THOMAS A. BAN: CONFLICT OF INTEREST IN NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY: MARKETING VS. EDUCATION

Thomas A. Ban’s response to Donald F. Klein’s response to Ban’s reply to Klein’s comment 

We certainly agree that “local legal issues are not inviolable dicta” and that “opposing social and economic interests” should be “fought out in the political arena”. The difference between our positions is that you believe that fight in the political arena should be given top priority in conflict of interest issues in neuropsychopharmacology, whereas I argue that the fight in the political arena should not distract attention from the need for identifying treatment responsive populations within diagnostic categories and delineating the therapeutic profile of psychotropic drugs. Addressing the same issue in 2006, I wrote: “Blaming industry for withholding information; chastising governments for allowing the release of semi-finished products: and slanting academic psychiatry for confounding education with marketing, have little impact………There is no political solution for any of these issues, but all three issues would be resolved by the identification of the treatment-responsive form(s) of illness within the diagnostic categories and the delineation of the therapeutic profile of psychotropic drugs”. 

Ban TA. Academic psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry 2006; 30: 429-41.

Thomas A. Ban

July 16, 2015