THE 17TH BLOG FOR THE OUTLAW OF PSYCHIATRY NOW !

2009-02-21T02:11:00.000-08:00

Saturday, November 22, 2008

http://bipolar-stanscroniclesandnarritive.blogspot.com/2008/11/another-of-big-names-in-psychiatry.htmlAnother of the Big Names in Psychiatry "Doctor Goodwin" just went down the tubes for his corruption and greed! Who is next on the list?
Friday, November 21, 2008Has psychiatry become so corrupt and filled with greed that Big Pharmaceutical has everyone bought and paid for now? From the FDA, to All the Major University research programs and clinical trials, and then you add in almost every well known and influential psychiatrist in the business!We can look at a long list of the people Dr. Fredrick K. Goodwin has provided intros, endorsed, and wrote books with!Manic-Depressive Illness: Frederick K. Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison: Minkoff and Robert E. Drake, Jossey Boss, 1991Manic-Depressive Illness - Fredrick K. Goodwin, M.D., & Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., Oxford; 1990Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You... That You Need to Know by John McManamy endorsed on the cover by Fredrick K. Goodwin.This barely even touches the surface of his endorsements, influence, and the power he wielded within the psychiatric community.We read almost every week about about Harvard's Baderman, Emory's Dr. Nemornuts, the FDA's psychiatry products chief Thomas Laughren, and the list just goes on and on, one bad apple after another dropping from the same tree of greed and influence by Huge Multi-Billion Dollar Mega Corporations called the Pharmaceutical Industry!So that puts everything in Question now doesn't it!The whole medical model and drug treatments are put into question? Since other options that were never explored because of people like Goodwin were in the pocket of Good Old Big Pharmaceutical! Isn't this unfolding stacked deck of cards just wonderful! NOT!Now you can understand why I say you cannot trust any mental health professional in psychiatry in these times, because they have all scratched each others backs to get to where they are. They have had it driven into their heads and bank accounts that drugs are the way and only way to treat mental health issues; and if they had their way we would be handing out more and more drugs all the time with Fantasy Diagnosis like Childhood Bipolar and a slew of other fallacies waiting in the pipeline for Corrupt Doctors and Big Pharmaceutical to jump all over.The Mental Health Nightmare Puzzle is starting to come together and it's looks extremely ugly and scary for the mental health community as a whole; but especially for the millions upon millions of patients that have fallen victim to this giant hoax!Dr. Goodwin perhaps the most influential researcher and writer in the world of bipolar disorder--and the well-known radio show "The Infinite Mind."The New York Times just reported that National Public Radio will finally kick psychiatrist Fred Goodwin off the air after more than a decade of his shows promoting the mental health system.Why?Because Congress discovered that Dr. Goodwin was one of many well known psychiatrists who took huge pay offs from psychiatric drug companies without disclosing it.By coincidence, Dr. Goodwin was reassuring radio listeners of low side effects of a drug on the very same day he received one of his pay-offs from the drug's manufacturer.Thank you MindFreedom, Senator Grassley, and Congress for finally stepping forward and actually doing something for the American people and those with Mental Health issues.(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
Posted by Justice Lover at 9:43 PM 0 comments

Children Antipsychotics_Douglas Kennedy--FOX News TRANSCRIPT
VERACARE
Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 1:57 AM
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTIONPromoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountabilityhttp://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.comFYIFOX News is to be congratulated for airing a hard hitting report by DouglasKennedy who pulled no punches by shedding light on the FDA official who ismost responsible for giving the green light that opened the floodgates forthe prescribing of increasingly toxic psychotropic drugs for children.Mostly healthy American children are being forced to ingest antipsychoticdrugs that alter their brain chemistry, interfere with normal development,and induce (iatrogenic) chronic diseases such as, diabetes, and metabolicsyndrome.An FDA advisory panel earlier in the week criticized the FDA's failure toprotect children from these toxic drugs.Featured in the news report was Philadelphia attorney, Stephen Shellerrepresenting children harmed by antipsychotics, including boys who grewbreasts after ingesting Risperdal, hit the nail on the head: "the reasonthey [antipsychotics] are prescribed so much is that there are a very goodprofit center for the drug industry."How many millions of previously healthy American children will be rendereddisabled by FDA-approved toxic drugs?.Below is a transcript, but you can still catch the FOX evening News reportclip at http://tinyurl.com/69k9dzContact: Vera Hassner Sharavveracare@ahrp.org212-595-8974(Emphasis by Justice Lover)http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=130&DateTime=11%2F20%2F2008+5%3A57%3A15+PM&LineNumber=&MediaStationID=130&playclip=True&RefPageFox News - U.S. NationalAmerica's News HQFNC 11/20/2008 5:57:15 PM:...jon: should children be prescribed pills that treat conditions that theydo not even have?how about drugs that have already killed kids nationwide?Adding to the argument of the overmedication of america's children, an issuethat our guest has been falling, douglas kennedy, the first nationalreporter to link anti-depressant medications to childhood suicide andviolence. that prompted action.>> for years, they ignored the side effects of anti- depressants, and now,it seems they're doing the same thing with antipsychotics, drugs that somesay are seriously hurting our nation's youth.One young woman on youtube describing what happened to her on the drugresperdal.>> it affects my moods, makes me depressed. >>She is one of the many videographers complaining about the side effects ofanti- psychotic drugs, including seroquel and zyprexa, drugs whose usagehave increased fivefold in the last years, despite there is no scientificbenefit to using them.>> this is a huge industry. >>Now, an independent group of doctors and scientists convened by the food anddrug industry itself agrees, criticizing them for being prescribed tochildren.Stephen Sheller an attorney in Philadelphia: <>>> the reason they are prescribed so much is that there are a very goodprofit center for the drug industry.anytime you come into a doctor's office and say, ""my kid is a problem inschool"" or ""he is acting out,"" they come up with the diagnoses of bipolaror attention deficit disorder or other vague diseases. Sheller representspatients damaged by anti-psychotic drugs, including these boys who had tohave mastectomies because they grow breasts on rispserdol.He and others point the finger directly at Thomas Laughren, director of theDivision of Psychiatry Products whom has been turning a blind eye to theside effects.>> He has been accused of major conflicts of interest, ghostwritingarticles, supporting new diagnoses to use these drugs, and he is notprotecting the public health. he is protecting the profit of the drugindustry....>>The FDA said Dr. Laughren was unavailable for commentSee the video:http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=130&DateTime=11%2F20%2F2008+5%3A57%3A15+PM&LineNumber=&MediaStationID=130&playclip=True&RefPage
Posted by Justice Lover at 10:08 AM 0 comments

http://3rdplutocracyordirectdemocracy.blogspot.com/
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"It's time to stop tinkering with a failed system"by Benjamin MerhavWhat humanity needs is not a "plan B", as the author of the article below concludes.What we all need right now is not the continuation of the "democracy" circus, as the bosses of the USA ruling class continue to do by replacing the former circus chief clown with a new one. What we all need now is the urgent replacement of the capitalist system by a direct and participatory democracy, a genuine democracy !POWER TO THE PEOPLE NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE !http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21280.htmThis Is Not A Normal Recession
Moving on to Plan B By Mike WhitneyNovember 20, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- - "The Winter of 2008-2009 will prove to be the winter of global economic discontent that marks the rejection of the flawed ideology that unregulated global financial markets promote financial innovation, market efficiency, unhampered growth and endless prosperity while mitigating risk by spreading it system wide." Economists Paul Davidson and Henry C.K. Liu "Open Letter to World Leaders attending the November 15 White House Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy" .The global economy is being sucked into a black hole and most Americans have no idea why. The whole problem can be narrowed down to two words; "structured finance".Structured finance is a term that designates a sector of finance where risk is transferred via complex legal and corporate entities. It's not as confusing as it sounds. Take a mortgage-backed security (MBS), for example. The mortgage is issued by a bank (the loan originator) which then sells the mortgage to a brokerage where it is chopped up into tranches (pieces of the loan) and sold in a pool of mortgages to investors that are looking for a rate that is greater than Treasurys or similar investments. The process of transforming debt ("the mortgage") into a security is called securitization. At one time, the MBS was a reasonably safe investment because the housing market was stable and there were relatively few foreclosures. Thus, the chance of losing one's investment was quite small.In the early years of the Bush administration, Wall Street took advantage of the gigantic flow of capital coming into the country ($700 billion per year via the current account deficit) by creating more and more MBSs and selling them to foreign banks, hedge funds and insurance companies. It was real gold rush. Because the banks were merely the mortgage originators, they didn't believe their own money was at risk, so they gradually lowered lending standards and issued millions of loans to unqualified applicants who had no job, no collateral and a bad credit history. Securitization was such a hit, that by 2005, nearly 80 percent of all mortgages were securitized and the traditional criteria for getting a mortgage was abandoned altogether. Subprimes, Alt-As and ARMs flourished, while the "30 year fixed" went the way of the Dodo. Lenders were no longer constrained by "creditworthiness"; anyone with a pulse and a pen could get approved. The mortgages were then shipped off to Wall Street where they were sold to credulous investors.The disaggregation of risk--spreading the risk to many investors via securitization--was as much of a factor in the creation of "the largest equity bubble in history", as the banks lax lending standards or Greenspan's low interest rates. By spreading risk throughout the system, securitization keeps interest rates artificially low because the real risks are not properly priced. The low interest rates, in turn, stimulate speculation which results in equity bubbles. Eventually, credit expansion leads to crisis when borrowers can no longer make the interest payments on their loans and defaults spiral out of control. This forces massive deleveraging and the fire-sale of assets in illiquid markets. As assets lose value, prices fall and the economy enters a deflationary cycle.There are many types of of structured instruments including asset-backed securities (ABS), mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) all of which provide a revenue stream from loans that were chopped into tranches and turned into securities. There are many problems with these complex securities, the biggest of which is that there is no way to unravel the individual pools of loans to isolate the bad paper. That's why subprime mortgages had such a destructive affect on the secondary market, because--even though subprimes only defaulted at a rate of roughly 5 percent--MBS sales slumped nearly 90 percent. Why? Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill explained it like this: "It's like you have 8 bottles of water and just one of them has arsenic in it. It becomes impossible to sell any of the other bottles because no one knows which one contains the poison."Exactly right. So why weren't these structured debt-instruments "stress tested" before the markets were reworked and the financial system became so dependent on them?Greed. Because the real purpose of these exotic investments is not to provide true value to the buyer, but to maximize profits for the seller by increasing leverage. That is the real purpose of MBS, CDOs and all the other bizarre-sounding derivatives; higher profits with less capital. It's a scam. Here's how it works: A mortgage applicant buys a house for $400,000 and puts 10 percent down. His mortgage is sold to Wall Street, chopped into pieces, and stitched together in a pool of similar loans. Now the brokerage can use the debt as if it were an asset, borrowing at ratios of 20 or 30 to 1 to fatten the bottom line. When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken into conservatorship by the government, they were leveraged at an eye-popping 100 to 1. This shows that nearly an infinite amount of debt can be precariously balanced atop a paltry amount of capital. This explains why the $4 trillion aggregate value of the 5 big investment banks and the $1.7 trillion value of the hedge funds is now vanishing more quickly than it was created. Once the mighty gears of structured finance shift into reverse, deleveraging begins with a vengeance pulling trillions into a credit vacuum.It all started when two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted in July 2006 and there were no offers for their MBS and other structured investments. Panic quickly spread to every corner of Wall Street as the alchemists of modern finance began to see that their worst nightmare might be realized, that trillions of dollars of Frankenstein investments could be worth nothing at all.Since the Bear Stearns funds fiasco, there have been huge explosions in the financial markets. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Indybank, AIG, Lehman Bros and other industry giants have either gone under or been forced into shotgun weddings by the FDIC. The stock market has plunged over 40 percent and suffered wild gyrations not seen since the 1930s. The entire Wall Street landscape has changed completely. Investment banking is no longer a viable business model; the Big 5 have either vanished or transformed themselves into holding companies to escape short sellers. The hedge funds have been deleveraging with a ferocity that has sent sent stocks and commodities crashing. In one day last week, the stock market plunged 300 points in the morning only to bounce back 550 points a few hours later; a whopping 850 point-spread in one trading day! No one but a madman would dabble in this market. Cautious investors have pulled up stakes and moved to the safety of Treasurys. Meanwhile, the financial tsunami is roaring through the real economy where consumer confidence has plummeted, unemployment is soaring and retail sales have fallen to historic lows. The downdraft from the financial markets has flattened Main Street and set the stage for a humongous $500 billion stimulus package to be delivered in the first few months of the Obama administration. The meltdown appears to be playing out much like Henry Paulson anticipated. According to Bloomberg News : "Shortly after leaving Wall Street as Goldman Sachs' CEO, Henry Paulson was at Camp David warning the president and his staff of "over-the-counter derivatives as an example of financial innovation that could, under certain circumstances, blow up in Wall Street's face and affect the whole economy." (PAUL B. FARRELL, "30 reasons for Great Depression 2 by 2011", MarketWatch)So far, the Federal Reserve has provided nearly $2 trillion through its lending facilities just to keep the financial system upright. The Treasury is currently distributing $700 billion to key banks and other financial institutions that are perceived to be "too big to fail". In truth, the "too big to fail" mantra is a just public relations hoax to conceal the web of counterparty deals that make it impossible for one institution to fail without dominoing through the rest of the system and wreaking havoc. That's why AIG is still on life-support with regular injections of taxpayer money; because it had roughly $4 trillion of credit default swaps (structured "hedges" that are not traded on a regulated exchange) for which AIG does not have sufficient capital reserves. In other words, the taxpayer is now paying the debts of an insurance company that didn't set aside the money to pay its claims. (As yet, No SEC indictments for securities fraud) In fact, the Fed and Treasury are now providing a backstop for the entire structured finance system which is frozen solid and shows no sign of thawing any time soon.This is not a normal recession, which is a downturn in the business cycle and "a period of reduced economic activity" usually brought on by a mismatch between supply and demand. (that ends in two quarters of negative growth) The present situation is much more grave; it is the utter destruction of a system that was developed fairly recently and has proven to be thoroughly dysfunctional. It cannot withstand the effects of tighter credit or adverse market conditions. This is not a cyclical downturn; the structured finance system has collapsed leaving behind a multi-trillion dollar capital hole that is bringing the broader economy to its knees.One by one, we have seen the structured instruments fail; mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps (CDS), commercial paper (CP), auction rate securities. Now we are seeing investors boycott anything related to structured investments. This is from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis:"There were NO sales of bonds backed by credit-card payments in October, the first time since 1993, when the asset-backed securities market was in its infancy. Yields on top-rated credit card bonds relative to benchmark interest rates reached a record high of 525 basis points more than the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, last week, according to Bank of America Corp. data."Wall Street has turned off the faucet for securitized investments. That market is toast. The only reason that Libor and the other gauges of interbank lending have normalized is because the Fed guaranteed money markets and commercial paper. It has nothing to do with trust between the banks themselves. There is no trust. Even so, the banks are not capable of making up for the vast amount of credit which was produced by the now-defunct investment banks and hedge funds which are constrained by losses of nearly $3.5 trillion; half of their total value. In the best case scenario, bank credit will only shrink 15 or 20 percent, which will put the US on track for a deep "18 month to 2 year" recession rather than another Great Depression.Paulson's attempt to divert $30 billion to non-bank financial institutions to revive loan securitization when there is no appetite among investors for such structured junk is pure folly. More troubling, is that neither Paulson nor Bernanke have a Plan B; an alternate scheme for rebuilding the financial markets on a solid, sustainable foundation rather than low interest rates and pools of debt. Everything they have done so far, suggests that they are focused on one thing alone; inflating another equity bubble. "Inflate or die", as the saying goes; and Bernanke intends to achieve this objective using the same tools that brought us to the brink of catastrophe. Here's a clip from a recent speech by Bernanke which shows his determination to prop up the broken system:"The ability of financial intermediaries to sell the mortgages they originate into the broader capital market by means of the securitization process serves two important purposes: First, it provides originators much wider sources of funding than they could obtain through conventional sources, such as retail deposits; second, it substantially reduces the originator's exposure to interest rate, credit, prepayment, and other risks associated with holding mortgages to maturity, thereby reducing the overall costs of providing mortgage credit."Sorry, Ben, the funding has dried up and the banks have shown no interest in going back to the days of conventional "30-year fixed" mortgages. It's a dead letter. The Fed and Treasury need to stop looking for ways to reflate the bubble and work to restore confidence in the markets by increasing regulation and reducing the amount of leverage that's allowable to 12 to 1. After all, it's no coincidence that AIG, Fannie and Freddie, Lehman Bros, General Motors, General Electric have all fallen off a cliff at the very same time. They are all victims of the same low interest, easy money finance swindle which allowed them to roll over huge amounts of short-term debt at artificially low cost. When Bear blew up; lending tightened, demand weakened, and credit was flushed from the system at an unprecedented pace. Borrowing short for long-term investments is not feasible when credit becomes scarce, but it's not because the banks aren't lending. That's just another myth that keeps the public from seeing what's really going on. As Jon Hilsenrath points out in his Wall Street Journal article, "Banks Keep Lending, but that isn't easing the crisis", that is not the case:"Banks actually are lending at record levels. Their commercial and industrial loans, at $1.6 trillion in early November, were up 15% from a year earlier and grew at a 25% annual rate during the past three months, according to weekly Federal Reserve data. Home-equity loans, at $578 billion, were up 21% from a year ago and grew at a 48% annual rate in three months....The numbers point to one of the great challenges of the crisis. The credit crunch is surely real, but it is complex and not easily managed. Banks are lending, but they're also under serious strain as they act as backstops to a larger problem -- the breakdown of securities markets..The worst of the credit crisis is being felt not in banks but in financial markets..."The banks are not to blame. There is a generalized contraction of credit in the non-bank financial system where structured finance has blown up and taken half of Wall Street with it. It's the end of an era. Here's how economist Henry C. K. Liu sums it up in his "Open Letter to World Leaders attending the November 15 White House Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy":"Neoliberal economists in the last three decades have denied the possibility of a replay of the worldwide destructiveness of the Great Depression that followed the collapse of the speculative bubble created by unfettered US financial markets of the 'Roaring Twenties'. They fooled themselves into thinking that false prosperity built on debt could be sustainable with monetary indulgence. Now history is repeating itself, this time with a new, more lethal virus that has infested deregulated global financial markets with 'innovative' debt securitization, structured finance and maverick banking operations flooded with excess liquidity released by accommodative central banks. A massive structure of phantom wealth was built on the quicksand of debt manipulation. This debt bubble finally imploded in July 2007 and is now threatening to bring down the entire global financial system to cause an economic meltdown unless enlightened political leadership adopts coordinated corrective measures on a global scale."Rome is burning. It's time to stop tinkering with a failed system and move on to "Plan B" before it's too late.(Emphasis added - B.M.)
Posted by Justice Lover at 9:53 AM 0 comments
Friday, November 21, 2008

November 20, 2008, 9:00 pm — Updated: 6:57 pm -->
Tough Choices for Tough Children
By Judith Warner
It was disturbing to read in The Times this week that the “atypical” antipsychotic Risperdal, a tranquilizing whopper of a drug with serious, sometimes deadly side effects, is now being widely prescribed to children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
This despite the fact that Risperdal, which is used in children mostly to treat bipolar disorder, isn’t approved for A.D.H.D., and apparently doesn’t work for treating it at all.
So why, according to new Food and Drug Administration data on doctors’ prescribing practices, were 16 percent of the pediatric users of Risperdal over the past three years children with A.D.H.D.?
The simple answer is to point fingers at the drug companies, whose aggressive efforts to promote off-label use of this problematic new class of drugs have resulted in a spate of lawsuits, including one recently filed by the Arkansas attorney general that accuses Risperdal’s manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, of having “engaged in a direct, illegal, nationwide program of promotion of the use of Risperdal for non-medically necessary uses” — like the treatment of A.D.H.D..
But I think the truth is more complicated than that. I think that what’s happening is that children with big problems are being given big, bad drugs because no one really knows what to do with them.
The biggest controversy in the controversial field of psychiatry these days (“the only field where the doctors are more stigmatized than the illness,” as Thomas R. Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, described it to me last week) is the issue of pediatric bipolar disorder, which many child psychiatrists now say is being grossly overdiagnosed, with a spike in incidence that dovetails suspiciously well with the introduction of atypical antipsychotics in the early and mid-1990s. At the heart of that controversy — the human heart, you might say — is a group of children who are really difficult: chronically irritable, extremely aggressive, prone to explosive outbursts and out-of-control rages.
Many doctors, influenced by the work of Dr. Joseph Biederman at Harvard Medical School (whose ties to industry were detailed in The Times in June), say these symptoms are signs of mania, and call these children bipolar. Others label them with “extreme A.D.H.D.” or Oppositional Defiant Disorder or “severe mood dysregulation,” a diagnosis that’s been proposed by Dr. Ellen Leibenluft, chief of the section on Bipolar Spectrum Disorders in the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program at the National Institute of Mental Health.
For the past five years, Dr. Leibenluft has been tracking 100 children she believes have severe mood dysregulation, studying the course of their illness and the outcome of their treatment.
Sixty percent of these children were diagnosed with bipolar disorder — mistakenly, she believes — before she met them. Ninety percent of them meet the criteria for diagnoses of A.D.H.D. or O.D.D. Sixty percent suffer from serious anxiety. Twenty-five percent had an episode of major depression before they turned 12.
“The severely mood dysregulated children are as sick as the bipolar children. They’re severely impaired,” she told me this week. “You can see easily why people would feel you need to use medication. But what medication? We don’t have the data to see what medication because we don’t yet know how to think about these children diagnostically.”
It may well be these kinds of children — these diagnostic orphans — who, at least in part, are showing up now as the “A.D.H.D.” patients being treated with Risperdal.
The issue of what to call these children is a hot one and will heat up further in the near future as discussions take place over whether a new or changed diagnostic category for them should be put in the D.S.M.-V, the long-awaited updated version of the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual.
And it isn’t just a matter of semantics.
Category change could mean treatment change. Children who are diagnosed as bipolar, even if they have attention issues, anxiety or depression, often aren’t treated with stimulants (the first-line treatment for A.D.H.D) or antidepressants, because some prominent child psychiatrists have argued that they make bipolar children much worse. So physicians who suspect children are bipolar instead try the much more powerful atypicals, which have much more serious side effects. But severe mood dysregulated children wouldn’t necessarily have to go the atypical route. And there is also data to indicate a real role for non-drug therapy.
In other words, thinking hard about these kids — instead of merely moralizing about them and their psychotropic drug use — may well lead to a situation in which atypical use can be greatly reduced.
This will not satisfy the critics of today’s biological psychiatry for whom no drug use is good drug use, nor the critics of today’s culture of parenting who are sure that all the aggression, irritability and out-of-control behavior that psychiatrists call mental illness is actually nothing more than a state of “toddlerhood in perpetuity” caused by ineffective parenting practices, as the conservative family psychologist and writer John Rosemond and his coauthor have asserted in his new book, “The Diseasing of America’s Children.”
It won’t solve the problem of the drug companies’ predatory marketing practices, or of thought leaders in psychiatry renting out their minds for the sake of fancy vacations and top-flight meals. But the fact that efforts are being made, in a concerted way, to figure out what lies behind the scary-sounding statistics about drugs like Risperdal argues, I think, for hope. After a period in which drug companies have had way too much power in determining how children with psychiatric issues are treated, the pendulum may be swinging back.
(Emphasis by Justice lover)
Posted by Justice Lover at 8:32 PM 0 comments
Thursday, November 20, 2008

CURRENT PSYCHIATRIC CRIMES AGAINST AMERICAN CHILDREN IN NEVADA USAby Justice LoverNevada Travesty--Foster Children Subjected to Brain CT Scans Then DruggedThu, Nov 20, 2008 at 7:19 AMALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTIONPromoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountabilityhttp://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.comFYILas Vegas Now reports (below) that Dr. Mark Collins, director of theMontevista Hospital and contracts with several residential treatment centersis ordering brain scans for foster children prior to their being prescribedhighly toxic psychotropic drugs.According to a legal complaint by Children's Attorneys Project, submitted onSept. 5, to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, fosterchildren in Nevada are being overdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, on thebasis of a dangerous brain scan.http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/spect_complaint.pdfPrior to the brain scan children are injected with radioactive material "toilluminate blood flow in their brain."Medical cowboys in Nevada are evidently undeterred by the risk ofradiation-induced cancer--when they order investigational brain scans forchildren in foster care. The use of these investigational scans to justifythe prescribing of highly toxic drugs for children is an example of themisuse of experimental scientific tools. Their use as a diagnostic tool isbogus.Even The American Psychiatric Association does not accept the use of brainimaging for the clinical diagnosis of children, in part, according to itsliterature, because of children's sensitivity to radiation and to risk ofradiation-induced cancer.Medicaid does not cover investigational procedures, like brain specs.However these claims slipped through to the tune of more than $33,000. Thestate has not yet decided whether to seek repayment and has issued a memoreiterating its policy.Nevada does not have a psychiatric care provider for children, so the statecontracts out with a Florida for-profit mental health provider. TheChildren's Attorneys complaint includes case histories of young children whowere bounced around from Montevista Hospital to Willow Springs ResidentialTreatment Center as well as other residential treatment agencies.The complaint indicates "there appear to be conflicts of interest amongservice providers and hospitals..." For example, in addition to hisposition as director of Montevista Hospital, Dr. Collins has contracts withfor-profit residential treatment facilities to which Nevada foster childrenare being placed--so there is an obvious (to us) conflict of interest.See: http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/spect_complaint.pdfContact: Vera Hassner Sharavveracare@ahrp.org212-595-8974http://www.klas-tv.com/global/story.asp?s=9354731&ClientType=PrintableColleen McCarty, Investigative ReporterI-Team: Lawyers Question Medical Tests on Foster KidsNov 15, 2008This is a story about an eight-year-old boy in foster care. A boy we'venever met. He exists for us only as a name on a letter questioning hismental health treatment. But his lawyer Janice Wolf wants us to rememberNathaniel is real."Some of the things our kids have gone through, you and I could only imaginein our dreams, or nightmares."Nathaniel described vivid nightmares according psychiatric records obtainedby the I-Team. During his first of two hospitalizations at Montevista, Dr.Mark Collins ordered a procedure called a brain spect. It requires theinjection of radioactive material to illuminate blood flow in the brain.Read the legal complaint:http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/spect_complaint.pdfIn a report to the family court, Collins writes the scan confirms Nathanielhas "severe bipolar disorder.""I think my concern is that our foster kids are getting not just the bestpsychiatric care, but proper psychiatric care -- that they're not beingmistreated, or experimented on, or used as investigational tools," saidWolf.The American Psychiatric Association does not accept the use of brainimaging for the clinical diagnosis of children, in part, according to itsliterature, because of children's sensitivity to radiation and to risk ofradiation-induced cancer.Read a statement from the county about the procedures:http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/county_spect_statement.docDr. Collins likens the exposure to a common CT scan, "To not look at achild's brain who's had multiple treatments and is not getting better, itwould be like if you had a heart attack and I'm saying, 'you know what,you've had a heart attack before. We know you have a bad heart. I'm notgoing to do an electrocardiogram on you.'"Collins argues the scans are a valuable tool to aid in the diagnosis of hissickest patients and insists not everybody gets a spec scan.A recent Medicaid review by the Nevada State Department of Health and HumanServices identified 96 Montevista patients who underwent brain imaging. Themajority, according to the state, were kids in the juvenile justice or childwelfare systems."I've been doing enough of them I see the utility in this. I see howimportant it is to take a look at these kid's brains. If I was not seeingthe benefit, I would not continue to do it," said Dr. Collins.Wolf however questions the benefit and again points to Nathaniel. Acourt-ordered psychiatric evaluation of the eight-year-old challengedCollins' diagnosis and noted, "Spect scanning is not yet an accepteddiagnostic method. Although it is interesting, it is not yet reliable."Read a statement from Nevada Medicaid:http://www2.lasvegasnow.com/docs/memo%20spect.pdf"We are hoping that at least by raising the concern and raising the issuethat others will look also, that people responsible for our kids will take alook at what it is and hopefully support us," said Wolf.And support kids like Nathaniel whose stories come to life from the pages ofa foster care case file.Only a caseworker stands between a child and a controversial procedure.Collins insists he receives no payment related to the scans. He insistsbrain imaging will soon be accepted by the psychiatric community. There iscertainly evidence he may be right but for now, it remains investigational.Medicaid does not cover investigational procedures, like brain specs.However these claims slipped through to the tune of more than $33,000. Thestate has not yet decided whether to seek repayment and has issued a memoreiterating its policy.(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2009-02-12T01:09:00.001-08:00

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lane16-2008nov16,0,5678764.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Opinion
Wrangling over psychiatry's bible
By Christopher Lane
November 16, 2008

Over the summer, a wrangle between eminent psychiatrists that had been brewing for months erupted in print. Startled readers of Psychiatric News saw the spectacle unfold in the journal's normally less-dramatic pages. The bone of contention: whether the next revision of America's psychiatric bible, the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," should be done openly and transparently so mental health professionals and the public could follow along, or whether the debates should be held in secret.One of the psychiatrists (former editor Robert Spitzer) wanted transparency; several others, including the president of the American Psychiatric Assn. and the man charged with overseeing the revisions (Darrel Regier), held out for secrecy. Hanging in the balance is whether, four years from now, a set of questionable behaviors with names such as "Apathy Disorder," "Parental Alienation Syndrome," "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder," "Compulsive Buying Disorder," "Internet Addiction" and "Relational Disorder" will be considered full-fledged psychiatric illnesses.This may sound like an arcane, insignificant spat about nomenclature. But the manual is in fact terribly important, and the debates taking place have far-reaching consequences. Published by the American Psychiatric Assn. (and better known as the DSM), the manual is meant to cover every mental health disorder that affects children and adults. Not only do mental health professionals use it routinely when treating patients, but the DSM is also a bible of sorts for insurance companies deciding what disorders to cover, as well as for clinicians, courts, prisons, pharmaceutical companies and agencies that regulate drugs.Because large numbers of countries, including the United States, treat the DSM as gospel, it's no exaggeration to say that minor changes and additions have powerful ripple effects on mental health diagnoses around the world. Behind the dispute about transparency is the question of whether the vague, open-ended terms being discussed even come close to describing real psychiatric disorders.To large numbers of experts, apathy, compulsive shopping and parental alienation are symptoms of psychological conflict rather than full-scale mental illnesses in their own right. Also, because so many participants in the process of defining new disorders have ties to pharmaceutical companies, some critics argue that the addition of new disorders to the manual is little more than a pretext for prescribing profitable drugs. The more you know about how psychiatrists defined dozens of disorders in the recent past, the more you can appreciate Spitzer's concern that the process should not be done in private. Although a new disorder is supposed to meet a host of criteria before being accepted into the manual, one consultant to the manual's third edition -- they're now working on the fifth -- explained to the New Yorker magazine that editorial meetings over the changes were often chaotic. "There was very little systematic research," he said, "and much of the research that existed was really a hodgepodge -- scattered, inconsistent and ambiguous. I think the majority of us recognized that the amount of good, solid science upon which we were making our decisions was pretty modest."Things are different today, the new consultants insist, because hard science now drives their debates. Maybe so, but still, I shudder to think what the criteria for "Relational Disorder" and "Parental Alienation Syndrome" will be. And I'm not the only one worrying. Spitzer is bothered by the prospect of "science by committee." Others, like forensics expert Karen Franklin, writing in American Chronicle, warn that advocacy groups are pressing for the inclusion of dubious terms that simply don't belong in a manual of mental illnesses.The row between Spitzer and Regier apparently dates to Regier's refusal to share the minutes of his task-force meetings with Spitzer, citing concerns about confidentiality that could jeopardize the integrity of the discussions. Regier insists, in personal correspondence that has since been made public, that the process is designed to ensure "input" from all interested parties. But Regier won't share any information except a handful of "periodic reports to the membership and media." Bypassed, conveniently, are the details of the debates themselves.Spitzer counters that "the real purpose ... is to avoid possible criticism of the ... process." He has called the attempt to revise the DSM in secret "a big mistake" and a likely "public relations disaster." I fear that I may have unintentionally contributed to Regier's excessively secretive behavior. Back in the 1970s, during the creation of the third edition of the manual, I published much of the correspondence that had circulated between committee members. Some of the exchanges were frankly hair-raising. They included proposals for the approval of such dubious conditions as "Chronic Complaint Disorder" and "Chronic Undifferentiated Unhappiness Disorder."When asked to define how he was using the term "masochism," one leading psychiatrist replied: "Oh, you know what I mean, a whiny individual ... the Jewish-mother type." And so it went for dozens of other terms that later became bona-fide illnesses. Regier obviously wants to prevent any such embarrassment for his task force; he apparently fears the public will not find his committee's work entirely convincing. I'm not interested in embarrassing anyone. My concern is the lack of proper oversight. If the proposed new disorders don't receive a full professional airing, including a vigorous debate about their validity, they will be incorporated wholesale into the fifth edition in 2012. Joining the ranks of the mentally ill will be the apathetic, shopaholics, the virtually obsessed and alienated parents. It's hard to imagine that anyone will be left who is not eligible for a diagnosis.Christopher Lane, a professor of English at Northwestern University, is the author of "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness."
Posted by Justice Lover at 10:51 PM 1 comments

http://blogger.xs4all.nl/joshb/archive/2008/11/15/423685.aspxSomething else for a change:psychiatry ...Posted on Saturday, November 15, 2008 2:53 PMTwo quotes out of the same magazine, psy #9 2008. I guess they say it all.Page 24 (left column, highlighted, translated next) “Menselijk contact is het enige dat geneest. De meeste hulpverleners zijn hier niet toe in staat.” “Human contact is the only thing that cures. Most care givers are unable to give it.” This is from a person who was once taken into a psychiatric institution, I suppose “obviously“ to be abused further there by being treated like an “insect that needs to be identified to be pinned down on a card” and heavily pressured to take their drugs.Psychiatry is mostly drug running in my experience, for the pharmaceutical industry that supplies them not only with medicine, but also with free lunches, fun congresses fully payed, right down to the pens and actually paper including merchendize advertizement used on the work floor ! Even merchandizing on the cups ! I don`t think the general public knows this. But maybe the role of psychiatry is one entirely different from imagined. It is not about helping people, it is about keeping them sick so they can be used as a prop to make money, and secondly to keep them away from society and provide cover for potential ills in society that induce such problems. This person had written a book about these problems, interviews with other people previously “treated“ in psychiatry, but also had come out of it and had fought these problems.Page 11 “Hoe bent u opgevangen na het incident ? Niets dan lof voor de warmte van collega`s en de betrokkenheid van de dericteur. Nog dagelijks informeren mensen hoe het met me gaat. Ik heb een gesprek met een psychiater gehad en een vervolgtraject aangeboden gekregen. Maar ik denk dat ik zonder kan. Ik heb veel steun van m`n gezin en m`n collega`s”“How where you helped after the incident ? Nothing but praise for the warmth of my collegues and the attention from the director. Still daily people inform how things are with me. I have had a conversation with a psychiatrist and been offered a secondary care path. But I think I can do without. I have a lot of support from my family and collegues.”What is the difference ? The latter is a psychiatric nurse who has been attacked by someone under his care with a knife and almost killed (making him a patient too I might add, can you still follow ?)They know perfectly well how to take care of people. They just don`t regard people “from the outside” as human. I know for instance about some girl who was still being raped by her father, that the nurses had diagnosed her with borderline. She was treated like dirt, also by her own family actually. Who is the monster, hmm ?The rule of inversed competence seems to apply in psychiatry: the more they are “educated” and high on the pecking order, the least use they are, the less humane, the more likely to utterly ignore you. In about a decade and a half, only after I got mad did they ever somewhat listen to me. The only person I ever had any human contact with that seemed significantly helpful, someone that seemed to believe I was human and not an object was someone who was there for training. When you are always treated like an object, life is not easy that way.How would that nurse have done, even if merely experienced one freak accident instead of a life long of being ignored and even hated for no reason, if he had to stare into the fishy eyes of a psychiatrist who tells him he probably has some personality disorder for which there are some pills ready. Nobody asks ever how he is doing, at least not with the intention to really know. And then you are someone who presumably had had a somewhat normal childhood.I know a place where these psychiatrists belong though: hell. If hell doesn`t exist yet, maybe we should build one for them. People are such blank sheets without experience, they have no idea what extensive long term pestering does, although they know exactly what they want for themselves ...I say though, many nurses, the majority, are fine people. They shouldn`t listen to psychiatrists though. People who want to work in this field should be much better tested to make sure they are not themselves problem cases and emotionally instable. They should also have a human attitude to other people, for which they should be tested. I think many people working in psychiatry are unstable emotionally, and indeed “incapable of normal human contact” although I doubt normal human contact really happens anywhere in this society. Some other “more trained” nurse actually once tried to make that trainee think that I was just incomprehensibly sick, isn`t that weird ? For once you are treated like a human being, and someone else tries to brainwash that more human person to think that other people just have some incomprehensible brain problem (not!). My life is just a long line of misery, and I have always told them that. But they didn`t want to even acknowlegde it, much less even talk about it once, much less do something about it. Only when I got mad, and mad, and against all of them constanstly said how it was and what was wrong, for several weeks, did they give me a little window to some help that seems to work. NOT medicines of course, if I still had those I would probably have killed myself already (that is anti-psychotic drugs like these they gave me “to put me down” I think, and to make money for their firms, based on erroneous diagnosis (for which - surprise surprise - drugs are available) on no more then 30 minutes of talk with some of the biggest problems namely my parents: orap (horrible), xeroxat (hid that shit and threw it in the toilet until I dared say I couldn`t take that) risperdal, zyprexa (sucks the life right out of you).The weirdest thing of: with life a mess and extreme years long isolation, I still get no psychosis, and am taking no medicine. One would say, hmm, problem isn`t the brain chemistry then. But while some psychiatrists agreed that is true, others didn`t, and none really did something to help. So what you are eventually left with is try to manage your own recovery (which you can only manage from a certain level of health), despite the sad state in “psychiatry.” Best thing they can do with psychiatry: get the psychiatry out of it, completely remove the involvement of psychiatrists, and only use them as medical advisors in case a problem is clearly physical. Nurses have by far the most experience and contact with people, therefore they should be 1, helped by a psychologist. The psychiatrists should retreat to general hospital and stay out of things they lack the humanity for to manage. They are trained physical medical specialists, they lack the training and are trained in the wrong field ! They should go to the areas of actual brain damage from accidents and drugs, and neuro-surgery, that kind of physical area.I think it is the psychiatrists, who really are brain chemists, that remove the humanity from people who need a different kind of help, usually because they have been abused in the past in one or several ways, often for very long indeed.Psychology is probably one of the most difficult areas of science, because the subject is as smart and often smarter then the person doing the studying; secondly there is almost no objectivity possible. As such it is much more of an art then a science. That would explain why nurses are much better and effective at it, if they are nice people at least, then the psychiatrists. The psychologists are somewhat in between. With all these people it depends a LOT on the particular person.What is also so funny: while 2 Dutch psychiatrists said I was “schizo” which means “going crazy/nuts without an apparent cause” (which is not true, every person goes crazy if isolated enough), there was once a German psychiatrist who knew her business. She said I was not “schizo” in Germany, under the German rules and culture, while I would be under the (superficial and simply wrong DSMIV) anglo-saxon model.Oy oy, what an abuse of people, amazing. And the street seems so nicely sweeped, and the water is so clear from the tap. Other people are saying the exact same thing. Psychiatry simply refuses to listen. I guess the reason for that is: psychiatry is a racket, they don`t want it threatened, it is their jobs and we are to be the cows.(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
Posted by Justice Lover at 8:03 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_28724.shtmlThe Machine Grinds OnBy Morton Skorodin, M.D.Nov 8, 2008, 18:52

The machine grinds on relentlessly. Now it’s: give Obama a chance. This means: Public, go back to sleep. In the meantime Obama and the state machinery work at feverish pace. Take a look at the people who have quickly been announced as contenders for high office in the Obama administration.
Rahm Emanuel, son of a right-wing Israeli terrorist; he filtered out anti-war Dems in the 2006 congressional primaries. As a result, the Dems had a smaller majority because his pro-war candidates did not do well. His loyalty to Israel is out there.
Samantha Power has found a successful niche for herself through her work on genocide. The term “genocide” is emotionally laden. This word has been around since the 1940s. There are battles about it. Who decides which particular mass murder is a genocide and which isn’t? Because of the emotional context of this noun, it was sucked into the “public relations” industry; which industry worked this word to further pull at the heart strings. So this question is important.America’s rulers decide what is and what is not genocide. The rather attractive Ms. Power is their willing instrument and is pretty enough for the Obama administration. (Fascism with a pretty face.) Take a look at Samantha Power’s book. Somehow the mass murder of Native Americans and Iraqis by Americans doesn’t pass muster for the emotionally laden “genocide”. She may have drier, less familiar and less shocking terms for these “lesser” crimes.She frames the question differently- America’s role in intervening to prevent genocides elsewhere, successfully deflecting the central question.Call me simple-minded, but the best way is to count the dead bodies, though accurate numbers are hard to obtain.A concept that goes along this framework is “humanitarian intervention” more accurately known as “humanitarian imperialism”. This is what Clinton did to the remains of Yugoslavia- a 78 day nuclear radiation bombing campaign.Power has interest in Darfur. Could it be due more to rivalry with China over East Africa’s oil that may drive policy here, rather than genocide?Behind her, I detect the rancid odor of Zbigniew Brzezinski. He’s the Democrat Kissinger wannabe. His cold calculations are outlined in “The Grand Chessboard”, his 1997 book. It’s about America controlling Eurasia. Yes, he’s every bit as crazy as the neocons.
Then there is the dunce, Lawrence Summers, whose ideas should be despised by all female humans, all humans from the “underdeveloped” countries, and everyone else with a lick of sense. This “economist” came up with the notion that poor countries were underpolluted and could be paid for being a dump. Can you make this shit up?
His quaint notion about women, wrong before the ink was dry: Women just are not as smart as men in math and science. Oh, that is so wrong on more than one level. I’ll spell some of it out in case he gets a tutor that thinks he should read it.
It’s about freedom and free time. Women have to spend more time working than men. You know, like regular icky job along with 90-100% of household chores. Fourteen hours a day of that might just delay that Ph.D. Then, there’s that kid in the belly, at the breast or on the hip.
When I was much younger they said women can not be great music composers or fine artists. Let’s not bother to stop and laugh.
What if there are valuable qualitative differences between female and male brains. Example, the great scientist, Lynn Margulis, developed a whole new area of science: symbiotic (cooperative) relationships as a driver of evolution. We can only postulate when and whether a man or men would have developed this.[See Harvard women's group rips Summers]
C’mon human race. I bet 99% of us could be clearer thinkers than this ignorant wretch and former president of Harvard.We need to mount opposition to these and other odious appointments.

2009-02-01T01:48:00.000-08:00

Saturday, November 8, 2008

THE CLOWNS OF THE AMERICAN CIRCUS OF “DEMOCRACY” AND THE RULE OF PLUTOCRACY
Justice Lover

The following report/article by Vera Hassner Sharav on behalf of AHRP has got some misleading information (if not misinformation). It regards the newly appointed Chief of Staff of Barak Obama, the newly elected President of the USA.
Let us establish the undisputed and correct facts, therefore.

Rahm Emanuel, the newly appointed White House Chief of Staff ,has been and still is an activist of AIPAC, the zionist lobby in Washington. Here is what the Wikipedia says about him :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel#Political_views

"Emanuel, whose father was in Irgun (the zionist terrorist oraganisation in Palestine before 1948 - Justice Lover), is a strong supporter of AIPAC, and personally introduced fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama to the organization's directors during the 2008 presidential campaign."

All fascists - including the zionists, of course - are demagogues, namely, those who purport to care for the people while in reality are loyal to the interests of big business. The career of Rahm Emanuel shows that along with being an aggressive fanatical zionist and a loyal supporter of the rule of big business, he has been a “generous” demagogue too. This is all part of the circus of “democracy”that big business bosses, the ultimate rulers under a plutocracy, have been running for the American people.

FDA Commissioner ??

VERACARE
Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 3:46 AM

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

Bloomberg News reports that friends of the pharmaceutical industry--in
particular, PhRMA, the trade lobbying group-- have put in a bid for Dr.
Janet Woodcock, the agency's long-time powerful ally of industry, to be the
next FDA Commissioner.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/14/60minutes/main655577_page2.shtml

http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2008/08/corruption-pharma-cmpi-ms-drugwonks-and.htm
l

However, there is hope for real change--rather than shuffling the chairs of
command at this dysfunctional agency. Ram Emanuel, President-elect Barak
Obama's newly appointed Chief of Staff, is on record publicly praising
"courageous whistleblowers like Dr. Peter Rost [a former Pfizer Marketing
Vice President] who became the first executive from a major drug company to
come forward and speak out against the drug industry's scare campaign."

"Over the past several years, whistleblowers have uncovered major accounting
scandals with consequences for millions of Americans. I want to thank Dr.
Rost for blowing the whistle on the pharmaceutical industry, breaking down
myths perpetuated by the industry that help keep prices - and profits - high
at the expense of American families."

Mr. Emanuel went on to say (in 2004), "I would like to nominate Dr. Rost for
the Guts of the Year award."
See: http://peterrost.blogspot.com/

So.........might Dr. Rost have a chance at being appointed FDA
Commissioner??

``Whoever the FDA commissioner is needs to reestablish the trust of the
American people. There are a lot of years' worth of decisions that have
really eroded the public confidence.''

Several doctors are being considered for the post:
Dr. Steven Nissen, head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and
an early critic of Vytorin, said the drug hasn't been shown to prevent heart
attacks or other cardiovascular complications, and now there are questions
about its safety.

Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore City's health commissioner.

Dr. Susan Wood, a professor at George Washington University in Washington
who previously was the FDA's assistant commissioner for women's health.
Wood served on an Obama campaign advisory panel on women's health policy.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

Friday, November 7, 2008

http://www.alcohol-drug-treatment.com/blog/2008/11/06/psychiatry-the-pharmaceutical-industry-and-the-fda/

Psychiatry The Pharmaceutical Industry And The FDA

Psychiatric drugs are now becoming more dangerous than street drugs per many medical physicians. Most of these psychotropic medications have never gone through stringent testing, instead the Food and Drug Administration have allowed for the pharmaceutical to push more drugs on society. The unfortunate thing is the FDA, Psychiatry, and Pharmaceutical Industry are all working together as a team raking in billions of dollars at the hands of uninformed patients who think there is something wrong with them.

Well many organizations have had enough. Many rehabilitation programs offer drug rehab to people who have become addicted to a drug prescribed to them by a physician. Ritalin, Xanax, Oxycontin, and Methadone are not only causing people to have to enter a drug rehab program, but also bringing people to their death because of the toxic levels. It’s very unfortunate because these pharma companies are making billions of dollars and only have to pay out millions of dollars for law suits. These are a drop in the bucket for a company like Eli Lilly or Merk.

Prescription drug addiction is not an easy addiction to overcome. It can be one of the hardest addictions to overcome because the detox can be too physically enduring. A quality long term drug rehab is usually the most effective type of treatment because it gives time for detox, counseling and life skills therapy. One of the most effectives form of rehab is a California drug treatment because not only is it holistic but also set in a residential setting. These are all vital tools to eliminate prescription drug addiction.

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/11402/supreme-court-preemption-state-law.html
Preemption - True Motives News
October 21, 2008. By Evelyn Pringle

In the original petition for writ of certiorari filed in the US Supreme Court in March 2007, under reasons for granting the petition, Wyeth reveals the true motives behind the pharmaceutical industry's all-out push for a preemption win against a lone citizen from Vermont, Diane Levine, when stating:

"There are tens of thousands of individual claims, and potentially millions of class action claims, currently pending in the lower federal and state courts, in which plaintiffs contend that a manufacturer’s use of FDA-approved labeling for its prescription drug is inadequate to satisfy state-law duties to warn."
A win against Ms Levine could potentially wipe out a majority of those lawsuits and save the industry billions upon billions of dollars. Wyeth would save the nearly $6.8 million owed to Ms Levine after the Vermont Supreme Court upheld a lower court's jury verdict.

"To find preemption in this context would eliminate all compensation for often devastating injuries – lost wages, medical costs, and other traditional forms of damages – without providing any federal remedy as a substitute."

According to an amicus brief filed in support of Ms Levine by eighteen members of Congress including Senators Patrick Leahy, Ted Kennedy, Sheldon Whitehouse, Tom Harkin, Dianne Feinstein, Richard Durbin, Bernard Sanders, Russ Feingold, and Representatives Henry Waxman, John Conyers, John Dingell, Frank Pallone, Bart Stupak, Zoe Lofgren, Linda Sánchez, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Maxine Waters, and Peter Welch. In arguing against the FDA's unauthorized preemption policy, the lawmakers' brief state that:

"For more than 70 years, Congress has operated against the background understanding that FDA approval of a drug label does not bar state-law failure-to-warn claims. If that rule of law is to be altered, it should be changed directly by Congress.

"This Court should not nullify more than 70 years of practice under the FDCA by bestowing an immunity that Congress has thus far declined to grant, nor should it permit the FDA to accomplish such a result indirectly through an unauthorized expansion of its regulatory power."

"Whatever the FDA's view of its labeling regulation," they write, "Congress never intended to allow the FDA to adopt regulations that would preempt failure-to-warn lawsuits under state law."

They maintain that state tort cases provide an invaluable source of data for regulators. "Time and time again, problems with long-term use of drugs were identified first in failure-to-warn litigation, involving such drugs as Vioxx, Bextra, Celebrex, Avandia, Rezulin, Baycol, Halcion, and Zomax," they point out.

"The voluntary physician reporting system on which FDA relies for collecting real-time information on drug side effects identifies fewer than 1% of serious side effects," they report.

FDA oversees the safety of 12,000 drugs made by 5,000 manufacturers around the world, according to the brief. "Given the agency's limited resources and information, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that the FDA alone – with no assistance from state tort suits – can protect patients from the post-market risks of even a fraction of these products," the lawmakers told the court.

Texas attorneys, Earl (Lanny) Vickery and Mark Lanier, have filed an amicus brief in support of Ms Levine on behalf of Kim Witczak, Sara Bostock, and Healthy Skepticism.

Kim Witczak lost her husband, Tim "Woody" Witczak, to a Zoloft induced suicide in 2003. Sara Bostock and her husband Peter lost their 25-year-old daughter, Cecily, to suicide 26 days after she began taking Paxil. Healthy Skepticism is an international non profit organization for health professionals and others with an interest in improving overall health.

Mr Vickery's firm won a $6 million plus verdict in the only Paxil-suicide case against GlaxoSmithKline ever to make it to a jury. Mark Lanier beat Merck in several Vioxx trials prior to the company's agreement to pay close to $5 billion to settle the remaining cases.

In their brief, the attorneys address the claims made by the FDA and Wyeth, that a drug company may not add a warning without prior FDA approval, pointing out that their actual practice contradicts their litigation position in stating:

"Wyeth added a warning of the increased risk of suicidality with respect to its antidepressant Effexor, without prior FDA approval, in August 2003. Three years later, GlaxoSmithKline ("GSK") added its own warning with respect to its antidepressant Paxil without prior FDA approval."

"Although the added warnings were not based on "newly discovered evidence," but on a reevaluation of long-existing data," they write, "FDA did not pursue misbranding actions."

In their brief, the lawmakers also note that, "the FDA's current regulations appropriately require manufacturers to warn of risks as early as possible – regardless of whether the risk is "newly discovered" or not."

They further state that "even if prior FDA approval for labeling changes to enhance safety were required, such a requirement could not possibly shield a manufacturer from liability (if it could have any preemptive effect at all) when the drug maker had never even requested the approval."

Manufacturers may also provide risk information by other means such as "Dear Health Care Professionals' letters," they note. "A manufacturer's failure to use such non-label measures may serve as a basis for imposing state-law failure-to-warn liability," they point out.

An amicus brief in support of Ms Levine was also filed on behalf of ten current and former editors and contributing authors of the New England Journal of Medicine including Doctors Jeffrey Drazen, Gregory Curfman, Stephen Morrissey, Marcia Angell, Jerome Kassirer, Arnold Relman, Paul Stolley, Harlan Krumholz, Stuart Rich and Eric Topol. In their brief, the doctors inform the court that:

"Pharmaceutical companies at times learn about dangers caused by their drugs long before the FDA does, but have failed to disclose this information to the FDA. Thus, as exemplified by the cases of Pondimin/Redux, Vioxx, and Trasylol, the drug companies have withheld key information from the FDA and ardently negotiated against stricter label warnings – all the while continuing to market their unsafe drugs to an unsuspecting public."

"In the case of these three drugs alone," they state, "literally tens of thousands of American lives have been lost or ruined long after the manufacturers realized that the drugs were not safe."

"In light of this sad reality," the brief notes, "Petitioner's/Amici's argument that failure-to-warn suits actually pose a danger to public health is nothing short of specious."

It has been estimated, they report, "that between 88,000 and 139,000 Americans suffered Vioxx induced cardiovascular events, of whom 30-40 percent (24,000-55,600) died."

Their brief points out that once approved, "Vioxx quickly became one of the most successful drugs in pharmaceutical history, averaging over two billion dollars in sales per year, with total sales from 1999 through 2004 exceeding ten billion dollars."

"During the five years Vioxx was on the market, over 100 million prescriptions were written for an estimated 20 million patients," the doctors advise.

They say the "argument that tort suits have led Americans to underutilize prescription drugs or companies to limit product development is baseless," and make the following points:

"The prescription drug industry earns global revenues of more than $700 billion per year, an increase of $178 billion over the last five years.

"As of 2004, Americans were responsible for $248 billion in pharmaceutical sales, accounting for nearly 45 percent of all revenue worldwide.

"Despite representations of a so-called explosion of stifling litigation, the pharmaceutical market has grown, not shrunk. ... In 2007 alone, there were approximately 445 million more prescriptions written than in 2003."

Due to lack of media attention, most Americans know little or nothing about the Levine case or preemption. "In fact most people believe that preemption has something to do with the war in Iraq and our preemptive strikes," says Bijan Esfandiari, lead motions attorney at Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman in Los Angeles and a member of the firm's pharmaceutical products liability litigation team.

"It is for that reason that when I talk to others about this issue I do not use the term preemption but rather refer to it as 'immunity,'" he says, "since after all, a finding of preemption results in immunity for the pharmaceutical manufacturers."

"When you ask most people if they think that drug manufacturers should be immune from compensating victims who are injured by their drugs," he reports, "the majority of the people usually respond with a resounding 'NO.'"

"The problem is that people don't usually focus on such things until they become the victims of a pharmaceutical company's negligence," he advises, "and they shockingly find out that they may have no judicial recourse."

"However, as the oral arguments of the Levine case approach closer," Mr Esfandiari says he's happy to report, "we have started to see a trickling of newspaper stories regarding the pending Levine case -- especially given the tragic facts of the case."

Ms Levine sought treatment for a migraine headache and left the hospital with injuries that led to the amputation of her arm after Wyeth's drug Phenergan was administered by IV to alleviate the nausea associated with migraines and the drug reached her arteries. Ms Levine alleges that Wyeth was aware of the risk and failed to warn against using this method to administer Phenergan.

"In the event that Wyeth wins and the Supreme Court issues a broad opinion," Mr Esfandiari explains, "such a ruling could have an effect on all pending failure-to-warn lawsuits."

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

Integrity in Science Watch - Nov. 3, 2008
Reply-To: notice-reply-igdugdir07d6i833@ga-mail.takeaction.cspinet.org
To: ben.merhav@gmail.com

Science Board Blasts BPA Report Despite Conflicts

The Food and Drug Administration's Science Board subcommittee reviewing the agency bisphenol A report last week blasted the agency for declaring the plasticizer safe, saying the agency used unacceptable criteria for selecting studies to inform its deliberations. The subcommittee report said the agency relied on inadequate data and underestimated BPA exposures for infants and children, who are most vulnerable to its effects. The subcommittee reached its conclusion despite consumer-group fears that financial conflicts of interest would taint the views of its chair, Martin Philbert, who heads a center at the University of Michigan that receives funds from Dow Chemical, which manufactures BPA. An FDA investigation last week cleared Philbert of the conflict of interest allegations, although it stipulated that he should not vote at the Science Board subcommittee's meeting.

Despite the panel's negative review, the FDA reaffirmed its defense of BPA, claiming government agencies worldwide believe "that current levels of exposure to BPA through food packaging do not pose an immediate health risk." The FDA also asserted Canada is taking steps to restrict the substance only "out of an abundance of caution."

The Science Board subcommittee was not the only voice expressing concern about the health risks associated with BPA last week, 36 scientists published a commentary in Environmental Health Perspectives attacking the FDA for declaring BPA safe. "While the U.S. FDA and [European Food Safety Authority] have deemed two industry-funded GLP (good laboratory practices) studies of BPA to be superior to hundreds of studies funded by the US-NIH and NIH counterparts in other countries, the GLP studies on which the agencies based their decisions have serious conceptual and methodological flaws," according to the commentary.

Meanwhile, prior to the committee’s statement, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) joined Congressmen John Dingell (D-MI) and Bart Stupak (D-MI) in questioning whether conflicts of interest might influence the FDA's findings on BPA. In a letter to FDA commissioner Andrew von Eischenbach, DeLauro noted Dow Chemical's $15 million grant to Philbert's center. ``There appears to be a complete undermining of the decision-making process at FDA on the BPA issue and I fear that this case demonstrates that the conflict of interest standards governing scientific advisory panels are inadequate,'' DeLauro said.

EPA Lowers Standard for Removing Water Toxins

The Environmental Protection Agency has created a new tool for determining toxic levels in drinking water which effectively raises the bar for emergency cleanup and remediation efforts, Inside EPA reports (subscription required). The new tool, released on an internal EPA site, will be used by regional EPA officials to determine if pollution levels have reached the so-called "Removal Action Levels" (RALs) for dealing with toxic compounds under the Superfund law. Possible responses include removing the contaminants or providing bottled water to people living near the contamination site. The new rule results in an online calculator that, according to Inside EPA, raises the RALs up to 60 percent above the RALs set in 1998. The new tool, unlike the previous calculator, will not be made available to the public.

Monday, November 3, 2008

MORE ON THE FDA TURNED LAP DOG OF BIG PHARMA RATHER THAN THE PUBLIC’S WATCH DOG IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE
by Justice Lover

The following AHRP report/article is one more proof of the corrupt, anti-people regime which dominates the USA under the false pretences of “democracy”, namely, the plutocracy regime, where big business bosses are the ultimate rulers.

The Safety Gap: FDA "a fundamentally broken agency"

VERACARE
Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 8:11 AM

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

Two reports put the spotlight on the FDA--an agency authorized to regulate
"more than $1 trillion worth of consumer goods, which amounts to about 25
cents of every consumer dollar spent in this country. This includes $466
billion in food sales, $275 billion in drugs, $60 billion in cosmetics and
$18 billion in vitamin supplements. The agency is responsible for monitoring
a third of all imported goods, from eggplant to eyeliner, microwave ovens to
monoclonal antibodies, slaughterhouses to cellphones. But with fewer than
500 import inspectors and computer systems so old that repairmen must be
called out of retirement to fix them, the agency is increasingly beset by a
sense of futility."

Writing in the Sunday Magazine, New York Times reporter, Gardiner Harris,
reports:

"Even the F.D.A.’s staunchest defenders now acknowledge that something is
terribly wrong. Among them is Peter Barton Hutt, who served as the agency’s
general counsel during the Nixon administration and is widely considered the
dean of the F.D.A. bar in Washington. I’ve interviewed Hutt dozens of times
over the years, and he has always defended the F.D.A. No more. “This is a
fundamentally broken agency,” Hutt told me earlier this year, “and it needs
to be repaired.”

"The breakdown is not simply about money. This summer 1,442 people around
the country were sickened by tainted tomatoes — or possibly jalepeño
peppers. Such scares have become familiar, and the inability to quickly find
the sources of contamination has been one of the agency’s signal failures. A
2002 law requires produce processors and distributors to keep track of where
food goes and comes from, but the government has yet to mandate standardized
record-keeping. As a result, in response to a scare, investigators must pour
over a blizzard of contradictory packing slips and incompatible computer
programs as they race to save people."

"The F.D.A. relies almost entirely on its own inspections of foreign plants.
This was not much of a problem 30 years ago, when most medical products
consumed in the United States were made here and F.D.A. inspectors could
drive around to plants in their district. Most of those plants have since
moved abroad, and now decades can pass between inspections. Testifying
before Congress in April, Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the F.D.A.’s drug
center, spoke with rare frankness about the ability of the agency to do its
job abroad. “The F.D.A. of the last century is not configured to regulate
this century’s globalized pharmaceutical industry,” she testified."

Furthermore, "The F.D.A.’s apparent inability to keep names straight is no
trivial matter. One reason the agency failed to inspect the Changzhou plant
that produced deadly heparin, for instance, was that someone mixed up the
facility’s name and concluded that the plant had already been inspected.
Chinese plant names, a vestige of its once strictly controlled economy, are
often very similar, and translations can vary. For instance, there are 57
separate drug master files — the basic F.D.A. record of a plant’s name,
location and approved product — with “Shanghai” in the name. Some are
obvious repeats, like the ones for “Shanghai No. 6 Pharmaceutical Factory”
and “Shanghai Number 6 Pharmaceutical Factory.” But others could be separate
plants. Or maybe not. It’s just too hard to tell."

More mind boggling still--
How does the Administration and Congressional leadership explain the fact
that the FDA still lacks a rudimentary reliable computer system????????

Gardiner Harris reports:
"Compounding the problem is the F.D.A.’s antiquated technology. Its computer
systems are so awful that officials have no way of knowing which names, or
which plants, are real. To determine which factories need to be inspected,
agency investigators must consult two incompatible databases, one of which
lists 3,000 foreign drug plants exporting to the United States and the other
6,800. Which number is right? Nobody really knows. Officials have told House
investigators that their best guess for the number of foreign drug plants
exporting to the United States is 2,967, while the Government Accountability
Office recently guessed 3,249. Neither can the agency tell in many cases
when the plants were last inspected (or, more important, which have never
been inspected), where they are located or what products they make."
See: The Safety Gap at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/magazine/02fda-t.html

Surely, the United States of America--a nation that spends $10 billion a month on a war the public opposes; a nation that coughs up close to a trillion dollars to bail out banks--which , again the public opposes; surely the US government could afford to provide the FDA with viable computer technology to protect the public health!!!!!!!!!

Jonathan Cantu, of the Government Accountability Project writes (below) that
the FDA needs some guts, not PR.

"After the failures of Vioxx, the respiratory drug Ketek, bacteria-laden
spinach and a roster of other safety lapses, it’s obvious why the agency is
seeking a reputation boost. But this won’t come about through Madison Avenue
spin jobs. This PR debacle is a microcosm of the inherent problem at FDA
that must be addressed: Officials are more concerned with limiting bad press
and helping corporate friends than with safeguarding public health. There is
a clear path to fixing these fatal flaws, but it won’t happen overnight. A
new generation of FDA leadership must provide sustained support for
decisions based on sound science rather than politics or the marketing
imperatives of drug companies."

We agree, "a new generation of FDA leadership" is essential if the agency is
to return to making science-based decisions--rather than helping increase
corporate profitability.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

http://citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200881024055
The FDA needs some guts, not PR
Jonathan Cantu

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) management has it wrong again:
The agency’s troubles aren’t due to bad public relations. At least they
weren’t until recently.

This has been yet another tormented year for the FDA. February brought
congressional hearings into the agency’s lax regulation of fatal drugs.
March brought a congressional report scorching the FDA for its woefully
inadequate inspection of foreign products entering the United States,
shockingly illustrated by that month’s Chinese ingredient-tainted Heparin
scandal that involved at least 81 American deaths. The summer months brought
the FDA’s long struggle to contain a salmonella outbreak that it attributed
to tomatoes, but was caused by peppers.

What was the FDA’s response to this string of spotlighted failures? To hire
a marketing firm to remake the agency’s public image. Comically, the FDA
botched that task, too. Investigative reports show the agency circumvented
the mandated competitive bidding process in order to steer the PR contract
to a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm.

After the failures of Vioxx, the respiratory drug Ketek, bacteria-laden
spinach and a roster of other safety lapses, it’s obvious why the agency is
seeking a reputation boost. But this won’t come about through Madison Avenue
spin jobs. This PR debacle is a microcosm of the inherent problem at FDA
that must be addressed: Officials are more concerned with limiting bad press
and helping corporate friends than with safeguarding public health.
There is a clear path to fixing these fatal flaws, but it won’t happen
overnight. A new generation of FDA leadership must provide sustained support
for decisions based on sound science rather than politics or the marketing
imperatives of drug companies.

It used to be this way. Dr. Frances Kelsey is the signature example of a
diligent FDA scientist who safeguarded the public health. In the early
1960s, Dr. Kelsey held fast to scientific integrity in the face of industry
pressure, and was able to block Thalidomide, which caused horrific birth
defects, from reaching the U.S. market. As a result, she was lauded publicly
and received a major award from President John F. Kennedy in a White House
ceremony. She continued to work for the FDA for another 40 years and, upon
her retirement in 2002, the agency named an award in her honor.

Tragically, the FDA treats today’s Dr. Kelseys as pariahs or enemies. When
Dr. David Graham sought to warn the public that the painkiller Vioxx was
related to tens of thousands of deaths, he needed congressional intervention
just to save his job and keep his findings from being suppressed by FDA
brass. FDA veterinarian Dr. Victoria Hampshire’s investigation, concluding
that a heartworm drug was related to hundreds of dog fatalities, resulted in
her removal without explanation from reviewing the drug. The FDA placed her
under criminal investigation, and it took a subsequent Senate investigation
to vindicate her of any wrongdoing.

Today’s FDA works at cross-purposes, tethered to its industry patrons when
it should be singularly focused on the public good. The FDA’s Office of New
Drugs, tasked with determining whether new drugs are safe, is largely funded
by industry user fees. How are these fees determined? By industry and agency
officials sitting down behind closed doors and negotiating terms of the drug
approval process (without any consumer or patient representatives). Once the
FDA approves a drug and it is on the market, the agency’s Office of
Surveillance and Epidemiology (OSE) is to monitor its safety. But OSE has no
independent authority to take action against unsafe drugs, only the “power”
to make a recommendation to the very body that approved the drug in the
first place.

To restore trust in the agency, the FDA must be restructured so that its
drug approval function is not tainted by industry conflicts, and its
oversight function is not subordinated to its drug approval branch.

Drs. Graham and Hampshire are just two of many FDA employees who should be
praised for coming forward. Their diligence in the face of industry pressure
and subterfuge are the sort of everyday heroism that safeguards public
health. Encouraging rather than subverting this type of work will make for
credible, honest and effective PR for the FDA and restore the public’s
trust. Corrupt PR contracts will not.

Jonathan Cantu is Public Health & Safety Associate for the Government
Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower protection and
advocacy organization. www.whistleblower.org. This column was distributed by
MinutemanMedia.org.

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

THE VERY DANGEROUS PERPETUATION OF PSYCHIATRIC LIES BY SHRINKS
by Justice Lover

The following belated article is very important in pointing out that although some top shrinks acknowledge the brain damage caused by Antipsychotic drugs ,they still refuse to ban them, not even for the developing brains of children.

It boils down to two issues, namely, to telling the truth about the fraud of "mental illness" which is the foundation of psychiatry's dogma (see psychiatry Prof. Thomas Szasz and Dr. Fred Baughman, MD, for the scientific rebuttal of that fraud ) ; and to exposing the marketing lies and corruption of Big Pharma.

Of course, as the renowned American neurologist, Dr. Fred Baughman, keeps reminding people : if there is no illness there should not be a "treatment" for it, let alone risking death, brain damage etc. which are the results of the neuroleptics consumption by the victim-patients !

Here is the article :

Expert Psychiatrists Acknowledge Drug-Induced Brain Damage

VERACARE
Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 7:49 AM

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

In May and September, while my husband and I were traveling, two
illuminating articles (below) were published in the national press that
deserve special attention.

On May 18, NewsWeek asked leading neurologists, psychiatrists (from Harvard,
Stanford, the National Institute of Mental Health) and Robert Whitaker, the
author of Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring
Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, what has been learned about the Biology of
Bipolar Disorder--its possible genetic and neurological roots.

NewsWeek reporter, Mary Carmichael posed two probing questions to the
experts:
1. "What do we know about the genetics of bipolar disorder?"

Dr. ROSS BALDESSARINI, Harvard: "People have tried genetic studies, but they
haven't gotten all that far. It's been difficult in adults, and it's at
least that fuzzy in children."

Dr. JANET WOZNIAK, Harvard: "In psychiatry all we have is the symptoms. We
don't have the tests yet."

Dr. KIKI CHANG, Stanford: "Right now, there's really no good way we have to
integrate what we've found so far regarding biological markers into our
clinical practice."

Noting that "Children with bipolar disease are often given powerful
medications," NewsWeek asked the experts:

2. "How might psychoactive drugs affect a developing brain?"

Dr. ELLEN LEIBENLUFT, NIMH: "...we don't really have data as to what these
drugs do to the brain."

Dr. BALDESSARINI: "Almost any psychotropic drug that's given for more than
a few weeks leads to changes in brain function such that when you stop, the
brain has to reset its thermostat. If you withdraw abruptly or rapidly
there's a very high risk of recurrence of the illness that you're treating."

Dr. WOZNIAK: "Our tools are not advanced enough to fully explain the
extraordinary complexity of the brain. We have a general knowledge about,
for example, dopamine: some drugs act as dopamine antagonists. But please
don't believe the idea that we understand everything that this medicine is
doing. I think part of our job as clinicians is to help parents understand
how little we know"

ROBERT WHITAKER: "The frontal lobes are still developing when kids are 19 or
20. Nature has honed that development over millions of years, and you muck
with that at some risk. When you put a kid on a psychotropic drug, the brain
will try to compensate and you will end up with a changed brain. Let's start
with the anti-psychotics-the standard ones block dopamine in the brain.
There are three dopaminergic tracts, one that controls motor movement; one
in the limbic system, related to emotions and paranoia; and one in the
frontal lobes. The drugs perturb normal function in these areas, and the
brain tries to compensate for that. Initially what will happen is the
neurons release a bit of extra dopamine. That compensatory mechanism burns
out after a while, but people on anti-psychotics also end up with a dramatic
increase in dopamine receptors, and it may never come back to normal. Once
you're in that unusual state, you're actually more vulnerable to psychosis
than you were in the first place. So when a kid is coming off his meds, it's
not the same as if he'd never been put on them."

On September 16, The New York Times published a conversation with Nancy
Andreasen MD, PhD, a prominent neuroscientist /psychiatrist, who is the
director of both the Iowa Mental Health Clinical Research Center and the
Psychiatric Iowa Neuroimaging Consortium. She is regarded as one of the
world's foremost authorities on schizophrenia who is largely responsible for
developing the concept of negative symptoms in schizophrenia. She served on
both the DSM III and DSM IV Task Forces and was the chair of the
Schizophrenia Work Group for DSM IV. Dr. Andreasen is the author of at
trilogy: "The Broken Brain: The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry" (1984);
"Brave New Brain: Conquering Mental Illness in the Era of the Genome"
(2001); and "The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius" (2005).

The Times describes Dr. Andreasen as someone who "concentrates on the big
questions."
In the interview, Dr. Andreasen acknowledges that her 18-year follow-up
study shows that the drugs used to treat psychotic symptoms cause the brain
to shrink:

"The big finding is that people with schizophrenia are losing brain tissue
at a more rapid rate than healthy people of comparable age. Some are losing
as much as 1 percent per year. That's an awful lot over an 18-year period.
And then we're trying to figure out why. Another thing we've discovered is
that the more drugs you've been given, the more brain tissue you lose."

Q. WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS HAPPENING?

A. Well, what exactly do these drugs do? They block basal ganglia activity. The prefrontal cortex doesn't get the input it needs and is being shut down by drugs. That reduces the psychotic symptoms. It also causes the prefrontal cortex to slowly atrophy.

If I were developing new drugs, I'd switch targets. Till now it's been
chemically formulated targets. I believe we should be thinking more
anatomically and asking, "With schizophrenics, which brain regions are
functioning abnormally?"

*** These are the very drugs that are currently being widely and
indiscriminately prescribed for children!

Inexplicably-from a moral human perspective-both the Times reporter and Dr.
Andreasen evade the essential question:

What is the medical justification for prescribing toxic drugs for
children--even after the damaging effects on adult brains have been
documented?

Instead, Claudia Dreifus asks Dr. Andreasen: "ARE YOU WORRIED YOUR FINDINGS
MIGHT BE MISUSED?"

Dr. Andreasen's answer is mind boggling outside the field of psychiatry:
A. "The reason I sat on these findings for a couple of years was that I just
wanted to be absolutely sure it was true. My biggest fear is that people who
need the drugs will stop taking them."

Two questions that should have been asked of Dr. Andreasen:
Why in the world should people prescribed brain damaging drugs NOT stop
taking them?
Isn't it unethical to withhold publication of important negative findings
about the hazards of currently prescribed drugs?

Dr. Andreasen served as the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of
Psychiatry for 13 years. Her deputy editor, Dr. Jack Gorman, was a major pharmaceutical industry promoter who was publicly discredited and barred from ever practicing medicine in Massachusetts.

A noteworthy demonstration of psychiatry's head-in-the-sand denial of
reality is the following pronouncement by the APA:
"The past 13 years have been perfect for Nancy and perfect for the Journal;
the result has been perfect for Psychiatry."
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/1/3

No doubt, these 13 years were PERFECT FOR PSYCHIATRY'S CASH FLOW.

Reality Check:

* This was the period during which psychiatry's diagnostic and therapeutic practices have been shown to lack a validated scientific foundation.

* Psychiatry's prescribing practices--e.g. TMAP, CMAP, TRAYY--have been influenced by drug manufacturers--and their partners in academia.

* Indeed, this was a period when psychiatry's academic leaders were shown to have penned their name for cash to ghostwritten reports that polluted the scientific literature.

* This was the period during which psychiatrists promoted off-label untested uses of antidepressants and antipsychotics--singly and in untested cocktails--for children--even when the drugs were known to be toxic resulting in serious harm.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Journal of Health Economics editors Have No Shame

VERACARE
Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 5:25 AM
To: "Infomail1@ahrp. org"

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

A critical article by Drs. Donald Light and Dr. Rebecca Warburton, Ethical
Standards for Healthcare Journal Editors: A Case Report and Recommendations,
published in the Harvard Health Policy Review,
http://www.hhpr.org/currentissue/ remains at the center of acrimonious
controversy. [the saga of the disappearing article was first reported by Ed
Silverman of Pharmalot
http:www.pharmalot.com/2008/10/the-case-of-the-disappearing-journal-article/
See also, AHRP's Infomail at:
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2008/10/to-editors-of-journal-of-health.html:

The article describes shameful editorial censorship by three editors of the
Journal of Health Economics--Joe Newhouse, Richard Frank, and Tom McGuire,
who are Harvard professors. The editors now accuse the authors, Drs. Light
and Warburton--the victims in this case--of making a "personal attack."

One editor, Dr. McGuire, is quoted in The Scientist stating: "Light and
Warburton's accusations are "far-fetched" and "bullshit."
See: http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/55101/

So, the perpetrators of academic muzzling--Harvard professors, no less--who
abused their editorial authority to suppress information that might be
harmful to pharmaceutical industry interests, turned their poison weapons on
the victims, accusing them of making a "personal attack."

The articles at the center of this sordid saga of editorial censorship:

1. DiMasi JA, Hansen RW, Grabowski H. The price of innovation: new estimates
of drug development costs. Journal Of Health Economics. 2003;22:151-185.

2. Light DW, Warburton RN. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence. Journal of Health Economics. 2005;24:1030-1033.

3. DiMasi JA, Hansen RW, Grabowski HG. Reply: extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence. Journal of Health Economics. 2005;24:1034-1044.

4. Light DW, Warburton RN. Setting the record straight in the reply by
DiMasi, Hansen and Grabowski. Journal Of Health Economics.
2005;24:1045-1048.

5. DiMasi JA, Hansen RW, Grabowski H. Setting the record straight to setting
the record straight: response to the Light and Warburton rejoinder. JHE.
2005;24:1040-1053.

6. Light DW, Warburton RN. Ethical Standards for Healthcare Journal Editors:

A Case Report and Recommendations, the Harvard Health Policy Review (Vol 9
(1):58-68 http://www.hhpr.org/currentissue/)

Drs. Light and Warburton have responded by providing to The Alliance for
Human Research Protection, the text of the deletions--including the original
proofs with the JHE/ Harvard editors' markings for chunks of text they
deleted from the published article, inviting readers, "You Be the Judge."
See: http://www.thejabberwock.org/blog/pdf/light001.pdf

All the deletions involve pharmaceutical industry inflated claims about the
cost of drug development and the acceptance of those claims by the authors,
DiMasi JA, Hansen RW, Grabowski H. The lead author, Dr. DiMasi, is the
Director of Economic Analysis at Tufts Center for the Study of Drug
Development, whose major contributors are pharmaceutical and
biopharmaceutical companies. The potential for a conflict of interest is
obvious to all--except those whose perception is clouded by a conflict of
interest.

Below is the first deletion made by the JHE editors:

"Underlying-or perhaps overshadowing-these methodological shortcomings is
the issue of competing interests. Given the strong known connection between
industry funding and research results favorable to the industry, disclosure
of industry connections in published work is essential. Two recent reviews
found that industry-sponsored research is 3 to 4 times more likely to report
results favorable to the sponsors than articles with independent funding
(Bekelman, Li, and Gross 2003; Lexchin, Bero, Djulbegovic, and Clark 2003).
Considering the clear interest of pharmaceutical companies in higher (rather
than lower) estimates of drug development costs, it is worth noting that the
DHG 2003 cost estimates are much higher than other estimates of R&D costs
(Love 2003, OTA 1993).

Medical journals using the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to
Biomedical Journals adhere to strong and clear criteria concerning real and
potential conflicts of interest (ICMJE 2003). The minimum requirement is
full disclosure by authors to editors and reviewers, and by journals to
readers. DHG 2003 did not disclose any industry funding or competing
interests, and simply stated "The authors did not receive any external
funding to conduct this study." Yet the web site (2004) of the Tufts Center
for the Study of Drug Development (where DiMasi is Director of Economic
Analysis) explains clearly that pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical
companies are major funders of the organization (TCSDD 2004a, 2004b). While
the bulk of the Center's support (65%) is apparently in the form of
unrestricted grants, the potential for conflict of interest remains.
Suppose that research results damaging to the pharmaceutical industry were
routinely published by the Center. In that case, what would happen to the
level of industry funding over time? Would the industry continue to supply
the confidential, proprietary information which is the basis of much of the
Center's research?"

The Scientist quotes Dr. McGuire stating that he was initially glad to
accept the Light and Warburton article but wanted to scrub it of "personal
attacks" against DiMasi."

Drs. Light and Warburton invite you to be the judge: Does this material
strike you as "personal attack"?

The second deletion involved relevant material questioning the high
estimates of how much research costs the pharmaceutical industry.

The third deletion--after months of haggling, the editors' acceptance of the
original authors' reply to the critique, and Light and Warburton's rejoinder
to the publisher (Elsevier) for copy-editing and then page proofs, "the
editors suddenly pulled the entire set out of production with no explanation
..."

See complete text and the page proofs at:
http://www.thejabberwock.org/blog/pdf/light001.pdf

The Scientist reports that one of the Harvard JHE editors, Dr. Richard
Frank, is reported to have resigned while another editor hurled
mud--sullying himself.

One cannot but conclude that influential journal editors with prestigious
academic affiliations have no shame about suppressing critiques charging
scientific bias and the stealth influence of Big Money from Big Pharma.
Beyond editorial misconduct, this case provides a glimpse into how the
pharmaceutical industry--with the help of academics at prestigious
institutions that are themselves recipients of substantial cash from
industry--used their influence to lend legitimacy to industry's inflated
claims about the cost of research and development. US healthcare costs which
are inflated beyond reasonableness were shaped by academics in the service
of drug manufacturers.

The next President of the US who will be faced with a financial crisis
approaching the Great Depression, will be looking for ways to reduce costs.
We suggest that he invite independent healthcare analysts such as, Dr.
Donald Light and Dr. Rebecca Warburton, to serve on the administration's
advisory panel on reducing health care costs--in particular inflated drug
prices--by billions of dollars.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-12-22T01:42:00.000-08:00

Monday, October 27, 2008

Texas AG Documents: U of Texas Docs Who Set Children Drug Rx Guidelines solicited $$$ from Pharma
1 message

VERACARE

Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 10:47 PM

To: "Infomail1@ahrp. org"

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

Evidence shows that the committee of academic-affiliated psychiatrists and
pharmacists solicited and received cash payments from drug companies that
have an enormous stake in ensuring that state-sponsored psychiatric drug
prescribing guidelines endorse their products.

The Dallas Morning News reports (below) that documents released by the Texas
Attorney General reveal that in June 1999, M. Lynn Crismon, head of the
University of Texas College of Pharmacy, and the director of the state
Children's Medication Algorithm Project (CMAP) wrote to at least 10 drug
companies, asking for donations.

In his solicitation letter Dr. Crimson wrote: "Although we have received
grant funding in support of this effort, these amounts fall short of the
funds required to complete this important outcomes project." The drug
companies responded with pledges that year ranging from $10,000 a year from
Wyeth and Pfizer, to $80,000 one-time grant from Forest Laboratories, and
$70,000 from Eli Lilly. While a few of the line items seem to limit the
grant to CMAP's "patient and family education" program, others are listed as
unrestricted CMAP "research gifts."

The documented evidence uncovered by the AG in the whistleblower lawsuit
against Janssen (subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson) and the marketing of its
neuroleptic (antipsychotic) Risperdal, refutes Dr. Crimson's recent denials
that the CMAP committee received cash payments from psychotropic drug
manufacturers.

"No pharma funding has ever been received for CMAP to the best of my
knowledge," he wrote. The Eli Lilly and Forest money "was not for CMAP."
Eli Lilly officials, however, confirmed that the company donated $70,000 to
the state for a CMAP education program.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-c
map_26tex.ART.State.Edition1.4a88179.html
The Dallas Morning News
State medication protocol researchers sought money from drug firms
Sunday, October 26, 2008
By EMILY RAMSHAW
eramshaw@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN Pharmaceutical company money, initially rejected as being ethically
questionable, was eventually sought and used by researchers developing a
list of preferred psychiatric drugs for children in state care, according to
documents reviewed by The Dallas Morning News.

A spot on the since-suspended children's drug plan could have meant millions
to pharmaceutical firms. The documents released to The News were collected
by the Texas attorney general's office, which is suing a pharmaceutical
company accused of trying to influence researchers on a similar adult drug
plan.

Citing the pending lawsuit over the adult plan, officials in two state
health agencies declined to comment on the Children's Medication Algorithm
Project, or CMAP which was put on indefinite hold in May. The researchers
have insisted that pharmaceutical companies never influenced their work.

The CMAP records obtained by The News don't refute this. Nor were the
researchers banned from soliciting funding from drug companies.
However, the records reflect a common pattern in state and university
medical programs. Unable to get ample government funding, researchers are
increasingly forced to rely on drug company money even when it's their last
resort.

When CMAP was started in the late 1990s, researchers were loath to accept
pharmaceutical grant funding. At an April 1998 meeting, "it was concluded
that we should try to avoid this if possible," according to minutes of a
meeting between CMAP researchers.

By June 1999, researchers needed more grant money and had changed their
minds. CMAP's director, M. Lynn Crismon, head of the University of Texas
College of Pharmacy, wrote to at least 10 drug companies, asking for
donations.

"Although we have received grant funding in support of this effort," he
wrote, "these amounts fall short of the funds required to complete this
important outcomes project."

By late that year, CMAP budgets included pledges for $10,000 a year from
Wyeth and Pfizer, an $80,000 one-time grant from Forest Laboratories, and
$70,000 from Eli Lilly. While a few of the line items seem to limit the
grant to CMAP's "patient and family education" program, others are listed as
unrestricted CMAP "research gifts."

When, in 2006, questions surfaced about drug company connections to the
adult drug plan, however, CMAP researchers were again cautious about drug
company money.

And as recently as this spring, Dr. Crismon assured top state health
officials there was no pharmaceutical link to CMAP, saying that any drug
company money was used for a patient and family education study unrelated to
CMAP.

"No pharma funding has ever been received for CMAP to the best of my
knowledge," he wrote. The Eli Lilly and Forest money "was not for CMAP."
Eli Lilly officials, however, confirmed that the company donated $70,000 to
the state for a CMAP education program.

These mixed messages seem to have made their way to the top. In a 2007
e-mail, Department of State Health Services Commissioner David Lakey asked
Bill Race, then the agency's medical director for behavioral health, for a
meeting to discuss an outside review.
"I will give you more background when we meet, but we will need to put
together a group to review it and make sure the algorithms truly represent
best practice as of 2007," he said. "No pharmaceutical company funding
should be a part of this."

Speaking through a UT attorney, Dr. Crismon told The News that he believes
CMAP was funded entirely by the state, but that he didn't have the records
available to check.

Staff writer John Jordan contributed to this report.

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

Friday, October 24, 2008

Stop the fraud with the UN-Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities !

[Please snowball this message on newsboards and your own e-mail address lists]

We kindly request support to stop the convention fraud being committed in Germany.
Kind regards,
René Talbot
for the Board of:

Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Psychiatrie-Erfahrener e.V.

Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte
Greifswalder Straße 4, 10405 Berlin
Fax: 030-7828947
die-bpe@gmx.de
www.die-bpe.de

The UN High Commissioner for human rights* confirms:

The draft of the German Federal Government for the ratification of the UN-Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a fraud and a falsification

On 1 October 2008 the draft for the ratification of the UN-Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities** was accepted by the Federal Cabinet. In its press release the Federal Government maintains that "The convention of the United Nations concerning the rights of the disabled" will thereby be put into practice on a national level. This statement is wrong and represents a deception in which the actual word and spirit of the draft is concealed with regard to the convention text.

Article 14 1b) of the convention specifies expressly
"that the existence of a disability shall in no case justify a deprivation of liberty"

On the other hand in the "Memorandum of the Convention of 13 December 2006 on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities" ** [which is part of the ratification draft] on page 52 of Article 14 the following restriction is made:

"Both Paragraph 1, small (b) and paragraph 2 establish that imprisonment is in principle not excluded, also for the disabled. A condition is however that for disability, additionally special circumstances must have arrisen, which make the deprivation of liberty necessary. That is for instance the case, if a danger to oneself or to others can only be avoided by means of deprivation of liberty. If there are additional circumstances which justify deprivation of liberty, this can be permissible also if the circumstances justifying deprivation of liberty are based on a disability. "

With fraudulent intention the draft** thereby makes a contradicting and false interpretation of the convention text as concerns the conditions for deprivation of liberty of disabled people, which expressly serves to leave untouched the existing special laws for the so-called „mentally ill" in the Federal Republic (mental health laws: PsychKG, §63 StGB, Regulations with regard to custodianship), which regularly justify the restriction of basic and human rights with a reference to an alleged "danger to oneself or others".

The note of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights* on the occasion of the "Dignity and Justice for Detainees Week" (6 - 12 October 2008) confirms our conclusion that the convention text is falsified:

„International human rights law and standards are very clear: persons with disabilities have the right to liberty and security of the person on an equal basis with others. The existence of a disability can in no case justify a deprivation of liberty. Persons with disabilities may be lawfully deprived of their liberty for having committed a crime or violated the law."

Legal equality of the "mentally ill" means that they have, just as with all others, the right to bring their health or their life into danger without being punished by the state. In addition, it means that also the denial of freedom based on an assumed or real danger to others, as is provided for in police and penal codes, may only serve to be applied in accordance with these general laws and as a measure to ward off danger, but not, however, for the purpose of the "correction of one's conduct". In any case, the UN convention in all of these cases forbids that a disability (diagnosed here as a "mental illness") is a special reason for the restriction of human rights.

The usual practice of justifying the deprivation of human rights and the use of coercion with a "danger to oneself or others" or an assumed or real need of assistance is unmistakably condemned by the UN High Commissioner:

„In violation of relevant international standards, in many legal systems persons with disabilities, and especially persons with mental and intellectual disabilities, are deprived of their liberty simply on the grounds of their disability. Such disability is sometimes used to justify preventive detention measures on the grounds that the person with a disability might cause harm to himself or to others.

In other cases, persons with disabilities are deprived of their liberty for their care and treatment. All such practices, policies and laws are in contravention of existing international standards.
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) states clearly that deprivation of liberty based on the existence of a disability is contrary to international human rights law, is intrinsically discriminatory, and is therefore unlawful. Such unlawfulness also extends to situations where additional grounds—such as the need for care, treatment and the safety of the person or the community—are used to justify deprivation of liberty."

In the practical jurisdiction up to the highest level the "memorandum" will be regarded as the intentional and a (binding) opinion of the legislator in the interpretation of the wording of the law. Individuals could therefore not defend themselves against forced incarceration in a psychiatric hospital or coercive treatment by referring to the UN-Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, because the courts would adhere to the German laws contradicting the convention.

Thus in the UN-Convention there is no room for interpretation to favor the fraudulent falsification in the draft of the Federal Government. The Federal Government and every member of the "Bundestag" as well as all 16 regional state parliaments were informed by the "Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Psychiatrie-Erfahrene" (a Federal Association of Psychiatric Survivors) of the planned convention fraud. If the draft is nevertheless passed, then the only conclusions that can be drawn from this are:

* The UN-Convention becomes a mockery of the hopes of the disabled for real legal equality.
* With this act the Federal Government and its supporting parties degrade the UN if their convention is ratified on the national level without practical consequences even for its core domains (deprivation of liberty, torture).
* Beyond that, the idea of universal human rights and their impact are weakened if a convention allegedly intended to strengthen them can be side-stepped in this blatant way.

We therefore sent a letter the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights informing her about our struggle with the German politicians and delivering a full documentation of all our correspondence. We urgently requested her to defend on short notice the UN-Convention against the fraud of the German government during the ratification process in the parliament.

We have seen that other states who ratified the convention up till now have taken no action to abolish the illegal mental health laws. We understand that in Germany it is a unique opportunity that the government revealed its planned fraud with the convention before the ratification.

Therefore we think it is of prime importance for all disabled people to stop this fraud in Germany and to encourage the High Commissioner for Human Rights to strongly oppose the fraud. Please write to the High Commissioner, Navanethem Pillay, with your concerns about the German ratification process, demonstrating international attention on this matter and encourage her to take action:

High Commissioner for Human Rights
Mrs. Navanethem Pillay
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland

civilsocietyunit@ohchr.org

Thursday, October 23, 2008

MORE ON THE CURRENTLY COMBINED CRIMES OF BIG PHARMA-PSYCHIATRY
by Justice Lover

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

The evidence is mounting against psychiatry's paradigm of care-in particular
its reliance on toxic drugs which, evidence shows, are unsuited for human
consumption--inasmuch as the prescribed treatments trigger irreversible
disabling measurable biological diseases.

Psychiatry's wanton prescribing practices, influenced by pharmaceutical
industry kick-backs, have been documented.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/03/minnesota-is-first-of-handful-of-states.htm
l

As a result, American children have been prescribed antipsychotics-primarily
the new expensive, but highly toxic drugs, called atypical antipsychotics.
Indeed, as The New York Times reports, prescriptions have increased more
than fivefold for children over the past decades and a half, "and doctors
now use them to settle outbursts and aggression in children with a wide
variety of diagnoses, despite serious side effects."

The latest published analysis of the evidence from the most comprehensive
government study of the five second generation neuroleptics /
antipsychotics-CATIE-shows that Zyprexa increases the risk of coronary heart
disease
[see:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2008/certain-antipsychotic-medications-
may-increase-risk-for-heart-disease.shtml]

The risk of coronary heart disease is but another in a series of
life-threatening diseases induced by Zyprexa.

Another study published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine,
examined the medical record of 4140 children and adolescents prescribed 1 of
5 atypical or 2 conventional antipsychotics. The control group was a random
sample of 4500 children not treated with psychotropic medications.

The findings confirm the dire risks antipsychotics pose for children:
* Children prescribed an antipsychotic had twice the risk for obesity
(OR, 2.13) and triple the risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus (OR, 3.23)
compared with the control sample.

* Prevalence of cardiovascular conditions (OR, 2.70) and orthostatic
hypotension/syncope (OR, 1.64) was also increased in the treatment cohort.

*By the end of the study, 25% of the sample had 1 to 3 comorbid
chronic medical conditions --metabolic and cardiovascular DRUG-INDUCED
life-threatening conditions--
in addition to (whatever psychiatric disorder they were originally diagnosed
with).

* Increased risk for metabolic adverse events associated with
combination antipsychotic therapy or concomitant treatment with
antidepressants or mood stabilizers was especially evident during the long
term (24 - 36 months).

Below the Medscape Medical News Report about the study.

The Times reported the findings of another pediatric study--one that
compared the effects of Eli Lilly's Zyprexa and Janssens' Rispedal in
children. The findings:

"Some of the children in this study gained 15 pounds or more in eight weeks.
That's as much as adults gain in a year on these medications. Children are
especially susceptible to these side effects, and this has broad
implications across the board, for the use of these agents to treat any
disorder."

Dr. Jon McClellan of the University of Washington, a co-author of the new
study and of the current guidelines for treating childhood schizophrenia,
said in a telephone interview that older schizophrenia drugs should now be
considered as an alternative in some cases.

Those drugs caused irreversible Tardive Dyskinesia (involuntary muscle
spasms of the face and torso). They were abandoned when the new drugs were
touted as "miracle" improvements.
Neither class of drugs are safe or effective.

What, we want to know, is what prevents psychiatrists-including Dr.
McClellan-from abandoning the failed paradigm of care that merely shuttles
between comparably toxic drugs?
Why not re-examine non-chemical therapies?

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Medscape Medical News
Pediatric Use of Antipsychotics Linked to Metabolic and Cardiovascular
Events CME/CE
News Author: Laurie Barclay, MD
CME Author: Laurie Barclay, MD

Release Date: October 7, 2008; Valid for credit through October 7, 2009
Credits Available
Physicians - maximum of 0.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)T for physicians;
Family Physicians - up to 0.25 AAFP Prescribed credit(s) for physicians;
Nurses - 0.25 ANCC contact hours (0.25 contact hours are in the area of
pharmacology)

All other healthcare professionals completing continuing education credit
for this activity will be issued a certificate of participation.
Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their
participation in the activity.

To participate in this internet activity: (1) review the target audience,
learning objectives, and author disclosures; (2) study the education
content; (3) take the post-test and/or complete the evaluation; (4)
view/print certificate View details.
~~~~~~~

October 7, 2008 - The use of antipsychotics in children and teens may
increase the risk for adverse metabolic and cardiovascular events, according
to the results of a retrospective cohort study reported in the October issue
of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.

"During the past decade, there has been a substantial increase in the use of
antipsychotics, predominantly atypical or second-generation antipsychotics
(SGAs), in young persons treated in privately and publicly insured systems,"
write Roger S. McIntyre, MD, FRCPC, from the University Health Network in
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Jeanette M. Jerrell, PhD, from the University
of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia. "However, a paucity of
controlled studies provide a quantitative estimate of the relative risks
associated with these agents in young populations."

The study goal was to examine factors associated with incident
cardiovascular events and metabolic disturbance in children and adolescents
treated with antipsychotic drugs through South Carolina's Medicaid program
from January 1, 1996, through December 31, 2005. The investigators evaluated
Medicaid medical and pharmacy claims covering outpatient and inpatient
medical services and medication prescriptions.

Incidence and prevalence rates for obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus,
dyslipidemia, cardiovascular events, cerebrovascular events, hypertension,
and orthostatic hypotension were compared in a treatment cohort of 4140
children and adolescents prescribed 1 of 5 atypical or 2 conventional
antipsychotics vs a random sample of 4500 children not treated with
psychotropic medications.

Compared with the control sample, the treatment cohort exposed to
antipsychotic drugs had a higher prevalence of obesity (odds ratio [OR],
2.13), type 2 diabetes mellitus (OR, 3.23), cardiovascular conditions (OR,
2.70), and orthostatic hypotension (OR, 1.64).

Compared with patients treated with only 1 antipsychotic drug, those exposed
to multiple antipsychotics had a significantly greater risk for incident
obesity or weight gain (OR, 2.28), type 2 diabetes mellitus (OR, 2.36), and
dyslipidemia (OR, 5.26). Use of conventional (OR, 4.34) or multiple (OR,
1.57) antipsychotics and mood stabilizers (OR, 1.31) was linked to a greater
incidence of cardiovascular events. Patients prescribed selective serotonin
reuptake inhibitors (OR, 1.77) and mood stabilizers (OR, 1.35) in addition
to antipsychotics had a greater prevalence of incident orthostatic
hypotension.

Limitations of this study include data not controlled; use of secondary
administrative data and observational techniques in a retrospective cohort
design; some of the medication exposure groups including less than 5% of the
cohort (ie, conventional antipsychotics, aripiprazole, and ziprasidone),
limiting power; lack of structured research and clinical interviews to
confirm any of the assigned medical disorders; underestimation of adverse
events on the basis of spontaneous reporting to a clinician; inability to
determine causality; key risk factors such as family history of obesity,
metabolic disorders, and cardiovascular disorders not available in the
database; truncated availability of ziprasidone and aripiprazole during the
study period, possibly limiting the incidence of adverse events attributable
to these drugs; and inability to estimate how representative this Medicaid
cohort is in relationship to those in other states and service systems.

"Antipsychotics are associated with several metabolic and
cardiovascular-related adverse events in pediatric populations, especially
when multiple antipsychotics or classes of psychotropic medications are
coprescribed, controlling for individual risk factors," the study authors
write. "When evaluating the overall benefit-risk ratio of antipsychotics in
children and adolescents, the practitioner needs to give careful
consideration to possible metabolic disruptions or cardiovascular toxic
effects, especially in individuals with comorbid metabolic conditions and
those receiving concomitant psychotropic medications."

The State Mental Health Data Infrastructure supported this study.
Dr. McIntyre has disclosed various financial relationships with Eli Lilly,
the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the National Alliance for Research
on Schizophrenia and Depression, AstraZeneca, Biovail, Bristol-Myers Squibb,
France Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen-Ortho, Organon, Lundbeck,
Pfizer, Solvay/Wyeth, Shire, Physicians' Postgraduate Press, and 13CME.

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2008;162:929-935.

~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/health/research/15drug.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Risks found for youths in new antipsychotics
By BENEDICT CAREY
Oct.17, 2008

A new government study published Monday has found that the medicines most
often prescribed for schizophrenia in children and adolescents are no more
effective than older, less expensive drugs and are more likely to cause some
harmful side effects. The standards for treating the disorder should be
changed to include some older medications that have fallen out of use, the
study's authors said.

The results, being published online by The American Journal of Psychiatry,
are likely to alter treatment for an estimated one million children and
teenagers with schizophrenia and to intensify a broader controversy in child
psychiatry over the newer medications, experts said.
Prescription rates for the newer drugs, called atypical antipsychotics, have
increased more than fivefold for children over the past decades and a half,
and doctors now use them to settle outbursts and aggression in children with
a wide variety of diagnoses, despite serious side effects.

A consortium of state Medicaid directors is currently evaluating the use of
these drugs in children on state Medicaid rolls, to ensure they are being
prescribed properly.
The study compared two of the newer antipsychotics, Zyprexa from Eli Lilly
and Risperdal from Janssen, with an older medication and found that all
three relieved symptoms of schizophrenia, like auditory hallucinations, in
many young patients. Yet half of the children in the study stopped taking
their drug within two months, either because it had no effect or was causing
serious side effects, like rapid weight gain. The children receiving Zyprexa
gained so much weight that a government oversight panel monitoring safety
ordered that they be taken off the drug.

The long-anticipated study, financed by the National Institute of Mental
Health, is the most rigorous, head-to-head trial of the drugs in children
and adolescents with this disorder. About three million Americans suffer
from schizophrenia, and perhaps 40 percent first show symptoms in their
teens or earlier.
"This is really a landmark study, because these newer drugs have been around
for 12 years or so now, and there were fundamental questions for which we
really didn't have answers," said Sanjiv Kumra, director of the division of
child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, who was not
involved in the study.

Kumra said the results revealed significant differences in the drugs' side
effects that should help doctors and patients choose among them.
"What this is saying is that all treatments work, at least for some people,
and have serious risks for others," he said. "It's a trial-and-error
process" to match people with the right medication.

Jon McClellan of the University of Washington, a co-author of the new study
and of the current guidelines for treating childhood schizophrenia, said in
a telephone interview that older schizophrenia drugs should now be
considered as an alternative in some cases.

"Some of the children in this study gained 15 pounds or more in eight
weeks," McClellan said. "That's as much as adults gain in a year on these
medications. Children are especially susceptible to these side effects, and
this has broad implications across the board, for the use of these agents to
treat any disorder."

Studies have found that more than 80 percent of prescriptions for atypical
antipsychotics for children are to treat something other than schizophrenia,
like autism-related aggression, bipolar disorder or attention-deficit
problems. Some of these are approved uses; others are not.

The researchers, led by Linmarie Sikich of the University of North Carolina,
recruited 119 young people, ages 8 to 19, who suffer from psychotic
symptoms. The children received either Zyprexa, Risperdal or molindone, an
older drug used to blunt psychosis. Neither the young patients nor the
doctors treating them knew which drug was being taken, but the researchers
told the youngsters and their parents that, if the medication was not
working out, the family could switch to another one.

After eight weeks, 34 percent of the children taking Zyprexa, 46 percent of
those on Risperdal, and 50 percent of those receiving molindone showed
significant improvement.

But by that time so many of the patients had stopped taking the drug they
were on that it was not clear that those differences were significant. Many
had gained a lot of weight: an average of about nine pounds for those in the
Risperdal group, and 13 pounds in the Zyprexa group.
Both groups also showed changes in cholesterol and insulin levels that are
risk factors for diabetes. Those taking molindone gained less than a pound,
on average, and had little metabolic changes.

"I thought the extra weight was putting a lot of pressure on me," said
Brandon Constantineau, 18, a study participant in Wilmington, North
Carolina, who gained 35 pounds while taking Risperdal for several months.
"Kids at school were making fun of me, all that. I knew I had to get rid of
it. I exercised a lot, but it didn't happen until I changed drugs."

FYI
The evidence is mounting against psychiatry's paradigm of care-in particular
its reliance on toxic drugs which, evidence shows, are unsuited for human
consumption--inasmuch as the prescribed treatments trigger irreversible
disabling measurable biological diseases.

Psychiatry's wanton prescribing practices, influenced by pharmaceutical
industry kick-backs, have been documented.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/03/minnesota-is-first-of-handful-of-states.htm
l

As a result, American children have been prescribed antipsychotics-primarily
the new expensive, but highly toxic drugs, called atypical antipsychotics.
Indeed, as The New York Times reports, prescriptions have increased more
than fivefold for children over the past decades and a half, "and doctors
now use them to settle outbursts and aggression in children with a wide
variety of diagnoses, despite serious side effects."

The latest published analysis of the evidence from the most comprehensive
government study of the five second generation neuroleptics /
antipsychotics-CATIE-shows that Zyprexa increases the risk of coronary heart
disease
[see:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2008/certain-antipsychotic-medications-
may-increase-risk-for-heart-disease.shtml]

The risk of coronary heart disease is but another in a series of
life-threatening diseases induced by Zyprexa.

Another study published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine,
examined the medical record of 4140 children and adolescents prescribed 1 of
5 atypical or 2 conventional antipsychotics. The control group was a random
sample of 4500 children not treated with psychotropic medications.

The findings confirm the dire risks antipsychotics pose for children:
* Children prescribed an antipsychotic had twice the risk for obesity
(OR, 2.13) and triple the risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus (OR, 3.23)
compared with the control sample.

* Prevalence of cardiovascular conditions (OR, 2.70) and orthostatic
hypotension/syncope (OR, 1.64) was also increased in the treatment cohort.

*By the end of the study, 25% of the sample had 1 to 3 comorbid
chronic medical conditions --metabolic and cardiovascular DRUG-INDUCED
life-threatening conditions--
in addition to (whatever psychiatric disorder they were originally diagnosed
with).

* Increased risk for metabolic adverse events associated with
combination antipsychotic therapy or concomitant treatment with
antidepressants or mood stabilizers was especially evident during the long
term (24 - 36 months).

Below the Medscape Medical News Report about the study.

The Times reported the findings of another pediatric study--one that
compared the effects of Eli Lilly's Zyprexa and Janssens' Rispedal in
children. The findings:
"Some of the children in this study gained 15 pounds or more in eight weeks.
That's as much as adults gain in a year on these medications. Children are
especially susceptible to these side effects, and this has broad
implications across the board, for the use of these agents to treat any
disorder."

Dr. Jon McClellan of the University of Washington, a co-author of the new
study and of the current guidelines for treating childhood schizophrenia,
said in a telephone interview that older schizophrenia drugs should now be
considered as an alternative in some cases.

Those drugs caused irreversible Tardive Dyskinesia (involuntary muscle
spasms of the face and torso). They were abandoned when the new drugs were
touted as "miracle" improvements.
Neither class of drugs are safe or effective.

What, we want to know, is what prevents psychiatrists-including Dr.
McClellan-from abandoning the failed paradigm of care that merely shuttles
between comparably toxic drugs?
Why not re-examine non-chemical therapies?

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Medscape Medical News
Pediatric Use of Antipsychotics Linked to Metabolic and Cardiovascular
Events CME/CE
News Author: Laurie Barclay, MD
CME Author: Laurie Barclay, MD

Release Date: October 7, 2008; Valid for credit through October 7, 2009
Credits Available
Physicians - maximum of 0.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)T for physicians;
Family Physicians - up to 0.25 AAFP Prescribed credit(s) for physicians;
Nurses - 0.25 ANCC contact hours (0.25 contact hours are in the area of
pharmacology)

All other healthcare professionals completing continuing education credit
for this activity will be issued a certificate of participation.
Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their
participation in the activity.

To participate in this internet activity: (1) review the target audience,
learning objectives, and author disclosures; (2) study the education
content; (3) take the post-test and/or complete the evaluation; (4)
view/print certificate View details.
~~~~~~~

October 7, 2008 - The use of antipsychotics in children and teens may
increase the risk for adverse metabolic and cardiovascular events, according
to the results of a retrospective cohort study reported in the October issue
of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.

"During the past decade, there has been a substantial increase in the use of
antipsychotics, predominantly atypical or second-generation antipsychotics
(SGAs), in young persons treated in privately and publicly insured systems,"
write Roger S. McIntyre, MD, FRCPC, from the University Health Network in
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Jeanette M. Jerrell, PhD, from the University
of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia. "However, a paucity of
controlled studies provide a quantitative estimate of the relative risks
associated with these agents in young populations."

The study goal was to examine factors associated with incident
cardiovascular events and metabolic disturbance in children and adolescents
treated with antipsychotic drugs through South Carolina's Medicaid program
from January 1, 1996, through December 31, 2005. The investigators evaluated
Medicaid medical and pharmacy claims covering outpatient and inpatient
medical services and medication prescriptions.

Incidence and prevalence rates for obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus,
dyslipidemia, cardiovascular events, cerebrovascular events, hypertension,
and orthostatic hypotension were compared in a treatment cohort of 4140
children and adolescents prescribed 1 of 5 atypical or 2 conventional
antipsychotics vs a random sample of 4500 children not treated with
psychotropic medications.

Compared with the control sample, the treatment cohort exposed to
antipsychotic drugs had a higher prevalence of obesity (odds ratio [OR],
2.13), type 2 diabetes mellitus (OR, 3.23), cardiovascular conditions (OR,
2.70), and orthostatic hypotension (OR, 1.64).

Compared with patients treated with only 1 antipsychotic drug, those exposed
to multiple antipsychotics had a significantly greater risk for incident
obesity or weight gain (OR, 2.28), type 2 diabetes mellitus (OR, 2.36), and
dyslipidemia (OR, 5.26). Use of conventional (OR, 4.34) or multiple (OR,
1.57) antipsychotics and mood stabilizers (OR, 1.31) was linked to a greater
incidence of cardiovascular events. Patients prescribed selective serotonin
reuptake inhibitors (OR, 1.77) and mood stabilizers (OR, 1.35) in addition
to antipsychotics had a greater prevalence of incident orthostatic
hypotension.

Limitations of this study include data not controlled; use of secondary
administrative data and observational techniques in a retrospective cohort
design; some of the medication exposure groups including less than 5% of the
cohort (ie, conventional antipsychotics, aripiprazole, and ziprasidone),
limiting power; lack of structured research and clinical interviews to
confirm any of the assigned medical disorders; underestimation of adverse
events on the basis of spontaneous reporting to a clinician; inability to
determine causality; key risk factors such as family history of obesity,
metabolic disorders, and cardiovascular disorders not available in the
database; truncated availability of ziprasidone and aripiprazole during the
study period, possibly limiting the incidence of adverse events attributable
to these drugs; and inability to estimate how representative this Medicaid
cohort is in relationship to those in other states and service systems.

"Antipsychotics are associated with several metabolic and
cardiovascular-related adverse events in pediatric populations, especially
when multiple antipsychotics or classes of psychotropic medications are
coprescribed, controlling for individual risk factors," the study authors
write. "When evaluating the overall benefit-risk ratio of antipsychotics in
children and adolescents, the practitioner needs to give careful
consideration to possible metabolic disruptions or cardiovascular toxic
effects, especially in individuals with comorbid metabolic conditions and
those receiving concomitant psychotropic medications."

The State Mental Health Data Infrastructure supported this study.
Dr. McIntyre has disclosed various financial relationships with Eli Lilly,
the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the National Alliance for Research
on Schizophrenia and Depression, AstraZeneca, Biovail, Bristol-Myers Squibb,
France Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen-Ortho, Organon, Lundbeck,
Pfizer, Solvay/Wyeth, Shire, Physicians' Postgraduate Press, and 13CME.

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2008;162:929-935.

~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/health/research/15drug.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Risks found for youths in new antipsychotics
By BENEDICT CAREY
Oct.17, 2008

A new government study published Monday has found that the medicines most
often prescribed for schizophrenia in children and adolescents are no more
effective than older, less expensive drugs and are more likely to cause some
harmful side effects. The standards for treating the disorder should be
changed to include some older medications that have fallen out of use, the
study's authors said.

The results, being published online by The American Journal of Psychiatry,
are likely to alter treatment for an estimated one million children and
teenagers with schizophrenia and to intensify a broader controversy in child
psychiatry over the newer medications, experts said.
Prescription rates for the newer drugs, called atypical antipsychotics, have
increased more than fivefold for children over the past decades and a half,
and doctors now use them to settle outbursts and aggression in children with
a wide variety of diagnoses, despite serious side effects.

A consortium of state Medicaid directors is currently evaluating the use of
these drugs in children on state Medicaid rolls, to ensure they are being
prescribed properly.
The study compared two of the newer antipsychotics, Zyprexa from Eli Lilly
and Risperdal from Janssen, with an older medication and found that all
three relieved symptoms of schizophrenia, like auditory hallucinations, in
many young patients. Yet half of the children in the study stopped taking
their drug within two months, either because it had no effect or was causing
serious side effects, like rapid weight gain. The children receiving Zyprexa
gained so much weight that a government oversight panel monitoring safety
ordered that they be taken off the drug.

The long-anticipated study, financed by the National Institute of Mental
Health, is the most rigorous, head-to-head trial of the drugs in children
and adolescents with this disorder. About three million Americans suffer
from schizophrenia, and perhaps 40 percent first show symptoms in their
teens or earlier.
"This is really a landmark study, because these newer drugs have been around
for 12 years or so now, and there were fundamental questions for which we
really didn't have answers," said Sanjiv Kumra, director of the division of
child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, who was not
involved in the study.

Kumra said the results revealed significant differences in the drugs' side
effects that should help doctors and patients choose among them.
"What this is saying is that all treatments work, at least for some people,
and have serious risks for others," he said. "It's a trial-and-error
process" to match people with the right medication.

Jon McClellan of the University of Washington, a co-author of the new study
and of the current guidelines for treating childhood schizophrenia, said in
a telephone interview that older schizophrenia drugs should now be
considered as an alternative in some cases.

"Some of the children in this study gained 15 pounds or more in eight
weeks," McClellan said. "That's as much as adults gain in a year on these
medications. Children are especially susceptible to these side effects, and
this has broad implications across the board, for the use of these agents to
treat any disorder."

Studies have found that more than 80 percent of prescriptions for atypical
antipsychotics for children are to treat something other than schizophrenia,
like autism-related aggression, bipolar disorder or attention-deficit
problems. Some of these are approved uses; others are not.

The researchers, led by Linmarie Sikich of the University of North Carolina,
recruited 119 young people, ages 8 to 19, who suffer from psychotic
symptoms. The children received either Zyprexa, Risperdal or molindone, an
older drug used to blunt psychosis. Neither the young patients nor the
doctors treating them knew which drug was being taken, but the researchers
told the youngsters and their parents that, if the medication was not
working out, the family could switch to another one.

After eight weeks, 34 percent of the children taking Zyprexa, 46 percent of
those on Risperdal, and 50 percent of those receiving molindone showed
significant improvement.

But by that time so many of the patients had stopped taking the drug they
were on that it was not clear that those differences were significant. Many
had gained a lot of weight: an average of about nine pounds for those in the
Risperdal group, and 13 pounds in the Zyprexa group.
Both groups also showed changes in cholesterol and insulin levels that are
risk factors for diabetes. Those taking molindone gained less than a pound,
on average, and had little metabolic changes.

"I thought the extra weight was putting a lot of pressure on me," said
Brandon Constantineau, 18, a study participant in Wilmington, North
Carolina, who gained 35 pounds while taking Risperdal for several months.
"Kids at school were making fun of me, all that. I knew I had to get rid of
it. I exercised a lot, but it didn't happen until I changed drugs."

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Shrinks Losing Gifts from Pharma‏
From:	Psych News (psych_news@psychsearch.net)

Sent:	Wednesday, 22 October 2008 4:18:06 AM
To:	Psych News (Psych_News@psychsearch.net)

"psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty ... For instance, the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved." - New York Times, June 27, 2007, Psychiatrists Top List in Drug Maker Gifts

Minnesota Star Tribune
U Medical School plan: Ban all gifts to doctors
By JANET MOORE, Star Tribune
October 21, 2008

The University of Minnesota Medical School is considering a new conflict-of-interest policy so strict that doctors wouldn't even be able to accept Post-it Notes bearing a drug company's logo.

The far-reaching policy, which if enacted would be among the toughest in the nation, comes as congressional investigators and the U.S. Justice Department are probing ties between doctors and drug companies and medical device manufacturers -- probes that have raised some difficult questions for the university.

The Medical School's proposed policy digs deep and reaches far into the entrenched relationship between the drug and medical device industries and the university's doctors, researchers and students, as well as the institution itself. If adopted, the policy would profoundly alter the relationship between industry and the state's largest medical school.

All personal gifts from industry would be banned. Free drug samples would be limited. Industry support for doctors' continuing medical education would be phased out. Doctors' consulting relationships would be disclosed to both patients and the public. Those financial ties would be monitored far more closely.

"It's really putting policies in place that would, as best as possible, ensure the patient's best interest,'' said Dr. Leo Furcht, co-chairman of the task force recommending the rules and chairman of the U's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology.

A draft of the proposed policy was presented to Medical School Dean Deborah Powell last month and subsequently distributed to the school's faculty for comment. That process will likely wrap up by the end of the semester. It's unclear whether approval by the university's Board of Regents will be required. Either way, Furcht said the reaction so far has been mixed.

"Many people have said, 'This is something we have to do,' there are some who feel [the policy] has gone a little too far, and some who feel it isn't enough,'' he said.

Link to story: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/31435329.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUJ

The Capital Times

Wisconsin group bars doctors from accepting gifts

Associated Press

10/16/2008

The largest association of medical doctors in Wisconsin is barring its members from accepting gifts from drug companies, following a national trend to limit conflicts of interest, real or perceived.

The ban includes the most common gifts to doctors such as food, mugs and pens, as well as reimbursements for travel, the Wisconsin Medical Society said in a statement released Thursday.

"A complete ban eases the burdens of compliance, biased decision-making, and patient distrust," reads the new policy, which was approved Saturday.

Drug companies generally say the gifts are too minor to influence a doctor's prescribing habits, and emphasize that they demand strict ethical standards from their sales representatives.

But industry observers, including the editors from a number of top medical journals, say the influence is subtle but measurable. They point to research that suggests doctors are more susceptible to drug pitches when freebies are involved.

In the last few years dozens of medical schools and medical-specialty societies have begun barring gifts to doctors and limiting their other financial ties to industry representatives.

The new policy of the Wisconsin Medical Society was meant to give guidance to its 12,000 members, not to condemn any specific group or industry, said Society President Steven Bergin.

"There's nothing more sacred than the physician-patient relationship," he said, "and we physicians have the responsibility to make sure nothing gets in the way of that relationship -- or even appears to get in the way."

Link: http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/309903

Video - Too many kids on meds?

#1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73SRn1gdAdM 8-1/2 minutes

#2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcvCtxaiOGg 7-1/2 minutes

#3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58UZqr3fiZI 6 minutes

27,567 Signatures Against TeenScreen. Petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html

Saturday, October 11, 2008

MORE ON THE DECEITFUL AND CORRUPT COMBINE OF BIG PHARMA AND PSYCHIATRY

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

Speaking truth to power and debunking misplaced trust in "authorities" (be
they in the medical or financial field) is an arduous, unpopular, often
lonely uphill road. Ultimately, truth prevails but not before havoc is
wreaked on the well-being of people who have been systemically misled with
false claims and empty promises.

Below an editorial in today's New York Times echoes our decade old refrain:
"We've long feared that the integrity of medical research is being eroded by
conflicts of interest and manipulation of scientific data."

Psychotropic drugs, the evidence demonstrates, have been especially
misused--in fact, abused by prescribers who ignored the drugs' adverse
effects on the mental and physical health of their patients. The Times
editorial points the spotlight (once again) on Dr. Charles Nemeroff a pillar
of American psychiatry whose concealed financial ties to drug manufacturers
is the focus of investigations by Sen. Charles Grassley and his university.
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/301/27 The latest revelations of
impropriety led Dr. Nemeroff to resign from his chairmanship of psychiatry
at Emory University.

The Times also cites "disheartening" evidence from recently unsealed
corporate documents showing that Pfizer's corrupt Neurontin marketing
tactics included "delaying publication of studies that found no evidence
that the drug worked for some disorders, spinning negative data to make it
look more positive and bundling negative data with positive findings to
neutralize the results."

In sharp contrast, we belatedly bring to your attention an important
editorial by Dr. Nassir Ghaemi in the American Journal of Psychiatry (March
2008).
Though Dr. Ghaemi has received funding from drug manufacturers, he pulls no
punches about the adverse effects of antidepressants:

He notes that the largest prospective observational study "has confirmed the
association of rapid cycling with antidepressant use, supporting the
viewpoint that these agents can worsen overall illness, causing more mood
episodes (including depression), in patients with a rapid-cycling course."

In 2004, Dr. Ghaemi documented an increased risk of drug-induced rapid
cycling-that is, mood swings between mania and depression--for patients
prescribed antidepressants. [1] In his current editorial, Dr. Ghaemi
cites controlled studies--as early as the 1970s-- documenting an association
between use of antidepressants and rapid cycling-a clinically significant
harmful result:

"the largest published randomized clinical trial showed that discontinuation
of antidepressant medication improved refractory rapid cycling (1988). This
study found an association between tricyclic antidepressant treatment and
rapid cycling in a double-blind, placebo-controlled on-off-on-off design,
although the published report was incomplete in many details."

He explicates the significance of the findings of a large
government-sponsored study, Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for
Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD) [2]
"Antidepressant use during follow-up was associated with more frequent mood
episodes."

"Mood destabilization with antidepressants should be distinguished from an
acute manic "switch." Antidepressant-induced mania, or switch, is a
short-term phenomenon; one might define it as happening within 2 months of
the beginning of antidepressant treatment. Mood destabilization is a
long-term phenomenon, reflecting more mood episodes over time than would
have occurred by natural history. Antidepressants may cause long-term mood
destabilization without a short-term manic switch, and vice versa. the data
from STEP-BD suggest that even the new generation of antidepressants can
produce long-term mood destabilization."

One more nail in the coffin:
"like other results from STEP-BD, this study may be one more nail in the
coffin of antidepressant use in bipolar disorder. It would seem rational to
turn our attention from antidepressants toward better proven interventions,
particularly psychotherapies, for the depressive morbidity of bipolar
disorder."

In what appears to be a direct challenge to psychiatry's leadership whose
treatment recommendations are tainted by their financial dependence on drug
manufacturers, Dr. Ghaemi urges clinicians to be guided by the scientific
evidence, and discontinue prescribing antidepressants for bipolar patients
and thereby improve their clinical outcome.

"the implication, that antidepressants cause rapid cycling, was intriguing;
this finding potentially gives clinicians an important tool to improve
outcome in bipolar disorder: discontinuation of antidepressants. Yet this
approach goes against some of the tendencies of physicians: giving, not
stopping, medications to improve mental illnesses."

Dr. Ghaemi trained and held positions at Harvard-affiliated hospitals. He is
currently Director of the Bipolar Disorders Research Program at Emory.

See also, Philip Dowdy's blog:
http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2008/03/one_more_nail_in_the_coffin_o
f_antidepressant_use_in_bipolar_disorder.html

Reference:
1. Ghaemi SN, Rosenquist KJ, Ko JY, Baldassano CF, Kontos NJ, Baldessarini
RJ.
Antidepressant treatment in bipolar versus unipolar depression. Am J
Psychiatry. 2004 Jan;161(1):163-5.

2. Schneck CD, Miklowitz DJ, Miyahara S, Araga M, Wisniewski S, Gyulai L,
Allen MH, Thase ME, Sachs GS. The prospective course of rapid-cycling
bipolar disorder: findings from the STEP-BD. Am J Psychiatry. 2008
Mar;165(3):370-7.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/opinion/11sat2.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES

October 11, 2008

Editorial

Drugs and Disclosure

We’ve long feared that the integrity of medical research is being eroded by conflicts of interest and manipulation of scientific data. Still, it was disheartening to learn that one of the nation’s most prominent psychiatrists has taken large, undisclosed payments from a drug company whose products he evaluated and that another company manipulated studies to make a drug look far more beneficial than it actually is.

As Gardiner Harris reported in The Times, Congressional investigators found that Dr. Charles Nemeroff of Emory University — the principal investigator on a government-financed study of antidepressant drugs made by GlaxoSmithKline — repeatedly promised to keep his consulting fees from Glaxo below $10,000 a year in compliance with federal and university conflict-of-interest rules. He took far more than that, mostly for giving talks promoting the company’s drugs to other doctors.

All told, according to Senator Charles Grassley, who has spearheaded the inquiry, Dr. Nemeroff failed to report some half-a-million dollars in fees and expenses from Glaxo while he led the study.

Dr. Nemeroff has declined to comment beyond assuring Emory that he followed university disclosure regulations “to the best of my knowledge.” The university is investigating. But the Congressional investigation was based on reports from drug companies on their payments to Dr. Nemeroff.

This episode underscores the need for Congress to pass a bipartisan bill, sponsored by Mr. Grassley and Senator Herb Kohl, that would require drug companies and other medical manufacturers to publicly disclose payments to physicians that exceed $500 a year.

Meanwhile, there is strong evidence that Pfizer and its Warner-Lambert unit have been manipulating the publication of studies to bolster the use of their epilepsy drug Neurontin to treat other disorders for which it has not been approved. As reported recently by The Times’s Stephanie Saul, experts who reviewed thousands of internal documents that surfaced in a lawsuit against the company concluded that Pfizer had used several tactics to mislead physicians about Neurontin.

The tactics included delaying publication of studies that found no evidence that the drug worked for some disorders, spinning negative data to make it look more positive and bundling negative data with positive findings to neutralize the results. Pfizer denies any such manipulation. It will be up to the courts to pass final judgment on what looks like tawdry behavior.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

MORE ON THE ANTI-SOCIAL ROLE OF PSYCHIATRY AND OF ITS SHRINKS
by Justice Lover

Psychiatry, and so called "Child Psychiatry" in particular, have no place in a civilised society. Psychiatry and its shrinks are anti-social, as they create misery and suffering by torturing people under the pretext of "psychiatric treatment",turn them into zombies, and even maim or kill them. For those who survive it there is the permanent stigma of "mental illness", created by psychiatry and its shrinks who labelled them. If these atrocities are not anti-social according to the politicians and other stooges of the status quo, then what is ?

Yet, psychiatry's "researchers", funded by Big Pharma, continue to churn out all kinds of purported "scientific discoveries" all the time to reinforce the crumbling edifice of the psychiatric dogma, a dogma which is plain fraud ! Their main targets seem to be kids - from birth to late adolescence - and associated with them are the psychiatric lie about the so called hereditary of "mental illness", and the psychiatric lie about the so called "chemical imbalance" in the brains of the patient-victims (an "imbalance" to be "corrected" by Big Pharma's psychiatric poisons, in return for Big Pharma bribes, of course !).

The article below is a typical psychiatric propaganda piece :

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Health/Heres_what_makes_some_kids_anti-social/articleshow/3549883.cms
The Times of India

Here's what makes some kids anti-social
1 Oct 2008, 1657 hrs IST, ANI

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered a link between reduced levels of "stress hormone" cortisol and antisocial behaviour in male adolescents.

Levels of cortisol in the body usually increase when people undergo a stressful experience, such as public speaking, sitting an exam, or having surgery. It enhances memory formation and is thought to make people behave more cautiously and to help them regulate their emotions, particularly their temper and violent impulses.

The new research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, shows that adolescents with severe antisocial behaviour do not exhibit the same increase in cortisol levels when under stress as those without antisocial behaviour.

The findings suggest that antisocial behaviour, at least in some cases, may be seen as a form of mental illness that is linked to physiological symptoms (involving a chemical imbalance of cortisol in the brain and body).

The scientists, led by Dr Graeme Fairchild and Professor Ian Goodyer, recruited participants for the study from schools, pupil referral units and the Youth Offending Service. Samples of saliva were collected over several days from the subjects in a non-stressful environment to measure levels of the hormone under resting conditions.

The young men then took part in a stressful experiment that was designed to induce frustration. Samples of saliva were taken immediately before, during and after the experiment to track how cortisol changed during stress.

The differences between participants with severe antisocial behaviour and those without were most marked under stressful conditions. While the average adolescents showed large increases in the amount of cortisol during the frustrating situation, cortisol levels actually went down in those with severe antisocial behaviour.

These results suggest that antisocial behaviour may be more biologically-based than previously considered, just as some individuals are more vulnerable to depression or anxiety due to their biological make-up.

Dr Fairchild said, "If we can figure out precisely what underlies the inability to show a normal stress response, we may be able to design new treatments for severe behaviour problems. We may also be able create targeted interventions for those at higher risk.

"A possible treatment for this disorder offers the chance to improve the lives of both the adolescents who are afflicted and the communities in which they live."

Friday, October 3, 2008

http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/10/nemeroff-steps-down-as-emory-psychiatry-chair/

Nemeroff Steps Down As Emory Psychiatry Chair

By Ed Silverman // October 3 ,2008

The move by well-known psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff comes in response to the investigation by the Senate Finance Committee into allegations of undisclosed conflicts of interest, according to an e-mail written by Claudia Adkison, an Emory University associate dean.

At issue is whether universities are adequately policing disclosures in an effort to maintain scientific integrity and objectivity. The committee is investigating up to 30 academic psychiatrists who allegedly accepted grants from the NIH and pharma, but failed to properly report payments, which universities are required to monitor. The NIH is being leaned on to yank grants when disclosure is inadequate.

So far, the committee has singled out Stanford University’s Alan Schatzberg, Harvard University’s Joe Biederman, Brown University’s Martin Keller, University of Texas’ Karen Wagner and John Rush, and Melissa DelBello at the University of Cincinnati. The back story on Nemeroff can be read here, here and here. This is Adkison’s e-mail….

From: cadkison@emory.edu
Subject: Announcement re Sen. Grassley’s allegations about Dr. Nemeroff
Date: October 3, 2008 9:05:01 PM EDT
To: Medicine-Faculty@EMORY.EDU
Reply-To: cadkison@emory.edu

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has raised a number of questions about whether Emory’s chairman of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Dr. Charles Nemeroff, has properly disclosed his financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies. We at Emory take this matter very seriously and are working diligently to determine whether our policies have been observed consistently with regard to the matters cited by Senator Grassley.

In view of the ongoing internal and external investigations into these allegations, Dr. Nemeroff will voluntarily step down as chairman of the department, effective immediately, pending resolution of these issues.

Dr. Nemeroff is recognized internationally as a leader in psychiatric research, education and practice. He has made fundamental contributions to the field over many years. The length and complexity of the history outlined by Senator Grassley will require careful review of underlying payment records from the pharmaceutical companies, which we have requested from Senator Grassley’s office. We have also requested that Dr. Nemeroff provide us with relevant information and documentation so that we will have all the facts before us.

Dr. Nemeroff has assured us that: “To the best of my knowledge, I have followed the appropriate University regulations concerning financial disclosures. I have dedicated my career to translating research findings into improvements in clinical practice in patients with severe mental illness. I will cooperate fully and work with Emory to respond to the alleged conflicts of interest issues raised by Senator Grassley and his staff.”

Emory is committed to maintaining strong conflict of interest policies and procedures and will conduct a fair, thorough, and evenhanded investigation of these claims.

* Medicine-Faculty Web Page:
http://WWW.LISTSERV.Emory.Edu/Archives/Medicine-Faculty.HTML

( Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-12-22T01:38:00.000-08:00

Monday, September 29, 2008

http://www.naturalnews.com/024353.html

Why the Institutions of Western Finance and Western Medicine are Both Doomed to Fail

by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) Here at NaturalNews, we've been publicly predicting the fall of Western Medicine for nearly five years. During that time, we've also covered the increasingly precarious financial situation, warning readers in 2005 and 2006 about the impending housing bubble crash and the implications for the entire financial system.

In covering these two topics (western medicine and western finance), I've come to recognize many strong parallels between the two. This article explores the common threads of deception that characterize these two powerful institutions.

#1 They're both based on fraud and deception

Both Western Finance and Western Medicine are fundamentally based on fraud. The fraud of Western Finance is that you can create money from nothing and everybody can get rich by selling each other fictitious financial instruments that have no connection to reality. The fraud of Western Medicine is that everybody can get healthy by taking fictitious patented chemicals (pharmaceuticals) rather than addressing fundamental issues of nutrition, exercise and exposure to consumer chemicals.

Western Finance's fraud is committed by high-brow academics who contrive complicated derivative financial instruments that are then presented to the investment community as things of real value (which they are not). Western Medicine's fraud is committed by high-ego medical researchers who selectively massage clinical trial data to create fictitious "scientific" results that are then presented to the FDA as fact. The FDA then "approves" such drugs which are sold to the public as medicines that treat "disease" (which are also fictitious, by the way; being voted into existence by a panel of experts who benefit from such disease definitions).

Both the financial instruments and FDA-approved medications are fraudulent to begin with, and they offer nothing of real, lasting value to anyone. They're both sold simply for momentary profits, without any regard for the health or the wealth of the People.

#2 When problems arise, they both treat symptoms rather than solving the causes

The $700 billion financial bailout created in Washington is a classic example of Western Medicine's "treat the symptoms" mentality. Rather than address the root cause of the problem (the Fed's control over the money supply and the very structure of fractional-reserve banking), politicians seem satisfied to rig up a series of financial bandages that allow them to pretend the problem has been solved.

In Western Medicine, this "treat the symptoms" approach is the de facto treatment philosophy taught in medical school: Ignore the real cause, don't bother educating patients about diet or exercise, and simply prescribe pharmaceuticals to mask the problem for as long as possible.

In both cases, the patient inevitably gets sicker: The financial situation festers and grows like an unchecked cancer tumor, and while stop-gap measures can create the illusion of a healthy patient, these actions inevitably contribute to far greater crisis down the road, where the patient eventually crashes and dies.

The financial sickness now infecting banks, lenders and insurance companies across the globe is an unchecked pandemic of infectious debt. But rather than addressing the cause of the infections, the financial industry seems satisfied to refinance the disease carriers so they can rise up, coughing and sputtering as they pass along the disease to anyone within breathing distance.

#3 They both enrich powerful corporations while impoverishing the People

The key agenda of both the financial and health industries is to enrich wealthy corporations at the expense of the public. In Western Finance, this is being done by privatizing the financial gains while socializing the financial losses. In other words, all the profits go to the wealthy elite while all the losses are passed along to taxpayers (this is the fundamental point of the $700 billion bailout, of course).

In Western Medicine, virtually every regulatory policy in effect today is constructed to enrich corporations. The FDA's censorship of true health claims on nutritional supplements, the FTC's crackdown on anti-cancer herbal remedies, the DEA's raids on medical marijuana... these campaigns are all conducted solely to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical companies at the expense of public health.

Think about it: Monopoly pricing on pharmaceuticals sold in the USA is enforced by the FDA and FTC. Approvals of drugs based on outright fraudulent science is openly granted by the FDA. Raids against vitamin companies, supplement companies and natural product retailers are organized and conducted by both the FTC and FDA, two regulatory bodies that engage in outright extortion, threatening natural health companies with bankruptcy and criminal charges if they don't pay outrageous fines based on fabricated accusations of things like "linking to a scientific journal from your website" (which is now a crime in the U.S. if you sell nutritional products).

These are all the actions of governmental tyrants who act solely as Big Business street thugs, wiping out the competition to protect the profits of their (mob) bosses.

#4 They're both based on arrogance and the worship of money

Arrogance runs high in Western Medicine, where clever men at the top of the pharmaceutical companies think they've outsmarted mother nature by brainwashing consumers into thinking the human body is born with deficiencies of patented synthetic chemicals. This same arrogance is woven directly into the fabric of Wall Street, where greed-based financial players convince themselves they're so brilliant that the mere idea of how to make money is now recorded as a bankable asset on the balance sheets (that's the Enron style of accounting, which has now infected all of Wall Street).

The arrogance in both these industries is astounding. Neither Western Finance nor Western Medicine believes there is such a thing as a reality that shall ever hold them accountable. They don't believe in gold, or real food, or cause and effect. Things are things because they say they are, and nothing is subject to economic reality, scientific scrutiny or real-world common sense.

These two industries have been living in the Twilight Zone for so long, they've completely lost touch with reality. In fact, they no longer have any familiarity with reality. Doctors, for example, have no knowledge of nutrition or superfoods. They are nutritionally illiterate the day they graduate from medical school. Similarly, bankers are almost universally ignorant of the basic laws of economics. Few understand how fractional-reserve banking really works, nor do they grasp the correlations between increases in the money supply and inflation.

Bankers and doctors, it could be accurately stated, have almost no knowledge about the very things over which they have been granted authority.

(For the record, yes I know there are many exceptions to this. Lots of well-educated bankers and doctors break out of the box of ignorance by learning, on their own, those things not taught to them in the land of academia.)

#5 They both seek instant profits at the expense of future generations

Western financial institutions are famous for their focus on the next fiscal quarter. If it doesn't create a profit in the next 90 days, it's not considered a worthwhile investment. This "instant profit" mentality inevitably leads to an abandonment of virtues like saving money or honoring future generations. Instead of leaving our children with equity, the United States of America (and its financial co-conspirators) have burdened future generations with an impossible debt burden.

Pharmaceutical companies think much the same way. Rather than uplifting the health of the nation with sound prenatal nutrition policies (and infant health programs based on disease prevention), it seeks to vaccinate and medicate every living being with a never-ending parade of high-profit pharmaceuticals... from birth to death. There is no attention paid to the environmental effects of flushing all those drugs down the drain (pharmaceuticals are now found in the drinking water of over 50 American cities), nor is there any attempt to actually prevent cancer (or other diseases) in any way whatsoever.

Instead, Western Medicine prefers to wait until people get sick so it can cash in on their disease. Similarly, Western Finance prefers to hide its problems, expanding its debt base until it gets too big to fail, at which point someone has to come along and bail it out.

Neither industry operates with any degree of accountability.

#6 Both are run by unindicted criminals

If I break into your house and steal your wallet, I would be considered a criminal. But when Congress breaks into your finances and steals your life savings, they consider themselves to be heroes!

Make no mistake: Both the Western Finance and Western Medical industries are run by unindicted criminals who steal, lie, and deceive their way to the greatest profits possible. Drug companies routinely bury studies they don't want you to see, and FDA leaders routinely stack their decision boards with "experts" who maintain direct financial ties to the companies selling the pharmaceuticals they're voting to approve.

Meanwhile, top bankers are shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars in favors to Washington politicians in order to avoid any reduction in their multi-million dollar salaries, even while the financial institutions they led are about to be bailed out by taxpayer money. What all this has in common is that the top CEOs, politicians and regulatory decision makers are unindicted criminals who are guilty of various crimes against the People: Theft, conspiracy, racketeering and much more.

If these people were held up to the same laws applied to you and me, they'd all be arrested and spend their lives in prison (or worse).

#7 Both are doomed to collapse

The final parallel between Western Finance and Western Medicine? They're both doomed to collapse.

That very idea was considered absolutely loony just 30 days ago. But I've stuck to this prediction for five years: Western medicine is doomed to collapse. And now, all of a sudden, more people are waking up and seeing their fictional world crumbling around them. The near-collapse of the global financial system, it seems, has rudely awakened a few people who were sleepwalking through life, intoxicated by visions of free riches, free pharmaceuticals and life in the land of zero accountability.

Reality, though, is a stubborn thing. You can daydream all you want, but the laws of economics cannot be violated any more so than the laws of human physiology. When there's a poison in the system (biologically or financially speaking), something must be done to eliminate the poison and bolster the health of the patient. Sadly, Washington remains in the business of denying the problem, which makes it all the more difficult to try to solve it.

Interestingly, the collapse of Western Finance is inevitably linked to the collapse of Western Medicine. How so? Because Big Pharma is almost entirely dependent on the government to protect and feed itself. Without Big Government creating an artificial monopoly market where competing natural products are censored or outlawed, Big Pharma could not compete!

Nobody would buy arthritis drugs if they knew cherry extracts or potent fish oils could solve the problem more safely and affordably. No one would buy high-profit cholesterol drugs if they learned the truth about red yeast rice, aged garlic or policosanol.

Big Pharma is entirely dependent on the government to prop up its business, and when the U.S. government goes operationally bankrupt (which is coming), Big Pharma may suddenly find itself competing in a free marketplace where it no longer has the tools of oppression, censorship and tyranny to bludgeon the competition into irrelevancy. When Big Government goes, Big Pharma will follow, and the collapse of Western Finance is thus a precursor to the collapse of Western Medicine.

Both institutions, of course, will attempt to claw their way back to power, even as they are crumbling. They won't go without a fight, and they may be able to put in place clever tactics that delay their demise by years. But in the end, no nation has a future when its finance -- and its medicine -- are based on fraud.

Think about that. It's a powerful realization. The U.S. simply cannot continue the way it's running today. With 50% of the population on pharmaceuticals, and children being drugged with Speed (ADHD drugs), and mandatory vaccines poisoning (and killing) young girls, there is no future unless something changes.

With junk foods and energy drinks intoxicating our youth, and dangerous chemicals running rampant through the personal care product industry, and foods being irradiated to destroy their nutritional content, there is no future.

With banks stealing money from the working taxpayers, and $10 trillion national debt knocking on our door, and the government taking ownership of more than 50% of the national economy, there is no future!

The real world will be a shock to many

The end of these systems is now in sight. They are crumbling under their own arrogance and stupidity, revealing a society based on self-righteous deception and global scandal. Everything we thought was real turns out to be fabricated: The money, the medicine, the economy, the law... it's all being revealed for what it is: A Matrix of enslavement, designed to keep the People believing they live in a free society, even as their health and wealth are stolen from them by the sinister few who wield political power.

Western Finance will fall, and Western Medicine will soon end its reign of terror over the people. We will live to see the end of the FDA as we know it; the end of the AMA, the cancer industry and the dominance of the drug companies. We may lose our savings and we may even lose our nation, but we will not lose the one thing that matters most in this cold, dark universe: Our sense of connection with life, nature and each other.

Because when all the fictions fall apart, and the facade of the American Empire crumbles like the twin towers on 9/11, when it's all said and done, we still have one thing we can count on: Mother Nature.

Nature will still be there. The trees, the gardens, the herbs... these things are real. The water, the oceans, the honeybees... these are the things that bring us real wealth.

Wealth is not a collection of digits in a computer. It isn't a promise printed on green paper money. Real wealth is a garden that feeds you, a river that hydrates you, and a system of medicine that nourishes and supports you. Real wealth is a day with sunshine, a night under the stars and a life lived with purpose.

Real wealth is not fleeting, nor subject to cascading collapse. It is as real as the morning dew on a cabbage plant, or the sweet taste of fresh blueberry juice, or the buzz of ten thousand honeybees pollinating an orchard.

These are the things Western society has forgotten, and in that forgetfulness, it has suffered a dangerous, multi-generational amnesia ... a disease of delusion, if you will, that is about to collide head-on with reality.

The awakening will be rude. Some will embrace reality and thrive in the Next Society. Others will deny reality and suffer.

As we watch all of this unfold, I invite you to join me in the real world; to eat real food, to experience real (natural) medicine and to make real, lasting contributions to the future of life on Earth. As fictional constructs fall to the ground around us, we are all being granted front-row seats to one of the most amazing transformations in the history of life on Earth: We are about to watch one civilization end, and another civilization emerge from the ruin.

We are, indeed, watching history unfold before our eyes. And you know what? We are all fortunate enough to participate in it! Don't miss this. Stay confident. Help those you can, and prepare yourself for the transition. The next few years are going to be the most interesting we'll see in our lifetimes.

Stay informed about more financial news by joining my Mindful Wealth Email List (free):
http://www.naturalnews.com/MindfulWealt...

Technical comments: While the outcome of Western Finance and Western Medicine are not in doubt, the timing of their demise is uncertain. The financial system could break and collapse in weeks, or it could possibly limp along in a severe recession for decades (a la Japan, circa 1989), depending on the actions of foreign central banks and the Federal Reserve.

Western Medicine will likely take many years to unravel and be replaced by a new system based on reality. But a collapse of the U.S. government would accelerate that shift by taking the FDA out of the equation. Without the FDA to enforce Big Pharma's monopolistic, racketeering practices, natural products would quickly take over the free market and Big Pharma would quickly shrink. Remember this: FDA employees are only one paycheck away from complete disloyalty. The entire U.S. government is held together by a long supply line of fragile paychecks. The whole system could unravel in less than 30 days if foreign nations stop buying U.S. debt.

Friday, September 26, 2008

http://3rdbigbusinesscrimes.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-day-for-health-in-south-africa.html
MORE ON THE ASTONISHING SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE COMBINED PSYCHIATRY-BIG PHARMA PROPAGANDA AND ZIONIST PROPAGANDA
by Benjamin Merhav

In my previous blog for the outlaw of psychiatry I posted my article which exposes the similarities between psychiatry and zionism : http://7thoutlawpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2008/01/more-on-similarities-between_30.html

Now, with the official prosecution and persecution of Dr. Matthias Rath's voluntary efforts to save the lives of AIDS victims in South Africa, we can see zionist fingerprints in the Big Pharma campaign against Dr. Rath too, as the second article below reveals. Thus, for example, Big Pharma's campaigners use a typically zionist propaganda idiom : "denialism". As everybody knows the zionist propaganda attacks have got 2 weapons against the critics of zionism : "antisemitism" and "denialism (of the Holocaust)". Both are designed to distract people from the truth, namely, that the zionist hierarchy is not onlly racist against non Jews, but also against all people of jewish background who are opposed to racism and to fascism.

Also the very methods used by Big Pharma's stooges in South Africa, namely, lies and bully tactics, are typically zionist propaganda methods, as anyone familiar with the methods used by the zionist lobby in Washngton, would know.

Below are two articles, the first (with the poster), downloaded from the website of Dr. Matthias Rath's foundation, reveals the truth. The second article, attacks and maligns not only Dr. Rath but also the Dr Tshabalala-Msimang, the former Minister for Health in South Africa, who supported Dr. Rath's initiatives to help AIDS victims there.

http://www.end-aids-business.org/

http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/nat_vit/index.html

Results of a Nutrient Community Health Program in People Affected by AIDS in South Africa

The links on this page access the results of a nutrient community health program in people living with AIDS in South Africa. The program was organized and conducted by the South African National Civic Organization (SANCO) and the micronutrients used were provided to SANCO free of charge by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation. The micronutrients donated in this program have never been sold within South Africa or anywhere else in the world.
This community health program consisted of the voluntary participation of members of poor South African communities affected by AIDS. They received the micronutrients from local SANCO community members free of charge and without any instructions to alter medications or lifestyles.
The only feedback provided by the participants in this program was the completion of questionnaires about their wellbeing at the beginning of the program and at regular intervals thereafter. The most important results of the evaluation of these questionnaires are published on this website.
This nutrient community health program was the largest program of its kind ever carried out since the AIDS epidemic began. The results from the program show that micronutrients can improve the symptoms of immune deficiencies – including those characterized by the WHO as AIDS-defining – as assessed by the questionnaires.

The Solid Scientific Rationale

The scientific rationale for the use of vitamins and other micronutrients in supporting immune function is not new. Over the past century, no less than nine Nobel Prizes have been awarded to vitamin research, the majority in relation to the importance to their essential role in optimizing immune response.
The collection of these important data was done against the fierce opposition of organizations in South Africa dedicated to the promotion of anti-retroviral drugs as the primary answer to the AIDS epidemic. In December 2005, two of these organizations, the South African Medical Organization (SAMA) and the so called Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) filed a complaint in the South African courts, trying to obstruct this program by characterizing: (a) the micronutrients as "illegal drugs;" (b) the SANCO community centres as illegal clinics and (c) the nutrient community health program as an "illegal study."
While the leadership of SAMA has been historically close to pharmaceutical interests, the TAC is an organization that "organizes rented crowds for the drug industry" to "force the government to spend millions of Rand on toxic drugs." *
In June 2008 the court in Cape Town ruled that no unregistered drugs should be used and no illegal clinical studies be conducted. By using this careful phrasing, the court avoided stopping this nutrient community health program.
While the ruling is being appealed from both sides, we decided to publish the results collected so far in this important community health program for the benefit of:
(a) The people of South Africa affected by AIDS
(b) Governments of the world desperately trying to find solutions to help control this pandemic
(c) Scientists, doctors and other health professionals to launch a worldwide effort in the area of medicine and health, to confirm the importance of vitamins and other micronutrients in the fight against immune deficiencies and AIDS.
While micronutrients are no "cure" for AIDS, they are an important answer to immune deficiencies caused by malnutrition. In light of the deadlock of ARV research – most recently exemplified by the discontinuation of its entire ARV research by Roche, one of the world's largest ARV manufacturers – micronutrients allow the research community to gain time until a cure or vaccine for AIDS can be found.

A Service to All Mankind

With the support of this nutrient community health program and the publication of these results, we provided a service to all mankind:

This nutrient community health program is the largest program of its kind documenting the benefits of micronutrients for people affected by AIDS
Never before has the possibility of halting and, in many cases reversing, the symptoms of AIDS as assessed by the patients themselves been documented in a larger number of people
No study with ARV drugs has ever been published showing similar outcomes and improvements in the wellbeing of people affected by AIDS.

We are confident that the significance of the results of this nutrient community health program is evident to all visitors to this website and that you will help to disseminate the information to everyone who should know about it.
We are also confident that every step the ARV lobbyists undertake to block this information will ultimately contribute to the worldwide acceptance of this breakthrough in the global battle against immune deficiencies and AIDS.

* These two statements, characterizing the activities of the TAC, were found non-objectionable by the same Cape Town court in a previous case.

============================

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/A2227FBE-A007-4721-9597-39FD47820C08.asp

A new day for health in South Africa: Manto is replaced as health minister by TAC supporter

by Theo Smart

September 26, 2008

Activists and health workers in South Africa celebrated outside the Cape Town parliament building last night after the news that Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has been replaced as South Africa’s Minister of Health by Barbara Hogan, one of the few African National Congress (ANC) Members of Parliament who spoke out openly against AIDS denialism in former president Thabo Mbeki’s government.

Barbara Hogan supported the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) early efforts to get the government to provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the public health system.

In addition, Dr Molefi Sefularo was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Health. As MEC of the Northwest Province, Dr Sefularo supported the roll-out of PMTCT and ART and helped write the National HIV and AIDS and STI Strategic Plan for South Africa, 2007-2011.

“We believe that the period of politically supported AIDS denialism has ended with the appointment of the Minister of Health,” a TAC press release declared.

The change of government in South Africa
The cabinet changes were announced yesterday, after the newly appointed South African President Kgalema Motlanthe was sworn in to replace Thabo Mbeki ,who was recalled by the ANC last weekend after a prolonged power struggle with ANC party President, and former Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

President Motlanthe, is a well-respected veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle who until recently has kept out of the spot light. Seen as belonging to neither camp within the divided ANC, he was selected as a consensus candidate to lead the country, at least until elections next year, when Zuma is expected to run for President.

Already being seen as a bridge builder, President Motlanthe appointed a mix of Zuma and Mbeki supporters into government, as well as other respected politicians who have remained above the fray. Dr Tshabalala-Msimang, a staunch Mbeki ally, will actually remain in government, occupying President Motlanthe’s former position as Minister in the Presidency. Though this is something of a promotion, it may not be a long-lasting one.

What is important is that Dr Tshabalala-Msimang has effectively been transitioned out of the Health Department.

The inglorious career of Dr Tshabalala-Msimang
During Dr Tshabalala-Msimang’s tenure as Minister of Health over two million South Africans died of HIV.

Sometimes called Dr Beetroot, for promoting a diet of beets, African potatoes, garlic and lemon as a remedy for people with HIV, she initially resisted the roll-out of treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) and of ART in the country. Instead, she supported the right of AIDS denialists such as Dr Matthias Rath’s to sell high-dose vitamin ‘cures’ without scientific evidence of benefit.

Even after the government moved to begin introducing appropriate HIV care through the public sector (partly as the result of legal action by the AIDS Law Project and TAC), she has been accused of trying to stall it.

South Africa’s current HIV programme got underway in earnest while she was on a leave of absence to have a liver transplant. It was during this period, while the Deputy Minister of Health Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge was in charge of the Department, that the National Strategic Plan was drafted. When the Minister came back to duty, they are reported to have clashed, and Dr Tshabalala-Msimang declined to deliver an invited address at a national AIDS conference because she reportedly felt that the Deputy Minister had a more prominent position in the conference programme. Shortly afterward, Mbeki fired the Deputy Minister. Yesterday, however, in an interesting turn of fortune, Madlala-Routledge was elected the new Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly.

Infighting within the department has been typical of the former administration’s management style and there are many reports that morale in the department of health is extremely low.

Treatment activists have long called for the Minister’s removal. At the first South African TB conference in July this year, activists conducted a silent protest during a plenary talk by Dr Tshabalala-Msimang, holding up signs saying that “South Africa needs real leadership in the fight against TB and HIV.”

The new Minister
Minister Hogan does not come from a health background. She too is a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, joining the ANC after the 1976 riots. She was arrested for treason by the apartheid government, tortured and imprisoned for eight years (with one year in solitary confinement).

Since release, she has been deeply involved in the ANC, and served for a time in Mbeki’s government as Finance Portfolio Chairperson, until she was dismissed by Mbeki in part for her stand on HIV/AIDS (according to the TAC press release).

But she has continued to play a role in the fight against HIV, serving on the board of the Amandla AIDS Fund (AAF) established in 2003 with a $2.5 million donation from Carlos and Deborah Santana. AAF provides ART, care, treatment and prevention services to people and children with HIV. Serving with her on the board are Archbishop Desmond Tutu, TAC’s Zachie Achmat and Luyanda Ngonyama, Head of the AIDS Law Project Mark Heywood, Dr Jerry Coovadia, and Dr Fareed Abdullah.

In an interview with News24.com, she said the biggest challenge for the Department of Health “is HIV/AIDS and all the strains that it places on the health system. I would thoroughly endorse the roll-out of antiretrovirals and any way we can accelerate that, the better.”

Minister Hogan said she welcome’s the opportunity to work with TAC. “I'm not saying we will always agree but I've always had a good relationship with the TAC and NGOs involved in that sector and I think you need to mobilise every possible sector of society at the moment, from the private sector to the NGO sector to the government sector, to improve our health services.”

TAC joyous
For their part, TAC is clearly eager to work with Minister Hogan. In fact, about 50 of the activists serenaded her outside her flat in Cape Town’s City Bowl last night.

According to an report in the Star, she came down to greet the activists. Fatima Hassan of the AIDS Law Project hugged her and announced that it was “the happiest day of her life.” (Also see this report).

But TAC acknowledges there will be tremendous challenges ahead.

“Hogan's biggest challenges will be to meet the treatment and prevention targets of the HIV/AIDS National Strategic Plan, integrate TB and HIV treatment, develop a feasible human resources plan for health workers and undo the considerable legacy of AIDS denialism left by her predecessor. The TAC will do all that it can to assist her and the Department of Health to meet these challenges.”

2008-12-20T16:54:00.001-08:00

Friday, September 26, 2008

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_US_Youths_More_Likely_to_Be_Prescribed_Psychotropic_Drugs_25145.html
US Youths More Likely to Be Prescribed Psychotropic Drugs
by Alice Carver
14:00, September 26th 2008

A study published online today in the journal Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health finds that American children are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants and stimulants for conditions such as ADHD and bipolar disease than children in Europe.

The study, which looked at insured kids and teens in the Netherlands (110,944), Germany (356,520), and the U.S. (127,157), found that 6.7% of American kids are taking psychotropic medications, compared with 2.9% of kids in the Netherlands and 2% of those in Germany.

Use of psychotropic drugs in the U.S. was 2.27 higher than in the Netherlands and 3.33 times higher than in Germany.

Antidepressant and stimulant prevalence were three or more times greater in the United States than in the Netherlands and Germany. Antipsychotic prevalence was 1.5 to 2.2 times greater in the U.S. than in the Netherlands and Germany, the study found. Other psychotropic medications such as alpha agonists, lithium, antiparkinsonian agents, anxiolytics, hypnotics, and anticonvulsant mood stabilizers were rarely prescribed.

“There is significantly greater use of atypical antipsychotics and SSRI-type antidepressants for child mental health treatment in U.S. than in Western Europe,” said lead researcher Julie Zito, from the pharmaceutical health services research department in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Maryland.

Over the past decade, prescriptions for psychotropic drugs have been rising across western Europe and in the U.S., according to the study.

The researchers said the differences may be due to regulatory practices, differences in policies related to direct-to consumer drug advertising, diagnostic classification systems, and cultural beliefs regarding the role of medication for emotional and behavioural treatment. For example, in the United States, there are more diagnoses of bipolar disease among children and adolescents than there are in Europe, the researchers noted.

Other studies showed that antidepressants use declined among teens after drugmakers added prominent warnings about the risk of side effects such as suicidal thoughts to the prescribing information for all antidepressants in 2004, following the request of the Food and Drug Adminstration. But in 2004, when the FDA released the new rules, he youth suicide rate increased by 18%. The black-box warning for antidepressants mentioned that the drugs could increase suicidal thoughts and behaviours among teens.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

GLOBAL PSYCHIATRISTS UNITE TO IMPROVE THE COLOSSAL PROFITS FOR BIG PHARMA AND TO PERPETUATE AND TO REINFORCE THE LIES AND COERCION OF PSYCHIATRY
by Justice Lover

The following piece was downloaded from Wall Street Journal, the most prominent of all the USA ruling class mouthpieces. It was authored by 14 top psychiatrists from the continents of Europe and the Americas. According to a line at the bottom of the article it "is based on presentations and discussions during two international meetings in 2006 that were funded by an independent educational grant from Pfizer Inc., New York, N.Y." It seems that the shameless shrinks - most of whom are holding high academic positions ! - are no longer hiding their subservience to Big Pharma in return for generous bribes !

The second paragraph is very important because it includes an admission of guilt by the psychiatric profession. Here is the guilt : "compared to the general public there were serious inequalities in the physical health of patients with severe mental illness and a shorter life expectancy, due primarily to cardiovascular disease". In other words, the shrinks admit that psychiatric "treatment" is very dangerous, as it cuts short the life span of patients, and it is causing more fatalities than amongst people who do not get the "treatment".

However, following the admission comes the "explanation" which is a flagrant lie ! To cover up the deadly risks, irreversible brain damage, and the daily adverse effects of the psychiatric poisons manufactured by Big Pharma (the Atypical neuroleptics in particular), as well as cardiovascular diseases ,the shrinks peddle and force on people who are their victim-patients, they say that it is all due to the stigmatization of mental patients ! Even if this would be true - and certainly this stigmatization is making the psychiatric torture more unbearable ! - who is responsible ? The shrinks themselves, of course, because the very lable of "mentally ill" that they put on their patient-victims without any scientific justification is the reason for the stigmatization !

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/global-psychiatrists-unite-improve-services/story.aspx?guid={3EB8A108-A8C0-4D65-BF58-FB9EE1CD2F3E}&dist=hppr

Global Psychiatrists Unite to Improve Services in Mental Health

INNSBRUCK, Austria, September 19, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Thirty seven medical experts in psychiatry from across the world have called on the medical community to take urgent action to optimize services for people with a diagnosis of severe mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder(i).

Professor W. Wolfgang Fleischhacker, principal author of Comorbid Somatic Illnesses in Patients with Severe Mental Disorders: Clinical, Policy, and Research Challenges which was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, together with leading physicians, confirmed that compared to the general public there were serious inequalities in the physical health of patients with severe mental illness and a shorter life expectancy, due primarily to cardiovascular disease.

Professor Fleischhacker said: "The prevalence of important risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as diabetes and obesity, is about 1.5 to 3.5 times higher in adults with schizophrenia than in the general population."

One of the key problems which contributed to neglecting the physical health of these patients, and identified by Professor Fleischhacker and colleagues in their paper, included stigmatization of mental illness. This led to widespread discrimination, including insufficient health care provision; suboptimal integration of general health and psychiatric care services and a lack of consensus as to which health care professional should be responsible for the prevention management of physical ill health.

Sigrid Steffen, President of the European Federation of Associations of Families of People with Mental Illness (EUFAMI) said: "For the past number of years, families have become aware of the situation and are very concerned about these additional health dangers. We believe that they have a very serious impact on our loved ones. The release of this article is a welcome development as it means that the issues are finally being treated as important."

The paper sets out a five-step plan to address these inequalities. The focus is on: taking responsibility for the patient - by the primary responsible treating physician; education and training - to increase general medical education in psychiatric training and increase psychiatric education in general medical training; access to services - by implementing measures such as improving access to general physical healthcare, appropriate insurance coverage and general physical healthcare within psychiatric institutions and systems of mental health care; collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines - to develop comprehensive educations efforts aimed at improving the knowledge and skills of mental health care providers; and more research into comorbidities seen in severe mental disorders.

The article is based on presentations and discussions during two international meetings in 2006 that were funded by an independent educational grant from Pfizer Inc., New York, N.Y.

2008-12-17T03:03:00.001-08:00

Sunday, September 21, 2008

THE TRUTH ALWAYS HAS BEEN, AND IT IS OBVIOUS NOW MORE THAN EVER BEFORE ,THAT PSYCHIATRY IS A FRAUD AND A FASCIST TOOL FOR OPPRESSION BY BIG BUSINESS RULERS
by Justice Lover

The following article was downloaded from a psychiatrist's website. It purports to tell the truth but it distorts the truth instead.

Thus, for example, contrary to the author's claim, the shrinks do run the "Mental Health" system all over the world. They have many collaborators, such as nurses, psychologists and social workers, but the control over the system is in the hands of shrinks. This outrageous situation has the full backing of Big Pharma, and of the politicians on behalf of the entire ruling class.

The second example is the author's defence of the medical model of psychiatry. Psychiatry has no scientific basis for its "mental illness" dogma, therefore no ground to claim to be a "Medical Specialty', therefore no ground to use a medical model and to force people to consume Big Pharma poisons, or take electric shocks, or undergo "psycho-surgery"as psychiatric "treatment".

The author then claims that the use of medical doctors as psychiatrists has been "historical", already during the asylum days hundreds of years ago. The only reason they have failed, he says, is that they did not have the "effective" means of modern psychiatry. This is a lie, of course, because by psychiatry's own admission it has no cures for any of the, so called, "mental illnesses" the shrinks label people with. Psychiatry is, as it has alway been, an excuse to torture or kill people, and its entire history is that of unmitigated barbarism.

http://frontierpsychiatrist.co.uk/why-has-psychiatry-become-so-dominant-in-mental-health-services/

Why has psychiatry become so dominant in mental health services?

Although psychiatrists cannot claim to ‘run’ mental health services, as things stand they take ultimate responsibility for the individual care of most patients in the mental health system. But good practice in mental health care involves more than just psychiatrists, and other professions such as psychologists and mental health nurses, could also make a valid claim to be in charge of patient care.*

The status of doctors in the treatment of mental health is actually historic. At the time of the establishment of asylums there were no effective treatments on offer for psychiatric disorders so doctors’ medical qualifications were irrelevant. However doctors’ social standing and accountability meant it was felt that they would be effective guardians of against abuse of patients.

One argument for the continuing prominence of psychiatry is the overlap between mental and physical diseases. For instance, thyroid problems can mimic depression and the argument runs that a psychiatrist should be on hand to identify these instances. This argument is not especially solid, as although physical problems are occasionally picked up by psychiatrists, general practitioners should sift these problems out before referring to psychiatrists.

A second argument is that ‘medical model’ of psychiatry is successful at treating mental illness. This is not just simply prescribing drugs for patients, as this could be done by doctors without their current status, but also that a doctor brings to the table a pragmatic approach to the treatment of patients that draws on scientific method. Although the medical model is much maligned, as being too narrow and too dominant, it also entails a benign paternalism and a willingness to accept responsibility, which some, but of course not all, in their time of sickness may welcome.

Consultation by a doctor is often valued by patients and staff alike despite the fact that a lot of patients are seen by psychiatrists do not have problems related to anything that could be characterized as an ‘illness’. Why this should be so has societal roots beyond the scope of this piece. It has not been unusual for me to be asked to give a ‘doctor’s opinion’ on matters of importance when there is no obvious reason for why I should be qualified to do this, except a willingness to stick my neck out. When working in the community I have often felt that, as many people with mental health problems often have very unsatisfactory social situations, patients would be better off seeing a social worker once a month who could then refer onto me if necessary rather than the current situation which is the other way around.

2008-12-16T13:26:00.001-08:00

http://3rdplutocracyordirectdemocracy.blogspot.com/
The Campaign of Terror at the Behest of Big Pharma in the USA and Elsewhere
By Benjamin Merhav

There has been a worldwide campaign of terror at the behest of the huge transnational pharmaceutical corporations (Big Pharma) for a number of years now to silence critics and to put honest and effective competition out of business.

Thus, for example, the renowned German physician, Dr. Matthias Rath, who not only exposed the crimes of Big Pharma, but also successfully researched and produced effective and harmless alternative cures to various diseases, was recently silenced and put out of business in South Africa, and maligned in the UK and elsewhere. As another example ,Psychiatry, the junior partner of Big Pharma, continues to push and impose Big Pharma’s deadly psychiatric poisons as "medications", ignoring scientific warnings and public protests all over the world.

The following article is from a news letter produced in the USA. It reveals more on the campaign of terror to protect the colossal profits of Big Pharma in the USA and elsewhere. The author of the article, Mike Adams, correctly points out that as the USA plutocracy regime and its economy plunge into deeper crisis so do state terror and tyranny further intensify.

http://mail.google.com/mail/h/18wxxlo96xpiw/?v=c&s=a&th=11c770da7294dfae

FTC unleashes campaign of terror against natural cancer cures

NaturalNews Insider Alert (www.NaturalNews.com) newsletter

Dear NaturalNews readers,

Today the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched a campaign of terror against companies selling natural cures for cancer. Using the same tactics as the FDA (fear, intimidation, legal threats, etc.) the FTC is working hard to destroy the businesses of companies offering genuine cancer cures that really work. Companies like MushroomScience.com, for example, are under attack for daring to link to scientific studies about the anti-cancer benefits of Reishi mushrooms, and anyone using the word "cure" on their website is instantly presumed guilty of criminal acts.

It's all part of the knowledge cleansing campaign being undertaken by the FTC and FDA to destroy knowledge and keep the population nutritionally illiterate. It's being done, of course, to protect the lucrative profits of the cancer indstry and the drug companies who now seem to control the FTC, FDA and even the DEA.

Read my breaking news story on this dangerous development here: http://www.naturalnews.com/024246.html

And be sure to share this story with as many people as you can. The entire natural products industry is now threatened by the FTC / FDA mobsters, and if they have their way, ALL natural products companies will be either put out of business or their founders will be arrested and imprisoned. This is a government-sponsored knowledge cleansing of the population, much like a national "mind wipe" effort that hopes to suppress or destroy any memory of the healing power of natural medicine.

Dark days are upon us, folks, and the U.S. government is desperately trying to destroy knowledge and censor the truth about cancer cures. We need your help to protect the truth and spread the word about natural cancer cures that really work. Spread the word by sharing these stories and linking to NaturalNews.com so we can educate more readers.

Internet Freedom Now Under Assault

Speaking of efforts to destroy knowledge, one of the founders of the Internet is now proposing that websites be labelled with "trust ratings" that would destroy the credibility of any "alternative" information websites that argue against things like chemotherapy or mandatory vaccination of children. This censorship effort is described here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/024240.html

The bottom line in all this is that the institutions of power are declaring war against the Internet, attempting to silence the truth and imprison those who dare speak it. We are in the midst of a battle of truth vs. deceit, knowledge vs. ignorance and health vs. death. The U.S. government and its corporate cronies want you to be trapped in a culture of death, disease and disinformation, and they're pulling out ALL the stops to make sure that happens.

It is no coincidence that this is all happening during the global financial meltdown that may ultimately lead to the complete dissolution of the U.S. government (and all its rogue agencies). These actions are the last desperate grunts of a tyrannical police state power that senses its days are numbered...

(Emphasis added - B.M.)

Thursday, September 11, 2008

http://www.nolanchart.com/article4797.html

The "Chemical Imbalance" Hoax

From cradle to the grave, we are bombarded with information pushing us towards a chemical fix. But lets take a closer look at some very important aspects of this new psychoactive, drug-centered philosophy of the "chemical imbalance" as currently pushed in psychiatry.
by Helio
(Liberal Libertarian)
Thursday, September 11, 2008

Psychiatrists claim that a person needs a drug to combat their chemical imbalance in the brain which is causing a persons mental disorder. However, the concept that a brain-based, chemical imbalance underlies mental illness is false. While popularized by heavy public marketing, it is simply psychiatric wishful thinking. As with all of psychiatrys disease models, it has been thoroughly discredited by researchers.

Diabetes is a biochemical imbalance. However, as Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen states, the definitive test and biochemical imbalance is a high blood sugar balance level. Treatment in severe cases is insulin injections, which restore sugar balance. The symptoms clear and retest shows the blood sugar is normal. Nothing like a sodium imbalance or blood sugar imbalance exists for depression or any other psychiatric syndrome.

In 1996, psychiatrist David Kaiser said, ...modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness...Patients [have] been diagnosed with chemical imbalances despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and...there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.

Todays brain imagery photos, said to prove mental illnesses are physical diseases, are deeply flawed. Indeed, prescribed psychotropic drugs most likely cause the changes seen in the brain. Steven Hyman, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, admits that indiscriminate use of such brain scans produce pretty but inconsequential pictures of the brain.

Elliot Valenstein, Ph.D., author of Blaming the Brain, is unequivocal: [T]here are no tests available for assessing the chemical status of a living persons brain. No biochemical, anatomical, or functional signs have been found that reliably distinguish the brains of mental patients.
According to Valenstein, The theories are held on to not only because there is nothing else to take their place, but also because they are useful in promoting drug treatment.

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

http://psychiatricnews.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/psychiatry-presents-yet-one-more-lunatic-idea/

PSYCHIATRY PRESENTS YET ONE MORE LUNATIC IDEA

From: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/gandhi-pills-ps.html

Only a psychiatrist would have the affront to propose such lunatic nonsense. If it were true that a pill could enhance morality then we would be able to cure psychiatrists.

Gandhi Pills? Psychiatrist Argues for Moral Performance Enhancers

By Alexis Madrigal
September 09, 2008

Could the right drug make you a better person?

A British psychiatrist raises and argues for that possibility in a new paper in a prominent psychiatry journal. In fact, he says that in many clinical settings, moral steroids are already being used.

“Within many clinical encounters, there may already be a subtle form of moral assistance going on, albeit one we do not choose to describe in these terms,” writes Sean Spence of the University of Sheffield in theBritish Journal of Psychiatry.”

Performance-enhancing drugs are generally used to enhance performance in competitive settings, like sports. On Wired Science, we’ve spent a lot of time looking at ways to increase cognitive performance. But what Spence suggests is that science should be searching for drugs to make people more “humane” not just smarter.

Spence describes the case of a man with “antisocial personality disorder” — somewhere on the continuum between dangerously sociopathic and just kind of a jerk — who requests drugs to prevent himself from harming a girlfriend. In making that request, Spence says that the man is using pharmaceuticals to exhibit “moral agency.”

“Hence, if we ask the question ‘Can pharmacology help to enhance human morality?’ then we should answer ‘yes,’ that sometimes it can be used as a means to this end,” Spence writes.

What do you think? Do you already use some substance — say, marijuana or a prescription painkiller — not for how it makes you feel, but how it influences your behavior toward other people? Do you consider this “moral pharmacology”?

Spence mentions that drugs could be specifically designed to “target and increase a prosocial feeling and behaviour such as ‘kindness.’” Would you take a kindness pill?

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Psychiatry under the influence of drug manufacturers has embraced the toxic prescribing guidelines dictated by industry and its paid psychiatrists.
by Justice Lover

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

Two different British epidemiological studies of patient medical records
examined the clinical outcomes of patients prescribed antipsychotics
(neuroleptics) compared to those not.

The studies confirm that these "major tranquilizers" increase the risk of
stroke and diabetes--both severely disabling medical conditions hasten
premature death.

1. A report in the BMJ by Ian Douglas and Liam Smeeth from the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, examined the records of 6,790 patients
who had suffered a stroke and were taking antipsychotic drugs. They found
that the ingestion of ANY antipsychotic increased the incidents of stroke
significantly in elderly patients with or without dementia.

Older patients prescribed any neuroleptic / antipsychotic drug were 1.73
times more likely to have a stroke than those not taking such a drug.
Patients with dementia who were prescribed antipsychotics were 3.5 times
more likely to have a stroke.

The findings confirm reports since 2002, about these drugs' toxicity.
Indeed, the findings overturn the medical justification for the current
paradigm of care for the elderly: patients prescribed one of the
aggressively marketed second generation neuroleptics (promoted as "atypical
antipsychotics") were found to pose the GREATEST DANGER for patients.

Risperdal was the most popular among the so-called 'atypicals' and Zyprexa
second: Patients taking these drugs were at 2.32 greater risk of stroke
compared to those patients prescribed one of the old neuroleptics: 1.69
increased risk.

2. A study reported in BMC Psychiatry compared the incidence and prevalence
of diabetes in patients with serious mental illness in North West Wales.
This study compared two cohorts, 1875-1924 & 1994-2006.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/8/67

The findings invalidate the unsubstantiated claims made by psychiatrists and
antipsychotic drug manufacturers about the prevalence of diabetes among
patients with schizophrenia prior to the use of neuroleptics /
antipsychotics.

The prevalence of Type 2 diabetes among patients with psychoses at time of
first admission in both historical and contemporary samples was 0%.
The incidence of diabetes remained 0% in the historical sample throughout 15
years of follow-up.
But the incidence of diabetes rose in the contemporary sample after 3, 5 and
6 years of treatment--with an incidence rate DOUBLE the expected population
rate so that the 15 year prevalence is likely to be over 8%.

Doesn't the body of medico-scientific evidence documenting drug-induced
health hazards suggest that it's time to change the paradigm of care in
psychiatry?

Neuroleptics (so-called antipsychotic drugs) are administered widely by
psychiatrists, general practitioners and pediatricians who variously assign
a diagnosis (Chinese menu style) such as psychosis, schizophrenia, paranoia,
bipolar disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, aggression, hysteria,
sleep disturbances, asthma, ADHD, misbehavior in children--or any other
reimbursable label.

Drugs such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and the other newly
packaged major tranquilizers (sold as "atypical antipsychotics") are
dispensed in the same way that aggressive animals of all sorts are given
drugs to restrain their stress-related reactions.

Court documents show that the elderly and children--who are vulnerable
non-consenting dependents-- are at particular high risk as industry has
targeted them in market expansion campaigns. See: Eli Lilly's "Viva
Zyprexa" marketing campaign www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/business/18drug.html
See: Connecticut Attorney General lawsuit charging Eli Lilly with fraud
under the federal racketeering law --RICCO:
http://www.ct.gov/ag/lib/ag/health/elililly-zyprexa.pdf
See also: www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/414/29/

Psychiatry under the influence of drug manufacturers has embraced the toxic
prescribing guidelines dictated by industry and its paid psychiatrists.

Beyond the life-shortening treatments forced upon the elderly, the TMAP
prescribing guidelines serve as the model adopted by state mental health
systems. And these treatment guidelines are undermining the health of young
and old. Indeed, those "treated" within the public mental health sector can
look forward to a 25- year shortened lifespan.
See: Colton CW, Manderscheid RW. Congruencies in increased mortality rates,
years of potential life lost, and causes of death among public mental health
clients in eight states. Preventing Chronic Disease, 2006 Apr.
http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2006/apr/05_0180.htm

Clearly those who come under the clutches of a failed mental health
treatment policy are doomed:
"There is no tyranny so great as that which is practiced for the benefit of
the victim."-C.S. Lewis

A successful no-drug paradigm of care for schizophrenia patients--for whom
neuroleptics were first marketed--was developed by Dr. Loren Mosher
http://www.moshersoteria.com/
See: Treatment of Acute Psychosis Without Neuroleptics: Two-Year Outcomes
From the Soteria Project by John R. Bola, Ph.D., and Loren R. Mosher, M.D.
published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 2003 (191: 219-229).

See also: Soteria: Through Madness to Deliverance by Loren R. Mosher, Voyce
Hendrix, and Deborah C. Fort. http://www.moshersoteria.com/book.htm
Soteria in the Literature - A Chronological Survey Bibliography
1972 - 2004. http://www.moshersoteria.com/sotlit.pdf

See also: Peter Lehmann's book, Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful
Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and
Tranquilizers . This resource has been published in US, UK, Greek. and German editions.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-12-12T02:37:00.001-08:00

THE BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL (BMJ) :

"Whatthis study adds

Both typical and atypical antipsychotic drugsare associated with an increased risk of stroke and this associationis unlikely to be caused by confounding .The risk of strokein patients receiving antipsychotics seems to be greater inthose with dementia than those without."

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug28_2/a1227

Published 28 August 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1227
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1227

Research

Exposure to antipsychotics and risk of stroke: self controlled case series study

Ian J Douglas, research fellow, Liam Smeeth, professor of clinical epidemiology

Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT

Correspondence to: I Douglas ian.douglas@lshtm.ac.uk

Abstract

Objectives To investigate the association between use of typicaland atypical antipsychotic drugs and incidence of stroke inpatients with and without dementia.

Design Self controlled case series.

Setting UK based electronic primary care records in the generalpractice research database (GPRD).

Participants All patients registered in the database with arecorded incident stroke and at least one prescription for anyantipsychotic drug before the end of 2002: 6790 eligible participantswere identified and included in the final analysis.

Main outcome measures Rate ratio for stroke in periods of timeexposed to antipsychotics compared with unexposed periods.

Results Use of any antipsychotic drug was associated with arate ratio for stroke of 1.73 (95% confidence interval 1.60to 1.87): 1.69 (1.55 to 1.84) for typical antipsychotics and2.32 (1.73 to 3.10) for atypical antipsychotics. In patientsreceiving any antipsychotic drug, the rate ratios were 3.50(2.97 to 4.12) for those with dementia and 1.41 (1.29 to 1.55)for those without dementia.

Conclusions All antipsychotics are associated with an increasedrisk of stroke, and the risk might be higher in patients receivingatypical antipsychotics than those receiving typical antipsychotics.People with dementia seem to be at a higher risk of an associatedstroke than people without dementia and use of antipsychoticsshould, when possible, be avoided in these patients.

Introduction

Concerns about an increased risk of stroke associated with atypicalantipsychotic drugs first arose from limited trial data in 2002.On the basis of these results, Health Canada and Janssen-Ortho(the manufacturer of risperidone) issued a warning to prescribersto highlight this issue.¹ In 2004 the United Kingdom’sCommittee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) recommended avoidingthe use of atypical antipsychotic drugs among people with dementia,²although this decision was criticised as being detrimental tocare of patients.³ Whether the risk of stroke associated withantipsychotic drug use differs among people with and withoutdementia is not known. More recently the European Pharmacovigilanceworking party considered the results of published and unpublishedobservational studies.⁴ ⁵ They concluded that there was someweak evidence that antipsychotic drugs increase the risk ofstroke but no clear evidence that this risk was greater withatypical versus conventional antipsychotic drugs.⁶ The reportsuggested that uncontrolled confounding might have affectedfindings to date. In particular, the underlying cardiovascularrisk in people prescribed and not prescribed antipsychotic drugsdiffers in ways that are difficult to quantify and control for.⁷⁸

We used a within person case series design to assess the riskof stroke associated with antipsychotic drugs. Using this technique,we compared the incidence of stroke during periods exposed andnot exposed to the drugs of interest within individual patients,⁹thus eliminating confounding between individuals. We examinedwhether some or all of the previously observed increased riskof stroke associated with antipsychotic drug use could be attributableto confounding, whether the risk of stroke associated with typicaland atypical antipsychotic drug use differs, and whether therisk of stroke associated with antipsychotic drug use is higheramong people with dementia.

Methods

General practice research database
The GPRD (www.gprd.com) was established in 1987 and was originallycalled the value added medical systems (VAMP) research bank.¹⁰It currently contains information from over six million patientsregistered at over 400 general practice surgeries in the UK.¹¹Continuous information is recorded for each patient, includinga record of each consultation, any diagnoses made, all prescribedmedicine, and basic demographic data. The geographical distributionand size of general practices represented in the database arelargely representative of the population of England and Wales,and the individuals registered on the database are representativeof the whole UK population in terms of age and sex.¹² The dataheld are rigorously checked and regularly audited and have beensuccessfully used to conduct over 500 peer reviewed publishedstudies. The information obtained from the database is entirelyanonymous.

Selection of participants
Patients were selected from the population registered with thedatabase before 2003. Eligible participants were all patientswith a first ever incident diagnosis of stroke at least 12 monthsafter initial registration with the database. To be includedin the study patients had to have had the incident stroke onor before 31 December 2002 and also to have been prescribedat least one antipsychotic medicine before this date. Concernsregarding the possible cerebrovascular effects of antipsychoticdrugs in elderly people began to emerge around this time andso we did not include information on events after this dateto eliminate the subsequent effect of possible changes in prescribingpatterns. Also, because of concerns over repeat coding of asingle event within the database, we considered only the firstever record of a stroke as truly incident and excluded any subsequentrecord from the analysis.

Self controlled case series analysis
The self controlled case series method is derived from the cohortmethod and relies on intraperson comparisons in a populationof individuals who have both the outcome and exposure of interest.Rate ratios compare the rate of events during exposed periodsof time with the rate during all other observed time periods.⁹This method removes the potential confounding effect of characteristicsthat vary between individuals, such as frailty and risk factorsfor vascular disease.

For each participant, we identified and classified all prescriptionsfor antipsychotic drugs before the end of 2002. When possible,we calculated the expected length of exposure after each prescriptionusing information on pack size and dosing frequency. From allprescription records for which this information was available,we calculated the median length of exposure and assumed thislength for all prescriptions where missing information preventedactual calculation. Each individual’s observation timewas then divided into exposure periods as follows: fully exposedperiods covered by the expected length of exposure, followedby a sequence of five 35 day periods after treatment up to amaximum of 175 days after the expected end of a treatment period.We included periods after treatment as we cannot be sure whentreatment stopped, and these periods will represent a gradualshift from full exposure, to a washout period, and finally toan entirely unexposed state. All other periods of time wereclassified as baseline (unexposed). The figure shows how weclassified the follow-up time for an individual participantwith respect to exposure. We also searched each patient’smedical record for diagnoses indicating dementia before stroketo allow subgroup analysis in these patients.

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[PowerPoint Slide for Teaching]

Pictorial representation of study design. Figure illustrates single individual prescribed antipsychotic drug during their observation period. All participants included in analysis had at least one prescription for an antipsychotic drug and a single incident stroke. Rate ratios presented are pooled estimates derived from rate of events during risk (exposed) periods divided by rate of events during baseline periods; age is adjusted for at all stages of analysis. Incident stroke can occur during any one of three exposure periods: baseline, exposed, or washout period

We estimated the relative rate ratios using conditional Poissonregression with Stata software, version 9 (StataCorp, CollegeStation, TX), adjusting for age at stroke in five year bands.We assessed the impact of exposure to any antipsychotic medication,looked at the effect of any antipsychotic drug among patientswith and without dementia, and measured the differential effectsof typical and atypical antipsychotics among all patients andstratified by dementia status.

Results

We identified 6790 eligible patients in the database with atleast one prescription for an antipsychotic drug and a recordedincident stroke between January 1988 and the end of 2002. Ofthese, 905 patients were prescribed at least one atypical antipsychoticdrug and 6334 were prescribed at least one typical antipsychoticdrug during the study period. Table 1 shows the number of patientsgiven a prescription for the most commonly prescribed antipsychoticsin this population. The most commonly used typical antipsychoticswere phenothiazines (5153 patients), and the most common atypicalantipsychotic drug was risperidone (729 patients). Some 2290(34%) patients had a single exposure period, 2406 (35%) hadbetween two and five exposure periods, and the 2094 (31%) remaininghad six or more. Table 2 gives demographic details of patientsincluded in the study, of whom 4353 (64%) were women. The medianage at first exposure to any antipsychotic drug was 80, whilemedian age at the time of first recorded stroke was 81. Table2 also shows details of each analysis subgroup; 1423 patientshad a recorded diagnosis of dementia before the incident strokeand these patients were slightly older than those without dementiaat the time the first antipsychotic drug was prescribed. Intotal, 5885 patients received a prescription for a typical butnot an atypical antipsychotic drug during the study period,and 456 patients received prescriptions only for atypical antipsychotics.The age at first recorded antipsychotic drug exposure was similarfor patients exposed only to typical or atypical antipsychotics.The 449 remaining patients received prescriptions for both typicaland atypical antipsychotics. Among patients with dementia, 1212received only typical antipsychotics and 85 received only atypicalantipsychotics. The median duration of total observation periodincluded in the analysis was at least four years for each subgroup.

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Table 1 Summary of antipsychotic drug prescribing in study population

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Table 2 Demographic details of study populations. Figures are numbers of patients and medians (interquartile ranges)

The rate ratio for stroke among all patients prescribed anyantipsychotic drug was 1.73 (95% confidence interval 1.60 to1.87), comparing exposed with unexposed baseline periods (table3). During the periods after treatment the rate ratio fell towardsunity. During exposed periods, the rate ratio was 1.69 (1.55to 1.84) for patients receiving only typical antipsychoticsand 2.32 (1.73 to 3.10) for patients receiving only atypicalantipsychotics. During periods of treatment with any antipsychoticdrug the rate ratio was 3.50 (2.97 to 4.12) in patients withrecorded dementia before stroke and 1.41 (1.29 to 1.55) in patientswith no record of dementia before stroke. In patients with dementiaand only typical antipsychotic drug prescriptions, the rateratio for stroke was 3.26 (2.73 to 3.89). This compares witha figure of 5.86 (3.01 to 11.38) in patients with dementia andonly treated with atypical antipsychotics. Patients withoutdementia before stroke and receiving only typical antipsychoticshad a rate ratio of 1.40 (1.26 to 1.54) compared with a figureof 1.90 (1.36 to 2.65) in patients without dementia and receivingonly atypical antipsychotics. In all analysis subgroups, therate ratio for stroke subsequently fell towards unity duringthe phase after treatment.

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Table 3 Case series analysis for antipsychotic drugs: association between exposure and stroke. Figures are rate ratios (95% confidence intervals)

Discussion

The previously observed increased risk of stroke associatedwith use of antipsychotic drugs is not attributable to differencesin baseline cardiovascular risk between people prescribed andnot prescribed these drugs. The risk of stroke is slightly higherwith use of atypical rather than typical antipsychotic drugs.The magnitude of the increased risk of stroke associated withantipsychotic drug use is more than twice as great among peoplewith dementia compared with those without.

Strengths and weaknesses
A key advantage of this study is the use of the self controlledcase series design, which is much less prone to problems ofconfounding than traditional case-control or cohort designs.Differences between patients are of little relevance as therisk comparisons are made entirely within patients. Also, theself controlled case series is more efficient than other observationalstudy designs and so more precise estimates of effects can bemade. We chose to censor follow-up for all patients at the endof 2002 as this was when concerns about the effects of antipsychoticdrugs in patients with dementia first emerged. This should avoidpossible biases arising from altered prescribing habits in thelight of these findings.

Other main strengths of the study were that it was large andstatistically powerful. Our study was based on routine clinicaldata from the UK general practice research database, which islargely representative of the population of the UK and so theresults are likely to be highly generalisable. A potential weaknessmight relate to the quality of the clinical data. Drug prescriptionsin the database are generated by practice computers to ensurethe accuracy of the electronic prescribing records. Prescriptiondata were highly detailed and recorded before people developedstroke so there was no potential for recall bias. Some patientswere probably not taking their prescribed antipsychotics duringperiods we classified as exposed, though this would result onlyin a reduced effect estimate for antipsychotic drug exposure.There might have been some inaccuracy in our estimation of exposedand unexposed periods. We addressed this issue by measuringthe relative risk of stroke during sequential periods aftertreatment, and, reassuringly, during these periods the relativerisk fell consistently towards unity. Our analysis also suggeststhat the risk of stroke might not fall to baseline until sixmonths after a patient stops taking an antipsychotic drug.

The validity of the clinical data included in the database hasrepeatedly been shown to be high.¹³ The rates for recorded strokeare comparable with estimates obtained from other epidemiologicalstudies.¹⁴ The database has been widely used to study the epidemiologyof stroke, with over 15 published papers (such as those by Smeethet al,¹⁵ Mulnier et al,¹⁶ and Andersohn¹⁷), including the replicationof results from two large randomised trials.¹⁸ ¹⁹ We chose notto include less serious outcomes related to stroke, such astransient ischaemic attack, as the ascertainment rate and accuracyof dating for these events is probably less reliable. Over 85%of the strokes identified in this study were recorded with codesthat did not specify the subtype of stroke. Nevertheless, wecarried out a subgroup analysis in the 233 patients with designatedhaemorrhagic stroke. The rate ratio for this subgroup, consideringexposure to any type of antipsychotic drug, was 1.14 (0.71 to1.84), indicating that the effect might be limited to non-haemorrhagicstroke.

We were unable to investigate possible mechanisms by which antipsychoticsmight cause stroke or why the risk seems to be greater withatypical antipsychotics. It is unclear if the effect representsa direct vascular toxicity or whether stroke might be a consequenceof other well established side effects such as weight gain.To further investigate weight gain as a possible mechanism,we conducted a subgroup analysis censoring follow-up for eachpatient after the first three months of exposure to any antipsychoticdrug, as weight gain is unlikely to substantially alter therisk of stroke within such a short timeframe. The resultantrate ratio was 2.66 (2.34 to 3.02), suggesting the effect ispresent shortly after a patient starts taking an antipsychoticdrug. More information on a possible mechanism would be usefulas further insight could facilitate effective minimisation ofrisk. Another possible limitation of the study design is thattime varying confounders can be difficult to take into account.Initiation of an antipsychotic drug might also be associatedwith a change in exposure status for some other independentrisk factor for stroke, such as a change in tobacco or alcoholconsumption. While we have successfully controlled for age,data within the database do not generally allow precise measurementsof subtle changes in behaviour patterns such as smoking anddrinking.

Results in context
Our results on the association between atypical antipsychoticsand stroke are generally consistent with the results of previousplacebo controlled clinical trials and observational studies,suggesting residual confounding is unlikely to be a major problem.¹² ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ²⁰ While few patients with dementia received atypicalantipsychotics in our study and power is therefore reduced,the point estimate for the effect of atypical antipsychoticsin this group is nearly 6, while the estimate from the risperidoneclinical trial meta-analysis in such patients was 3.32 (1.43to 7.70).²⁰ Our estimate has wide confidence intervals, rangingfrom 3.01 to 11.38 and is therefore consistent with the effectseen in clinical trials. It is also consistent, however, witha more pronounced effect, which could reflect a genuinely differenteffect of atypical antipsychotics under less well controlledconditions than those attained in clinical trials. Before ourstudy, the risk of stroke associated with typical antipsychoticswas not clear. For example, the case-control study conductedby the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products RegulatoryAgency (MHRA) suggested a stronger effect of risperidone onstroke than other antipsychotics²⁰ but did not compare the effectof typical with atypical antipsychotics. We have establishedthat all types of antipsychotics carry an increased risk, althoughthe risk might be somewhat higher with the atypical drugs.

As the background risk of stroke in elderly patients is relativelyhigh,²¹ we reaffirm that the risks associated with antipsychoticdrug use in patients with dementia generally outweigh the potentialbenefits, and use of antipsychotic drugs in these patients shouldbe avoided whenever possible. When the use of antipsychoticdrugs is deemed necessary, our results indicate that typicalantipsychotics are preferable to atypical antipsychotics withrespect to serious cerebrovascular outcomes. By contrast, ourresults suggest a much more modest association between antipsychoticsand stroke in patients without dementia, regardless of age (1.41,1.29 to 1.55). This implies that the use of antipsychotics mightbe acceptable in elderly patients without dementia, althoughas with all treatment choices, a wider consideration of allpotential risks and benefits would need to be taken into account.

What is already known on this topic

Atypical antipsychoticsmight increase the risk of stroke in elderly patients, but thisassociation could be due to unmeasured or uncontrolled confounding

Theextent to which typical antipsychotics are associated with anincreased risk of stroke and whether the effect is the samein patients with dementia as those without is not known

Whatthis study adds

Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1227

Contributors: IJD and LS were the sole contributors and authorsof this study. Both authors played a substantial role in developingthe research question, obtaining the data, interpreting theresults, and preparing the manuscript and are joint guarantors.IJD carried out the analysis.

Funding: LS is supported by a Wellcome Trust senior researchfellowship in clinical science. Data from the general practiceresearch database were made available through the access forUK academics via Medical Research Council agreement.

Competing interests: None declared.

Ethical approval: Independent scientific advisory group of thegeneral practice research database and the London School ofHygiene and Tropical Medicine ethics committee.

Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peerreviewed.
(For the list of references see the original article at the BMJ above website.
Emphasis by Justice lover ).

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/08/25/antipsychotic-drug-use-up-in-elderly-despite.html

Antipsychotic Drug Use Up in Elderly Despite Warnings

Canadian study suggests cautions fail to alert docs to effectiveness of alternative therapies

Posted August 25, 2008

MONDAY, Aug. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Safety warnings slowed the use of antipsychotic drugs in seniors with dementia. But the overall use of the drugs in the elderly increased, a finding which suggests that warnings may not be sufficient to protect patients, Canadian researchers say.

Between late 2002 and June 2005, Health Canada issued three warnings that three new atypical antipsychotic drugs increased the risk of stroke and death in elderly patients with dementia.

The researchers analyzed prescription drug data in the province of Ontario and found that antipsychotic drug use among the elderly increased 20 percent from the month prior to the first warning in September 2002 to February 2007. About 70 percent of the seniors receiving antipsychotic drugs lived in nursing homes, and about 40 percent of them were 85 or older.

"This finding highlights the limited impact of warnings and suggests that more effective approaches are needed to protect vulnerable populations from potentially hazardous medications," wrote Dr. Geoffrey Anderson, of the University of Toronto, and colleagues.

The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Some health care warnings don't have much effect, because the warnings don't provide doctors with information about the safety and effectiveness of alternative treatments, Dr. Laurence Katz, of the University of Manitoba, wrote in an accompanying comment article.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

http://danledmunds.blogspot.com/

Oppressive Society

by Dr. Dan L. Edmunds

For the disadvantaged youth, what are the choices that the ruling oligarchy allows them? Go into military service and fight the wars for the rich so they can possibly receive the 'blessings' of the rich to pursue an education? Or become a slave to them by amassing student loan debt while the wealthy ones path is paved. There is no real opportunity.

Efforts are rarely rewarded, but the good conformists are rewarded. Is it any wonder that many poor kids turn to the sale of drugs and crime? When we do not reward effort, the elite oppress, and opportunities are glim, some are willing to assume the risk and danger if only for a moment to be apart from poverty and struggle. And so it is with our homeless and those we often label mentally ill.

They seek to be free from oppression, and thus many depart from the reality and standards of corrupt society. As Laing stated, madness may very well be a normal response to a society gone mad. For these persons, the elite drug them into submission, their experience is of no importance, and so they often wander the streets with little chance of recovery as first, no one seems to care, second, they are damaged by psychiatric drugs, and lastly, society refuses to change.

Where is our sense of humanity? Where is our compassion? Can equality truly exist? We are taught not to worry about such things, there is a pill for these worries. No need to change anything, its all in your brain. You have the money, you can be part of the game, and maybe win. If you don't have money, you lose. Whether this be education, health care, or other basic human rights.

-Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D.
www.humanepsychiatry.info

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

MORE ON THE CRIMES OF BIG PHARMA BY DR. D. CARLAT, MD, USA PSYCHIATRIST

by Justice Lover

See also http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8ZT4hT0XK0Q&refer=home

http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-documents-merck-used-doctors-and.html
Tuesday, August 19, 2008

New Documents: Merck used Doctors and Patients as “Seeds” to Boost Vioxx Sales

According to a paper published in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, Merck conducted a sham clinical trial whose purpose was to turn 600 physician-researchers into marketing seeds to boost sales of its arthritis medication Vioxx. This study, called the ADVANTAGE trial, was billed by the company as a placebo-controlled study comparing Vioxx with the pain reliever Naproxen.

However, according to internal company documents obtained in the course of a trial involving Merck, the research was designed and conducted by the marketing division as a “seeding trial,” intended to induce the researchers and their colleagues to prescribe more Vioxx after the clinical trial was over. (More coverage of this story here and here.)

This new variation on the theme of marketing-disguised-as-science is a little complicated, so I interviewed the lead author on this paper, Kevin Hill, M.D., a former Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale, about the issue. Dr. Hill is now Addiction Psychiatry Fellow at McLean Hospital.

Dr. Carlat: What is a “seeding” trial?

Dr. Hill: A seeding trial is a study that is designed to appear as though it is answering a scientific question but whose true purpose is to market a medication.

Dr. Carlat: But how is this different from any industry-funded trial? Anytime a drug company compares its drug with placebo or another drug, aren’t they planning to use the results to help market their drug?

Dr. Hill: That’s true, but a seeding trial is different. In the usual clinical trial, the goal is to answer an important scientific question about your drug and, perhaps, end up with a scientific finding that is advantageous for your drug. You then take that finding, and advertise it to doctors and patients. So the research study itself is not a marketing activity; the marketing comes after the study is over and you have your findings.In Merck’s seeding trial, their primary interest was not in assessing the gastrointestinal tolerability of Vioxx, because they already had a sense of it from other research they had done. ADVANTAGE was not necessary to address the question of tolerability.

Dr. Carlat: So what was the point of the trial if they weren’t interested in the findings?

Dr. Hill: The point of the study was to market Vioxx directly to the researchers involved. The ADVANTAGE trial recruited a large number of community physicians—600—as “researchers.” The point was to get Vioxx into the hands of all these doctors very early in the game, before the drug came to market. Merck hoped that these doctors would find Vioxx helpful, and that they would spread a positive marketing message to other doctors by word of mouth. The company also paid these doctors to go to researchers’ meetings, and paid them a substantial amount of money for every patient they recruited. They hoped that this financial arrangement would also induce loyalty to Merck and, indirectly, lead them to prescribe even more Vioxx.

Dr. Carlat: I see. So the “seeds” are the physician/researchers, and the hope is that these seeds grow into a positive buzz for Vioxx among colleagues.

Dr. Hill: Exactly.

Dr. Carlat: It seems like we hear about companies manipulating research in various ways all the time. Why is this a particularly objectionable practice?

Dr. Hill: A number of reasons. First and most importantly, doctors and patients were not told about any of these marketing objectives, so they were not given all of the information about what they were signing up for. Generally, patients choose to participate in clinical trials either because they think they might benefit from a treatment, or because they have an altruistic notion of wanting to help the cause of medical science. But if these patients had been told that the trial was designed in order to boost profits of a drug company, I suspect that many might not have participated. In this case, a lot of people risked their health for marketing purposes, and ADVANTAGE is a particularly poignant example because Vioxx increased their chances of having heart attacks.A second problem is that, as opposed to most clinical trials, Advantage was conceived and run solely by Merck’s marketing division without any input from Merck’s scientific division. We had access to company documents, and what was striking was how frank they were that this study was a marketing exercise. There was little pretense within the company that this was in the service of clinical science.

Dr. Carlat: What were some of the company documents you saw?

Dr. Hill: One of the most revealing was a memo describing an award given by Merck executives to the those in the marketing division who conducted ADVANTAGE . The award describes the trial, quite blatantly, as a marketing program. They were very proud of how they were able to quickly and efficiently get the medication into doctor’s hands.[Ed. note: This memo is published in the Annals article. Here is one excerpt in which the research is described:“The objectives were to provide product trial among a key physician group to accelerate uptake of VIOXX as the second entrant in a highly competitive new class and gather data important to this customer group. The trial was designed and executed in the spirit of the Merck marketing principles, as described below."]Another remarkable document was an email written by Dr. Edward Scolnick, the head of the research division at Merck. He said that this trial was “intellectually redundant,” and lamented how ADVANTAGE could exacerbate an already complicated situation as Merck was addressing the safety of VIOXX.

Dr. Carlat: Did Merck make any effort to track the success of the seeding?

Dr. Hill: Yes. We published some of these documents. For example, they did an analysis 6 months after the launch of Vioxx and found that the Advantage researchers prescribed significantly more Vioxx than a control group of primary care physicians who were not part of the research. They also graded a group of rheumatologists from A+ to D based in part on their use of Merck products.

Dr. Carlat: Do seeding trials still go on?

Dr. Hill: Probably, but we don’t know for sure. We only have documentary evidence for ADVANTAGE. The problem is that they often look like legitimate scientific trials. The only reason we knew Advantage was a seeding trial is because we had access to company documents. Merck went to great lengths to hide the nature of this trial. In one memo, an employee in the marketing division wrote: “It may be a seeding study, but let’s not call it that in our internal documents.”

Posted by Daniel Carlat, M.D. at 7:11 AM

Friday, August 15, 2008

Future wars 'to be fought with mind drugs'

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

The UK Telegraph reports that a US Military report commissioned by the
Defense Intelligence Agency, found that "great progress has been made" in
neuroscience over the last decade, and that continuing advances offered the
prospect of a dramatic impact on military equipment and the way in which
wars are fought.

The report suggests that that future wars will utilize "pharmacological
landmines" which release brain-altering chemicals to incapacitate soldiers
upon their contact with them, scanners reading soldiers' minds and devices
boosting eyesight and hearing could all figure in military arsenals.

Research into "distributed human-machine systems", including robots and
military hardware controlled by an operator's mind, is another particular
area for optimism among researchers, according to the report. It says
significant progress has already been made and that prospects for use of the
field are "limited only by the creative imagination."

The report also explains that "the concept of torture could be transformed
in the future."
"It is possible that some day there could be a technique developed to
extract information from a prisoner that does not have any lasting side
effects."

Does this line of "medical research" give anyone pause?

Who are the human guinea pigs on whom these "pharmacological landmines" are
/ were tested?

Discomforting reminder about the nature of Nazi medical experimentation:

The debasement of American medicine is terrifying as it rapidly descends
along the blueprint of Nazi medicine whose unethical medical experimentation
during the Third Reich may be divided into three categories:

The FIRST CATEGORY consists of experiments aimed at facilitating the
survival of Axis military personnel.
In Dachau, physicians from the German air force and from the German
Experimental Institution for Aviation conducted high-altitude experiments,
using a low-pressure chamber, to determine the maximum altitude from which
crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety.
Scientists there carried out so-called freezing experiments using prisoners
to find an effective treatment for hypothermia. They also used prisoners to
test various methods of making seawater potable.

The SECOND CATEGORY of experimentation aimed at developing and testing
pharmaceuticals and treatment methods for injuries and illnesses which
German military and occupation personnel encountered in the field.
At the German concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Natzweiler,
Buchenwald, and Neuengamme, scientists tested immunization compounds and
sera for the prevention and treatment of contagious diseases, including
malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious
hepatitis. The Ravensbrueck camp was the site of bone-grafting experiments
and experiments to test the efficacy of newly developed sulfa
(sulfanilamide) drugs. At Natzweiler and Sachsenhausen, prisoners were
subjected to phosgene and mustard gas in order to test possible antidotes.

The THIRD CATEGORY of medical experimentation sought to advance the racial
and ideological tenets of the Nazi worldview.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/2557025/Future-war
s-to-be-fought-with-mind-drugs.html
TELEGRAPH
Future wars 'to be fought with mind drugs'
Future wars could see opponents attacking each other's minds, according to a
report for the US military.

( Emphasis by Justice Lover)

Thursday, August 7, 2008

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org/ and http://ahrp.blogspot.com/

FYI

Despite lack of evidence of their clinical effectiveness--as documented in the 18 month CATIE antipsychotic patient outcome study--and a mountain of evidence documenting their severe debilitating adverse effects, the second generation neuroleptics (so-called atypical antipsychotics) account for about 19 of every 20 prescriptions written for antipsychotic drugs in theU.S., according to data from health care research firm IMS Health.

Their inexplicable popularity has helped make antipsychotics the third best-selling class of drugs in the country. AstraZeneca's Seroquel, one of the drugs prescribed for Rebecca Riley who died at age four of a toxic drug reaction, is currently the most popular antipsychotic with sales climbing above $4 billion.

The News Journal reports (below) that attorneys general in three states have filed suit against AstraZeneca charging Seroquel's rise was "fueled by an illegal marketing campaign designed to promote the powerful drug for unapproved uses -- for children, for seniors with dementia and for sleeping disorders, to name a few."

In a bizarre turn of events, when a drug manufacturer--such as AstraZeneca,Eli Lilly, Janssen or Pfizer--face thousands of lawsuits from patients who say they are suffering from drug-induced serious adverse effects, the companies seek federal approval for new uses for the very drugs whose safetyhas been put into question.Only 18 percent of patients on Seroquel stayed on the drug for the fullcourse of the 18-month CATIE trial, the worst rate among the five drugs studied. Yet, we find an utter disconnect between FDA standards of approvalfor expanded uses of a drug and the evidence of serious risks of harm.

The News Journal reports that "patients like Wanda Bernal of Claymont, who has taken Seroquel for two years for her sleeping disorder, said she was diagnosed six months ago with diabetes, a disease linked to antipsychotic drugs."Yet even as she bemoans the drug's side effects -- the weight gain, the vivid dreams, the groggy feeling -- Bernal reveals the reliance she has developed on Seroquel."I can't stop taking it," she said, "because if I do, I won't be able to sleep at all."The News Journal reporter seems to have greater insight about a disturbing adverse signal that seems to have eluded FDA reviewers: Seroquel poses aserious risk of drug dependency--i.e., it may be highly addictive.

Given the serious hazards posed by Seroquel, how does the company and the FDA explain the fact that AstraZeneca is seeking FDA approval for Seroquel XR, its extended-release version of the drug, for the treatment of anxiety and depression? It would be the first atypical approved to treat those conditions, a prospect that baffles some patients who have taken the drug.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974

2008-08-05T23:03:00.000-07:00

http://downloads.truthpublishing.com/LivewithFredBaughman.pdf
AN INTERVIEW WITH Dr. Fred Baughman: ADHD fraud and the chemical holocaust against a generation of children

Mike: Hello everyone, this is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, and I’m talking about the mythical disease known as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and the overmedication of the population.
I want to give you a little background about why I’m so interested in
interviewing you. Our readers will really appreciate your information, because we cover this subject quite extensively. We have similar views on it and there is a lot of increasing interest out there.
People are realizing that they have been fooled all these years, so that’s why I wanted to get in touch with you.

Dr. Fred Baughman: In the area of child psychiatric drugs, the main focus has been the recently commenced FDA hearings, which pertain to reports of death, strokes and heart attacks in children and adults. The first report concerning Adderall came out about a year ago. Adderall is the number one ADHD drug, and that report dealt with 12 or so individuals that were said to have had strokes, if you can imagine a stroke occurring in a young child. Some were sudden deaths and others were heart complications, and a total of 20 to 30 such reports lead Health Canada to take Adderall off the market.

Mike: Now these records are through the voluntary MedWatch system, correct?

Dr. Baughman: Exactly, which the FDA explains in a booklet about the mechanics of MedWatch and other similar voluntary reporting schemes. They confessed that such schemes ordinarily identify no more than 1 percent of actual occurrences. So at any rate, we had that occurrence about a year ago with Health Canada taking Adderall off the market and our FDA not taking Adderall off the market. Subsequently, we learned our FDA lobbied Health Canada behind-the-scenes not to take it off the market.

Mike: That is unbelievable. The FDA applied pressure to foreign nations to protect dangerous drugs in our own market?

Dr. Baughman: Yes, it’s just that. Then about three or four months ago, Health Canada put Adderall back on the market. It wasn’t because they had any good evidence of its safety or effectiveness. Adderall is a mixture of the two salts of amphetamine, so it’s a pure amphetamine.

Mike: I want to talk to you more about what’s actually in these drugs later.

Dr. Baughman: The fascinating thing about Adderall is that it was a weight reduction drug for adults called Obetrol. It’s was so extremely addictive that Obetrol was taken off the market for that reason. Now we have the FDA bringing this extraordinarily addictive drug to market for little children.

Mike: So it was too dangerous for adults but not unsafe for children?

Dr. Baughman: In fact, they are bringing it to market for entirely normal little children said to have the illusory, bogus disease called ADHD.

Mike: For those reading, you’re a pediatric neurologist, correct?

Dr. Baughman: Yes, and I practiced both adult and child neurology; board-certified in both. I have been a long-standing fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.

Mike: Okay, so you come from the world of what I might call conventional medicine. You are an M.D., and yet, over the years, and I’m sure you’ll explain how this happened, you found some mass distortions happening with ADHD so you launched a web site called www.ADHDfraud.org. My first question:
At what point as a pediatric neurologist did you begin to see something was wrong with this picture?

Baughman: I began to publish actual research works when I was in training, first at Sinai Hospital in New York and after that, at the Boston Veteran Hospital. After the first 10 years in my practice, which was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I published a considerable body of original research mainly having to do with genetically determined brain decisions or neurological diseases and chromosome abnormalities. Much of that work was published with Dr. Joseph Mann, also of Grand Rapids.

I have discovered and described actual diseases, and that’s the background that I bring to my newfound duty of evaluating and critiquing modern-day psychiatry, especially where it pertains to their wholly fraudulent claims that their diagnoses, such as ADHD, bipolar OCD and depression are actual brain diseases when they are not.

Now I was in private practice from 1964 to 1993 when I retired, and it was during the ‘70s that I began to notice, first in Grand Rapids and then here in San Diego where I relocated, the increasing frequency of the burst of diagnoses of hyperactivity and brain damage. Then in 1980, the American Psychiatric Association invented ADD, or attention deficit disorder, and with that the epidemic seemed to worsen.

It appeared to me that the frequency of such diagnoses and their treatment with Ritalin, an amphetamine-like drug every bit as addictive as cocaine, were increasing in my community. At first I took note and later became alarmed at the frequency with which children were being referred to me by schools through their physician with these diagnostic labels put in place, basically by schoolteachers.

Mike: This was a “disease” that almost appeared to be spreading like a virus.

Dr. Baughman: It was a notion of a disease, an illusory disease; with child psychiatry repeating the lie often enough that it was becoming a reality, especially for the educational establishment and teachers nationwide, and increasingly, the media or the public at large. Then in 1997 with the epidemic standing somewhere around 500,000 to 700,000 nationwide, they simply rewrote the diagnostic criteria by adding hyperactivity to the attention deficit.

Mike: Do you mean to say that there is a group of psychiatrists who meet in a room somewhere and they just write down and invent whatever behavioral observations they want to assign to this disease definition?

Dr. Baughman: That is exactly the way it works. In medicine, including my specialty, neurology, if a curious, observant physician discovers a new abnormality in a patient in his practice or in his clinic at medical schools, that previously unobserved abnormality is the new disease. So there has to bean objective abnormality. In diabetes, there is elevated blood sugar in the blood throughout all the tissues. With cancer, a pathologist has to see cells that have abnormal nuclei and chromosomes under the microscope in order to contend that that patient has that disease or a disease. But in psychiatry, the committee of the diagnostic and statistical manual meets in a room and by a show of hands, they consider one another’s favorite galaxies or mixture of behaviors and vote those into existence and give it a code number or an entry into the DSM, and they are all psychiatric disorders. By the word “disorder,” they mean disease.

Mike: Can you give us an example of the type of behaviors that are listed in the DSM as being diseases or disorders?

Dr. Baughman: In the case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, here are the 14 symptoms that appeared in the 1987 DSM. Remember, a child found to have eight of them was deemed to have ADHD. Number one is often fidgets or squirms; two is trouble staying in one’s seat; three is easily distracted; four is can’t wait one’s turn; five is blurts out answers; six is trouble following instructions; seven is can’t sustain attention; eight is shifts from one activity to another; nine doesn’t play quietly; 10 talks excessively; 11 interrupts; 12 can’t listen; 13 loses things; 14 does dangerous things, thrill seeking and so on.

Mike: Wow, I think you just described probably half the population.

Dr. Baughman: Right, exactly, so much for their motivation. It’s just absolutely brilliant, the marketing scheme, as long as you get away with it.

Mike: And they are getting away with it.

Dr. Baughman: The Center for Disease Control estimated in 2004 that there were 4 million cases nationwide in children 17 and under.

Mike: Now isn’t it one out of every 10 children in public schools?

Dr. Baughman: As of 2003 I believe it was. Professor William Cary of the University of Pennsylvania testified to Congress that 17 percent of all school children as of 2003 are on some type of psychiatric drug, not all ADHD drugs and not all with an ADHD diagnosis. I think that the number today is probably one in five, or 20 percent. It was 17 percent according to Dr. Cary in 2003. It’s probably 20 percent today.

Mike: It’s astounding. Even if this disease were legitimate, this was something that doesn’t exist in other countries and it didn’t exist anywhere two generations ago. How do the psychiatrics explain the abrupt emergence of this apparent disease?

Dr. Baughman: They don’t much explain it. People who try to ask legitimate questions of them are generally ignored because they don’t have any scientific answers. They know it is a big lie, and as long as they are getting away with it and as long as they have full access to the U.S. Department of Education and the lobbyists to members of Congress, they enact the diagnosis and treatment of this into law. Consequently, there are laws on the books that mandate a certain level of diagnosis in the schools and that even pay extra to school districts for every child that is diagnosed with one of their bogus and contrived diseases and treated as special-education subjects. Taxpayers end up paying two or three times as much for children thus labeled as they do for normal kids.

Mike: Let me clarify that. So a school district that gets more of its children are diagnosed with ADHD, it gets rewarded with more funds?

Dr. Baughman: They get more funds. There are even laws on the books that pay parents a stipend for every child they have who is diagnosed and thus considered disabled. So I think they get Social Security disability. I think the stipend, at least a few years ago, was $400 a month.

Mike: Isn’t this a situation where everybody is on the take, so they can turn the bodies of our children into profit machines?

Dr. Baughman: That’s exactly what is happening. These entirely bogus, junk science, pseudoscientific labels are a barcode on the forehead of a child, and once the label gets in their record, it sticks. They can’t get rid of it. If a child or an adult gets one of these labels, this stigmatizes that individual. They are going to have more trouble getting health care insurance and trouble finding employment. The armed services will not take children who have been on these drugs. I must confess that as the Armed Forces have failed to meet their quota for the Iraq war, they have dropped their standards and they are recently accepting persons who have such labels and have been on such drugs.

Mike: Well, let’s get back to the parents if we could for a minute. People in positions of authority,people who apparently have an education in neurology or psychiatry, are telling parents that their children have a chemical brain disorder. It’s a very convincing argument to the parents.

Dr. Baughman: Yes it is, and I must point out that virtually every physician-patient encounter in the country, regardless of specialty, has wholeheartedly embraced this scheme. That includes the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Neurology Society, of which I am a member, the American Academy of Family Practice, and by various psychological groups. The American Academy of Pediatrics in fact, republished in the DSM for diagnostic criteria for ADHD in the journal Pediatrics, I think it was in 1999, and subsequently published a guideline for the psychostimulant treatment of ADHD the following year, I believe in 2000. In so doing, the American Academy of Pediatrics, along with the other groups I just mentioned, served notice that they intended to enter the business of diagnosing and drugging entirely normal children for profit. That’s one of the things that has spurred the epidemic.

Mike: Now, do you have any colleagues who are also standing up and openly questioning this practice, or are you pretty much finding yourself isolated?

Dr. Baughman: I’ve been isolated, but there are a small cadre of honest scientific physicians who feel as I do, and a smaller number yet, that are speaking out. I’ve really been surprised to behold the impact that my web site has had. Now I’ve got a book that is going to be published soon.

Mike: Can you give us the title of that book please?

Dr. Baughman: Yes, it’s called “The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes Patients of Normal Children.” It will be available through www.Trafford.com—Trafford publishing company—and it should be available within the week.

Mike: Have you been pressured to censor your views in any way or have you taken any heat?

Dr. Baughman: Back in 1994-95, I made a formal written proposal to the American Academy of Neurology to write practice parameter for ADHD that would essentially determine the best advisable practices for the disease. The Academy wrote an encouraging response and gave me the go ahead in writing. I presented them with a statement saying that my review of the world scientific literature found no evidence that ADHD was a disease. The next thing that happened was that I heard from members of the Quality Assurance Committee that my efforts wouldn’t really be needed any longer.
So I was essentially deep-sixed; I was put on the shelf.

Mike: Do you know which of these groups accept money from pharmaceutical companies?

Dr. Baughman: Every one of them. Every one of them accepts lots of money and there is no such thing as a psychiatric expert in any psychiatric disorder that is not wholly owned or operated by the pharmaceutical industry.

Mike: That’s a big statement.

Dr. Baughman: That is a big statement and a big and tragic truth.

Mike: So these experts are really just paid promoters of the drugs.

Dr. Baughman: They’ve got M.D. degrees and so they masquerade as scientific physicians but they have sold their souls and they have sold whatever scientific credentials they ever had.

Mike: What kind of money can they make writing these prescriptions for children?

Dr. Baughman: They are making an immense amount of money; millions of dollars.

Mike: This is all very difficult for the average American parent or consumer to swallow. They simply cannot believe that individuals would be so evil as to sell their souls to pharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Baughman: I think this has a great deal to do with the magnitude of the psychiatric epidemic in general and the ADHD epidemic. Parents, ordinary layman, going with their children at the behest of school officials in the first place, could not believe that someone would tell a total lie to them. They cannot imagine that. At the moment, I’m working with individuals to put together a consumer fraud suit here in the state of California, based on fraudulent diagnosis of ADHD and subsequent drugging.
If you’ve been lied to and told you have a disease when you don’t and then drugged, that’s battery.

Mike: Will you keep me posted on this action?

Dr. Baughman: Yes, people keep asking about it. I tell them to keep an eye on my web site because if we get this thing going, I certainly will be posting notes as to our progress or lack of it.

Mike: If you set a precedent in California, this thing could really sweep the nation.

Dr. Baughman: That is what we hope. They’ve had such obscene amounts of drug company money to defend themselves, that no one has really succeeded against them as is necessary to put an end to this fraud. It’s so much more than a fraud when they actually poison normal children, which is what they’re doing.

Mike: I’ve heard it described somewhere else on the internet as a chemical holocaust or crimes against humanity.

Dr. Baughman: There has been a perversion of the language. They have taken entirely normal children and made patients out of them by diagnosing them with fictional chemical imbalances of the brain. It’s a total fraud. I have observed two national news programs recently, talking about a new kind of disability that our soldiers in the Iraqi conflict are developing. I listened to hear what the new disease was. Lo and behold, it was PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.
I grant you, there are a lot of troubling visions and experiences that all men in a war are exposed to, and these cause troubling flashbacks and troubled sleep. But it’s not an organic disease of the brain as psychiatry would have us believe, nor are these symptoms inevitable. They would have all the soldiers over there believe that PTSD is a disease with a grave prognosis. They tell them they are never going to get rid of these terrible flashbacks without the help of a new drug that they’re trying to develop to obliterate those painful memories.

Mike: Well, that’s the way to make a permanent customer, isn’t it?

Dr. Baughman: Yes, and the media has bought into this psychiatric disease mongering, and that’s why it is rampant. That’s why the drugging of our children is rampant.

Mike: Isn’t the next great marketing frontier for these companies adult ADHD now?

Dr. Baughman: Well yes, it’s not the future; it’s the present. There has been a tremendous year-to-year growth in the billions of prescriptions for Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, and all the other amphetamines.
My alma mater, New York University School of Medicine, is at the very forefront of this fraud. There was a story in the magazine section of the New York Times roughly a year ago, describing the launch of an adult ADHD clinic at the university. They had a hall or a big space at the Helmsley Hotel. I guess they had signs out on the curb saying this was underway on the top floor. If you want to be checked for ADHD, go on up.

Mike: They had a recruiting service there.

Dr. Baughman: People went up and they took this behavioral checklist test and 85 percent of those taking the test had the disease. They got labeled and were on their way the very next day to their doctors with a new label.

Mike: Is it true that I could make an appointment with a psychiatrist walk in and say I have trouble focusing, I’m easily distracted and I fidget a lot, and right then I could be diagnosed and put on these drugs?

Dr. Baughman: Let me tell you something. In a 2002 survey done by the American Academy Of Child and Adult Psychiatry, they looked at the surveying practices of child psychiatrists and found that 91 percent of children seeing child psychiatrists came out of their initial visit with a prescription for a drug.

Mike: Ninety-one percent?

Dr. Baughman: Ninety-one percent. I would say that a third to a half of all the patients I saw as a neurologist had no organic disease. Now contrast that with this 2002 study survey of child psychiatry, where 91 percent are coming away with a prescription. Were the 90 percent commonsense parents? Most likely.

Mike: If you look at the big picture of what’s happening here, what does this say about scientific integrity in Western civilization, if these well-educated people in this so-called scientific organization can invent such a widespread hoax? Does this have you questioning some of scientific truth today, or what’s your view on it?
Dr. Baughman: I pointed out earlier that it’s not just psychiatry, but its pediatrics, neurologists, family practitioners, psychologists, and school teachers across the country that have become pawns and are not seeing the evil of their ways by becoming pushers for the drugging establishment. This is the standard of practice across the board. The entire profession has been bought out. On average, every physician in the country gets $13,000 per year from the drug companies.

Mike: In what form?

Dr. Baughman: They get free dinners, golf, free trips, but that money isn’t spread around equally. It is spread strategically so that your top policy makers in medicine—your top psychiatrists and your heads of departments—get more money than anyone else. Some get about $500,000 a year, and it has been so successful that no one within academic medicine can speak out as I speak out. I knew a long time ago I would not prove compatible with the sort of control from above that is the rule in academic medicine.

Mike: So you are saying that anybody in academic medicine has to go along to get along.

Dr. Baughman: If they were to stand up and say things that I say, they would be out the next day. NYU has become a hive for disease-inventing psychiatry. I got the sad news that the department received more funds to train more poisoners of normal children.

Mike: Well, I think it’s obvious that you have experienced the idea that when you operate with integrity in this world, it can be a pretty lonely path. Now let’s talk about poisoning and the long-term implications. What happens to Americans when one out of five children grow up on speed or some other kind of psychiatric drug?

Dr. Baughman: Well, we are at that number clearly. We are drugging well over 10 million. There is no sign that it’s getting better. I pointed out that ADHD in adults is a rapidly growing market sector, so I think when you are told you’ve got a disease and you are in fact normal, you are damaged just by the label. When you are given a drug to normalize an abnormality in your body or brain that doesn’t exist, that’s poisoning and you are going to be damaged by that drug every single time. So the side effect rate for Ritalin or for Adderall is 100 percent. There is no kid that gets put on these drugs that isn’t altered by them. Their perceptions, behaviors, feelings and emotions are always changed and not always noticeably. They are always altered and there are horrible long-term consequences that we can’t begin to know.

Mike: What long-term side effects have you heard of ?

Dr. Baughman: I mentioned before that Health Canada found that there were roughly 20 to 30 cases of strokes in young children, roughly 10 or 12 sudden deaths, heart abnormalities. Just before the Feb. 9 FDA hearing, there were 51 reported cases of complications, deaths, strokes and heart attacks reported to the FDA MedWatch program. I have written testimony on the record for the Feb. 9 FDA conference.
In fact, back in the 1990s, I testified in a Kansas City case for Mr. Gary Bell on behalf of his daughter Stephanie. She underwent heart surgery for what I think was a complication of her long-term Ritalin use. At any rate, Gary Bell and I did a freedom of information request for all the deaths and injuries related to Ritalin or methylphenidate, and for 1990-1997 there were 160 deaths from methylphenidate Ritalin. There were another 26 deaths for 1998 to 2000, 186 deaths for the decade.

Mike: Again, these are only voluntary reports.

Dr. Baughman: These are voluntary reporting schemes to MedWatch, 1 percent of actual incidents the FDA says. That means there may have been 18,600 for that decade. I have personally been consulted in about a dozen death cases, including Matthew Smith of Royal Oak, Michigan, which is just outside of Detroit. He and his parents had been coerced to keep him on Ritalin from first grade to age 13.
He suddenly fell over while playing with friends and died. At autopsy, his heart muscle was diffusely enlarged, scarred and infiltrated with fat. The medical examiner, Dr. Drakovic, a highly experienced pathologist, said there was no doubt in his mind that Matthew Smith died of long-term chronic amphetamine methylphenidate Ritalin poisoning.

Mike: So we have a population that is potentially setting themselves up for long-term death and harm just like drug addicts?

Dr. Baughman: Yes. Reports that young athletes, college and high school athletes suddenly drop dead are not uncommon. There was a pro ballplayer, I think a pitcher on the Baltimore Orioles, who had been on supplements that contained ephedrine, which is very similar to the amphetamines. My feeling is that steroid use and amphetamine use is very, very common in athletes at the high school level and up. I think every one of those deaths is conceivably related to psychiatric drugs, most of which have startling coronary cardiac heart consequences. Not just amphetamines, but all of these so-called antipsychotics, which are horrible poisons the pharmaceutical industry is hoisting upon the population.
Almost all those drugs have cardiac side effects as well.

Mike: Before I wrap this up. I have to ask about the front groups for psychiatric medicine, like Teen Screen and CHAD. Give us a rundown on these groups and what they do.

Dr. Baughman: Teen Screen is coming to us out of Columbia University, once an esteemed medical school uptown from NYU, which was also once a proud scientific institute. David Schaefer, the psychiatrist who has authored Teen Screen, along with the pharmaceutical sponsors, is not content with the rate of growth of psychiatric poisoning in this country, so they want to make it mandatory that all kids in our captive population, our schools to take diagnostic tests.

Mike: So they think four out of every 10 kids…

Dr. Baughman: That is probably a low yield for Teen Screen. I would think that more of these screens would have a 60, 70 or even 80 percent positive diagnostic rate like the adult ADHD screen run by New York University at one of the Helmsley Hotels. As long as they’ve got enough friends in Congress and in the White House to write these things into law, they’re going to carry on. Teen Screen is very much a product of the White House. The President’s new Freedom Commission on Mental Health launched the notion of Teen Screen.

Mike: Which is mandatory mental health screening, right?

Dr. Baughman: Yes. I think Illinois already passed it and made it law. They are not asking parents whether or not they want their kids screened. This is Big Brother to the max. This is worse than anything Stalin could have imagined. This population had better wake up; the implications go far beyond the drugging of our normal school children.

Mike: That leads me to my final question: How does all of this ever end? How does this return to normal? When is the fraud exposed? How long will it take? If the pharmaceutical companies are so powerful and control so many big players, how does this ever get exposed?

Dr. Baughman: Exactly. Right now there is a pharmaceutical company lobbyist for every member of Congress and probably three or four for every senator. Who knows how many for the president? It is really a horror story unfolding. When I started medicine in 1964, I thought we were a wonderful profession. We didn’t have to compromise ourselves by inventing things to do. That has changed 100 percent. The medical profession is a disgrace today.

Mike: Again for those reading, you are hearing from Dr. Fred Baughman, pediatric neurologist and M.D. Your web site is www.ADHDfraud.org. What is the title of your upcoming book?

Dr. Baughman: “The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes Patients of Normal Children.”

Mike: Okay, that’s a title that we will be looking forward to. Any last thoughts, Dr. Baughman?

Dr. Baughman: Yes, you might also consider getting a DVD production by Gary Null Associates in New York City, called “Drugging Our Children.” I was interviewed for it in a powerful hard-hitting video view of what we’ve talked about here. I also have a video that I produced with footage from the 1998 ADHD consensus conference. My video is called “ADHD Total 100% Fraud.” It can be purchased through my web site.

Mike: If you have any new items, books, videos or press releases, send them my way. I will be happy to get that out to the readers.

Dr. Baughman: I sure will.

2008-08-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS, NOT "MENTAL ILLNESS", MAKE PATIENTS PERMANENTLY DISABLED ( WITH POSSIBLE PERMANENT BRAIN DAMAGE AND LIFE SHORTENED BY 25 YEARS )
by Justice Lover

The following article was forwarded to me today by Peter Myers :

Psychotropic drugs, not the "mental illness", make patients permanently disabled

From: Gary Kohls <gkohls@cpinternet.com> Date: 29.06.2008 06:36 AM

Subject: Please read the following article thoroughtly. Then access the handful of articles attached that prove that it is the psychotropic drugs (and not the "mental illness" labels) that are making huge numbers of "psych patients" permanently disabled, incurable (?) and, what is almost worse, dependent on (dependence = addiction) the neuroactive, psychoactive and usually neurotoxic drugs.

Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 224

Excerpts from Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic:

Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 7, Number 1, Spring 2005

Full article, with extensive documentation, accessible at:

http://psychrights.org/index.htm

Excerpted, with minimal editing, by Gary G. Kohls, MD, Duluth, MN

The percentage of Americans disabled by mental illness has increased fivefold since 1955, when Thorazine – remembered today as psychiatry’s first “wonder” drug – was introduced into the market.

There are now nearly 6 million Americans disabled by mental illness, and this number increases by more than 400 people each day. A review of the scientific literature reveals that it is our drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this epidemic. The drugs increase the likelihood that a person will become chronically ill, and induce new and more severe psychiatric symptoms in a significant percentage of patients.

E. Fuller Torrey, in his 2001 book The Invisible Plague, concluded that insanity had risen to the level of an epidemic. This epidemic has unfolded in lockstep with the ever-increasing use of psychiatric drugs.

The number of disabled mentally ill has increased nearly six-fold since Thorazine was introduced.

The number of disabled mentally ill has also increased dramatically since 1987, the year Prozac was introduced.

Anti-psychotics, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs create perturbations in neurotransmitter functions. In response, the brain goes through a series of compensatory adaptations. Neurons both release less serotonin and down-regulate (or decrease) their number of serotonin receptors. The density of serotonin receptors in the brain may decrease by 50% or more. After a few weeks, the patient’s brain is functioning in a manner that is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.

Conditions that disrupt brain chemistry may cause delusions, hallucinations, disordered thinking, and mood swings – the symptoms of insanity. Infectious agents, tumors, metabolic and toxic disorders and various diseases could all affect the brain in this manner. Psychiatric medications also disrupt brain chemistry. Psychotropic drugs increase the likelihood that a person will become chronically ill, and they cause a significant percentage of patients to become ill in new and more severe ways.

TURNING PATIENTS CHRONICALLY ILL

Neuroleptics (= Anti-psychotics = Anti-schizophrenics = Major Tranquilizers)

In an NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) study, short-term (6 weeks) anti-psychotic drug-treated patients were much improved compared to placebo (75% vs. 23%). However patients who received placebo treatment were less likely to be re-hospitalized over the next 3 years than were those who received any of the three active phenothiazines.

Relapse was found to be significantly related to the dose of the tranquilizing medication the patient was receiving before he was put on placebo – the higher the dose, the greater the probability of relapse.

Neuroleptics increased the patients’ biological vulnerability to psychosis. A retrospective study by Bockoven also indicated that the drugs were making patients chronically ill.

There were three NIMH-funded studies conducted during the 1970s that examined this possibility (whether first-episode psychotic episodes could be treated without medications), and in each instance, the newly admitted patients treated without drugs did better than those treated in a conventional manner (i.e. with anti-psychotic drugs).

Patients who were treated without neuroleptics in an experimental home staffed by nonprofessionals had lower relapse rates over a 2-year period than a control group treated with drugs in a hospital. Patients treated without drugs were the better functioning group as well.

The brain responds to neuroleptics – which block 70% to 90% of all D2 dopamine receptors in the brain – as though they are a pathological insult. To compensate, dopaminergic brain cells increase the density of their D2 receptors by 30% or more. The brain is now supersensitive to dopamine and becomes more biologically vulnerable to psychosis and is at particularly high risk of severe relapse should he or she abruptly quit taking the drugs.

Neuroleptics can produce a dopamine supersensitivity that leads to both dyskinetic and psychotic symptoms. An implication is that the tendency toward psychotic relapse in a patient who had developed such a supersensitivity is determined by more that just the normal course of the illness.

With minimal or no exposure to neuroleptics, at least 40% of people who suffered a psychotic break and were diagnosed with schizophrenia would not relapse after leaving the hospital, and perhaps as many as 65% would function fairly well over the long term. However, once first-episode patients were treated with neuroleptics, a different fate awaited them. Their brains would undergo drug-induced changes that would increase their biological vulnerability to psychosis, and this would increase the likelihood that they would become chronically ill (and thus permanently disabled).

In the mid 1990s, several research teams reported that the drugs cause atrophy of the cerebral cortex and an enlargement of the basal ganglia. The drugs were causing structural changes in the brain. The drug-induced enlargement of the basal ganglia was associated with greater severity of both negative and “positive” (schizophrenic) symptoms. Over the long term the drugs cause changes in the brain associated with a worsening of the very symptoms the drugs are supposed to alleviate.

Antidepressants

The story of antidepressants is a bit subtler, and it leads to the same conclusion that these drugs increase chronic illness over time. Well-designed studies, the differences between the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs and placebo are not impressive. About 61% of the drug-treated patients improved, versus 46% of the placebo patients, producing a net drug benefit of only 15%.

At the end of 16 weeks (in a study comparing cognitive behavior therapy, interpersonal therapy, the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine and placebo) there were no significant differences among treatments, including placebo plus clinical management, for the less severely depressed and functionally impaired patients. Only the severely depressed patients fared better on a tricyclic than on placebo. However, at the end of 18 months, even this minimal benefit disappeared. Stay-well rates were best for the cognitive behavior group (30%) and poorest for the imipramine group (19%).

Antidepressants were making people chronically ill, just like the anti-psychotics were. In 1985, a U.K. group reported that in a 2-year study comparing drug therapy to cognitive therapy, relapse was significantly higher in the pharmacotherapy group. Long-term use of antidepressants may increase the patient’s biochemical vulnerability to depression and thus worsen the course of affective disorders. An analysis of 27 studies showed that whether one treats a depressed patient for 3 months of 3 years, it does not matter when one stops the drugs. The longer the drug treatment, the higher the likelihood of relapse.

Benzodiazepines

Xanax (a benzodiazepine class “minor” tranquilizer) patients got better during the first four weeks of treatment; they did not improve any more in weeks 4 to 8, and their symptoms began to worsen after that. A high percentage relapsed and by the end of 23 weeks, they were worse off than patients treated without drugs on five different outcomes measures. Patients tapered off Xanax suffered nearly 4 times as many panic attacks as the non-drug patients and 25% of the Xanax patients suffered from rebound anxiety more severe than when they began the study.

Then and Now

Today’s drug-treated patients spend much more time in hospital beds and are far more likely to die from their mental illness than they were in 1896. Modern treatments have set up a revolving door and appear to be a leading cause of injury and death.

MANUFACTURING MENTAL ILLNESS

It is well-known that all of the major classes of psychiatric drugs – anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, benzodiazepines, and stimulants for ADHD – can trigger new and more severe psychiatric symptoms in a significant percentage of patients. It is easy to see this epidemic-creating factor at work with Prozac and the other SSRIs. ...

CONCLUSION

There is an outside agent fueling this epidemic of mental illness, only it is to be found in the medicine cabinet. Psychiatric drugs perturb normal neurotransmitter function, and while that perturbation may curb symptoms over a short term, over the long run it increases the likelihood that a person will become chronically ill, or ill with new or more severe symptoms. A review of the scientific literature shows quite clearly that it is our drug-based paradigm of care that is fueling this modern-day plague.

Excerpts by Gary G. Kohls, MD, From Robert Whitaker’s long essay at http://psychrights.org/index.htm

NOTE: Robert Whitaker wrote the ground-breaking book, Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, a book that should be required reading for everybody, (check out www.madinamerica.com).

THE 17TH BLOG FOR THE OUTLAW OF PSYCHIATRY NOW !

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Friday, November 7, 2008

http://www.alcohol-drug-treatment.com/blog/2008/11/06/psychiatry-the-pharmaceutical-industry-and-the-fda/

Psychiatry The Pharmaceutical Industry And The FDA

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Integrity in Science Watch - Nov. 3, 2008

Monday, November 3, 2008

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Monday, October 27, 2008

Friday, October 24, 2008

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Drugs and Disclosure

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Friday, October 3, 2008

http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/10/nemeroff-steps-down-as-emory-psychiatry-chair/

Nemeroff Steps Down As Emory Psychiatry Chair

Monday, September 29, 2008

http://www.naturalnews.com/024353.html

Why the Institutions of Western Finance and Western Medicine are Both Doomed to Fail

#1 They're both based on fraud and deception

#2 When problems arise, they both treat symptoms rather than solving the causes

#3 They both enrich powerful corporations while impoverishing the People

#4 They're both based on arrogance and the worship of money

#5 They both seek instant profits at the expense of future generations

#6 Both are run by unindicted criminals

#7 Both are doomed to collapse

The real world will be a shock to many

Friday, September 26, 2008

Results of a Nutrient Community Health Program in People Affected by AIDS in South Africa

The Solid Scientific Rationale

A Service to All Mankind

Friday, September 26, 2008

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Global Psychiatrists Unite to Improve Services in Mental Health

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Why has psychiatry become so dominant in mental health services?

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

http://psychiatricnews.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/psychiatry-presents-yet-one-more-lunatic-idea/

Gandhi Pills? Psychiatrist Argues for Moral Performance Enhancers

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Research

Exposure to antipsychotics and risk of stroke: self controlled case series study

Abstract

Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/08/25/antipsychotic-drug-use-up-in-elderly-despite.html

Antipsychotic Drug Use Up in Elderly Despite Warnings

Canadian study suggests cautions fail to alert docs to effectiveness of alternative therapies

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Oppressive Society

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Friday, August 15, 2008

Thursday, August 7, 2008