Those that hold the keys to promoting, funding and assisting certain scientists, while firing, blocking or withholding funding from other scientists, play a key role in the world of science.
I call them Scientific Gatekeepers. And today we meet one of them, Dr. Maurizio Fava.
- Collect them all – Is it possible to have financial conflicts with every single pharmaceutical company and more? Here’s a top contender!
- Discover how this one man has directed almost $100 million in funding.
- What happens when the “world leader in the field of depression” is funded by all the depression drug makers?
- Psychiatric illness is all based on symptoms. Meet the man who creates symptom questionnaires.
- Prestigious institutions such as Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School reap the benefits.
- And more.
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Click the link below to see written articles and references.
Medical Monopoly Musings #60
Scientific Gatekeeper – Dr. Maurizio Fava
In understanding how Western medicine is able to get away with bad science time and time again, or at least science that takes us further down the same broken path, we need to explore a concept I’m calling the “scientific gatekeeper”.
This would be a scientist that oversees others, controlling access and distribution of information, allowing some to pass through a gate (promotion, publication, revolving door positions, etc.) and not others (non-promotion, firing, blocking publication, smears, etc.).
Because science comes with an ideal of being objective, few people are looking at scientists for being specifically attached to certain outcomes. This lack of a spotlight would then allow scientific gatekeepers to thrive.
In the previous issue, we looked at the FDA regulator Thomas Laughren, spinning through the revolving door into a consultant for the drug companies he used to oversee, helping them pass regulation. He holds a leadership position at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Clinical Trials Network and Institute which sets up drug trials for success.
Looking at the about page which includes other employees I just had to dig into the top guy there. The executive director is Maurizio Fava, MD. In addition to this spot, he is currently:
• Director, Division of Clinical Research of the MGH Research Institute
• Chief, Department of Psychiatry, MGH
• Associate Dean for Clinical & Translational Research, Harvard Medical School
• Slater Family Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
He’s authored or co-authored more than 800 medical articles. He sits on the editorial board of five medical journals. He is a “world leader in the field of depression.”
His bio states, “Dr. Fava has been successful in obtaining funding as principal or co-principal investigator from both the National Institutes of Health and other sources for a total of more than $95,000,000.” That’s taxpayer money, and Fava is pointing where it goes to, as scientific gatekeepers do.
Based on my knowledge about how medical science works, I assumed he had extensive conflicts of interest. Was I right?
Even more so than I expected! The following comes from a 2018 list.
I had to zoom out just to take a screenshot! Even then it didn’t fit in one screen! If you can’t squint well enough this includes money from a slew of companies, all the familiar names and many more, via:
• Research Support
• Advisory Board Fees
• Consultancy Fees
• Speaking Fees
• Publishing Fees
• Equity Holdings
• Royalties and Patents
• And Copyrights
I guess I can say at least he is disclosing his conflicts unlike others!
…but not always. A paper on Antidepressant Treatment History Questionnaire discloses no such interests. Even though it is directly about antidepressants, produced by many of the companies he’s been paid by.
This man is a psychiatrist. As I’ve only briefly covered, psychiatry is worse off than other areas of pharmaceutical medicine because of how it’s easier to play games there. “The fact that few psychiatric disorders have objective criteria for diagnosis makes these disorders easier to expand than most physical illnesses,” says Marcia Angell, former editor of the medical journal NEJM.
In other words, disorders can be altered or changed usually based on symptoms. Then drug trials can similarly be fudged. Hmmm…Dr. Fava holds copyrights for symptom questionnaires…the things by which people are diagnosed and then given treatment!
This man has been at Massachusetts General Hospital for over 30 years. He is the Psychiatrist-in-Chief since Oct 2019.
And he works at Harvard too. Remember in #53 when we looked at the board of directors of Big Pharma who also held positions at non-profits, notably hospitals and universities.
Is there any chance that this man, given his experience and conflicts, is interested in any methods of healthy psychology or treating depression that don’t have to do with Big Pharma?
The evidence points to no. My read of all this is that Maurizio Fava is a scientific gatekeeper that keeps the system in place to the benefit of himself and his cronies. Even more details next time…
References:
https://mgh-ctni.org/leadership/maurizio-fava-m-d/
https://web.archive. org/web/20180517181848/https://mghcme.org/faculty/faculty-detail/maurizio_fava
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6493891/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maurizio-fava-9684507/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170428/
