Healy Redux : In response to Healy

This article, which was not indicated as written by David Healy, appears to provide a summary of the point of view espoused by Healy in his recent books, The Antidepressant Era and The Creation o/Psychopharmacology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. I have written a review of the latter and some of the key ideas in the former in Science (Meltzer, 2002) which I refer the interested reader to for my reasons believing that Healy, a skilled polemiscist who is often loose with facts, must be read with great caution because of the innumerable inaccuracies and selective facts he choses to describe the role of industry, academia and government in the development and marketing of the current generation of psychotropic drugs. This condensed version of his general point of view, while faithful to the gist of his argument, lacks the polish of his book. I find nothing in it that makes me want to add to my previously published commentary and critique. Statements like the comment that the pharmaceutical industry is "apparendy able to mould academic debate at will and to market psj'chiatric disorders more effectively than they can make new therapeutic agents" yet they are the only source of new therapeutic agents used throughout the world (with considerable improvement in patient outcomes compared to the drugs which Healy advocates, e.g. cyproheptadine for depression and methylene blue for schizophrenia), are self-contradictory.