor." What did this Harlow-like experiment add to scientific knowledge? "As expected from previous studies, monkeys removed from their mother shortly after birth and raised in standard nursery conditions develop a syndrome characterized by decreased affiliation, increased aggression, and increased self-directed, repetitive behavior," write the researchers.

In another experiment conducted by Insel on voles, a mouse-like mammal, "an animal was placed in the start box" with 2-8 days old pups. "Parental behavior was recorded as time spent with pups, either nursing, grooming or crouching during a 5-min period. Females were decapitated the same day." What?

With disturbing links to cronyism, pharmaceutical conflicts of interest, overmedication of children and cruelty to animals--why is this person heading a government institute? Supported by our tax dollars?

Martha Rosenberg is an award-winning investigative journalist who covers food and drug safety and regulation. Her acclaimed expose, Born with a Junk Food Deficiency, with 30 cartoons, is now available as an ebook.

(Article changed on July 16, 2014 at 11:44)

Authors Bio:

Martha Rosenberg is an award-winning investigative public health reporter who covers the food, drug and gun industries. Her first book, Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, is distributed by Random House. Rosenberg has appeared on CSPAN and NPR and lectured at medical schools and at the Mid-Manhattan Public Library.