More disturbing still are the efforts made by current orthodoxy to suppress any view at variance with the chemical-genetic model. The rise of psychopharmacology generated an huge industry of mental illness and changed irrevocably the previous societal models for the treatment of the mentally ill. Prior to the introduction of readily available medications the mentally ill were outcasts from society and in the majority of cases incarcerated to protect the sensibilities of the sane defined by cultural and societal norms of behaviour. Little money was expended on researching the problem in spite of its size and no one would have dreamed that these unfortunates would have ever represented a balance sheet asset.

The invention and establishment of psychopharmacology changed all that[1] the mass production of medications and the aggressive marketing of these products made very large profits for their manufacturers and the economic pressures created changed the vary definition of psychiatry, let alone its practice. With the development of more and more drugs the diagnosis of mental illness vastly increased often with the drug treatment being in place before the illness was fully described or classified. The definition of mental illness was now controlled not only by societal norms of behaviour but also by the economics of the market.

This is the root of the current orthodoxy. Two of the most powerful agents in human society combine to make the rules. Even in the most rational of societies orthodoxy cannot tolerate alternative approaches and psychiatry, as a branch of modern medicine is no exception. Psychiatrists who adopt a more traditional view, or as some would call it holistic approach are now under threat from the bio-psychiatry orthodoxy. Those taking views at variance with the biopsychiatry orthodoxy are finding themselves marginalized, labelled and overtly threatened by that orthodoxy. An alarming use of disciplinary action based on the ‘threat to the patient’ concept has been observed in recent years and it has led to psychiatrists critical of the current orthodoxy being prevented from practising.

As in all of human history the orthodox wish to silence the critics. Where this differs from past ‘persecution of heretics’ or ‘purging of revisionists’ the suppression of criticism is done falsely in the name of the patients. Patients are cynically manipulated in large part not to protect them but to protect the vested economic interests of the biopsychiatry industry. An even more startling element of this attempted suppression of critical views in the name of patients is that patients are very rarely consulted as to their views. A staggering degree of professional arrogance in a branch of medicine that likes to talk about empowering the service users.

Throughout medical history and the concomitant history of medical ethics and essential element in evolution of both science and its humanitarian application has been dissent. It is the differing views of countless thousands of physicians that have over four thousand years brought medical science to where it is today. As in almost all branches of science and philosophy it is doxasticism not orthodoxy that has served mankind best. It was the critical psychiatrists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that changed the treatment of the mentally ill into a caring branch of medicine not the shareholders of Bedlam. We now enshrine criticism and dissent in our political and social systems and elevate them to human rights in our international law. Yet the powerful lobby groups would still suppress the views of the critical not because they threaten patients but because they threaten profits.