You know things aren't going well in your medical practice when....

....a shitload of disgruntled ex-patients get together to form themselves into a support group, and a class action lawsuit looks probable. It looks like the misdeeds of the Australian psychiatrist Professor Graham Burrows are finally catching up with him. Why has it taken so long?

I find it rather interesting that Australia has two controversial psychiatrist professors, Dr Graham Burrows and Prof. Patrick McGorry, who have both been the subject of serious ethical objections to their trials of the same drug - Seroquel, which has the proper chemical name of Quetiapine and also goes by other brand names, and is manufactured by the drug company AstraZeneca. According to the Seven News report Burrows was being funded by the manufacturer of Seroquel to trial the drug on eating disorder patients, and Prof. McGorry tried to get a trial of Seroquel as a treatment to prevent the onset of psychosis happening in Australia, but that trial was closed down on ethical grounds after an international collection of health professionals and researchers lodged a formal objection to the trial, known as the NEUROPRO-Q study. Like Burrows McGorry has been the beneficiary of funding or assistance from AstraZeneca, which he has disclosed at least once in a medical journal paper. Another thing the two profs have in common - both Burrows and McGorry have been accused of practicing psychiatry in a way that results in or probably would result in patients being incorrectly diagnosed as schizophrenic. McGorry should take a tip - looking this similar to Dr Graham Burrows is not a good look, and this is true now more than ever!

Class action against Burrows.
reporter Louise Milligan
7News (Melbourne)
January 15th 2012
http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/vic/-/watch/27901358/class-action-against-burrows/
http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/vic/watch/27901358/

Seroquel XR: 0:28 of advert, 1:02 of horrible side effects!
YouTube
http://youtu.be/vUBjO7J_UpM
[This is an unintentionally hilarious and scary advertisement for the drug Seroquel from the US, in which the disclaimer about serious side effects (which presumably must be added by law) takes up most of the time of the advert.]

Wikipedia contributors (accessed 2012) Quetiapine. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quetiapine&oldid=471222206