Who puts the gold in the gold standard of drug research? Can’t you guess?

Ah! Now I get it!

I always assumed that medical mainstreamers referred to placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized trials as the “gold standard” of clinical research because the results are supposed to be reliably impartial.

But now I’m wondering…maybe the “gold” in “gold standard” refers to actual gold.

Dr. Charles Nemeroff is the one who got me thinking about this.

Just a few weeks ago, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Dr. Nemeroff had stepped down as chairman of the psychiatry department at Emory University. The Journal- Constitution describes Dr. Nemeroff as an internationally known expert on depression.

According to an earlier New York Times report, Congressional documents revealed that Dr. Nemeroff received nearly $3 million in consulting fees from drug makers over a seven-year period. The documents also indicate that Dr. Nemeroff failed to report at least $1.2 million to the university.

More to the point, the Times notes that Dr. Nemeroff received nearly $1 million from GlaxoSmithKline while he was the principal investigator on research for which GSK supplied the drugs. Funding came from the National Institute of Mental Health. In other words: your tax dollars.

Senator Charles E. Grassley – leader of the investigation – told the Times: “After questioning about 20 doctors and research institutions, it looks like problems with transparency are everywhere.”

Pure gold.