Emory University psychiatry professor J. Douglas Bremner has assembled a "shadow team" to follow the deliberations of the American Psychiatric Association as it rewrites the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Psychiatry, the desktop reference that defines mental illnesses. Bremner's website, launched, like this one, to help promote a book reports 22 of 28 members of the APA committee have ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

Others have received educational grants and other perks from pharma, making pretty much everyone compromised, so it isn't surprising that a lot of people are worried about the potential corrupting influence that the pharmaceutical industry may be having on our beloved "bible" of psychiatry. Not to mention the fact the members of the task force were required to sign confidentiality agreements that they wouldn't talk to anyone until the book was published.

Bremner got to see the "corrupting influence" of pharma up close, since Emory is also home to psychiatry prof Charles Nemeroff, who received over $800,000 in consulting fees from GlaxoSmithKline in this decade yet failed to report those payments to his university, according to an investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA).

Bremner's disclosure, prominently displayed on his website, shows he also has received research support from Glaxo and Eli Lilly. Both are major manufacturers of anti-depressants and other psychiatric drugs. Still, we wish him and the shadow committee, which isn't listed yet on the website, well. The APA, given its long standing entanglements with the pharmaceutical industry, bears close scrutiny as it considers the next version of the DSM.