Public health experts are having a collective anxiety attack over the prospect of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, taking the helm as HHS secretary under Donald Trump. Armed with zero public health experience but plenty of skepticism, Kennedy might just trade your prescription meds for a tinfoil hat and some experimental treatments. He’s famous—or infamous—for pushing the debunked myth linking vaccines to autism, and he’s got a bone to pick with the FDA and drug regulations like Adderall, which means he might just rewrite the pharmaceutical rulebook.
Reshma Ramachandran from Yale rings the alarm on Kennedy’s potential to steamroll scientific evidence and play Frankenstein with healthcare policy. Meanwhile, over in the land of clinical trials, chaos ensues. Participants in Lykos trials accuse the company of sweeping side effects like suicidal thoughts under the rug. This led to some serious journalistic backpedaling, with retractions galore from Psychopharmacology and MAPS. Lykos, however, swears by its data, using the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale as their trusty sidekick.
Enter Neşe Devenot, who calls the therapy a pseudoscientific mess, reminiscent of the discredited Facilitated Communication. Add a dash of ethical drama with a therapist-participant romance, and you’ve got a clinical trial soap opera. Meanwhile, Kennedy bashes FDA decisions, crying conspiracy and collusion with Big Pharma, while Lykos cozies up with industry bigwig Jeff George on board.
Despite the circus, Devenot and Ramachandran see a glimmer of hope in psychedelic therapies but urge slow and steady research. They caution against fast-tracking approvals, a fast-forward button Kennedy and Elon Musk seem
Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/25/rfk-jr-prescription-drugs-cannabis-psychedelics
Published Date: 2024-11-25