CHEAP SELLOUTS

They say everybody has their price. The ones who say this this are the people looking to bribe someone. While that cynical statement may or may nor be true, nobody likes a guy who sells out cheap. Take a gander at Doctor Joseph Biederman and Doctor Timothy Wilens, a couple of influential psychiatrists from Harvard Medical School. The New York Times reported that in the last 5 years they received about a million and a half dollars apiece in "consulting fees," from pharmaceutical companies whose drugs these doctors have popularized. The drug corporation giants like nothing more than to have world-renowned experts plugging their products. And so they bribe them with consulting fees.

Dr. Biederman is the guy most responsible for the drugging of our nation's children, tranquilizing the soul and spirit right out of so-called difficult children. Then these helpless kids become miniature zombies prone to obesity and other metabolic problems. So now it comes to light that this jack ass Biederman sold his soul and our children's lives for chump change. While a million and half sounds like a lot of money to you and me, it doesn't amount to much to a man with the earning potential of a psychiatrist.

Spread those bribes over a number of years and it's really not much of a difference-maker in the life of a wealthy person. The pharmaceutical companies must be astounded at how cheap this man sold himself while they rake in huge fortunes from Americans for the privilege of drugging junior into submission. We like to think that our medical doctors didn't all sleep through Ethics 101 in medical school but we're mature enough to realize that they are human beings like the rest of us equally susceptible to corruption. Well, the truth is, most of us are not corrupt, or at least have had few opportunities to be tested.

But here's a guy who wielded enormous influence due to the status of his affiliations with Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital and his promises to improve the lives of our children. The net worth and life style of a man in his position would hardly be changed by a million and a half dollars over the course of several years. But still he lied about it to Harvard, violating all sorts of conflict-of-interest rules by which we trust our professionals to abide, whether they be lawyers, judges, surgeons or somebody messing with our children's minds and bodies. So maybe you have to figure that the 1.6 million was only the amount of bribes he could not hide from the tax man and his employers at Harvard.

Once you know a guy is corrupt, then, right or wrong, you figure he's totally corrupt and will seek every opportunity to cash in. This is not a safety inspector here making $65,000 a year and looking the other way when contractors hand him an envelope stuffed with cash. Not that corrupt safety inspectors are acceptable, but the theory here is that are easier and cheaper to buy than doctors. A bribe-taking doctor has a whole lot more to lose than 65 grand a year. Most doctors make that much in a few weeks and are held to a higher standard than the great majority of other professions, and rightfully so. These are the people we trust with the very immediate issues of life and death, the men and women whose judgement and honesty we all rely on.

While psychiatrists are for the most part lying blowhards who don't make a dime's worth of difference in most of their patients' lives, a lot of them, like this Biederman thug, wield enormous influence. And like any other low-rent thug, he sells himself cheap. Most of our doctors are hard-working and earnest professionals, plying their vital trade in an increasingly unfriendly industry environment, one corrupted by corporate interests in the health care providers, profit-driven hospitals and crippling malpractice insurance rates. Add to this the constant pressure by pharmaceutical giants to peddle their questionable drugs to trusting patients and you see where a good set of ethics is vital in a doctor.

So now you have to question Biederman's entire body of work. It's impossible not to, especially when you figure he sold himself so damned cheap. What other corners did he cut? How many children's imaginations did he stifle? How many of these children are now the steady patients of real doctors who have to treat their damaged bodies after having been prescribed metabolism-altering drugs by quick-fix psychiatrists with no talent at all for figuring out children's minds? How much of his research was funded and influenced by multi-billion dollar corporations with a specific agenda and with a desired result in mind? How long has he been on the take? A lot of parents would like to know. Their children would too if their curiosity had not been drugged right out of them. Make psychiatrists prove this is not a racket and Biederman isn't just another low-rent racketeer.