In February 2015 I wrote to my College and the General Medical Council about concerns that competing financial interests were not being made public and that the current College system of Governance was not being properly followed:
Vanessa Cameron was interviewed for the Psychiatric Bulletin the following summer: “36 years at the Royal College of Psychiatrists”. In a frank interview ahead of her retirement she made this statement:
On the 28th June 2017, Professor David Baldwin took over as Chair of the Psychopharmacology Committee of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
An online curriculum vitae for Professor David Baldwin “Brief CV November 2010” states that “he has a professional interest in public education about mental disorder and its treatment, and played a leading role in the Defeat Depression Campaign over six years.”
Vanessa Cameron was introduced in her Profile as “being at the heart of psychiatry for 36 years”. I am left worrying that, if the former Chief Executive of my College was so seemingly insightless about the continuing involvement of industry in medical education, we may see a further 36 years with Pharma at the heart of British Psychiatry.
Here are some of the paid opinion leaders in UK psychiatry [I have used information available in the public domain to construct visual summaries of the competing interests of some key opinion leaders. I have done so in the spirit of the relevant guidance of the Royal College of Psychiatrists].
One Reply to ““We have an appropriately puritanical relationship with Pharma””