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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS ... ‘danger to national security’, in order to silence and discredit me. They even managed to imprison me for a while. "In order to keep me quiet and bash me around so much, they relied on the fact that a little guy like me did not have the financial means to fight back against their injunctions and legal assaults against me. But with a blog, I'm newly empowered— and how I wish I had known about them years ago..." On the subject of MI6's recruitment campaign, Tomlinson says: "Good luck to any applicants: it is a very interesting career. I really enjoyed my time there. But be warned: they are a bullying employer, and are thoroughly vindictive towards any ex-employee who dares to criticise them. "If I were to return to the UK, I would be arrested and imprisoned, simply for the crime of having written a book. It's not the sort of behaviour one would expect from a supposedly civilised employer in this day and age." (Source: Richard Tomlinson blogsite, 9 April 2006, http://www.richardtomlinson.typepad. com/) particular concern because diagnosis is so tricky. Physicians rely heavily on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, which categorises psychiatric illnesses and their diagnostic criteria. "The existence of disease categories validates the need for drugs," says Mildred Cho, a bioethicist at Stanford University in California. "Companies have an incentive to influence those creating the categories." Lisa Cosgrove, a clinical psychologist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, began to worry about such conflicts when she discovered that a majority of the members of a panel formed to consider whether to include "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" in the manual had received money from Eli Lilly. In 2000, Lilly won approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to market Prozac, rebranded as Sarafem, to treat the condition. Together with Sheldon Krimsky of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, Cosgrove looked at whether members of other DSM panels had financial ties to drug firms. Such ties included receipt of funding for research, acting as a consultant and being paid for speaking. Overall, 56 per cent of panel members had such links, and all members of the panels for "schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders" and "mood disorders" had such links (Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, vol. 75, p. 154). Even subtle changes to the DSM can have a big effect on patterns of prescribing. This is a worry for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). "There has been a gradual broadening of the diagnostic criteria," says James Swanson of the University of California, Irvine. Cosgrove and Krimsky found that 62 per cent of the DSM panel dealing with disorders such as ADHD had links to pharmaceutical firms. The American Psychiatric Association (APA), which publishes the DSM, says its experts are not influenced by their financial ties. However, those recruited for the next edition, to appear in 2011, will be required to declare such interests. Krimsky argues that the APA should ensure that no DSM panel has a majority of members with ties to drug companies. "It is time that the profession of psychiatry takes a serious look at itself from an ethical standpoint," he says. (Source: by Peter Aldhous, New Scientist, 29 April 2006, http://www.newscientist.com/ article/mg19025494.100.html) MERGER MAY CREATE AMERICA'S NEW SECRET POLICE [pciigence experts warn that a proposal to merge two Pentagon intelligence units could create an ominous new agency. The turf grab by a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit is causing concern among both privacy experts and some of the Defense Department's own personnel. An informal panel of senior Pentagon officials has been holding a series of unannounced private meetings during the past several weeks about how to proceed with a merger between the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a post-9/11 Pentagon creation that has been accused of domestic spying, and the Defense Security Service (DSS), a well- established older agency responsible for inspecting the security arrangements of defence contractors. DSS also maintains millions of confidential files containing the results of background investigations on defence contractors' employees. CIFA, a mysterious and secretive unit created in 2002, became the subject of public controversy when, late in 2005, documents surfaced indicating that CIFA had put together a database that included reports on anti-administration demonstrators including peace activists protesting alleged "war profiteering". Both Pentagon insiders and privacy DO DRUG COMPANY LINKS SWAY PSYCHIATRY? disturbing number of the experts who help write psychiatry's most influential diagnostic manual have financial ties to drug companies, raising concerns about the independence of diagnostic advice in the manual. While such possible conflicts of interest are not uncommon, psychiatry is of 8 = NEXUS JUNE — JULY 2006 "Why, yes, I am the CEO of a transnational oil company. How did you know? www.nexusmagazine.com