Big Pharma -- Big Lies

[Judee]

85% of new drugs 'offer few benefits'

By John von Radowitz, PA

Tuesday, 17 August 2010
The Independent

Drug companies were accused today of conning the public by hyping up patented medicines with little new to offer while downplaying their side-effects.

An estimated 85% of new drugs offer few if any new benefits while having the potential to cause serious harm due to toxicity or misuse, a study has concluded.

The author of the research delivered a damning attack on "Big Pharma" at a meeting of sociology experts in the US.

Professor Donald Light described the pharmaceutical industry as a "market for lemons" - one in which the seller knows much more than the buyer about the product, and takes advantage of this fact.

"Sometimes drug companies hide or downplay information about serious side-effects of new drugs and overstate the drugs' benefits," said Prof Light, a professor of comparative health policy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey, US.

"Then, they spend two to three times more on marketing than on research to persuade doctors to prescribe these new drugs. Doctors may get misleading information and then misinform patients about the risks of a new drug. It's really a two-tier market for lemons."

He alleged that the pharmaceutical industry owned companies in charge of drug testing and provided "firewalls" of legal protection behind which information about dangers or lack of effectiveness could be be hidden.

Companies were assisted by the "relatively low bar" for effectiveness that had to be crossed to get a new drug approved, he claimed.

Prof Light presented his paper, entitled "Pharmaceuticals: A Two-Tier Market for Producing 'Lemons' and Serious Harm" today at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

The study includes data gathered from independent reviewers which suggest that 85% of new drugs provide few, if any, new benefits.

Yet toxic side effects and misuse of prescription drugs had made medicines a significant cause of death, said Prof Light.

The professor makes the same claims in a new book, The Risk of Prescription Drugs due to be published this autumn by Columbia University Press.

In both his paper and the book, he describes the "risk proliferation syndrome" involved in drug marketing. This is said to arise from maximising the number of patients exposed to the side effects of new drugs of dubious efficacy.

Hyping a drug began with clinical trials designed to minimise evidence of harm and published literature that emphasised its advantages, said Prof Light.

Building on this foundation, pharmaceutical companies staged massive campaigns to sell the product, when a controlled limited launch would allow evidence of its effects to be gathered, he argued.

Leading clinicians were recruited to try using the drug for conditions other than those for which it was approved, and to promote "off-label" or unapproved uses, Prof Light maintained.

Physicians inadvertently became "double agents" - promoters of the new drug, yet trusted stewards of patients' health.

When patients complain of adverse reactions, studies show that doctors are likely to discount or dismiss them, according to Prof Light.

He accused companies of conducting a "swamp the regulator" policy - bombarding the bodies that award drug licences with large numbers of "incomplete, partial, sub-standard clinical trials".

One study of 111 final applications for approval found that 42% were missing data from adequately randomised trials, 40% were supported by flawed testing of dosages, 39% lacked evidence of clinical efficacy, and 49% raised concerns about serious adverse side-effects, he said.

Recently, major reports had focused on "biased, poor trials" involving the diabetes drug Avandia and the antibody cancer drug Avastin.

Avandia has been linked to an increased risk of heart attacks, while controversy surrounds Avastin's effectiveness as a breast cancer treatment.

A US Food and Drink Administration expert panel has called on the agency to withdraw its licence allowing Avastin to be used for this purpose.

Companies control the generation of scientific knowledge and which findings will go to licensing authorities such as the FDA or be published, Prof Light argued.

"The result is that drugs get approved without anyone being able to know how effective they really are or how much serious harm they will cause," he said.

"A few basic changes could improve the quality of trials and evidence about the real risks and benefits of new drugs. We could also increase the percentage of new drugs that are really better for patients."

Prof Light highlighted the marketing of statin cholesterol-lowering drugs as a good example of pharma hype.

Company-supported clinical researchers and medical writers created a global market for controlling cholesterol with statins, he argued.

A complex set of relationships between heart disease and saturated fats and cholesterol had been converted into the simple message that "cholesterol kills".

Yet two major trials of statins found little evidence that the drugs reduce the risk of heart attacks. In contrast, they showed an increased total risk of harm to health and death from the drugs despite the lowering of cholesterol levels.

One major meta-analysis, which pooled the findings of a number of studies, found that "statins were not associated with reduction in the risk of all-cause mortality".

Another trial led by a statin manufacturer was stopped early so that adverse side-effects were not recorded.

Mental illness and diabetes were other areas where questionable use of drugs occurred, said Prof Light.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants became immensely popular despite evidence that they are little better than "dummy" placebos for most patients.

In his paper, Prof Light concluded: "The evidence here indicates that the two-tier market for prescription drugs is the largest and most dangerous market for lemons in modern society. Neither wars nor used car injuries come close.

"Current incentives for research produce a few that substantially improve patients' chances of getting better or avoiding death but a large number of barely innovative drugs each year. These new drugs of little benefit consume about four-fifths of all drug costs.

"The incentives and institutional practices around testing and regulatory review predictably result in approvals being based on trials so biased and poorly run that no one knows how much better or worse new drugs are."
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 54972.html

[Alpha]

Great thread Judee....let's document all we can on this.....

This could be one of them...

Avastin

Of course there are many more IMHO....this one's just for starters....Vaccines

[pyrite]

cipro: in high doses causes tendon damage...thats right makes them stretch and kinda tear apart...some folks are in wheel chairs because of it...they knew this was a side effec of that class of anti biotics...how did i find out...after my tendons in my feet and legs started to fail...now its like i have razor blades inside of my feet/legs

neurontin:...never intended to be a pain medication, it is an anti depressant...but the docs slap it at ya in really high doses if you have chronic pain...never mind what it does to serotonin levels....i believe the medical fielsd is filled with lazy doctors who slap meds at ya, and have no clue as to the damages the meds cause...

[SquidInk]

Incredible! We need to move quickly to outlaw natural supplements, farmers' markets, apple cider vinegar, turmeric, garlic, etc. In fact outlaw all plants - it's worked well with narcotics. We can start the "War on Plants". Only mega corporations are benevolent and responsible enough to be tinkering with healing compounds. The common idiot will inevitably kill his/herself if they attempt home remedies. This article is the final proof that the corporate/university/government meritocracy has successfully screened the most brilliant among us, and wisely given them carte blanche to alter all of nature in order to create profitable & patentable compounds to poison us all.

Yeah, for sure.

__end rant__

[pyrite]

Incredible! We need to move quickly to outlaw natural supplements, farmers' markets, apple cider vinegar, turmeric, garlic, etc. In fact outlaw all plants - it's worked well with narcotics. We can start the "War on Plants". Only mega corporations are benevolent and responsible enough to be tinkering with healing compounds. The common idiot will inevitably kill his/herself if they attempt home remedies. This article is the final proof that the corporate/university/government meritocracy has successfully screened the most brilliant among us, and wisely given them carte blanche to alter all of nature in order to create profitable & patentable compounds to poison us all.

Yeah, for sure.

__end rant__

add insult to injury..there is a bill being written to ban and remove all colloidal silver from the market...all of it

[SquidInk]

of course... can't patent that, so let's ban it.

[Judee]

cipro: in high doses causes tendon damage...thats right makes them stretch and kinda tear apart...some folks are in wheel chairs because of it...they knew this was a side effec of that class of anti biotics...how did i find out...after my tendons in my feet and legs started to fail...now its like i have razor blades inside of my feet/legs

neurontin:...never intended to be a pain medication, it is an anti depressant...but the docs slap it at ya in really high doses if you have chronic pain...never mind what it does to serotonin levels....i believe the medical fielsd is filled with lazy doctors who slap meds at ya, and have no clue as to the damages the meds cause...

I agree with you pyrite. I have a close friend who is seriously and permanently disabled from Accutane (an acne medication [poison]). There are so many lawsuits going on over many different medications right now that it boggles my mind!

Here's some feedback from ordinary people on Cipro:
http://www.askapatient.com/viewratin...537&name=CIPRO

And Accutane:
http://www.askapatient.com/viewratin...&name=ACCUTANE

Give me a drug name and I could list the horrible side effects all day...

Quote Squid:
SquidInk
Incredible! We need to move quickly to outlaw natural supplements, farmers' markets, apple cider vinegar, turmeric, garlic, etc. In fact outlaw all plants - it's worked well with narcotics. We can start the "War on Plants". Only mega corporations are benevolent and responsible enough to be tinkering with healing compounds. The common idiot will inevitably kill his/herself if they attempt home remedies. This article is the final proof that the corporate/university/government meritocracy has successfully screened the most brilliant among us, and wisely given them carte blanche to alter all of nature in order to create profitable & patentable compounds to poison us all.

Yeah, for sure.

That's right Squid. Big Pharma wants to make sure they have total control over what goes into our bodies, and they damn sure don't want us being healthy. Their business plan works something this: They put a new drug on the market knowing that there is a probability that a certain number of people will be harmed and/or die. They sit around a conference table and figure out how much money that drug has to make, verses how much money they will have to pay out in damages, and we all know how hard it is to win a medical lawsuit don't we? When 'x' number of people have died, they pull the drug off the market and pay out as little as possible. What's left amounts to huge profits. They take the pulled drug back to the lab, change it a little, give it a different name, and splash ads across the TV that tell people to 'ask your doctor about' the latest poison pill! And now, I'd like someone to tell me why, under Bush's reign, that a cap was put on medical lawsuits... Big Pharma has a perfect business plan, with a huge population to victimize. All of this is only my opinion however, and I'm crazy of course so none of this matters.

[Judee]

Pharmacy chains poised for universal flu vaccination push
Lisa Schnirring Staff Writer


Aug 18, 2010 (CIDRAP News) - With seasonal flu shots already available in many pharmacies and their in-store clinics, retail chains are retooling their marketing plans to include the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) new recommendation for universal flu vaccination.

Both CVS and Walgreens recently announced they have expanded the number of sites offering the seasonal flu vaccine. Troyen Brennan, MD, chief medical officer of CVS Caremark, said in a statement announcing the launch of the company's seasonal flu campaign that every CVS pharmacy and MinuteClinic location will be able to administer flu vaccinations this season.

Yesterday, Walgreens announced that flu shots will be available at all of its pharmacies and Take Care Clinics. In early August, Rite Aid began accepting reservations for the seasonal flu vaccine at 3,000 of its pharmacies, adding that it would be offering immunizations at 800 more sites in October and November.

The three chains and their affiliates have about 20,300 locations across the United States.

In February the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended seasonal flu immunizations for everyone except babies younger than 6 months old. It said expanding the recommendation addresses two problems: Flu complications can occur even in healthy people, and many adults with conditions such as diabetes and asthma don't consider themselves at increased risk.

The president and chief operating officer of Walgreens, Greg Wasson, said in a press release yesterday that the company, which administered 7 million seasonal and pandemic flu shots last season, is urging everyone to follow the CDC's recommendations... "It's [the vaccine] never been more convenient and never more accessible," he said.

In its new informational materials, CVS is promoting the seasonal flu vaccine, which contains the pandemic H1N1 strain, as an "all in one" flu shot. The company said it is also providing customers with information about the CDC's new universal vaccination recommendations and tips for staying healthy during flu season.

Based on the new recommendation and the results of a customer survey, CVS expects demand for flu shots to be high. A survey of 3,113 customers conducted between Apr 1 and Apr 5 found that 59% said they are likely to get a flu shot in 2010. More than a third (37%) of those who did not get vaccinated in 2009 responded that they were more likely to be immunized against the flu this season.

However, CVS found some gaps in flu-shot messages. Though two-thirds of respondents said they were aware of the new universal vaccination recommendation, only half said they were more likely to be vaccinated because of it. "Our survey results demonstrate that while there is a high public awareness about flu, more work needs to be done to educate consumers on the importance of getting a flu shot every year," Brennan said.

Walgreens said it is offering new direct-billing processes though major insurance carriers such as United Healthcare and CIGNA, along with a handful of regional insurance providers. This year the company is offering online flu vaccine forms so that customers can complete them before going to their pharmacy.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/con...armacy-br.html

[Judee]

The Hidden Truth: Why Government Wants Your Kids on Cholesterol Drugs…
August 18 2010

If Pfizer has its way, your child's gummy bears may be replaced with chewable Lipitor

The exploitation of children for the sake of profit is yet another loathsome strategy drug manufacturers are willing to deploy, this time for the purpose of extending Lipitor's patent to hold off generic brand competition.

We are already drugging children into complacency with psychotropic stimulants such as Ritalin if they are bored or distracted in the classroom, and devastating their developing immune systems with massive amounts of sugary drinks and a growing barrage of mercury-laden vaccines.

The following trends are quite disturbing:

•According to one study, American children take antipsychotic medications at six times the rate of U.K. children.
•One in four American kids takes a prescription drug for a chronic health condition.
•One in five teens has high cholesterol.
•Heartburn and acid reflux medications among adolescents has jumped 147 percent since 2001.
•Girls aged 10 to 19 taking medications for type 2 diabetes has jumped almost 200 percent in the past nine years.
•Children and adolescents make up the leading growth category for the pharmaceutical industry, with increases nearly four times higher than those seen in the rest of the population.
"No Child Left Unscreened"
Pumping statins into your children, like we are already doing with psychiatric drugs, would be disastrous, as the damaging side effects are now well established.

And if the government gets involved in mandating cholesterol screenings, it then becomes a slippery slope toward YOUR loss of parental choice about YOUR child's medical care. Often the government passes off recommendations as "medical decisions" but they are really "monetary decisions."

You should be the person in charge of your child's health -- not some government agency with a competing agenda!

Generation XL
It is indisputable that childhood obesity is placing the very future of the developing world at stake -- a topic I am so concerned about that I wrote a book called Generation XL. If the childhood obesity epidemic is not reversed, we will, for the first time in history, see children living shorter lives than their parents.

Indeed, something must be done about escalating childhood obesity and "adult" diseases showing up in our children.

But massive statin campaigns are certainly NOT the answer.

The cause of the problem is unhealthy lifestyle choices -- and drugs do nothing to address this. As mentioned in the source article, Harvard researchers found 85 percent of heart disease can be prevented by lifestyle changes alone -- diet, exercise, and supplemental nutrients.

What is Really Making Your Child Fat?
The modern Western diet has become exceedingly reliant on high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), refined grains, processed foods and artificial sweeteners -- a "perfect storm" for weight gain and poor health.

HFCS is now the number one source of calories in the US, and free-floating fructose is now the leading culprit for the obesity epidemic.

Sugar -- specifically fructose -- is metabolized by your child's body in such a way that nearly all of it is converted to fat.

Fructose is a very different sugar from glucose, which humans were designed to use for energy. Fructose is actually closer to ethanol, in terms of how it's metabolized. Unfortunately, fructose is the number one source of calories in the American diet, and children and adolescents are its number one consumers.

If you wish to promote your children's health and well being, it is essential to limit their fructose consumption.

You may have been deceived into thinking that dietary fat is the reason for your child's weight problem. But low-fat diet foods actually CAUSE weight gain in the majority of people, rather than saturated fats.

There are other factors that influence whether or not your child may develop a weight problem and other related health issues. There are genetic, emotional, social and environmental factors.

For example, researchers at the University of Illinois and the Harvard School of Public Health report that toddlers in day care tend to gain more weight than those who are cared for at home. They found babies spending more than 9 months in day care gained 0.4 pound more than those cared for by their parents. Although the higher weight gain was not easily explained, they speculated it had to do with "irregular eating patterns," as well as possibly the types of foods they were fed.

One hypothesis suggested by scientists was that day care workers might use food to sooth crying babies more than parents do, which could theoretically set up your baby for "emotional eating."

There is evidence that childhood obesity is not only related to adult obesity but to poor health in adulthood as well, so it is very important to pay attention to your child's diet and eating patterns from day one.

Total Cholesterol Number Alone is Virtually Useless
If your doctor is urging your child to get her total cholesterol level checked, you should realize this test tells you virtually nothing about her risk of heart disease -- unless it is 330 or higher.

Without also knowing lipid values, total cholesterol is meaningless. If you are going to participate in a screening, make sure a complete fasting lipid profile is what is being done.

What matters is how much HDL your child has in relation to her LDL and triglycerides.

The purpose of HDL is to take cholesterol from your child's tissues and arteries and transport it back to her liver, where it can be reused. It is her body's way of recycling and reusing cholesterol -- because cholesterol is vital for health, not the villain it has been made out to be.

LDL particles come in a variety of sizes, and it's the small, dense ones (VLDLs) that can potentially be a problem because they can squeeze through the lining of your child's arteries and oxidize, causing inflammation.

Full Story:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/ar...rol-drugs.aspx

[Judee]

America’s mental illness epidemic: It turns out that the drugs are the problem

August 26th, 2010

(OnlineJournal) – Tens of millions of innocent, unsuspecting Americans, who are mired deeply in the mental “health” system, have actually been made crazy by the use of or the withdrawal from commonly-prescribed, brain-altering, brain-disabling, indeed brain-damaging psychiatric drugs that have been, for many decades, cavalierly handed out like candy — often in untested and therefore unapproved combinations of drugs — to trusting and unaware patients by equally unaware but well-intentioned physicians who have been under the mesmerizing influence of slick and obscenely profitable psychopharmaceutical drug companies, a.k.a. BigPharma.

That is the conclusion of two books by investigative journalist and health science writer Robert Whitaker. His first book, entitled Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill noted that there has been a 600 percent increase (since Thorazine was introduced in the US in the mid-1950s) in the total and permanent disabilities of millions of psychiatric drug-takers. This uniquely First World mental ill health epidemic has resulted in the life-long taxpayer-supported disabilities of rapidly increasing numbers of psychiatric patients who are now unable to be happy, productive, taxpaying members of society. Whitaker has done a powerful, albeit unwelcome job of presenting previously hidden, but very convincing evidence to support his thesis, that it is the drugs and not the diagnosis that is causing the epidemic of mental illness disability. Many open-minded physicians and many aware psychiatric patients are now motivated to be wary of any and all synthetic chemicals that can cross the blood/brain barrier because all of them are capable of altering the brain in ways totally unknown to medical science, especially when the patients are taking the drugs long-term. .

In Whitaker’s second book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, he goes much further in advancing this sobering reality. He documents the history of the powerful forces behind the relatively new field of psychopharmacology and its major shaper and beneficiary, BigPharma. Psychiatric drugs, whose developers, marketers and salespersons are all in the employ of the giant drug companies, are far more dangerous than the drug and psychiatric industries are willing to admit: These drugs, it turns our, are fully capable of disabling — often permanently — body, brain and spirit.

More evidence to support Whitaker’s well-documented claims are laid out in two important new books written by psychiatrist and scholar Grace Jackson. Jackson did a beautiful job of researching and documenting, from the voluminous basic neuroscience research (which is uniformly ignored by the clinical sciences) the unintended and often disastrous consequences of the chronic ingestion of any of the five major classes of psychiatric drugs. Her second and most powerful book: Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that any of the five classes of drugs that are commonly used in psychiatric patients (antidepressants, antipsychotics, psychostimulants, tranquilizers and anti-seizure/”mood-stabilizer” drugs) have shown microscopic, macroscopic, biochemical, clinical and/or radiological evidence of brain shrinkage and other signs of brain damage, which can result in clinically-diagnosable, permanent dementia, premature death and a variety of other related brain disorders that can mimic mental illnesses. Jackson’s first book, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent was an equally sobering book warning about the many hidden dangers of psychiatric drugs.

This sad truth is that the seemingly knee-jerk prescribing (without very much information being given to patients about the long list of serious long-term adverse effects) of potent and often addicting/dependency-inducing psychiatric drugs has become the standard of care in American psychiatry since the introduction of the so-called anti-schizophrenic “miracle” drug Thorazine in the mid-1950s. (Thorazine was the offending drug that all of Jack Nicholson’s fellow patients were coerced into taking at “medication time” in the Academy Award-winning movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”) Thorazine and all the other “me-too” early antipsychotic drugs are now universally known to have been an iatrogenic (= doctor or other treatment-caused) disaster because of their serious long-term, initially unsuspected, brain-damaging effects that resulted in a number of incurable neurological disorders such as tardive dyskinesia and Parkinson’s disease.

Thorazine and all the other knock-off drugs like Prolixin, Mellaril, Navane, etc., are synthetic “tricyclic” chemical compounds similar in molecular structure to the tricyclic “antidepressants” like imipramine and the similarly toxic, obesity-inducing, diabetogenic, “atypical” anti-schizophrenic drugs like Clozaril, Zyprexa and Seroquel.

Thorazine, incidentally, was originally developed in Europe as an industrial dye. That doesn’t sound so good although it may not be so unusual in the closely related fields of psychopharmcology and the chemical industry, especially when one considers that Depakote, a popular drug marketed initially as an anti-epilepsy drug but now is being heavily used as a so-called “mood stabilizer.” Depakote, known to be a hepatotoxin and renal toxin, was originally developed as an industrial solvent capable of dissolving fat — including, presumably, the fatty tissue in human livers and brains.

Some sympathy and understanding needs to be generated for the various victims of BigPharma’s compulsive drive to expand market share and ”shareholder value” (share price, dividends and the next quarter’s financial report) by whatever means necessary. Both the prescribers and the swallowers of BigPharma’s drugs have succumbed to BigPharma’s cunning marketing campaigns, the prescribers having been seduced by attractive drug company representatives and their “pens, pizzas and post-it note” freebies in the office, and the patients being brain-washed by the inane and unbelievable (if one has intact critical thinking skills) commercials on TV that quickly gloss over the lethal adverse effects in the fine print while urging the watcher to “ask your doctor” about the latest unaffordable wannabe blockbuster drug. .

For a quick overview of these issues, I recommend that everybody with an open mind read a long essay written by Whitaker that persuasively identifies the source of America’s epidemic of mental illness disability (a phenomenon that doesn’t exist in Third World nations because costly psych drugs are not prescribed so cavalierly as in the US).

Whitaker and Jackson (among a number of other ground-breaking and whistle-blowing authors who have been essentially black-listed by the mainstream media and mainstream medical journals) have proven to most critically-thinking scientists, alternative practitioners and assorted “psychiatric survivors” that it is the drugs — and not the so-called “disorders” — that are causing our nation’s epidemic of mental illness disability. The Whitaker essay, plus other pertinent information about his books can be accessed at Mad In America. A recent interview on Wisconsin Public Radio can be accessed at www.wpr.org (at their radio archives link) and a long interview with Dr.Joseph Mercola can be heard here.

After reading and studying all these inconvenient truths, mental health practitioners must consider the medicolegal implications for them, especially if the information is ignored or if the information is dismissed out of hand by practitioners who might be tempted to not take the time to study this new information. Those people who are hearing about this for the first time need to pass the word on to others, especially their prescribing healthcare practitioners who should be equally concerned. This is important because the opinion leaders in the highly influential (for good or ill) psychiatric and medical industries have been marketed into submission without hearing the all the facts (which may have been intentionally hidden from them. If that is the case, they cannot be automatically blamed for. proceeding in a practice that some day might represent malpractice. It shouldn’t have to be pointed out that is the solemn duty of ethical practitioners who are in positions of authority to fully examine potential malpractice issues and then warn others, especially their patients, of the dangers.

Sadly, it must be admitted that most of the over-worked, double-booked care-givers in medical clinics have not yet heard the news that most if not all of the brain-altering synthetic chemicals known as psychotropic drugs (which are treated as hazardous waste unless they are packaged in a swallowable capsule!) have been marketed as safe and effective — but only for short-term use. The captains of the drug industry know that the psychotropic drugs that they present for the FDA-approval have only been tested in animal trials for days and in clinical trials for 6 weeks. They also know — indeed they hope — that patients will be taking their drugs for years (despite no long-term trials proving safety and efficacy) as the only “treatment” for mental ill health. They know that their brain-altering drugs are also dependency-inducing (aka addicting, causing withdrawal symptoms when stopped), neurotoxic and increasingly ineffective (a la “Prozac Poop-out”) as time goes by.

The truth is that the people diagnosed as “mentally ill” for life are often simply those unfortunates who find themselves in acute or chronic states of crisis or “overwhelm” due to any number of preventable, curable and treatable (without the use of drugs) bad luck accidents such as poverty, abuse, violence, torture, homelessness, discrimination, underemployment, brain malnutrition, addictions/withdrawal, brain damage from electroshock “therapy” and/or exposure to neurotoxic chemicals in their food, air, water or prescription bottles.

Those labeled as the “mentally ill” are just like us “normals” who have not yet decompensated because of some yet-to-happen, crisis-inducing, overwhelming (however temporary) life situation. And thus we have not yet been given a billable code number (accompanied by the seemingly obligatory — and unaffordable — drug prescription or two signifying we are now chronically mentally ill. Unlabeled, we are likely to remain off prescription drugs but with a label and in “the system,” it is hard to “just say no to drugs.”

The victims of hopelessness-generating situations like simple bad luck, bad circumstances, bad company, bad choices, bad government, big business, and a competitive society that generates a few winners but mostly losers. America tolerates, indeed celebrates, punitive and thus fear-inducing social systems resembling in many ways the infamous police state realities of 20th century European totalitarianism, where people who were different or just dissidents were thought to be abnormal and therefore “disappeared” into insane asylums, jails or concentration camps without just cause or competent legal defense. And many of them were and are drugged with disabling psychoactive chemicals against their will.

The truth is that most, if not all, of BigPharma’s psychotropic drugs are lethal at some dosage level (the LD50, the lethal dose that kills 50 percent of lab animals, is calculated before efficacy testing is done), and therefore the drugs must be regarded as dangerous. The chronic use of these drugs is a major cause of cognitive disorders, brain damage, loss of creativity, loss of spirituality, loss of empathy, loss of energy, loss of strength, fatigue and tiredness, permanent disability and a multitude of metabolic adverse effects that can readily sicken the body, brain and soul by causing insomnia or somnolence, increased depression or anxiety, delusions, psychoses, paranoia, mania, etc. So before filling the prescription, it is advisable to read the product insert labeling under WARNINGS, PRECAUTIONS, ADVERSE EFFECTS, CONTRAINDICATIONS, TOXICOLOGY, OVERDOSAGE and the ever-present BLACK BOX WARNINGS ABOUT SUICIDALITY.

Full Story:
http://dprogram.net/2010/08/26/ameri...e-the-problem/

[Judee]

I would bet my life that prescription psychotropic drugs are what is responsible (perhaps along with street drugs) for Charlie Sheens' bizarre behavior!! He has already stated that he had serious reactions to the prescription sleeping drug Ambien.

Congressman Wu's bizarre behavior due to psychiatric drugs?
by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) In a tale that many mainstream media outlets are attempting to use as a political smear campaign, the story of US Rep. David Wu's severe negative reaction to a common psychiatric drug speaks more about the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs than it does partisan politics. According to reports, Wu was hospitalized in 2008 for severe reactions to an unnamed psychiatric drug which caused him to display erratic and strange behavior, including the sending of personal photos of himself in a tiger costume to his staffers.

Though Wu denies that the photo incident -- which took place two years after his hospitalization in 2008 -- is directly connected to the psychiatric drug, such behavior suggests at least a possible connection. Other odd behavioral events include excessive bouts of severe anger, demonstrations of impatience for no apparent reason, and even episodes where Wu disappeared and nobody was able to find him.

Wu has refused to identify the drug that led to his hospitalization, and insists that extreme campaign stress, his divorce, and having to raise his children alone, are among the reasons why his behavior began to spiral out of control. Wu's spokesman Erik Dorey, however, has stated that Wu is "clearly acknowledging" that he has a medical issue, but did not provide any further details.

In a recent interview with KGW NewsChannel 8 in Portland, Wu repeatedly apologized for his behavior, and reiterated that he has no plans to resign, despite the controversy. He says he is now in a "good place," having since recovered from a "rough patch during an election."

But what has not been adequately explained is what Wu took that triggered his severe mental reaction. Some reports speculate that the drug given to Wu by his campaign donor was Oxycodone, but Wu insists that he was unaware of what drug he took. Interestingly, oxycodone is among the top prescription drugs responsible for emergency room visits (http://www.naturalnews.com/030252_p...).

Sources for this story include:

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/...
http://www.naturalnews.com/031561_Co...ric_drugs.html

[Judee]

Antidepressants may raise risk of heart disease
by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) One class of antidepressant drugs may increase a patient's risk of developing heart disease by 35 percent, according to a study conducted by researchers from University College London and published in the "European Heart Journal."

The researchers compared heart disease risk among 15,000 residents of Scotland who were taking either older (tricyclic) antidepressants or antidepressants in the newer selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) family. They found that patients taking tricyclic antidepressants were significantly more likely to suffer heart disease than those taking SSRIs, indicating that depression itself was unlikely to be causing the heart disease.

"Our findings suggest that there is an association between the use of tricyclic antidepressants and an increased risk of CVD that is not explained by existing mental illness," researcher Mark Hamer said.

"This suggests that there may be some characteristic of tricyclics that is raising the risk. Tricyclics are known to have a number of side effects; they are linked to increased blood pressure, weight gain and diabetes and these are all risk factors for CVD."

Just because SSRIs appear to pose less risk of heart disease, however, it does not render those antidepressants safe.

"All of the SSRI antidepressants have very similar and often identical adverse effects, so that as of early January 2005, the FDA has required the identical black-box warning for all of them concerning drug-induced suicide and mental deterioration in children and youth age eighteen and younger, which was then expanded to include young adults," writes Peter Breggin in his book "Medication Madness."

"Given that antidepressants are now prescribed not only for depression, but for a wide range of conditions such as back pain, headache, anxiety and sleeping problems, the risks associated with antidepressants have increasing relevance to the general population," Hamer warned.

Hamer noted that people taking antidepressants are more likely to smoke, be overweight, and engage in less physical activity than people not taking such drugs. Changing these three factors can lead to a dramatic decrease in heart disease risk and can also reduce the symptoms of depression.

Sources for this story include: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...
http://www.naturalnews.com/031557_an...t_disease.html

[Alpha]

Actually SSRI's have not been proven to improve the very specific symptoms they were alleged designed to treat...quite the converse from what I have read.

There is a much more sinister plot with this group of drugs IMO. Remember too, they can't be filtered out of the water system, which means essentially we are all on them.