FDA Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee

http://ablechild.org/alert.htm

FDA Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee

Center Date Time Location
CDER February 9, 2006
February 10, 2006
 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
8:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Holiday Inn Gaithersburg
Two Montgomery Village Ave.
Gaithersburg, MD
 

Agenda:
Cases of sudden death and serious adverse events including hypertension, myocardial infarction, and stroke have been reported to the agency in association with therapeutic doses of drugs used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in both pediatric and adult populations. The few controlled clinical studies of longer term drug treatment of ADHD provided little information on cardiovascular risks.

On February 9, 2006, the committee will be asked to discuss approaches that could be used to study whether these products increase the risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes.

On February 10, 2006, the committee will be briefed on developments in the Office of Drug Safety and will receive updates on the Drug Safety Oversight Board and agency actions for the COX-2 selective Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) and the risk management program for the isotretinoin products.

Background material and meeting information will become available no later than one business day before each meeting day (Simply scroll down to the appropriate committee heading).

 

Proposal: law to ban overuse of amphetamine-based compounds in schools

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/38677.html#

Proposal: law to ban overuse of amphetamine-based compounds in schools

 

      Stephen Fox
January 28, 2006

 

AN ACT

 

RELATING TO DRUGS PRESCRIBED BY AND DISPENSED IN NEW MEXICO PUBLIC SCHOOLS; RELATING TO THE OVERUSE OF AMPHETAMINE BASED COMPOUNDS LIKE RITALIN FOR THE SO-CALLED “ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER”; CREATING A SYSTEM OF CONSENT FOR THE PRESCRIPTION OF DRUGS AND THE DISPENSATION THEREOF IN NEW MEXICO PUBLIC SCHOOLS; MAKING AN APPROPRIATION

 

 

Leslie Demeniuk impassive as dad speaks about sons

"Though Demeniuk's family sat a few rows behind her, the only other person who wanted to speak at the hearing was her attorney.

As a 64-year-old father of six children, Sheppard said, "All of us have been affected by this tragedy."

"What's the answer?" he continued. "We need to take another look at a phenomenon known as SSRIs."

The public has been lulled by advertisements into thinking SSRIs are "quick fixes to our daily problems," said Sheppard.

He told the judge that anyone considering taking an SSRI should have it dispensed by a mental health professional, "not by a doc in the box, not by your general practitioner."

As new discoveries about SSRIs are made public, he said, their volatile side effects "are going to be shocking to our nation.""

 

http://www.staugustine.com/stories/012806/new_3604948.shtml

 

 

A is for the alarming number of children

 

The ADHD quandary

By LIDIA WASOWICZ
UPI Senior Science Writer

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- A is for the alarming number of children as young as 2 diagnosed with a chronic psychiatric disorder.

D is for the debate surrounding diagnostic criteria that include common childhood behaviors.

H is for the hue and cry over the hiked-up use of mind medicines in minors.

D is for the discovery yet to be made of the number of children inappropriately or inadequately diagnosed and treated and of means to bring down those rates.

Put them all together and you get ADHD, which stands for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which stands for one of the most common, and controversial, behavioral conditions reported in America's children.

http://www.upi.com/ConsumerHealthDaily/view.php?StoryID=20060126-070102-9221r

Anti-Psychiatry Activist Speaks Sooth

They call it 'evidence-based medicine': A guide to help the harried doctor. (Remember: your main task as a physician is to dispense drugs.) HUMOR by BEN HANSEN.

Ragged Edge Online

January 26, 2006

Schizophrenia Treatment in 7 Easy Steps

Adapted from the Michigan Implementation of Medication Algorithms
Physician Procedural Manual, Appendix I: Guidelines for Treating Schizophrenia

Excerpted, abridged, and translated into plain English by Ben Hansen, MindFreedom Michigan

If you're a doctor treating a patient for schizophrenia, the Physician Procedural Manual will help guide your clinical practice and make things a lot easier for you.

At each step of the way, always remember your three options: continue the present drug regimen, adjust the drug dose, or move on to another drug. Don't even THINK about taking your patient off drugs. The manual plainly states, "The schizophrenia algorithm contains no guidelines for antipsychotic medication discontinuation, which is anticipated to be a rare event in the typical mental health clinic patient population."

Your main task as a physician is to prescribe drugs. As a rule of thumb, it's always best to prescribe a new drug before its patent expires. For this reason, the new drugs called atypical antipsychotics are an excellent choice as first-line treatment.

Atypical antipsychotics cost twenty times more than older drugs, but cost is only one factor to consider when making a clinical judgement. Another factor is profit. With this in mind, schizophrenia can be treated in seven distinct stages, outlined below.

STAGE 1. Prescribe an atypical antipsychotic such as Zyprexa, Risperdal, or Seroquel. Some physicians will select a drug based on whichever sales rep last visited the office, but this is not recommended. Whatever brand you choose, if your patient shows little or no improvement after 4 weeks, go to the next stage.

STAGE 2. Switch to a different atypical antipsychotic. You may select a particular drug based on the quality of free ballpoint pens provided by the manufacturer, but this is not recommended. If results are unsatisfactory after a few weeks, go to the next stage.

STAGE 3. Switch to yet another atypical antipsychotic, or try a conventional antipsychotic such as Haldol for old times' sake. If progress remains unsatisfactory after a few more weeks, go to the next stage.

STAGE 4. Prescribe Clozaril. Since there's a 50-50 chance the patient will respond unfavorably to Clozaril, you may skip this stage and go directly to the next stage.

STAGE 5. Prescribe Clozaril in combination with another antipsychotic, or Clozaril in combination with electroshock. The manual says, "Almost all studies have shown beneficial effects of electroschock for persistent psychotic states." The manual also says, "There are no controlled studies of electroshock for schizophrenia in which number of treatments, duration of treatments, and electrode placement have been systematically evaluated." Therefore, if you're going to use electroshock on the patient, be sure to use it at least ten times, on both sides of the brain. If this proves unsuccessful, go to the next stage.

Your main task as a physician is to prescribe drugs.

STAGE 6. Try one of the few remaining atypical antipsychotics you haven't tried yet. If results are satisfactory, that would be nice but it's not very likely at this stage, so go to the next stage.

STAGE 7. Prescribe any combination of two antipsychotics OR two antipsychotics plus electroshock OR two antipsychotics plus a mood stabilizer such as Depakote. Maintain this regimen for at least 12 weeks, if your patient lives that long.

Helpful hints for the clinician

More http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/departments/overtheedge/000766.html

Taxpayer Funds Promote Child Screening & Drugging

Taxpayer Funds Promote Child Screening & Drugging

 "The Abramoff scandal pales in comparison to the stench of the mental health establishment’s influence over
government, causing our children to be labeled in infancy and creating a never-ending market for psychiatric drugs. "

Sadly, here is another case where the rhetoric of government officials and agencies bears no resemblance to reality and the truth.  This time it involves our children being labeled mentally ill in infancy by vague and politically motivated criteria and becoming lifelong dependents on ineffective and dangerous medications. The cost of these deceptions to our children, our freedoms of conscience and religion, our parental authority, and our treasure will be incalculable.

During the October 17th, 2005 meeting with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administrator (SAMHSA) administrator Charles Curie, Mr. Curie made some significant statements. The statements were made to EdWatch, AHRP, and other members of the coalition of national groups opposing universal mental health screening and psychiatric drugging that are recommended in the New Freedom Commission (NFC) report. The recommendations are being implemented and funded by the federal government, state laws, and private and government grants.

Curie admitted the lack of scientific validity of the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) psychiatric drug program. He also stated that TeenScreen is no longer a model program. The facts are, however, that both TMAP and TeenScreen are still present and/or receiving federal funding. His other statements in the October meeting included:

• “The New Freedom Commission report is not official Bush Administration policy, but rather the unofficial recommendations of an appointed commission.” 
• The state incentive transformation grants (SITG), funded at $26 million in the FY 2006 appropriations bill, are merely for infrastructure for states to set up their individual transformation plans for a “recovery oriented system.”
• The Federal Mental Health Action Agenda (FMHAA or “Action Agenda”) is “not really a blueprint or road map for implementing the NFC report.”

It took only a cursory review of the Action Agenda and other SAMHSA documents to see that none of these statements is true:

• The NFC recommendations are clearly administration policy. SAMHSA admits in the very first paragraph of the Action Agenda that the five principles “around which the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health framed its work… embody the vision of transformation that will guide the challenging but necessary work that lies ahead.”

The NFC report is the very foundation of the federal Action Agenda. This Agenda involves at least 13 different offices and agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and at least five different cabinet level departments. It includes the Department of Education, where many ineffective and dangerous federal mental health programs, like Foundations for Learning for 0-7 year olds (see Dr. Effrem’s description of this program) and the politically correct "Early Warning, Timely Response" (see the quote regarding “intolerance” from the Department of Education’s website for this program) are already rampant from preschool to high school. 

• State Incentive Grants are implementing the NFC recommendation. Despite Mr. Curie’s assurances to us and to Congress, and despite protestations by Representatives Ralph Regula (R-OH), Tim Murphy (D-PA) and Grace Napolitano (D-CA) that the State Incentive Grants (funded by Congress at $26 million for FY 2006) are merely for planning, they are being used to implement the NFC recommendation. These involve “early” universal mental health screening “across the life span,” including preschoolers and 52 million public school children, as well as the push for infant mental health screening in the Action Agenda. These also include “referral to treatment” involving government psychiatric drug programs like the NFC model program, TMAP. The 2004 SAMHSA Matrix brochure says, “SAMHSA is investing more than $517 million in transformation efforts, including $47 million to fund the State Incentive Grants for Transformation program to enable States to begin implementing the Commission’s findings.” [Emphasis added.]

The Action Agenda is the means to implement the NFC recommendations.  Both the Action Agenda itself and several other SAMHSA documents contain statements such as, “CMHS [Center for Mental Health Services within SAMHSA] has contracted with a number of national mental health organizations to provide technical assistance to States in the development of activities and plans to implement the New Freedom Commission recommendations.” [Emphasis added.]

Not only is there an enormous discrepancy between Mr. Curie’s statements and the facts, but the agency also admits in the Action Agenda and accompanying documents that it is using our tax dollars to recruit non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to implement the NFC recommendations:

• The Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) within SAMHSA, as part of the technical assistance program mentioned above, has used taxpayer funds to contract with “the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) to coordinate this project and to collaborate with six subcontractors: the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), the National Association of Mental Health Planning and Advisory Councils (NAMHPAC), the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare (NCCBH), and the National Mental Health Association (NMHA) to “deliver written analysis or on-site training and technical assistance on a range of policy issues related to the implementation of the recommendations of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.” {Emphasis added.]

---

Forty-five states have received technical assistance from these groups via SAMHSA. Parents in the state of Missouri even received training in how to lobby for more taxpayer funds to pay for these ineffective and dangerous programs.  Every one of the organizations listed above has a vested financial, power, or professional interest in expanding the mental health system and has been a wholesale, uncritical supporter of the screening and medication recommendations in the NFC report. These groups completely ignore contradictory scientific and medical evidence. The State Mental Health Program Directors and NAMI have received millions of dollars in grants from the pharmaceutical industry. 
 

---

NFC chairman Michael Hogan is the director of the Ohio Mental Health Department, which was one of the first to adopt TMAP (Texas Medication Algorithm Project). He is one of its most aggressive promoters, and he has traveled across the country - all expenses picked up by drug manufacturers. Hogan also served on an "Advisory Committee" of Janssen Pharmacia, manufacturer of the antipsychotic Risperdal (risperidone) a TMAP-recommended first line treatment. Thanks to Hogan and the other state mental health program directors, TMAP has spread to at least a dozen states and is affecting thousands of children, as young as age three, in juvenile justice, foster care [1] and welfare programs.  The cost of these psychiatric drugs is bankrupting state Medicaid programs. Besides being exorbitantly expensive, the drugs are ineffective. Every large study not funded by the pharmaceutical industry has demonstrated this. The FDA has issued stringent black box warnings, as well, for fatal side effects of these drugs in some group of people.[2]

---

These points and more were discussed in a follow-up letter from the national coalition of concerned groups to SAMHSA on December 12, 2005.  Mr. Curie’s reply to that letter did not address a single one of these concerns.
 
It appears that SAMHSA was not really interested in answering the concerns of EdWatch, and others about these invalid and dangerous programs.  It also appears that interests of the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatric establishment are more important to their lapdogs in Congress and the bureaucracy than are the rights of parents, children and citizens.

---

The Abramoff scandal pales in comparison to the stench of the mental health establishment’s influence over so many areas of the federal government and, in turn, so many areas of state governments. Their influence causes our children to be labeled in infancy, and it creates a never-ending market for psychiatric drugs. The long term effects of these drugs on the brains of our children are unknown. They also create a market for other drugs used to treat the chronic side effects like obesity and diabetes, and they will be needed throughout the lives of those affected, enhancing drug company profits while bankrupting taxpayer funded programs. As these programs multiply, the use of politically motivated labeling and drugging for children who do not comply with the indoctrination of the federal curriculum will increase. Brave New World will appear less and less like fiction unless these programs are stopped.

---

What will you do to stop it?  Stay tuned for more of this story and for what you can do.

---

[1] Over 60% of foster children in Texas, nearly two-thirds in Massachusetts, and 55% of foster children in Florida are on as many as 16 different psychiatric drugs, starting as young as age 3.

---

[2] For a summary of the latest studies and medical information showing the dangers and ineffectiveness of psychiatric medications, see here.

     
EDUCATION FOR A FREE NATION
105 Peavey Rd, Suite 116, Chaska, MN 55318
952-361-4931 – www.edwatch.org - edwatch@lakes.com

EdWatch is entirely user-supported. The continuation of our research and distribution work is entirely dependent upon individual contributors.

 

 

Depression screenings faulty

The Minnesota Daily

January 25, 2006
Depression screenings faulty
Any combination of answers resulted in recommendationsto see a doctor.

By Brian Hokanson

At the beginning of fall semester I noticed fliers in my residence hall encouraging students to take the free depression screening test at depression-screening.org.

Having a vague hunch as to what might follow, I visited the Web site. The first section of the test consists of a list of negative behaviors such as “feeling bad about yourself” and “feeling tired or having little energy.” The test-taker chooses how often the statements have applied to him or her in the past two weeks, from “not at all” to “nearly every day.”

The second part asks you to rate how difficult the behaviors have made it to function in daily life, from “not difficult at all” to “extremely difficult.”
I decided to test the test. I chose “not at all” for every behavior on the list except “poor appetite or overeating,” for which I chose the next option, “several days.” Then, I indicated that my problems made it “not difficult at all” for me to function.

The result? “Your screening results are consistent with minimal depression … You are advised to see your doctor or a mental health professional for a complete evaluation as soon as possible.”

Just because of my poor appetite? Couldn’t I just stop eating at University Dining Services or something?

After fiddling with the test some more, I realized that virtually any combination of answers resulted in the advice that I see a doctor as soon as possible. Obviously, this is a flawed test; we all have small problems, but this alone does not indicate an urgent need for professional help. I e-mailed the National Mental Health Association, which sponsors the Web site, explaining the results of my experiment and requesting that they either remove or alter the test.

More

http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/01/25/66779

.

"American people are in danger. Wake up! Wake up American people"

   

 

 

America The Insane

By Nancy Levant

January 23, 2006

It’s looking more and more like the American contribution to population reduction will be in the form of diagnosing half its citizens as mental incompetents. That will naturally lead to reproductive legislation and control. And when they come up with a way to declare eldership and religiosity as mental illnesses, which is well underway, that will clear the way for incarceration and euthanasia legislation, including, but not limited to, starvation and dehydration.

The plan, according to Bush, his pharmaceutical connections, and TMAP is to test every American citizen for emotional and “social” problems. Children and pregnant women are being tested, as we speak, and senior citizens are of particular vulnerability and concern. There are a lot of seniors in the U.S. The government already spent all the Social Security savings, and once the powers-that-be crash the stock markets, seniors will be flat broke and destitute.

All one can say is… who let the freaks wag the dog?

The people who are running this country, and those they truly serve, slipped over an edge a long time ago. Now, after losing property, homes, Constitutional rights, and even toilets that hold proper amounts of water, we are to simply allow ourselves to be diagnosed by partnership-money trails and desires for pathological power and profits. Sincerely, truly, we are not going to allow this to continue…are we?

More: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=4939

Petitioner Liu Xinjuan Sent to Psychiatric Hospital

http://www.hrichina.org/public/contents/press?revision%5fid=26694&item%5fid=26692

 

police officer 041525 and several others took Liu bound and gagged to the Minhang District Beiqiao Psychiatric Hospital. Liu’s son, Feng Liangxi, visited Liu at the mental hospital and reported that Liu’s body and face were covered with bruises and wounds, and that her left hand was immobile as a result of injury.

 

 Liu Xinjuan is a longtime petitioner on land and relocation issues who has been subjected to particularly harsh treatment in the past. She was forcibly admitted for psychiatric treatment in March and June of 2003, as well as being held in criminal detention. According to HRIC’s sources, Liu was subjected to brutal and degrading abuse while undergoing psychiatric treatment in 2003.

Happy Pills Don't Make Me Happy

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=8ede50179d1b40629a6e5a3518931fef

Happy Pills Don't Make Me Happy

New America Media, Youth Commentary, Amber Smidebush, Jan 20, 2006

Editor's Note: A young woman who's taken dozens of powerful prescription medicines says Americans must learn to stop popping pills.

LIVERMORE, Calif.--I've been on psychiatric medications since I was 10 years old. Today, I take six prescribed medications a day, plus three over-the-counter pills. Doctors seem to think that medications are the cure for everything, and because of that, I am stuck in a trap.

A lot of people use drugs recreationally to feel better. I do that every day with my meds and hate it. How would you like to remember that you have to take three orange ones, a blue one, a white one, a red one and one that changes color every time they up the dose? If I forget one dose, I feel like crap. I've heard from others about heroin withdrawal, and it feels like that. How is that good for my body?

In December, an annual report on American health stated that 44 percent of Americans are on prescription drugs. Many people who are prescribed narcotics or non-antibiotic medications become addicted. Some people lie about their symptoms in order to continue the medication. Withdrawals from these can be worse than withdrawals from street drugs. When and where will this stop?

I have been on so many different psychiatric medications over the years it makes my head spin -- I was even a test subject for quite a few. When my doctors told my Mom I was bipolar, they automatically gave me a bunch of pills to take. Wellbutrin, Neurontin, Seroquel, Depakote, Effexor, Inderal, Trileptal, Paxil, Zyprexa, Lamictal, Abilify -- I've taken them all. I call them happy pills; they call them "chemical balancers." At one point I was on a type of speed, much like Ritalin, that messed me up really bad. Once, I was even prescribed a narcotic that is illegal to the rest of the world.

The worst experience was when I was first put on Seroquel by this psychotic doctor. He had me on an 800mg dose every day. According to the big book of medications, that should have overdosed a 35-year-old adult male. It's no wonder I failed my freshmen year's morning P.E. class. It would take me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get out of bed each morning. I couldn't think, I couldn't see, and I couldn't be me. When my therapist heard about this, she made me stop taking it. But when I went back to my doctor, he upped my dose again! So I left that doctor, and his license was later revoked.

The doctors prescribe the pills to "make me happy." The pills just don't allow me to think. I don't have a chance to be happy or upset -- I'm just ... there. About 90 percent of the people I know on medications have had the same emotionless experience. My younger sister is diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and has been taking Aderal for the last three years. My father is taking Effexor to suppress his depression. My mother has also been diagnosed bipolar and has to take five various medications.

As of today I take multiple medications: Inderal, Abilify and Lamictal. I also take prescribed supplements of iron and L-Lysine. I am on Nexium for acid reflux disease and take various other supplements each day.

I see commercials each day about this medication and that, and how it will "change your life forever, and you'll never feel better," but I look at them and laugh. Especially because, nine times out of 10, I've taken the medication they're advertising. They never show the people who can't get out of bed, or the children taking their handful of pills each night before Mom tucks them in. They don't show the people who cry each day because they don't know what's going on and their meds make them worse than they were.

Instead of listening to problems and maybe thinking of a solution with therapy or even just cognitive thinking, doctors take the easy route and give people pills. It's almost like we're living in the world Aldous Huxley described in his novel "Brave New World." Will we become a society run by pills that keep us from being unique and normal? When will the medical field realize that they are only offering temporary solutions and possibly pain and suffering? I'm waiting for that.

Amber Smidebush, 18, is a writer for Sprawl (www.sprawlmagazine.com), a magazine for suburban youths and a PNS project. She is also a student at Las Positas College in Livermore, Calif.

Anti-depressants Might Impact Immunity

Uppers Might Impact Immunity

 

A major class of anti-depressant drugs including Prozac and Paxil may impact patients’ immunity.
January 19, 2006

 

A major class of antidepressant drugs that includes brand names like Prozac and Paxil might impact the immune system in unknown ways, researchers said Thursday, adding that further research needs to be done on the potential effects.

 

Link

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15393&hed=Uppers+Might+Impact+Immunity&sector=Regions&subsector=Americas

Are recess and Ritalin inversely correlated?

 

http://www.bloggingbaby.com/2006/01/19/are-recess-and-ritalin-inversely-correlated/

Prescription Drug Abuse Can Kill

"She tells parents that Julie started out using over the counter medication and stealing her brother's ritalin medication."

 

http://nbc15.madison.com/news/headlines/2221332.html

Prescription Drug Abuse Can Kill

Paige Lambrecht

Ask Catherine Zdeblick about her daughter Julie, and she'll tell you how warm and funny she was.
She'll also tell you about her daughter's deadly addiction.
"She also could do just about anything well and she also thought she could do drugs pretty well."
17-year-old Julie, a student at Middleton high school, became addicted to drugs and died from an oxycontin overdose in March of 2004.
Oxycontin is found in many prescribed pain medications.

Latest "No Suicide Risk" Antidepressant Study Flawed

Decoding Psychiatric Propaganda http://groups.msn.com/psychbusters

Even Dr. Robert Temple, FDA Medical Policy Director of the Center for
Drug Evaluation & Research dismisses the claimed findings of a flawed,
but highly trumpeted recent SSRI study published in the American Journal
of Psychiatry. The study was sponsored by the National Institute of
Mental Health. Dr. Temple is quoted in the FDA "Pink Sheet" stating:

"The new study bears only a tangential relationship at best to the
previous information.... "the new study doesn't have an untreated group.
They have no information at all about what would have happened to those
people had they not been treated. It simply sheds no light at all on the
particular point raised in the labeling or the analysis of those
trials."

Unfortunately, most media swallowed the promotional hype dished out by
the American Psychiatric Association (whose financial dependence on SSRI
manufacturers renders its pronouncements biased and not credible). Most
media did not bother to examine the actual study or to notice that the
claimed findings were NOT substantiated.

Dr. Gregory Simon, the lead author / investigator has received
Grant/Research Support from: Abbott Laboratories (Inactive); Eli Lilly
and Company; Pfizer, Inc. (Inactive); Searle (Inactive).

See: http://www.wpic.pitt.edu/STANLEY/4thbipconf/introduction.htm

Source: ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP) www.ahrp.org

Prescriptions of mind-altering drugs for teens rise

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20060104-122700-9017r.htm

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 4, 2006

Teenagers are taking more mind-altering drugs -- but under doctor's
orders.
Drug prescriptions meant to counter depression, anxiety and mood or
attention disorders in teens increased by 250 percent between 1994 and
2001, according to a Brandeis University study released yesterday.
"There is an alarming increase in prescribing these drugs to teens,"
said lead author Cindy Parks Thomas, who tracks prescription drug trends
for the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at the
university.

Taming my little monster

Ritalin is not the answer. 

 

 

Taming my little monster
Charlotte Phillips faced up to her son's disruptive behaviour by changing her own. It worked.

I had a passionate Eastern European temperament, the cheek bones to go with it and a firm belief that this gave me a licence to operate at all settings on the emotional range, from unconfined joy at one end to dangerous hair-trigger rage at the other. So it was no surprise to me when Leo, my son, turned out to show just the same breadth and depth of temper. After all, he’d learnt it at his mother’s knee.

 

More here:

 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8125-1982646,00.html

.

January 11, 2006

Drug Makers Scrutinized Over Grants

By GARDINER HARRIS

A Congressional investigation of the money that drug companies give as supposed educational grants has found that the payments are growing rapidly and are sometimes steered by marketing executives to doctors and groups who push unapproved uses of drugs.

Twenty-three drug makers spent a total of $1.47 billion in 2004 on educational grants, or an average of $64 million per company, according to the Senate Finance Committee. That number was a 20 percent increase from the total in 2003, which was $1.23 billion.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/11/business/11grant.html?pagewanted=print

Report Questions FDA's Conclusions on Suicide Risk

Report Questions FDA's Conclusions on Suicide Risk

 

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/41/1/29?etoc

 

Highlights from the article:

 

The American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) has determined that "SSRIs and other new-generation antidepressant drugs, in aggregate, are associated with a small increase in the risk of [adverse event] reports (AEs) of suicidal thinking or suicide attempts in youth."

 

Both citalopram (Celexa) and nefazodone (Serzone) have demonstrated significant efficacy in one clinical trial of youth with depression, but each drug was separately found to be no different from placebo in a second clinical trial.

 

Paroxetine (Paxil) and sertraline (Zoloft) each demonstrated significant efficacy compared with placebo in one trial; however, two other trials of each drug found no difference between drug and placebo.

 

Venlafaxine (Effexor) and mirtazapine (Remeron) were no better than placebo in two clinical trials each.

 

Still another large meta-analysis, which included more than 700 randomized clinical trials involving 87,650 patients, found more suicide attempts in the SSRI group compared with placebo,

 

This means 402 patients would have to be given antidepressant medications before one experienced an AE (adverse event) involving suicidal thoughts or behaviors.

 

Testimony Against TeenScreen

http://www.fda.gov/cder/ddmac/dtc2005/051102Transcript.pdf

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

+ + + + +

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION

+ + + +

PUBLIC HEARING

+ + + +

WEDNESDAY,

NOVEMBER 2, 2005

Our next speaker is Ellen Liversidge, a speech pathologist, who will be speaking.

MS. LIVERSIDGE: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Ellen Liversidge from Silver Springs, Maryland. I'm a speech pathologist and board member of AHRP, the Alliance for Human Research Protection.

But most of all I'm the parent of a wonderful son who was killed by a prescription drug. Rob died of profound hyperglycemia on October 5th, 2002, back before the FDA had gotten around to placing a warning on the label, back before Eli Lilly had a settlement with 8,000 people harmed or killed by Zyprexa, back before we had any idea that there was any danger.

When I found out after his death from Public Citizen that other countries had required Lilly to place warnings on the label, I desperately tried to change the situation in this country. Working with reporters and the Baltimore Sun and the Wall Street Journal trying to get and getting front page articles about the dangers of Zyprexa.

Erica Wood of the New York Times followed up with another front page story, and finally, a year later, the FDA ordered all the atypical anti-psychotics to place a warning for diabetes, hyperglycemia, and death.

I speak today on behalf of AHRP, and also on behalf of all the parents I have met whose sons and daughters have been lost to psychotropic drugs. We are a band of brothers and sisters when get together, having had the worst possible thing in all the world happen to us and to our innocent children.

Most of all, it is for the innocent children that are alive that I speak today, giving you AHRP's position on the very nefarious direct to consumer advertising scheme called Teen Screen, dreamt up by pharma and funded by the federal government. This plan will give unvalidated questionnaires to all the teens in every high school in the country, providing many of them with false, possibly false, psychiatric labels, and referring them to a doctor for probable medication, thus creating a new market share for the industry.

AHRP's position on this scheme is as follows. The Alliance for Human Research Protection opposes government policies requiring or promoting mental health screening of America's infants, toddlers and school children. Our opposition is informed by scientific, legal, ethical and common sense consideration.

Number one, the primary catalyst for both Teen Screen and for the prescribing guidelines, known as TMAP, is market expansion. Dr. Peter Weiden, who is a member of TMAP - it stands for the Texas Medication Algorithm Project - expert consensus panel has charged that the guidelines are based on opinions, not data, and that bias due to funding sources undermines the credibility of the guidelines since most of the guidelines' authors have received support from the pharmaceutical industry.

The invalid screening process of Teen Screen ensures that mostly healthy normal children will be brought into government subsidized mental health dragnet. Once children acquire a psychiatric label they may be branded for life. For example, between 55 and 60 percent of foster children in at least three states - Texas, Massachusetts and Florida - are on psychotropic drugs starting as young as age three.

Some children are on multiple drug cocktails, as many as 16 drugs. The drugs that are recommended by TMAP are both dangerous and often ineffective. They all carry black box warning labels.

Two, the diagnostic criteria upon which mental health screening instruments rest are scientifically invalid, vague and entirely open to subjective interpretation. Teen Screen was tested on 1,729 children in seven New York City schools using passive parental consent and teen active consent, which is legally invalid.

Teen Screen is fraught with suggestive insinuations of failure and self doubt. Such questions can lead vulnerable teenagers to obsess about perceived inadequacies that might lead them to develop low self esteem that could give rise to anxiety, withdrawal and emotional problems.

By raising the possibility that suicide may be an option, and that's one of the questions, screening might lead to suicidal thinking, as happens in Japan's Internet suicide clubs.

Teen Screen questions are so vague, suggestive and broad that most normal teens are mislabeled as mentally ill.
Teen Screen, also known as Columbia suicide screen, is an illegitimate intrusion on privacy which purports to be a suicide prevention assessment tool, but lacks any semblance of scientific validity.

Indeed, the results of the study by Dr. David Schaeffer, chairman of child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia University who is credited with developing and promoting Teen Screen showed that of 1,729 New York City high school students who were screened using the questionnaire, 475 students tested positive.

Number three, mental health screening is gambling with children's normal development. Teen Screen promoters fail to disclose that the risk for children who are screened to be falsely labeled as suicidal or mentally ill is 84 percent.
Number four, despite its proven unreliability as a predictive tool, and no evidence that mental health screening prevents suicide, Teen Screen promotes itself in direct to consumer marketing advertisements as a suicide prevention tool, proving that science is no deterrent to a marketing strategy.

The Teen Screen website states: We are running public service advertisements in the New York Times and the Washington Post to raise awareness of our new report, entitled, Catch Them Before They Fall.

Catch Them Before They Fall is a marketing pitch much like pharmaceutical company advertisements that refer to unsubstantiated chemical imbalances. Teen Screen promoters are misinforming public health policymakers, school officials, families and teens by mischaracterizing their experimental, scientifically invalid questionnaire as a proven suicide prevention strategy, when their own research refutes such claims.

Teen Screen's low predictive level shown to be only 16 percent, will result in falsely 84 percent of children who test positive as mentally ill or suicidal.

As acknowledged by Dr. Schaeffer, such a high rate of false positives could reduce the acceptability of a school-based prevention program.

Number five, coercive mental health screening and forced drugging is already happening to children in the United States. Current estimates are that each year 8 million American children, or about 10 percent of the school age population are prescribed mind-altering drugs.

Finally, a radical proposal contained in the federal mental health action agenda, a follow up to the NFC, is alarming as it is preposterous. The FMHAA's stated goal is to develop mental health promotion and early intervention services targeted to infants, toddlers, preschool and school age children. The action agenda, targeting infants, toddlers and children, is invalid and irresponsible, and disregards the risks, the lack of evidence to support such, quote, early intervention.

In 2001 Dr. Benedetto Ditiello, director of child and adolescent treatment and prevention interventions research branch for the National Institutes of Mental Health, acknowledged the diagnostic uncertainty surrounding most manifestations of psychopathology in early childhood.

AHRP opposes psychiatric screening of children without active, informed parental consent. Consent of parents must be documented and given voluntarily without a hint of coercion. Teen Screen has attempted to sidestep parental consent by claiming passive parental consent, which is invalid.

Teen Screen is being sued in federal court by the parents of 15-year-old Chelsea Rhodes for violating their constitutional rights by failing to inform them that their child would be screened, and for failing to obtain parental consent.

The Rhodes family is represented by the Rutherford Institute.

The FDA bears responsibility for failing to stop an unethical drug marketing strategy that is increasing the risk of serious harm for healthy children who are being misprescribed psychoactive drugs on the basis of an invalid screening tool that was being promoted with false claims.

According to its website, as of October 25th of this year, Teen Screen is actively operating at 460 locations in 42 states and Washington, D.C.

Thank you.

MR. ABRAMS: Thank you for your presentation and sharing your thought.

Before I open the questions up to questions by the FDA panel, I want to make it clear the rules of a Part 15 meeting, that FDA is here to listen, to get your information. So we are not allowed to respond to comments or answer questions. I think that is important. The purpose of the meeting is to gather information.
So with that I'll open it up to the panel members.

Dr. Temple.

DR. TEMPLE: You mentioned that some direct to consumer ads are mentioning and promoting Teen Screen. I checked. We don't think we're aware of that. Can you either now or afterwards identify those for us so we can look at them?

MS. LIVERSIDGE: What I can identify for you now is what is stated in my statement that I got from AHRP. But I do not have any information in any public document.

DR. TEMPLE: Well, even if you went back to them and asked them?

MS. LIVERSIDGE: I would be happy to do that.

MR. ABRAMS: Thank you for your presentation. And any additional information please submit to the docket, and we will carefully consider it.

Thank you.

 

 

Eli Lilly's and Christopher Gillberg's failed experiment with Strattera

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/view_press_release.php?rID=10122

 

Eli Lilly's and Christopher Gillberg's failed experiment with Strattera
The Swedish Medical Products Agency (MPA) knows that Gillberg's and Lilly's clinical trial of Strattera is a catastrophe. It has nevertheless been allowed to continue.

 

/24-7PressRelease/ - SWEDEN, January 04, 2006 - The agency does not have the mission to protect the authority of psychiatrists and the profit of pharmaceutical companies - it is supposed to make sure that patients and the public are getting safe and effective medications.

 

The famous Swedish Professor in Psychiatry Christopher Gillberg is doing a clinical trial for Lilly. They are testing Strattera for adults. Strattera is a failed antidepressant, which Lilly didn't succeed to get out on the market. It was recycled as an "ADHD medication". The drug is not approved in Sweden; can only be prescribed after special approval from the MPA.

 

Lilly wants this changed. To get the drug approved would mean a lot of money. Gillberg is also helping Lilly to create a market for Strattera - he says that 2-4 percent of all adults in the country are suffering from a "clinical severe form" of ADHD. There are in other words many candidates for Strattera.

 

Normally pharmaceutical companies only run their trials for around 10 weeks. During this time they often succeed to see a "positive effect" of the pill compared to placebo and no catastrophic harmful effects. This is usually enough to get the drug through the approval procedure at the medical agency. If the trials are done longer the "positive effect" is very likely to completely vanish and more harmful effects are showing up. Not even the most "customer-oriented" agency could then approve the drug.

 

So one must say it was a pretty bold step by Lilly and Gillberg to apply for a long-term clinical trial of Strattera on 40 adults - the trial should last for a year.

 

The MPA thought there should be a control group of 20 persons who got placebo, to be compared with the group of 20 who got Strattera. This should be of "more scientific value", the agency thought. But Lilly did not agree. So it ended up with 40 adults "with ADHD" who should get Strattera during a year.

 

Bruno Hägglöf, Professor in Psychiatry - who also is a member of Lilly Strattera Advisory Board - marketed the new pill in an excellent way on national TV in the end of 2004. A bottle of Strattera was shown, with the name Eli Lilly prominently displayed, and at the same time Professor Hägglöf said: "There are persons who need to take this type of medication all their life..." And Gillberg, in his turn, wrote in the application for the trial: "The treatment of AD/HD is in most of the cases ongoing for many years." The idea was that treatment with Strattera should be almost life-long - and Lilly, of course, had no real objections to this.

 

But, as MPA knows, the actual effects were not at all so good for the test persons involved - the persons who should test Strattera for a year.

 

First of all Lilly/Gillberg did not succeed to recruit 40 persons to the study - a very strange circumstance considering the fact that so much has been written in newspaper articles about the impossible for adults "with ADHD" to get treatment.

 

Only 20 persons got enrolled in the trial. And what happened to them?
Ten (10) persons "disappeared" - 3 with the given reason that the drug did not have any effect, 2 never came to their next visits, 1 patient ended without any stated reason - and 4 never got started!

 

Of the 10 remaining, 5 (!) patients had to be taken out of the trial due to harmful effects: 1 patient had to be taken out due to liver problems, 2 due to aggressiveness/hostility and 2 due to depression. We can in Gillberg's report also read: "One pat[ient] has completed the whole study." And in addition to this one patient, can we read, there are four (4) who still have not fallen off.

 

For sure this must be considered a catastrophe?

 

The result, that 10 persons (half of the patients included) disappeared, cannot, no matter the counting, be considered positive. Especially not if one also considers the fact that 25 percent of the patients had to be taken out due to harmful effects - and that it at last only remained one (1) patient who had completed the whole study (and 4 others who the researchers in some way are trying to complete)!

 

Despite the above catastrophic results the MPA writes: "OK to continue the study."

 

What is the agency trying to do? Is the intention to assist Lilly and Gillberg in the eventual publication of the "positive parts" of this study - and to conceal the rest? Does the agency want to enhance its image even further as a "customer-oriented agency" - and get more applications from the pharmaceutical industry?

 

The legitimate claim must now be that the MPA is intervening to close down this failed experiment and to make sure that all details about the catastrophic results are being published as soon as possible.

 

The MPA is after all an agency that should oversee the actions of the pharmaceutical companies - the patients and the public are the real customers of the agency.

 

Janne Larsson writer from Sweden, investigating psychiatry

Anti-medicine advocates step in to local custody case - Lisa Payne

Kane County crime & justice

NEIGHBOR

Anti-medicine advocates step in to local custody case

Tona Kunz & Adam Kovac

511 words

19 December 2005

F3,F4

1

English

Copyright (c) 2005 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.

Lisa Payne, the former Batavia woman who lost her mother to an ex- husband's methamphetamine-fueled rampage, has a new advocate in her battle to gain custody of her daughter.

Payne's mother, Linda Duchaine, had custody of Payne's 13-year- old daughter when the elder woman was kidnapped and beaten to death by the girl's father, Joseph Foreman, in April 2004. Payne was living with Foreman in Batavia at the time. The girl and grandmother were visiting.

The loss of the girl's guardian threw her into the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services system.

Payne had a hearing earlier this month to check the progress of a transition plan to regain custody of her daughter. She will have another progress hearing in about six months. Payne abdicated custody to her mother when the child was 4 years old, but now wants the child back.

The not-for-profit Austin, Texas-based advocacy group Citizens Commission on Human Rights is trying to draw attention to Payne's plight. The group focuses on what it views as the abuses by government or medical agencies forcing children to take medication against their will.

DCFS guardians have required both Payne and her daughter take anti-depressant medications while they work through the emotional issues of the attack. Payne was beaten nearly into a coma by Foreman before he took off with Duchaine, leaving his daughter to find her bloody mother. Both mother and daughter have contested their need for medication and fought taking pills.

Jim Moore, director of research for the group, argues that the drugs the girl is being forced to take exacerbate her reckless behavior. She has run away from a Streamwood residential care center as well as her paternal grandmother's home and a Naperville teen center. Family court officials have said the trauma of the attack, an unstable home life and emotional issues have caused the girl to act out.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights does not supply attorneys for custody hearings, but hopes to use media blitzes to generate interest among legal groups willing to do pro bono work.

Paper cites drug ads for improper diagnosis

Paper cites drug ads for improper diagnosis
By Tony Bridges DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

FSU graduate student Jeffrey Lacasse co-wrote a paper that says drug companies mislead the public about the causes and cures of depression.

Depression - it's a chemical imbalance in the brain, right? Not exactly. But there's a good reason you might think that.

You've seen too many TV commercials, according to Jeffrey Lacasse, a Florida State University graduate student.

He's co-written a paper - published in this month's issue of the Public Library of Science Medicine - arguing that drug-company advertisements have confused consumers by oversimplifying the causes of and ways to treat depression.

More here.

One Very Wild Pitch - 5 antidepressants

One Very Wild Pitch
Did drugs make a star hurler rob a jewelry shop?
By Arian Campo-Flores
Newsweek

Jan. 9, 2006 issue - By Christmas day, Jeff Reardon was a physical and
emotional wreck. The former star relief pitcher was struggling through a
second holiday season without his son Shane, who died of a drug overdose
in 2004 and would have turned 22 last Thursday. "I miss you more than
ever," Reardon wrote in a November entry to a Web memorial for Shane. To
help numb the pain, Reardon, 50, was taking at least five
antidepressants, his lawyer says. That was on top of four or five heart
medications he was prescribed after an angioplasty operation on Dec. 23.
The day after Christmas, Reardon went to a nearby mall in Palm Beach
Gardens, Fla. Though he told his wife and two surviving kids that he was
going to buy a coffeepot, instead he entered a jewelry store and slipped
a sales clerk a note demanding cash and jewelry and claiming that he had
a gun, according to a police affidavit. The store manager gave him $170
in a bag. After leaving, Reardon-who in fact had no weapon-saw a
security guard in the parking lot, went up to him and surrendered. "I
completely lost my mind," he wrote later in a statement to police. "I
flipped on my medications."

URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10663341/site/newsweek/

Results of antidepressant study mixed

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20060101-17554300-bc-us-depression.xml

Results of antidepressant study mixed

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- Two new federally funded studies on the dangers and efficacy of anti-depressants show mixed results.

The Food and Drug Administration is being urged by some psychiatrists and the American Psychiatric Association to change warnings on the drugs, The Washington Post reports.

Darrel A. Regier, director of research for the APA, blames the warnings -- which claim the drugs could cause suicidal thoughts -- for a 10-year decline in use.

While studies show limited contradiction of the warnings, some psychologists say the studies are not accurate.

Irving Kirsch of Britain's University of Plymouth said the lack of a placebo aspect in the studies renders the findings moot.

Robert Temple, director of medical policy of the FDA, said the agency will continue to study the drugs and its policy.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

National Women's Group Director Reponds

 

Eileen Dannemann
Director, National Coalition of Organized Women

Submitted as Guest Editorial:

 

           Thank you so much for the Savodnick article on Psychiatry's sick compulsion. (LA Times, Jan 1, 2006)   My son David, now 21, who has been meditating since he was four; grew up on organic food, received no mandated childhood mercury vaccines, and was point guard of his high school basketball team and a most creative "out of the box thinker" decided to try recreational drugs at the University of Iowa 3 years ago. He had a bad reaction to LSD  The Psychiatrists at the U of I Hospital totally disregarded the fact that he was coming off of a recreational trip and labeled him Bi Polar neatly coded by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) enabling him to be locked up and covered by Medicaid insuring that the Hospital would be paid.  

            The Hospital psychiatrist put David, then age 19, on Lithium, Haldol, Addivan and you name it.  He gained enormous amount of weight and became zombie-like. They told him he would have to be on Lithium the rest of his life...that is...the rest of his life.   This once brilliant athlete was now shuffling his feet having been condemned to a life of a lawn mower. The diagnosis was based on no tests...no genetic history...no nothing...just the "professional opinion" of a college educated, brainwashed American Psychiatric Association (APA) dweeble who blatantly disregarded the fact that David's symptoms were caused by LSD (one of the first SSRI drugs developed by Pfizer in the early day).  Does the DSM have a code for LSD adverse effects?   Would "detoxification" have been a more rational first line of treatment? Would Medicaid pay for a hospital stay for "detoxification"? I don't think so, but it sounds like a sorely needed common sense plan for the youth of America, today. s And...to add insult to injury:

            One day as David was coming off the Haldol, he hung himself in my back yard.  Twitching uncontrollably from a tree, I saved him in the nick of time, shouldering him back up on the ladder from whence he jumped. Today, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued black box warnings for SSRIs:  A little late for David or Diane Routhier, a well-educated, beautiful, happily married mother of two who killed herself with a gun after six days on Wellbutin. Or Sara Bostock whose daughter stabbed herself twice in the chest with a large chef's knife after taking Paxil for 2 weeks.  (Sleeping in the next room, Sara simply heard a slight yelp and a thump when her daughter fell on the floor). Glenn McIntosh’s 6th grade daughter hung herself with her shoelaces in the school bathroom after being prescribed Paxil/Zoloft.  Chris Pittman was 12 years old and on Zoloft when he killed both his grandparents and torched their house.

Yet, Psychiatrists still prescribe these drugs.  David "believed" the white coated, diploma laden authorities and so did his father who would piss in the wind if an authority told him to do so.  It took David a self discovery journey in and out of mental institutions and hospitals for over two years to realize he was not mentally ill but had become a victim of massive, covert, quasi-legitimate, series of clinical drug trials.   The reality is that research hospital psychiatrists are "experimenting' on this generation with a vast array of sketchily FDA approved anti depressant/psychotic medications. University mental hospitals have become the second tier drug trial laboratory for the drug companies. The Bayh-Dole Act passed by Congress in the 80's gave Universities and their researchers full patent rights to drugs they might develop.  Since then, universities and associated hospitals have become field laboratories for the drug industry. (See:  http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune75/articles/0,15114,1101810-2,00.html) Emory College, for example, recently received over $300 million dollars for a drug they developed. 

            Currently on the radar is TeenScreen, a suicide screening initiative created by Columbia University (emphasis on university). Teen Screen has begun to infiltrate our public schools, using our convenient "educational" network as a channel for the Drug industry. There is so much blind banter going on in the media about the TeenScreen program, but has anyone actually seen a Teen Screen survey?  Have a peek.  Judge for yourself whether this is science or academic junk. We have a research project currently reviewing a TeenScreen survey on our website www.ProgessiveConvergence.com.   In our review, we noticed that there were many questions on the use of street drugs such as marijuana, LSD, amphetamines, etc, but no questions on the use of "prescription drugs".  It seemed odd to us that since over eight million children are on psychiatric drugs and many of these drugs have black box warnings in particular for suicide that there were no questions on this survey pertaining to prescription drugs. Marijuana isn't known for causing suicidal ideation, but drugs given to ADD and ADHD kids are.   It is quite telling by this blaring omission who is behind the congressionally funded, mandated mental screening of all America's children via public schools initiative.  In addition, this initiative has been strategically designed so that it does not require active parental consent. And although Congressman Ron Paul (TX) has fought for parental consent, Congress has failed to support him.  

        And while we are at it:  Why all this concern about mental illness in our public schools? Yes, it is true that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that 1 of every 6 children has a neurological disorder. Could the 20 years of injecting the generation (via the CDC’s mandated  children’s vaccine program) with high levels of mercury (aka Thimerosal) in as many as 22 vaccines between the ages of 1 month and 2 years old have anything to do with the apparent rampant epidemic of mental illness, ADD, ADHD and Autism?

        Doesn't it seem odd to anyone that we are advised by our government not to eat fish contaminated with mercury, yet we are asked to stand by while health professionals inject this deadly neurotoxin directly into our children’s bloodstreams?  And does it not appear to be even odder… rather than facing this CDC atrocity square on, that Congress is facilitating the dumbing down of our children with anti-depressants, psychiatric, suicide/homicide drugs by funding programs like Teen Screen and the New Freedom Commission. Seems odd to me…the on going government program...shoot ‘em up with mercury, then dumb ‘em down with Zoloft

         In conclusion, I wonder how we will all fare when the Dept. of Defense (DoD) calls a Bioterrorism emergency (based on reality or not) and the Human Health Services director, Mike Leavitt mandates the injection of every man, woman and child with untested vaccines. Last week’s passage of the Patriot Act amendments has insured non-liability for Drug companies.  How convenient.  We might expect either the avian flu pandemic or a bio terrorist attack any time soon now that Drug companies are held harmless for damages.

Eileen Dannemann
Director, National Coalition of Organized Women
www.ProgressiveConvergence.com

www.SlavetotheMetal.org
 

         

Holy Smoke! Here we go 2006!!

2006 starts off with a bang! 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/editorials/la-op-psych1jan01,0,1868753.story?coll=la-home-sunday-opinion

January 1, 2006

Los Angeles Times

Psychiatry's sick compulsion: turning weaknesses into diseases

By Irwin Savodnik, Irwin Savodnik is a psychiatrist and philosopher who teaches at UCLA.

IT'S JAN. 1. Past time to get your inoculation against seasonal affective disorder, or SAD — at least according to the American Psychiatric Assn. As Americans rush to return Christmas junk, bumping into each other in Macy's and Best Buy, the psychiatric association ponders its latest iteration of feeling bad for the holidays. And what is the association selling? Mental illness. With its panoply of major depression, dysthymic disorder, bipolar disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, the association is waving its Calvinist flag to remind everyone that amid all the celebration, all the festivities, all the exuberance, many people will "come down with" or "contract" or "develop" some variation of depressive illness.

The association specializes in turning ordinary human frailty into disease. In the last year, ads have been appearing in psychiatric journals about possible treatments for shyness, a "syndrome" not yet officially recognized as a disease. You can bet it will be in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, published by the association. As it turns out, the association has been inventing mental illnesses for the last 50 years or so. The original diagnostic manual appeared in 1952 and contained 107 diagnoses and 132 pages, by my count. The second edition burst forth in 1968 with 180 diagnoses and 119 pages. In 1980, the association produced a 494-page tome with 226 conditions. Then, in 1994, the manual exploded to 886 pages and 365 conditions, representing a 340% increase in the number of diseases over 42 years.

 

Nowhere in the rest of medicine has such a proliferation of categories occurred. The reason for this difference between psychiatry and other medical specialties has more to do with ideology than with science. A brief peek at both areas makes this point clear. All medicine rests on the premise that disease is a manifestation of diseased tissue. Hepatitis comes down to an inflamed liver, while lung tissue infiltrated with pneumococcus causes pneumonia. Every medical student learns this principle. Where, though, is the diseased tissue in psychopathological conditions?

Unlike the rest of medicine, psychiatry diagnoses behavior that society doesn't like. Yesterday it was homosexuality. Tomorrow it will be homophobia. Someone who declares himself the messiah, who insists that fluorescent lights talk to him or declares that she's the Virgin Mary, is an example of such behavior. Such people are deemed — labeled, really — sick by psychiatrists, and often they are taken off to hospitals against their will. The "diagnosis" of such "pathological behavior" is based on social, political or aesthetic values.

This is confusing. Behavior cannot be pathological (or healthy, for that matter). It can simply comport with, or not comport with, our nonmedical expectations of how people should behave. Analogously, brains that produce weird or obnoxious behaviors are not diseased. They are brains that produce atypical behaviors (which could include such eccentricities as dyed hair or multiple piercings or tattoos that nobody in their right mind could find attractive).

Lest one think that such a view is the rant of a Scientologist, it is no such thing. Scientology offers polemic to lull the faithful into belief. Doctors and philosophers offer argument to provoke debate.

It's a natural step from using social and political standards to create a psychiatric diagnosis to using them to influence public policy. Historically, that influence has appeared most dramatically in the insanity defense. Remember Dan White, the man who murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978? Or John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan in 1981? Or Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon? White, whose psychiatrist came up with the "Twinkie defense" — the high sugar content of White's favorite junk food may have fueled his murderous impulses — was convicted and paroled after serving five years, only to commit suicide a year later.

The erosion of personal responsibility is, arguably, the most pernicious effect of the expansive role psychiatry has come to play in American life. It has successfully replaced huge chunks of individual accountability with diagnoses, clinical histories and what turn out to be pseudoscientific explanations for deviant behavior.

Pathology has replaced morality. Treatment has supplanted punishment. Imprisonment is now hospitalization. From the moral self-castigation we find in the writings of John Adams, we have been drawn to Woody Allen-style neuroses. Were the psychiatric association to scrutinize itself more deeply and reconsider its expansionist diagnostic programs, it would, hopefully, make a positive contribution to our culture by not turning the good and bad into the healthy and the sick.

The last thing the United States needs is more self-indulgent, pseudo-insightful, overly self-conscious babble about people who can't help

themselves. Better, as Voltaire would put it, to cultivate our gardens and be accountable for who and what we are.