Gareth Iacobucci The BMJ

An adviser to the government on antidepressant use has quit in the wake of a row over conflicts of interest.

David Baldwin resigned from Public Health England’s expert panel on prescribed medicines after he was subjected to a string of insults online, including being called “worse than Hitler” and a “pharma-whore,” the Times has reported.1

Baldwin was the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ representative on the panel, which was set up to review the potential effects of withdrawing from prescribed drugs. But he was criticised after he co-wrote a letter to the Times in February that downplayed the side effects of coming off antidepressants.2 The letter, coauthored with Wendy Burn, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, read, “In the vast …