Posted on 01/12/2013 9:34:04 AM PST by JohnPDuncan
Since I first began working as a medical expert in product liability cases way back in the early 1990s, I’ve spent innumerable hours culling the sealed data contained within the files of companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly. Among other things, I long ago found evidence that Paxil and Prozac cause suicidality in adults. These discoveries then led to settlements in product liability suits brought against the two companies brought by surviving family members. I’ve also communicated my conclusions in books like Talking Back to Prozac and the Antidepressant Fact Book and in scientific articles but the primary data until recently remained sealed.
Drug-company-groomed data creates the biggest loophole in the FDA’s evaluations of drug safety. In May 2006 GSK published a 'Dear Healthcare Provider' letter admitting that Paxil causes suicidality in depressed adults, but even that data was diluted before it was processed. The real picture is even worse.
Paxil Suicide Data Sealed in Company Files
I recently published analyses of previously sealed GSK data on Paxil suicide in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. I combed the data out of GSK files during a several-day investigation of the company’s Paxil records. My original medical/legal report recently became unsealed and provided the basis for the published reports.
The first report shows how GSK omitted some suicides and suicide attempts from their tables and from the data sent to the FDA.[ii] The second shows how the company hid data on Paxil-induced akathisia (psychomotor restlessness) and its relationship to suicidality.[iii] The third shows how the company hid the basic concept of activation or stimulation that recently became a central part of the newly mandated antidepressant labels.[iv]
(Excerpt) Read more at breggin.com ...
He denies being a Scientologist, but there is a history, as there is with his wife. He has certainly been connected to the CCHR (the component of the "Church" of Scientology most closely associated with anti- antidepressant propaganda), although he has taken great pains to sever all ties and repudiate them -- at least once the connection became known.
I think it's a valid, and in my opinion still open question.
That all said ...
You don't have to be a Scientologist to be a rabid opponent of antidepressants. A lot of people in the psychology and psychiatry professions don't like them. Why not? Actually, for the very same reason that Scientologists don't: it cuts into their racket. Why should somebody pay hundreds of dollars a month to talk to a shrink when the pharmaceutical alternative is so much cheaper and so much more effective?
We would never even consider the prospect of trying to "talk" a diabetic out of his insulin problem, but when the gland in question is the brain, for some reason we still hang onto these thoroughly discredited ideas that brain chemistry problems can be solved by talking. They can't. People who claim they can be are quacks.
Pretty much what I would expect a practitioner to say, especially one who is a quack.
Most depression is not cured by talk-therapy, all propaganda by quacks to the contrary not withstanding. The onset of most affective disorder is spontaneous and it typically lifts spontaneously as well, usually after a few months, sometimes after years. "Talking" to people about brain chemistry problems doesn't cure them. The best non-drug treatment isn't counseling, it's exercise. But of course, there's no money for talk therapists in doing that.
There's also no way to address most of these claims scientifically, because there is no control within the subjects own phenomenology. Suppose the disease was progressing, and had reached a point of discomfort where antidepressants were prescribed, but had not yet reached a point where suicidal or homicidal thoughts had begun? In which case the dosage might be too low, or perhaps there is no safe, effective dosage to suppress this symptom...
The truth is many people having a major depressive episode don't have homicidal or suicidal thoughts at all. Those who do might have them with or without the drug. As with all drugs, these issues show up in the clinical trials and prescribing doctors and patients are warned to look for (what may or may not be) the side-effects.
Seriously ill people being treated need to be monitored whatever the illness is.
Yeah, there was a *really* weird posting yesterday along the same lines of this one. Hope the AdminMods have got their eyes open for any subversive activity by that scam cult.
“but when the gland in question is the brain,”
The brain is a gland?
"Why is it sold?"
To make lots and lots of money.
There are actually four glands within the brain proper, and to the extent that the CNS also secrets neurotransmitters and other chemicals specific to its purpose, yes, it is a gland.
And I repeat: "talking" to nerve cells about how they're chemically malfunctioning doesn't alter them.
Yes, and it makes money because it has efficacy.
It’s infowars but seems legit
Seeing as we’re on the subject of psychological problems caused by medication and the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to conceal the harm their products are causing, I wonder if I could mention a pet topic of mine: artificial hormones in pregnancy.
The human body has an enormously complex regulatory system based around steroidal hormones. The most commonly known ones are testosterone, progesterone, estradiol, cortisone and aldosterone, but there are dozens of others along with a whole host of enzyme systems that manufacture, change or destroy each type of hormone. There are a few main types of receptors targeted by these hormones (androgen, estrogen, progesterone, corticosteroid and mineralocorticoid), but each receptor type has many subtypes with differing binding affinities to these molecules. Basically it’s an enormously complex signalling and control system with many inbuilt checks and balances, that controls a waide variety of body functions, everything from blood pressure to muscle growth.
The pharmaceutical industry has developed a wide range of artificial versions of these hormones, including anabolic steroids, contraceptive hormones and corticosteroids such as prednisone. Collectively, artificial hormones are probably the single most widely used class of drugs there are in the entirety of medicine.
In adults, artificial hormones can perform many useful and beneficial medical functions, but I’ve uncovered a dark side to them which I don’t think anyone’s properly appreciated before. When they’re given to a pregnant woman, they cause misdirected development in her unborn child. They can produce malformed or missing limbs, serious abnormalities of major organs, infertility, intersexed or opposite-sexed development, and abnormalities of brain development that result in serious mental illnesses later in life. The specific thing that got me started on this was looking at the bizarre and horrific situation of people who were born with a woman’s brain in a man’s body after being exposed to one of these substances (a drug called DES), but along the way I’ve discovered several other groups of people affected in other, equally horrific ways too. The pharmaceutical industry has so far done a very good job of covering things up, and I think they’ve treated it as a series of separate disasters rather than realising that the problem lies with artificial hormones as a whole.
They disrupt the normal workings of the steroid hormone system.
In adults that doesn’t matter too much. It results in side effects, but they’re only temporary and go away once the medication is discontinued. In the unborn child it’s a whole different story though. You get misdirected development, that can affect any part of the body or brain, depending on what the drug is and at what stage of pregnancy it was administered. Once something has been built wrong, it stays that way for the remainder of that person’s life.
I was wondering if there’s any way people here in Free Republic can help me raise awareness of the problem. I’ve spent the best part of 2 years looking into this, and there definitely is a problem as far as a drug called DES is concerned, but I think it goes well beyond that. If you’ve wondered why so many bizarre and outlandish things have been happening lately, and so many crazy people doing crazy things, here is your answer.
I added a couple of comments to a story earlier about a transsexual basketball player who shows all the signs of being a victim of DES:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2969058/posts
Please, have a think about what I’ve said there. This is no joke. To the best of my knowledge, a colossal medical disaster has taken place and is continuing to take place affecting literally millions of people. Everyone I’ve tried contacting so far has either ignored me or at least not been sufficiently inspired to act. As I see it, I’ve been given this one chance to do a tremendous good, but so far I’ve failed, and with each day that passes, more pregnant women are being given these drugs and more babies will be born with lifelong problems and disabilities as a result. Is there any way you people can help me raise awareness of what these drugs can do to the unborn child?
Thank you
Hugh Easton
Depressed people are often suicidal. Maybe the medication wasn’t strong enough?
Pretty much what I would expect a practitioner to say, especially one who is a quack.
No need to get snippy about it, you may note I only said chemicals don't cure depression. I did not recommend "Talk Therapy", you brought it up. I don't care, if exercise works, that's great. Maybe a religious epiphany will do it for some. I only know that loading people up with psychoactive chemicals is setting them up to experience a dangerous crash when they feel good enough and quit their meds abruptly and go totally bonkers.
You are absolutely right about the link between talk therapy and money, the process is "open ended" and will find a rapid conclusion only when the cash runs out...
Regards,
GtG
PS I'm not any sort of "practitioner". I'm a retired engineer, a recovering "Liter a day" drunk, and currently on antidepressants. Dry for over nine years and life is good.
Suprise: Judges bought off by big Pharma... you trust these people too much!
Practically every single mass school shooting from 1989 onwards it comes out that the perpetrator has been found to be on suicide pills. Previously there weren’t that many ‘mass’ school shootings, most school shootings were by a disgruntled student or fired teacher and only one or two killed or wounded. (check wikipedia “history of school shootings).
1989 was the year Prozac was released and then big pharma push began.
I get a very big pain in my rear listening to folks like this guy, who spread disinformation. He's as bad as the anti- vaccine people, and I suspect that his motives are far less pure.
Antidepressent use has always had the risk of suicide, ever since the first crude versions came out in the seventies.
Sometimes a severely depressed person is so depressed they are physically unable to do much. I would call it face-down-on-the-bed depressed.
So they are given an antidepressant. So they start improving. Sometimes they gain physical energy faster than their emotions improve. So a profoundly depressed person who couldnt open a can of peas previously, is now still profoundly depressed but can move around and do things, Like kill themselves.
If they were just able to wait a bit longer, their mood would catch up with their physical response.
It’s not that easy. I knew one of the top biochemical psychiatrists in the country back in the 1980’s. He was a high grade genius type, and his take on psychiatric drugs explains a lot.
“Neurochemistry is incredibly complex, and science is just starting to make inroads into understanding it. Drugs are a shotgun solution to bb gun problems. But people are so incredibly desperate for something, anything, that can help them, that they are more than willing to try extremely powerful drugs on just the off-chance they might help.”
The situation isn’t helped by brain individuality, which is extensive. Some people are killed by a slight concussion; whereas others have had more than half their brain removed yet not lost entirely any single function.
His estimate then was that if research continues at a breakneck pace, in somewhere between 50-200 years we might figure out the whole system. But until then, science does what it can, because the alternative is truly awful.
Now this being said, Peter R. Breggin, M.D. appears to be one of those individuals who are no longer scientists, but advocates, that no longer look to science for proof, preferring anecdote and opinion. In his case, he has embraced the same line of thinking of those who abhor vaccination against communicable disease.
It’s a numbers game. If six people out of 10,000 get a horrible effect from a life saving drug, it is a cause for concern, but not a good reason to ban it for the other 9,990.
“Your literalism is silly and doesn’t change the point. “
I wasn’t trying to be silly. I don’t know much about the brain. I was curious.
Why are any harmaceuticals sold?
They all have deadly side effects, far more prevalent than the licensed use of them.
There isn’t one that brings about healing or curing of disease. Just so-called “disease management,” if you’re willing to accept such a disingenuous euphemism.
>> “talking” to nerve cells about how they’re chemically malfunctioning doesn’t alter them. <<
.
Unless it is the Holy Spirit doing the “talking.”
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