The Cardinals of Psychiatry

Abstract

When it became clear, slightly over 10 years ago, that the Catholic Church faced a major child abuse problem, and a complete rupture in the social contract between the Church and its flock, Pope John Paul II convened a meeting of US Cardinals to frame a response to the crisis of moral legitimacy institutionalized sexual abuse represented. In psychiatry — and in medicine more widely — we face a comparable crisis. While there is no medical Pope, there are lots of Cardinals, and it is far from clear that our medical Cardinals are getting to grips with our crisis any better than the apostolic Cardinals from the US or from Ireland did with theirs.

If clinical trials become a commercial venture in which self-interest overrules public interest and desire overrules science, then the social contract which allows research on human subjects in return for medical advances is broken.

(Quick, 2001)