two years ago Jeremy hunt when he was
the Minister for health said that
children’s mental health services are
the greatest failure in the NHS back
then and even more so now there was a
whole range of articles about university
students are committing suicide in
unprecedented numbers distressed
teenagers in school been given
antidepressants because they couldn’t
access children’s mental health services
and just this week there’s been a whole
bunch of reports about a quarter of
young women have mental health problems
this isn’t just a UK issue anywhere from
New Zealand to the United States you’ll
find the same articles and the same
programs if you read the articles and
watch the programs the old media usually
say this is a new media issue which
sounds a little bit to me like nu plus
nu equals five I mean and you have to
remember that the old media hate the new
media when I ask people people like you
for instance for other things going on
the kind of thing that I hear the most
often is well it’s a quick-fix issue
we’ve become a quick-fix culture and
that sounds good to me except for the
fact I’m not quite sure I haven’t been
sure what a quick fix actually is until
president Trump a little bit back came
up with an answer for me which in
response to one of them at the school
shootings he said you know what we need
is a good guy with a gun in all those
schools news outrage in response to this
but people were stumped by the follow up
point he made was well if you don’t
think a good guy with a gun as the right
hand sir why do you have good guys with
guns outside the White House and of
course guns work trouble is if you
multiply them up and spread them too far
like maybe into schools we figure that
so it can potentially cause more
problems than they solve medicines are a
little bit like guns
there are fix they can solve problems
multiply them up too much and spread
them let them leak into the kinds of
situations that they shouldn’t be in and
potentially you can cause more
problems than yourself especially if the
information that goes with the medicine
is fake information most of you will
have heard of ghost writers Donald
Trump’s book the art of the deal was
famously ghost written footballers and
film stars and maybe Tony Blair the kind
of people we think have their books
ghost written Gordon Brown were less
likely to think that he had a ghost
written brainy people we think don’t
need ghosts to write things for them
well think again the greatest
concentration of ghost writing on this
planet is centered on the drugs that you
take that your doctor gives to you since
about 1989 our thereabouts
pretty well all the articles about all
the pharmaceuticals that you might be
put on by a doctor even in the most
prestigious medical journals have been
ghost written the authors on the
authorship line are not the people that
wrote that article now this isn’t
necessarily a problem because the ghost
writers are smart young women for the
most part you’ve got PhDs who write
better than the average doctor it
wouldn’t be a problem if the ghosts and
the doctors behind the trial of the
drugs and your doctor had access to the
data from that trial but they don’t who
does well you might think that FDA who
approved drugs in the United States have
access to the data they don’t you might
think that MHRA who prove drugs here
have access to the data behind the drugs
you’re on they don’t you might think
that those nice people who write the
nice guidelines that tell your doctor
which hard drug to give you a gut ‘roger
antidepressant would have the data when
they write the guidelines they don’t
they work from ghostwritten articles now
this is a problem for all doctors you
used to be a gulf between the NHS and
private medicine over and say the United
States but increasingly the systems are
exactly the same since about 1989
they’ve been increasingly run by
and the first job the manager has is to
ensure that doctors keep the guidelines
they’re not doing this to take care of
you they’re doing this so that if
anything goes wrong to you you die are
you disabled by the treatment the
organization and the manager won’t be
held responsible if there’s any fuss in
the media about any treatment you’re on
politicians worldwide will say
everything will be okay provided doctors
keep the guidelines all these people are
seeing rotten apple in the barrel
problem we just need to make sure we get
rid of the rogue doctor when the problem
is that you and I are facing a rotten
barrel problem the greatest threat to
you is the good doctor who keeps to
guidelines not a person like me who
thinks the guidelines are junk the good
doctor that keeps the guidelines is
totally in the pocket of the
pharmaceutical industry without them
having to pay him a cent now let me
bring you back to 1989 thereabouts and
the Berlin Wall has just come down and
prozac has just come on the market it’s
the first of what we now call the SSRI
antidepressants this and the other
exercises where drugs were going to make
you better than well they were going to
help you transition from the old you to
a new enhanced you they were miracle
drugs about as far removed from say the
anti histamines that you could think
about I mean nobody thinks the
antihistamines are miracle drugs well in
actual fact prozac and the other SSRIs
her and histamines they were less
effective and more expensive than the
older antidepressants we had so how are
they made into miracle drugs well the
answer is there was lack of access to
the data from the trials that brought
them on the marker and the articles were
ghostwritten up to hide the problems
that they could cause the fact that
these drugs can cause you to commit
suicide can cause you to commit homicide
there 80 percent to the people who take
them for
period of time are not going to be able
to get off them easily that they wipeout
your ability to make love and that 20
years after you’ve halted the drugs you
still may not be able to make love
properly all of this was concealed by
the ghost writing a few years after
these drugs came the market there was a
few reports from enthusiastic doctors
saying when I give these drugs to
children they they work wonders for
children – now when we see reports like
that the response usually as well
doctors can be paid to write these
enthusiastic reports so what do we need
to do is we need to do a clinical trial
and if the trial is negative we don’t
use the drug there have been 30 clinical
trials of this group of drugs in young
people who are depressed every single
trial negative now it’s not just that
but in the trials there’s a doubling or
tripling of the rate of children going
on to suicidal events on the treatment
compared with non treatment this was
written out of the script what’s
happened the sales of these drugs
well besides oral contraceptives the
SSRI group of drugs are the most
commonly taken drugs by teenage girls
how does this happen well before we
found out about the ghost driving and
the negative trials and things like that
what had happened was prozac had been
approved for young people by FDA in the
states and MHRA here that’s I mean
that’s only done on the basis that FDA
and m.nature I have positive trials to
Pasir trials of any of these drugs that
they approve I’ve just told you that all
the trials were negative FDA and NHRA
know this the nice guidelines recommend
for teenagers who are depressed that you
can give Prozac and maybe other SSRIs
they know there is not a single positive
trial it’s not just the case that the
SSRIs of the most commonly taking drugs
by teenage girls but the use of these
drugs generally is exploding
this group of drugs plus related drugs
if you go to universities over in the
United States fifty percent of the
students are on one or other of these
drugs and the ones who are most commonly
on the mark medical trainees the people
you depend on not to put you on a quick
fix to solve your problems they’re the
ones who are most likely to be taking a
quick fix now how does this apply to any
of you well everything I say about the
antidepressants for young people applies
to every single drug you may be on back
around 1989 you and I were probably on
just one drug for short period time an
antibiotic for a week or two now 50% of
you over the age of 45 will be on three
or more drugs every single day of the
year 50% of you over the age of 65 will
be on five or more drugs every single
day of the year and if you’ve got a good
doctor who keeps two guidelines you’re
going to be on more drugs every single
year you live so by the time you get
into your 70s you’re going to be on ten
or more drugs if we don’t have the
information that makes these drugs safe
that’s the problem what do you got what
you have to remember in all this is that
companies aren’t in the business of
making you well are better than well
they’re in the business of making sure
that their sales of a drug this year are
better than last year then the business
of trying to transition their drugs from
poisons to sacraments sacraments or
quick fix poisons
aren’t you might have the word poisons
touch strong but it used to be said that
the art of medicine is bringing good out
of the use of a poison and you have to
remember that a medicine is a chemical
which is always risky plus the
information that we need in order to
make that risk as safe as we can make it
well over the last thirty years the
information has been degrading in
quality the whole
tongue Donald Trump again introduced us
to fake news a few years ago and the
general impression you get from the old
media it’s really people who are a
little bit dim out there who are taken
in by fake news well doctors have been
consuming only fake news for the last 30
odd years or so where does this leave us
well modern medicine began or roughly
200 years ago it began with people like
Philippe Pinel who famously said it’s
great to have a fix for our problems but
it’s an even greater art to know when
not to use that fix over the course of
the last 200 years year are near your
life expectancy improved until two years
ago when in the United States it began
to fall not just stopped speeding up but
began to fall and here it has stalled so
that the situation now is the life
expectancy we thought you had two years
ago it’s less now than we thought it was
two years ago whether you live in the
United States are Europe allied to that
there’s been a change in the climate of
health care our services are addicted to
the idea that the treatments we give you
work wonderfully well and are free of
harms and there are quicker and cheaper
fix for the problems you have than
having someone engage with you and try
and solve those problems in a less risky
way when I say change the climate of
health care you’re probably going to
think global climate change but you know
we can’t see the sea levels rising out
there yet we can see your life
expectancy falling how am I going to
solve the problem well in fact you can
do more to change the climate of health
care back to what it should be then most
of us feel we can do for global climate
change and in the course of doing
the healthcare climate you can maybe
help but the global climate change too
because it’s the same set of forces
driving both sets of changes and what
you can do to borrow from the
pharmaceutical industry who who have
come up with this phrase which you hear
the whole time
at least it over in the States ask your
doctor what you need to do is the next
time you go to your doctor and he or
she’s going to put you on some pill ask
your doctor if access to the data behind
this pill could be good for you and for
her and perhaps suggests that you don’t
want to be put on a pill where she
doesn’t have access to the data this
will be a tremendously scary moment for
you and for her you will feel the weight
of those interest groups who don’t want
to see change and they’re the same
interest groups who don’t want to see us
do anything about the global climate
change there’s another ask you can do
which is if you’ve got a relative or a
friend who’s in a residential home or a
care home or in their home are living
with you ask them how many pills are on
chances are after over the age of 70
it’s 10 or more and there’s increasing
evidence that if we can cut that down
from 10 or more to 5 or less that you’re
going to increase their life expectancy
you’re going to make it less likely that
they’re going to go into hospital again
and in many instances you’re going to
see them reborn in front of your eyes
the politicians these days here talk
about the NHS the whole time on the cost
of the NHS and you know how are we going
to finance the NHS it’s the same over
the states it’s the same globally when
asked for what the problem is they tend
to say it’s the elderly we have no
option but to give them more and more
treatments they give the impression that
they’re giving them more more care
they’re not they’re giving them more and
more quick fixes which are causing the
problem rather than actually solving it
how do I know this well they’re doing
exactly the same thing to our kids it
was very famous
Simpsons cartoon which you can google
just googled Google Bart Simpson and
this is the worst day of my life and
what you’ll see is a very hangdog danby
Bart who looks like he needs a quick fix
and antidepressant maybe and then on the
next panel you’ll see Homer Simpson
saying no this is the worst day of your
life so far now this is bittersweet
humor about to me it’s bittersweet humor
which seems to point to something we’ve
lost that we need to regain you’re not
going to regain it listening to me
talking here we’re going to regain it if
some of you go out there and ask your
doctor if you can have access to the
data that you should be entitled to – –
and that you think she has thank you [Applause]
the Minister for health said that
children’s mental health services are
the greatest failure in the NHS back
then and even more so now there was a
whole range of articles about university
students are committing suicide in
unprecedented numbers distressed
teenagers in school been given
antidepressants because they couldn’t
access children’s mental health services
and just this week there’s been a whole
bunch of reports about a quarter of
young women have mental health problems
this isn’t just a UK issue anywhere from
New Zealand to the United States you’ll
find the same articles and the same
programs if you read the articles and
watch the programs the old media usually
say this is a new media issue which
sounds a little bit to me like nu plus
nu equals five I mean and you have to
remember that the old media hate the new
media when I ask people people like you
for instance for other things going on
the kind of thing that I hear the most
often is well it’s a quick-fix issue
we’ve become a quick-fix culture and
that sounds good to me except for the
fact I’m not quite sure I haven’t been
sure what a quick fix actually is until
president Trump a little bit back came
up with an answer for me which in
response to one of them at the school
shootings he said you know what we need
is a good guy with a gun in all those
schools news outrage in response to this
but people were stumped by the follow up
point he made was well if you don’t
think a good guy with a gun as the right
hand sir why do you have good guys with
guns outside the White House and of
course guns work trouble is if you
multiply them up and spread them too far
like maybe into schools we figure that
so it can potentially cause more
problems than they solve medicines are a
little bit like guns
there are fix they can solve problems
multiply them up too much and spread
them let them leak into the kinds of
situations that they shouldn’t be in and
potentially you can cause more
problems than yourself especially if the
information that goes with the medicine
is fake information most of you will
have heard of ghost writers Donald
Trump’s book the art of the deal was
famously ghost written footballers and
film stars and maybe Tony Blair the kind
of people we think have their books
ghost written Gordon Brown were less
likely to think that he had a ghost
written brainy people we think don’t
need ghosts to write things for them
well think again the greatest
concentration of ghost writing on this
planet is centered on the drugs that you
take that your doctor gives to you since
about 1989 our thereabouts
pretty well all the articles about all
the pharmaceuticals that you might be
put on by a doctor even in the most
prestigious medical journals have been
ghost written the authors on the
authorship line are not the people that
wrote that article now this isn’t
necessarily a problem because the ghost
writers are smart young women for the
most part you’ve got PhDs who write
better than the average doctor it
wouldn’t be a problem if the ghosts and
the doctors behind the trial of the
drugs and your doctor had access to the
data from that trial but they don’t who
does well you might think that FDA who
approved drugs in the United States have
access to the data they don’t you might
think that MHRA who prove drugs here
have access to the data behind the drugs
you’re on they don’t you might think
that those nice people who write the
nice guidelines that tell your doctor
which hard drug to give you a gut ‘roger
antidepressant would have the data when
they write the guidelines they don’t
they work from ghostwritten articles now
this is a problem for all doctors you
used to be a gulf between the NHS and
private medicine over and say the United
States but increasingly the systems are
exactly the same since about 1989
they’ve been increasingly run by
and the first job the manager has is to
ensure that doctors keep the guidelines
they’re not doing this to take care of
you they’re doing this so that if
anything goes wrong to you you die are
you disabled by the treatment the
organization and the manager won’t be
held responsible if there’s any fuss in
the media about any treatment you’re on
politicians worldwide will say
everything will be okay provided doctors
keep the guidelines all these people are
seeing rotten apple in the barrel
problem we just need to make sure we get
rid of the rogue doctor when the problem
is that you and I are facing a rotten
barrel problem the greatest threat to
you is the good doctor who keeps to
guidelines not a person like me who
thinks the guidelines are junk the good
doctor that keeps the guidelines is
totally in the pocket of the
pharmaceutical industry without them
having to pay him a cent now let me
bring you back to 1989 thereabouts and
the Berlin Wall has just come down and
prozac has just come on the market it’s
the first of what we now call the SSRI
antidepressants this and the other
exercises where drugs were going to make
you better than well they were going to
help you transition from the old you to
a new enhanced you they were miracle
drugs about as far removed from say the
anti histamines that you could think
about I mean nobody thinks the
antihistamines are miracle drugs well in
actual fact prozac and the other SSRIs
her and histamines they were less
effective and more expensive than the
older antidepressants we had so how are
they made into miracle drugs well the
answer is there was lack of access to
the data from the trials that brought
them on the marker and the articles were
ghostwritten up to hide the problems
that they could cause the fact that
these drugs can cause you to commit
suicide can cause you to commit homicide
there 80 percent to the people who take
them for
period of time are not going to be able
to get off them easily that they wipeout
your ability to make love and that 20
years after you’ve halted the drugs you
still may not be able to make love
properly all of this was concealed by
the ghost writing a few years after
these drugs came the market there was a
few reports from enthusiastic doctors
saying when I give these drugs to
children they they work wonders for
children – now when we see reports like
that the response usually as well
doctors can be paid to write these
enthusiastic reports so what do we need
to do is we need to do a clinical trial
and if the trial is negative we don’t
use the drug there have been 30 clinical
trials of this group of drugs in young
people who are depressed every single
trial negative now it’s not just that
but in the trials there’s a doubling or
tripling of the rate of children going
on to suicidal events on the treatment
compared with non treatment this was
written out of the script what’s
happened the sales of these drugs
well besides oral contraceptives the
SSRI group of drugs are the most
commonly taken drugs by teenage girls
how does this happen well before we
found out about the ghost driving and
the negative trials and things like that
what had happened was prozac had been
approved for young people by FDA in the
states and MHRA here that’s I mean
that’s only done on the basis that FDA
and m.nature I have positive trials to
Pasir trials of any of these drugs that
they approve I’ve just told you that all
the trials were negative FDA and NHRA
know this the nice guidelines recommend
for teenagers who are depressed that you
can give Prozac and maybe other SSRIs
they know there is not a single positive
trial it’s not just the case that the
SSRIs of the most commonly taking drugs
by teenage girls but the use of these
drugs generally is exploding
this group of drugs plus related drugs
if you go to universities over in the
United States fifty percent of the
students are on one or other of these
drugs and the ones who are most commonly
on the mark medical trainees the people
you depend on not to put you on a quick
fix to solve your problems they’re the
ones who are most likely to be taking a
quick fix now how does this apply to any
of you well everything I say about the
antidepressants for young people applies
to every single drug you may be on back
around 1989 you and I were probably on
just one drug for short period time an
antibiotic for a week or two now 50% of
you over the age of 45 will be on three
or more drugs every single day of the
year 50% of you over the age of 65 will
be on five or more drugs every single
day of the year and if you’ve got a good
doctor who keeps two guidelines you’re
going to be on more drugs every single
year you live so by the time you get
into your 70s you’re going to be on ten
or more drugs if we don’t have the
information that makes these drugs safe
that’s the problem what do you got what
you have to remember in all this is that
companies aren’t in the business of
making you well are better than well
they’re in the business of making sure
that their sales of a drug this year are
better than last year then the business
of trying to transition their drugs from
poisons to sacraments sacraments or
quick fix poisons
aren’t you might have the word poisons
touch strong but it used to be said that
the art of medicine is bringing good out
of the use of a poison and you have to
remember that a medicine is a chemical
which is always risky plus the
information that we need in order to
make that risk as safe as we can make it
well over the last thirty years the
information has been degrading in
quality the whole
tongue Donald Trump again introduced us
to fake news a few years ago and the
general impression you get from the old
media it’s really people who are a
little bit dim out there who are taken
in by fake news well doctors have been
consuming only fake news for the last 30
odd years or so where does this leave us
well modern medicine began or roughly
200 years ago it began with people like
Philippe Pinel who famously said it’s
great to have a fix for our problems but
it’s an even greater art to know when
not to use that fix over the course of
the last 200 years year are near your
life expectancy improved until two years
ago when in the United States it began
to fall not just stopped speeding up but
began to fall and here it has stalled so
that the situation now is the life
expectancy we thought you had two years
ago it’s less now than we thought it was
two years ago whether you live in the
United States are Europe allied to that
there’s been a change in the climate of
health care our services are addicted to
the idea that the treatments we give you
work wonderfully well and are free of
harms and there are quicker and cheaper
fix for the problems you have than
having someone engage with you and try
and solve those problems in a less risky
way when I say change the climate of
health care you’re probably going to
think global climate change but you know
we can’t see the sea levels rising out
there yet we can see your life
expectancy falling how am I going to
solve the problem well in fact you can
do more to change the climate of health
care back to what it should be then most
of us feel we can do for global climate
change and in the course of doing
the healthcare climate you can maybe
help but the global climate change too
because it’s the same set of forces
driving both sets of changes and what
you can do to borrow from the
pharmaceutical industry who who have
come up with this phrase which you hear
the whole time
at least it over in the States ask your
doctor what you need to do is the next
time you go to your doctor and he or
she’s going to put you on some pill ask
your doctor if access to the data behind
this pill could be good for you and for
her and perhaps suggests that you don’t
want to be put on a pill where she
doesn’t have access to the data this
will be a tremendously scary moment for
you and for her you will feel the weight
of those interest groups who don’t want
to see change and they’re the same
interest groups who don’t want to see us
do anything about the global climate
change there’s another ask you can do
which is if you’ve got a relative or a
friend who’s in a residential home or a
care home or in their home are living
with you ask them how many pills are on
chances are after over the age of 70
it’s 10 or more and there’s increasing
evidence that if we can cut that down
from 10 or more to 5 or less that you’re
going to increase their life expectancy
you’re going to make it less likely that
they’re going to go into hospital again
and in many instances you’re going to
see them reborn in front of your eyes
the politicians these days here talk
about the NHS the whole time on the cost
of the NHS and you know how are we going
to finance the NHS it’s the same over
the states it’s the same globally when
asked for what the problem is they tend
to say it’s the elderly we have no
option but to give them more and more
treatments they give the impression that
they’re giving them more more care
they’re not they’re giving them more and
more quick fixes which are causing the
problem rather than actually solving it
how do I know this well they’re doing
exactly the same thing to our kids it
was very famous
Simpsons cartoon which you can google
just googled Google Bart Simpson and
this is the worst day of my life and
what you’ll see is a very hangdog danby
Bart who looks like he needs a quick fix
and antidepressant maybe and then on the
next panel you’ll see Homer Simpson
saying no this is the worst day of your
life so far now this is bittersweet
humor about to me it’s bittersweet humor
which seems to point to something we’ve
lost that we need to regain you’re not
going to regain it listening to me
talking here we’re going to regain it if
some of you go out there and ask your
doctor if you can have access to the
data that you should be entitled to – –
and that you think she has thank you [Applause]
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