THE 7th BLOG FOR THE OUTLAW OF PSYCHIATRY NOW !

2008-02-06T07:54:00.000-08:00

LETTERS PROTESTING THE PSYCHIATRIC TORTURE OF REBECCA MERHAV :

3. LINDA RAPS

linda <lindaraps97@yahoo.com> wrote: Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 19:14:17 -0800 (PST)
From: linda <lindaraps97@yahoo.com>
Subject: Rebecca
To: s.wilkins@alfred.org.au
CC: lisa.neville@minstaff.vic.gov.au, jesse.martin@minstaff.vic.gov.au,
hsc@dhs.vic.gov.au, kuruvilla.george@dhs.vic.gov.au

Hello,

I am writing to you to let you know that the toxic dangerous drugs you are forcing Miss Merhav to endure into her body and brain appears to be an undisclosed experiment. Do you and all the "professionals" associated with Psychiatry/Pharmaceutical Racketeering really believe this young woman will live a longer and more fulfilling life due to these poisons?

Have you shown her father real orthodox PROOF that her brain is so defective she cannot be allowed to see or talk to her Dad? Do any of you who seem to be power tripping this man Ben know how it feels to not be allowed any information on his daughter? (Remember, he was her Dad and she was his baby or may be that doesn't mean a thing to any of you).

Capturing humans to experiment on and keep after you have damaged them is the most cruel and obnoxious form of captivity for any human! Haven't you read about the SIDE EFFECTS and the Permanent Damage these drugs create in humans never mind RATS.

Thousands upon thousands of allies and friends of Ben are watching and waiting for your mishap or death to happen as it happens all the time. Are you going to let Ben know when she dies or is it going to be a BIG SECRET! We are ashamed of all of you connected with poisons, captivity and deaths just because you all want the BIG BUCKS.

Linda

2008-02-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

LETTERS PROTESTING THE PSYCHIATRIC TORTURE OF REBECCA MERHAV :

2. AMY PHILO

Under the title/subject LET REBECCA GO her letter is addressed to the treating psychatrist with copies to the Minister for Mental Health, the Chief Psychiatrist,and the Health Services Commissioner, Victoria, Australia.

To all those who currently have the power to influence the CTO placed on Rebecca Merhav:

I am a U.S. Citizen and survivor of Zoloft and psychiatry. In 2004 I was forcibly held in a psychiatric hospital for two days and separated from my newborn baby and my family for much of that time. I considered that to be the worst time of my life and I had no idea that I should have considered myself fortunate that the treatment was no worse. I took Zoloft for only 3 days before it made me suicidal and homicidal. I stayed on it for 5 months because of advice that I needed to give it time to work or raise my dose even higher to get a therapeutic effect, before going off of it against medical advice and discovering that I was indeed not mentally ill while not taking prescription mind-altering drugs.

For 30 years Rebecca has been subjected to these dangerous experiments and it is nothing short of a miracle that she has survived the torture of psychiatry. She definitely has a strong spirit and protection from God to be able to survive all this and it is probably divine intervention that keeps her going so she can fulfill her purpose. I pray that her life will not be cut short by your cruel treatments and that she will not become an example of the deaths often caused by Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome.

I have struggled to understand for a long time why you have been allowed to force Rebecca Merhav to ingest and absorb these drugs that are so dangerous and toxic. Your forced treatment of her is endangering her life. It is her desire and that of her father that she be given an opportunity to taper off of the medications and restore her health through natural means. To refuse a patient the right to control the course of their own life is to take away their freedom, and taking away freedom when someone has committed no crime is unjustifiable torture.

Recent studies show that antipsychotic medications do not improve outcomes for patients and actually did worse than placebo. Therefore, the only logical justification you could possibly have to be forcing this woman to take these drugs is that you are either ignorant of evidence against the drugs, completely incompetent, or you are intentionally trying to hurt or kill her. This is a failed trial and the drugs are not helping Rebecca, all they are doing is hastening her death.

I have been tempted in the past to contact U.S. officials or international organizations to intervene. I have been urged not to do so by Rebecca's father Ben because all he wants for Rebecca is a chance at a normal life and not to be turned into a media target in the process.I am a mother of two and if this were to ever happen to my children I would be tempted to take much more severe and punitive actions against the people attempting to kill my children. Clearly Ben has been more than rational and patient with you and is following all of the normal protocol and appeal process put in place by your twisted system.

I can't imagine what it must be like to have to suffer this torture for so long or to have to see your own child go through this.

If you do not release Rebecca you will become the subjects of an international investigation and very likely held criminally liable for her death which will no doubt occur under your watch. The only chance she has at survival and the only chance you have to save face is to release her and let her make her own path before the drugs kill her.

I hope that you will choose the right thing and let her go.

I will be forwarding the information on your abuses to many people and if necessary I will alert the many media contacts that I have acquired over the past few years. Do the right thing and avoid a scandal and the dismantling of your career by the governments who will hold you accountable for your actions.

To have such power as to play with people's lives this way and let the torture continue for 30 years, I have to really wonder what kind of people you are. If you do not act now to free her, you are not good people. If you let her go you can have at least a semblance of a clean conscience.If I do not receive a reply from you indicating that Rebecca is being released within the next few days, I will assume that you want the attention of the international human rights community and cameras at your doorsteps.

Hopefully she will survive the next few days and live on to be enabled to have the freedom that we are all born expecting to have.

Sincerely,
Amy Philo
amyphilo@yahoo.com

2008-02-03T20:20:00.000-08:00

THE PSYCHIATRIC TORTURE OF REBECCA MERHAV IS ONCE MORE INTENSIFIED TO THE DETRIMENT OF HER WELLBEING, AND SHE IS AT THE HIGH RISK OF BEING CRUSHED TO DEATH AS A RESULT !
by Justice Lover

Some 10 days ago Miss Rebecca Merhav, the daughter of Benjamin Merhav, was told by the state shrink ,who is in charge of her under a compulsory treatment order, to leave her home and stay at a psychiatric institution. Her father was not informed of that until about a week later, and then only following his phone call to the shrink.

Her detention address and the phone number to contact her were denied to him. Further inquiries by him revealed that she was ordered to take 400 mg of Serquel tablets per day, in addition to the 75mg Risperdal injections she was forced to take every 10 days.

This is a very dangerous, and very horrible setback for her, having endured the Clozapine torture for over 2 years and all the psychiatric experimentations forced on her for the past 30 years.

Benjamin's letter :

" To the treating psychiatrist,

I am alarmed, dismayed, distressed, disappointed and very worried about the new "treatment" you are forcing my daughter to take, as part of your experimentations with her. This is a sever case of misuse of your legal power given to you by the Mental Health Act, as the psychiatrist treating Rebecca. Are over 30 years of psychiatric torture and experimentations that she has endured so far not enough ?

In reply to my call you told me over the phone that she herself chose to go to that psychiatric institution where you arranged for her to stay and take more very dangerous psychiatric drugs. You also added that if she would not be happy there she would be free to go back home any time. You should know by now that no patient under CTO is free to do what they consider best for them to do. Rebecca sure knows that, as she had 30 years of very bad experience under CTO.

She knows, of course, that the treating psychiatrists and their psychiatric nurses do not like complaints, much less patient's disobedience, and she has been powerless against the psychiatric machine, which has both overt and covert punishments at its disposal (and in her case, with the full support of her mother).

As I phoned the clinic this morning I was told, in reply to my questions, that Rebecca is now forced to take another Atypical drug (Seroquel, 250mg tablets per day, to replace the old Clozapine poison). This in addition to the 10 day interval Risperdal 75mg injections. As you know, Serquel is a very dangerous neuroleptic, and with many adverse effects. Even the FDA in the USA states as follows (with my emphasis ) :

http://www.fda.gov/cder/foi/label/2004/20639se1-017,016_seroquel_lbl.pdf

"WARNINGS

Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome (NMS) A potentially fatal symptom complex sometimes referred to as Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome (NMS) has been reported in association with administration of antipsychotic drugs, including SEROQUEL. Rare cases of NMS have been reported with SEROQUEL. Clinical manifestations of NMS are hyperpyrexia, muscle rigidity, altered mental status, and evidence of autonomic instability (irregular pulse or blood pressure, tachycardia, diaphoresis, and cardiac dysrhythmia). Additional signs may include elevated creatine phosphokinase, myoglobinuria (rhabdomyolysis) and acute renal failure. The diagnostic evaluation of patients with this syndrome is complicated. In arriving at a diagnosis, it is important to exclude cases where the clinical presentation includes both serious medical illness (eg, pneumonia, systemic infection, etc.) and untreated or inadequately treated extrapyramidal signs and symptoms (EPS). Other important considerations in the differential diagnosis include central anticholinergic toxicity, heat stroke, drug fever and primary central nervous system (CNS) pathology."

At the same page the FDA has the following information :

"Post Marketing Experience:

Adverse events reported since market introduction which were
temporally related to SEROQUEL therapy include:

leukopenia/neutropenia. If a patient develops a low white cell count
consider discontinuation of therapy. Possible risk factors for
leukopenia/neutropenia include pre-existing low white cell count and
history of drug induced leukopenia/neutropenia.
Other adverse events reported since market introduction, which were
temporally related to SEROQUEL therapy, but not necessarily
causally related, include the following: agranulocytosis, anaphylaxis,
hyponatremia, rhabdomyolysis, syndrome of inappropriate
antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH), and Steven Johnson
syndrome (SJS)."

A law firm in the USA, which has vast legal experience in law suits against drug corporations, pasted the piece of information on its website as it is below . According to this information the drug manufacturer itself
changed the label on Seroquel to include the following (my emphasis ) :

"In January 2004, AstraZeneca changed the labeling on Seroquel^® to warn of the serious, increased risk of diabetes and related health complications such as hyperglycemia, ketoacidosis, coma and death."

http://www.kritzerzonies.com/drug_seroquel.htm

"Seroquel^® (quetiapine fumarate), manufactured by AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, is an atypical antipsychotic medication approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1997 to control the symptoms of schizophrenia and manic episodes associated with bipolar disorder. Although approved specifically for these limited purposes, some physicians have prescribed Seroquel^® for "off-label" use including sleep disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and other anxiety disorders.
Not long after Seroquel^® was approved for use, evidence began to mount regarding the serious side effects associated with it and other similar medications. In January 2004, AstraZeneca changed the labeling on Seroquel^® to warn of the serious, increased risk of diabetes and related health complications such as hyperglycemia, ketoacidosis, coma and death. In April 2005, the FDA ordered AstraZeneca to add a "black box warning" to Seroquel^® labeling, informing consumers about the increased risk of death from the drug. The FDA also emphasized at that time that Seroquel^® was NOT approved to treat elderly patients with dementia. Although studies have linked Seroquel^® to diabetes, death and other serious side effects, the drug remains on the market.

In 2004, soon after the discovery of diabetes-related Seroquel^® side effects, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of all patients who had taken the drug. The lawsuit sought the establishment of a medical monitoring fund which would provide free, periodic testing for diabetes and related conditions for patients taking Seroquel^®. Other Seroquel^® lawsuits have been filed on behalf of individuals who allegedly have been seriously injured or killed by Seroquel^® side effects.

If you or a loved one is taking Seroquel^®, it is important to be aware of these risks and speak with your health care professional to learn more. It is also crucial to speak with your doctor before starting, stopping or otherwise modifying the use of Seroquel^®."
It is true that Rebecca suffers from chronic insomnia as a result of being forced to take Clozapine, Risperdal, Flupenthixal and other neuroleptics for many years. Her body badly needs detoxification, physical activities, community activities etc. - whatever else she thinks she needs - rather than forcing into her more psychiatric poisons. She is not a danger to the community nor to herself, and therefore the CTO should be lifted immediately to give her a chance to return to normal life !
Do not kill my daughter !

Sincerely, Benjamin Merhav"

2008-01-31T07:35:00.000-08:00

"Lilly in Settlement Talks With U.S--But what about the death toll?

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

FYI

. . . And the band plays on and the body count continues to mount--

The New York Times reports that Eli Lilly is in negotiation talks with the
US Justice department to settle both civil and criminal investigations of
the company's marketing of its toxic diabetes-inducing antipsychotic,
Zyprexa. If the settlement is reached, the Times reports, Lilly would pay
the biggest fine in history.

In a recent study in The Lancet, compared Risperdal an antipsychotic in the same class as Zyprexa, to placebo in calming aggression--which is the
primary reason that Zyprexa and Risperdal are prescribed. They found the harmless placebo to be more effective:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673608600720/abstra ct

The authors concluded: "Antipsychotic drugs should no longer be regarded as
an acceptable routine treatment for aggressive challenging behaviour in
people with intellectual disability."

Underscoring the total failure by the US government to take meaningful
action to protect the public health as well as the public wealth, The Times reports:

"But the company would be allowed to keep selling Zyprexa to Medicare and
Medicaid, the government programs that are the biggest customers of the
drug. Zyprexa is Lilly's most profitable product and among the worlds
best-selling medicines, with 2007 sales of $4.8 billion, about half in the
United States."

Indeed, Medicaid pays for about 70% go 80% of the antipsychotic drug
prescriptions.

All anyone involved cares about is money--as they lend their government seal of approval that leads the lambs to slaughter

Contact:

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/business/30cnd-drug.html?hp
THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 30, 2008
Lilly in Settlement Talks With U.S.
By ALEX BERENSON

Eli Lilly and federal prosecutors are discussing a settlement of a civil and
criminal investigation into the company's marketing of the antipsychotic
drug Zyprexa that could result in Lilly's paying more than
$1 billion to federal and state governments.

If a deal is reached, the fine would be the largest ever paid by a drug
company for breaking the federal laws that govern how drug makers can
promote their medicines.

Several people involved in the investigation confirmed the settlement
discussions. They insisted on anonymity because they have not been
authorized to talk about the negotiations.

Zyprexa has serious side effects and is approved only to treat people with
schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. But documents from Lilly show
that between 2000 and 2003, Lilly encouraged doctors to prescribe Zyprexa to
people with age-related dementia, as well as people with mild bipolar
disorder who had previously been diagnosed only as depressed.

Although doctors can prescribe drugs for any use once they are on the
market, it is illegal for drug makers to promote their medicines any uses
not formally approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Lilly may also plead guilty to a misdemeanor criminal charge as part of the
agreement, the people involved with the investigation said. But the company
would be allowed to keep selling Zyprexa to Medicare and Medicaid, the
government programs that are the biggest customers for the drug. Zyprexa is
Lilly's most profitable product and among the world's best-selling
medicines, with 2007 sales of $4.8 billion, about half in the United States.

Lilly would neither confirm nor deny the settlement talks.

"We have been and are continuing to cooperate in state and federal
investigations related to Zyprexa, including providing a broad range of
documents and information," Lilly said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
"As part of that cooperation we regularly have discussions with the
government. However, we have no intention of sharing those discussions with
the news media and it would be speculative and irresponsible for anyone to
do so."

Lilly also said that it had always followed state and federal laws when
promoting Zyprexa.

The Lilly fine would be distributed among federal and state governments,
which spend about $1.5 billion on Zyprexa each year through Medicare and
Medicaid.

The fine would be in addition to $1.2 billion that Lilly has already paid to
settle 30,000 lawsuits from people who claim that Zyprexa caused them to
suffer diabetes or other diseases. Zyprexa can cause severe weight gain in
many patients and has been linked to diabetes by the American Diabetes
Association.

Prescriptions for Zyprexa have skidded since 2003 over concerns about those
side effects. But the drug continues to be widely used, especially among
severely mentally ill patients. Many psychiatrists say that it works better
than other medicines at calming patients who are psychotic and
hallucinating. About four million Zyprexa prescriptions were written in the
United States last year.

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia are leading the settlement talks for the
government, in consultation with the Department of Justice headquarters in
Washington. State attorneys general's offices are also involved. Lawyers at
Pepper Hamilton, a firm based in Philadelphia, and Sidley Austin, a firm
based in Chicago, are negotiating for Lilly.

Nina Gussack, who is representing Lilly at Pepper Hamilton, said she could
not comment on the case. Joseph Trautwein, an assistant United States
attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, also declined to comment.

While a settlement has not been concluded and the negotiations could
collapse, both sides want to reach an agreement, according to the people
involved in the investigation. Besides the escalating pressure of the
federal criminal inquiry, Lilly faces a civil trial scheduled for March in
Anchorage, Alaska, in a lawsuit brought by the state of Alaska to recover
money the state has spent on Zyprexa prescriptions. A loss in that lawsuit
would damage Lilly's bargaining position in the Philadelphia talks.

While expensive for Lilly, the settlement would end a four-year federal
investigation and remove a cloud over Zyprexa. While Zyprexa prescriptions
are falling, its overall dollar volume of sales is rising because Lilly has
raised Zyprexa's price about 40 percent since 2003.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating Lilly for its marketing of
Zyprexa since 2004, and state attorneys general since 2005. The people
involved in the investigations said the inquiries gained momentum after
December 2006, when The New York Times published articles describing Lilly's
multiyear efforts to play down Zyprexa's side effects and to promote the
drug for conditions other than schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder - a
practice called off-label marketing.

Internal Lilly marketing documents and e-mail messages showed that Lilly
wanted to convince doctors to prescribe Zyprexa for patients with
age-related dementia or relatively mild bipolar disorder.

In one document, an unidentified Lilly marketing executive wrote that
primary care doctors "do treat dementia" but leave schizophrenia and bipolar
disorder to psychiatrists. As a result, "dementia should be first message"
to primary-care doctors, according to the document, which appears to be part
of a larger marketing presentation but is not marked more specifically.
Later, the same document says that some primary care doctors "might
prescribe outside of label."

In late 2000, Lilly began a marketing campaign called Viva Zyprexa and told
its sales representatives to suggest that doctors prescribe Zyprexa to older
patients with symptoms of dementia.

The documents were under federal court seal when The Times published the
articles, and Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn
rebuked The Times for publishing them.

The settlement negotiations in Philadelphia began several months ago,
according to the people involved in the investigation.

Last fall, the two sides were close to a deal in which Lilly would have paid
less than $1 billion to settle the case, which at the time consisted only of
a civil complaint.

Then Justice Department lawyers in Washington pressed for a grand jury
investigation to examine whether Lilly should be charged criminally for its
promotional activities, according to the people involved in the
negotiations. A few days ago, facing the possibility of both civil and
criminal charges, Lilly opened new discussions with the prosecutors in
Philadelphia."

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-01-30T15:19:00.000-08:00

MORE ON THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN PSYCHIATRY'S PROPAGANDA METHOD AND THE PROPAGANDA METHOD OF ZIONISM
by Justice Lover

Both the dogma of psychiatry and the ideology of zionism are based on big lies. Both are megalomanical in their ambitions. Both are fascist oriented, rather than scientifically based in the case of psychiatry, and social justice in the case of zionism. It is no wonder, therefore, that their propaganda methods are very similar too. Essentially, their propaganda poisons are made up of lies : big lies and small lies, yet presented to the public as pure truth, and in very aggressive manners, and with totally outrageous impunity !

The following AHRP article/report provides very convincing evidence in regard to the outrageous torture method of electric shocks (ECT), used and advocated by top shrinks as an "effective therapy". The truth is ,of course, that not only are electric shocks to the brain a fascist form of brutal torture, but they are very harmful and very dangerous to patients. It was invented by an Italian shrink under the fascist regime of Mussolini, and those who advocate it today must be fascist torturers too !

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

FYI

The history of psychiatry is a story of megalomania. A confounding problem
for psychiatry is the profession’s failure to examine its therapeutics from
patients’ perspectives or to put psychiatry’s therapeutics to a valid
scientific test to determine whether the benefit outweighs the risks from
patients’ perspective.

Suppose someone told you about a treatment for depression that was more
effective than anything else, virtually free of side effects, that is being
promoted as “the Penicillin of Psychiatry"—would you believe it or would you
be skeptical? This is what we are told in a new book, "Shock Therapy: A
History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness" (2007) by Edward
Shorter, PhD and David Healy, MD. To decide whether this book is describing
a scientific breakthrough or merely more propaganda, we should consider some
highlights from the contentious history of ECT.

Thomas Insel, MD director of the National Institute of Mental Health,
recently acknowledged on public television that psychiatry’s practices,
unlike other fields of medicine, are governed by the personal
preference--i.e., bias--of a psychiatrist: " the treatments that people are
given depends not so much on a thorough understanding of mental disorders,[but] much more on what it is the therapist is most comfortable in doing."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/interviews/insel.html

Indeed, history demonstrates that psychiatrists regularly prescribe invasive biological interventions--be they pharmacologic, magnetic, electric, or surgical—on the basis of conviction (faith) rather than evidence.

Sixty years after its introduction, electroshock (ECS) a.k.a. electroconvulsive
therapy (ECT), remains psychiatry’s most controversial intervention. ECT is
a polarizing symbol of authoritarianism that continues to be mired in both
moral and professional controversy. Practitioners are locked in a bitter
battle against patients who have been harmed and who are fighting for full
disclosure. ECT’s longevity—even as its adherents are fiercely divided over
the dosage of electricity and method of application (bilateral vs.
unilateral placement of electrodes) [1] confirms Dr. Insel’s observation.

What ECT does to the brain is best described by neurologists who describe
the measurable pathological changes that are recorded on the EEG, including
alterations in brain chemistry and physiology. Neuroscientist, Dr. Peter
Sterling, University of Pennsylvania, provides a detailed description of
what ECT does to the brain in testimony. [2]
http://retina.anatomy.upenn.edu/pdfiles/Oct2002NYC.pdf

1. The electric shock delivered by a standard ECS machine to the skull is
roughly comparable to what you would get from a common electrical outlet,
but the voltage is stepped up from 110 V to 150 V. The total power drawn is
about 60 Watts -- enough for a conventional light bulb.

2. ECS is designed to evoke a grand mal epileptic seizure. The seizure
causes an acute rise in blood pressure, well into the hypertensive range,
and this frequently causes small hemorrhages in the brain.

3. ECS ruptures the “blood-brain barrier”. This barrier normally protects
the brain from potentially damaging substances in the blood.

4. ECS causes neurons to release large quantities of the excitatory
neurotransmitter, glutamate, leading to “excito-toxicity” causing neurons
literally die from overactivity.

5. ECS releases myriad other neurotransmitters and hormones within the brain. The degree of damage consequent to ECS varies between individuals. It can be catastrophic in response to a single series, or it can appear more gradually following repeated series. http://retina.anatomy.upenn.edu/pdfiles/Oct2002NYC.pdf

ECT Background:

ECT was originally promoted much as lobotomy had been—as an expedient,
quick, easy, and cheap method of controlling mental patients’ behavior.

Early on leading US practitioner / researchers acknowledged that ECT
produces profound, lasting trauma. Lothar Kalinowsky, MD:

“All intellectual functions, grasp as well as memory and critical faculty, are impaired.” [2]

Abraham Myerson, MD:

“The mechanism for improvement and recovery seems to be
to knock out the brain and reduce the higher activities, to impair memory.”

[3] Max Fink, MD, acknowledged in 1958 that a single ECT treatment is akin to "severe head trauma," suggesting that “convulsive therapy provides an excellent experimental method for studies of craniocerebral trauma.” [4]

Despite its injurious effects on cognitive function and memory, ECT has
outlasted the other three “brain-damaging-therapeutics”

—insulin coma, Metrazol, and lobotomy.

In part, because anesthesia was introduced to moderate the physical vertebrae and bone-breaking force of the convulsions that patients undergo during electrically induced Grand Mal seizures.

However, as an authoritative systematic meta-analysis in Lancet (2003)
reports, neither anesthesia nor other newer methods for applying ECT have
resulted in an appreciable reduction in other adverse effects. [5]

Three other factors led to ECT’s survival after its eclipse in the 1960s and
1970s:

1. Psychotropic drugs did not prove to be the claimed wonder drugs—they also
caused debilitating neurological side effects, and failed to improve
patients’ long-term outcome.

2. ECT economics, which Leonard Frank succinctly outlined: “ECT is a
money-maker. An in-hospital ECT series can cost anywhere from
$50,000-75,000. Using a low figure of 100,000 Americans who are
electroshocked annually, most of who are covered by private or government
insurance, ECT brings in $5 billion a year.” [6] In the US especially, the
promoters of ECT-- including academic-affiliated practitioner / researchers,
device manufacturers, and hospitals—all have significant financial interests
in ECT.

3. The zealous advocacy of its practitioner-proponents—all of whom have
unacknowledged financial conflicts of interest. [7] ECT is dominated by a
small vocal group of powerful "authority" figures who exert inordinate
influence—indeed, control over ECT research, funding, publications and
practice policies on the basis of their conviction—not scientific evidence.
Although their financial stake in the business of ECT is rarely (if ever)
mentioned in their professional academic contributions, no doubt money plays
a role. Since ECT treatment approaches and outcome evaluations rely entirely
on practitioners’ own preference and assessment, their objectivity is highly
questionable.

Foremost among ECT’s influential proponents is Dr. Max Fink, a combative
octogenarian who has been applying bilateral ECT longer than anyone. Dr.
Fink wrote the first ECT textbook, and is credited with formulating the
theoretical foundation, ethical justification, practice guidelines, and
informed consent documents for ECT, actively contributing promotional
material for commercial use. [8]

In September 1978, amidst a heated debate, the first ECT Task Force of the
American Psychiatric Association surveyed the membership to find out whether
they thought that ECT was brain damaging. The response by 41% of APA
members affirmed the likelihood that: "ECT produces subtle or slight brain
damage”—only 26% said no. [9] The Task Force report outlined the ECT
research agenda to address patients’ complaints of memory loss. No such
research was carried out.

In 1979 the FDA classified shock machines as a Class III medical
device—indicating it had not been proven safe and effective. Despite
continuing controversy, ECT machines have never been put the test in
controlled trials because manufacturers and ECT practitioners were adamantly
opposed. The question is, WHY?

If ECT does not cause cognitive damage and memory loss, why have its
proponents failed to conduct a test that will prove them right?

The reason behind ECT practitioners’ fierce opposition to performing
controlled clinical trials may found in a 1978 article by Max Fink in the
official journal of the Psychopathological Association:

“The principle complications of EST [ECT] are death, brain damage, memory impairment, and spontaneous seizures. These complications are similar to head trauma to which EST has been compared.” [10]
Indeed, a cumulative body of evidence confirmed ECT’s brain damaging
effects. [11]

Ardent ECT promoters regularly go to battle when threatened with restricted
use:

By 1983, 26 states had passed statutes restricting ECT and 6 others
established regulations. In 1985, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
issued a Consensus Statement confirming:

“It is well established that ECT produces memory deficits. Deficits in memory function, which have been demonstrated objectively and repeatedly, persist after the termination of a
normal course of ECT.” [12]

Threatened with restrictions, ECT’s torch bearers
began a propaganda campaign, vehemently denying evidence of lasting memory
loss, while resolutely avoiding an examination of the impact of ECT on
memory and cognition.

Dr. Fink’s pronouncements border on missionary zeal, if not megalomania.In 1983, he declared: “If there is no SUBSTANTIAL evidence of brain impairment, then there is NO evidence for brain impairment.” [13]In 1996, he stated: "ECT is one of God's gifts to mankind. There is nothing like it, nothing equal to it in efficacy or safety in all of psychiatry."[14]

He pronounced ECT an “effective treatment of patients with major depression,
delusional depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, catatonia,
neuroleptic malignant syndrome, and parkinsonism…. No age or systemic
condition bars its use.” [15]

“Adverse effects on memory have been minimized to the point of being
undetectable, by any means of assessment, six weeks after completion of
treatment." [16]

In 2002, Dr. Fink promoted the use of ECT for children, disregarding the
profound harm that he himself had documented but now vehemently denies:
“Until demonstrations of untoward consequences are recorded, we should not
deny the possible benefits of biological treatments to children on the
prejudice that these treatments affect brain functions.” [17]

Shock Waives in the Shock Community:

In 2000, the tightly knit ECT cottage industry was confronted with the most
serious challenge to their vehement public denials that persistent memory
loss is a risk of ECT. The central supporting stone was pulled from ECT’s
house of clay by Harold Sackeim, Ph.D., an equally prominent ECT advocate
arguably the most prolific ECT researcher. In an astonishingly candid
editorial in the Journal of ECT, he explicitly validated patients’ claims,
acknowledging that consistent evidence exists documenting that:

“virtually all patients experience some degree of persistent and
likely permanent amnesia… It has also become clear that for rare patients the retrograde amnesia due to ECT can be profound, with the memory loss extending back years prior to receipt of the treatment.” [18]

Sackeim further conceded that ECT causes frontal lobe damage significantly affecting the brain’s executive functions: including working memory, logical reasoning and abstraction, problem solving, planning and organizing.

Dr. Sackeim, who simultaneously headed the ECT divisions at Columbia
University and New York Cornell, was the recipient of tens of millions of
dollars in NIMH research grants collecting data on its effects for two
decades. He was, therefore, in possession of evidence demonstrating that the
profession’s failure to provide evidence of cognitive harm and memory loss
is not evidence that none exists.

“As a field, we have more readily acknowledged the possibility of death due to ECT than the possibility of profound memory loss, despite the fact that adverse effects on cognition are by far ECT’s most common side effects.” [18] [AHRP seeks an electronic copy of Dr. Sackeim's editorial]

In 2001, Sackeim and his Columbia University
colleagues reported in JAMA an 84% relapse rate, six months after ECT. [19]
Seven years after his editorial (2007), he and colleagues published the data
substantiating his editorial. [20]

"Shock Therapy: A History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness"
(2007) by Edward Shorter, PhD and David Healy, MD, is not so much a history
of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as it is an unreserved endorsement and
tribute to Max Fink. Oddly, although he is not a named author, Dr. Fink
states on his website that he is “now working on a book on a History of
Convulsive Therapy with Edward Shorter and David Healy.”
http://www.hsc.stonybrook.edu/som/psychiatry/fink_m.cfm

Whatever... The book is clearly written at the behest of Dr. Fink—whose
private foundation, Scion Natural Science Association, provided a $34,900
grant. http://dfcm.utoronto.ca/research/pdf/grants.pdf

The book serves to bolster Dr. Fink’s extreme position in his battle against
those who argue against the continued use of bilateral ECT because it has
been shown to cause more cognitive damage. Dr. Fink claims unilateral ECT
(confined to the non-verbal, right side) is not as effective. And the book
attempts to deflect the fall out from Dr. Sackeim’s confessional editorial,
which Drs. Shorter and Healy acknowledge, “flabbergasted” psychiatrists.

Chapter 1, “The Penicillin of Psychiatry?” sets the evangelical, revivalist
tone, and decidedly unscientific framework of the book.
“So clear are the benefits of ECT for patients who might otherwise commit
suicide, or languish for years in the blackness of depression, that there
should be little controversy over whether it is safe or effective.” [p. 3]

“Why, today, seventy years after its discovery, is ECT highly stigmatized,
both patients and many physicians? ECT is, in a sense, the penicillin of
psychiatry.” [p.3]

The authors even adopted Dr. Fink’s implausible promotional pronouncements
extolling the virtues of ECT by adamantly denying its previously
acknowledged, harmful effects. These unreferenced pronouncements are
unsupported by empirical evidence:

“Therapeutic convulsions induced by electricity…do not harm the brain and
can save lives” [p.9]
“There is no doubt that ECT is effective in the prevention of suicide” [p.
97]
“There is no known occurrence of brain damage associated with ECT.” [p. 104]

“ECT does not lend itself well to abuse because it is painless: the patient
is immediately unconscious.” [p. 94]
“No neurologic sequelae to treatment can be demonstrated.” [p. 212]

However, as neurologist, Peter Sterling, MD, noted in his letter in Nature
(2001),

“ECT damage is easy to find if you look for it.”
http://retina.anatomy.upenn.edu/pdfiles/5448.pdf

The credibility of the book is undermined by the authors’ heavy reliance on
Dr. Fink as a source—given his demonstrable bias—and their failure to
present the informed concerns of neurologists who have no stake in this war.

John Friedberg, MD, the author of Shock Treatment is Not Good for Your
Brain, (1976) was the first neurologist to raise objections against its use.
In 1977 he wrote in the American Journal of Psychiatry:

“Like other insults to the brain, ECT produces EEG abnormalities…The potency of ECT as an amnestic exceeds that of severe closed head injury with coma.”[21] He
reviewed the ECT data from six states that mandate reporting of adverse ECT
effects, and found evidence of brain damage and memory loss. He noted that
ECT proponents’ data frequently belie their claimed findings.

Rather than address the mounting empirical evidence documenting the case
against ECT—which hinges on its short-lived efficacy outweighed by long-term
memory loss and cognitive harm [11] [22]—Drs. Shorter and Healy employ
psychiatry’s time worn ploy.

They divert attention from evidence of its
damaging therapeutics. They frame the contentious controversy surrounding
ECT as an orchestrated political battle by 'anti-psychiatry' forces against
the profession—exactly as Dr. Fink has done. They blame Scientology, the
press / media, the movies, and they blame psychologists for “stigmatizing”
ECT:

"CCHR and the Church of Scientology have since consistently been the most
sustained critics of psychiatry and especially of ECT, within the United
States." [p. 184]

“There is no doubt that in its fantastical depictions of ECT, the movie
industry played a capital role in stigmatizing the procedure.” [p. 153]
Ken Kesey’s book / movie, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” is cited 9
times.

Psychologists, the authors suggest, have sided with patients “as a tactic in
professional rivalry” using memory loss “as a wedge in battering down the
citadel of medical authority.” [p. 242]

A single controlled study is presented by the authors to substantiate their
efficacy claims. The study, by Drs. Tillotson and Sulzbach, was conducted in
1945 at McLean Hospital. Its reported positive recovery results are
described twice, [p. 80, p. 96] followed by the exuberant reaction of ECT
champion, Dr. Kalinowsky, who brought ECT to the US: “In this group, amazing
recoveries are achieved in the majority of all treated cases.” [p. 81]
“Shock Therapy” authors then claim: “Because of the extraordinary success of
ECT in medicine, by the late 1940s its curative value was understood in
other areas of American society.” [p. 81]

They cite malpractice cases judged on the basis of likelihood of ECT’s
curative effect, lamenting the good old days when “there were no anguished
worries about memory loss, no antipsychiatry groups…and no squeamish
psychologists and social workers shying away from a ‘brutal’ therapy.”
[p.82]

However, they fail to present any of the evidence—from scientifically valid
studies—that might explain why the protests came about. [11] [22]

How can a credible history of ECT fail to present documented evidence of
brain damage, memory loss, and cognitive deficits, most reported by
credentialed neurologists and psychiatrists, including ECT proponents?

For example, a 1986 controlled study comparing the brain scans of 101
depressed patients who had received ECT with the scans of 52 normal
volunteers. The study, not intended as an ECT evaluation, found a
significant relationship between ECT treatment with brain atrophy. The study
also showed that the brain abnormalities correlated only with ECT, and not
with age, gender, severity of illness, or other variables. [23]

As early as 1950, Dr. Irving Janis, (1950) of Yale University conducted a
series of well-designed, matched controlled follow-up studies. [24] These
studies are recognized as methodologically unique in the ECT scientific
literature: their importance is noted by neurologists, independent
scientists, and patients.

His method directly addressed the concern of the
patients and to date is considered the most sensitive and scientifically
valid. Janis studied the effects of ECT on depressed patients’ memory by
testing them before and after ECT—and by comparing their memory loss with
matched controls who had not undergone ECT. By examining patients’ memories
2 ½ to 3 ½ months after ECT—and following some of the patients in a year
long follow up study—Janis could determine whether an individual patient
showed changes in memory, and whether the ECT group differed from the
matched group of controls.

Janis reported that ALL ECT patients had
“profound, extensive” amnesia for at least 10 to 20 life experiences. The
controls, who had not been subjected to ECT, had no memory difficulties. No
one has raised serious criticism of the Janis studies. Despite the fact that
such tests are easy to carry out, no ECT researcher has attempted to
replicate them. Why?

Irving Janis is not even accorded a citation in the index--his findings are
misrepresented:

“One possibility was that patients actually learned a protective amnesia, as
opposed to having amnesia directly caused by the treatment.” [p. 209]

The authors dismiss patients’ testimonies and trivialize their concerns
about memory loss: “In informed circles, serious memory loss has seldom been
considered real.” [p.111] The arrogance betrayed by that statement mirrors
the dismissive indifference shown by FDA officials who characterized
concerns about an increased suicide risk linked to SSRI antidepressants as a
“public relations” problem.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/09/alison-bass-hits-bulls-eye-in-op-ed.html

Drs. Shorter and Healy attribute implausible political power and influence
to the victims of ECT while failing to discuss the evidence presented in
recently published authoritative reports. For example, the first-ever,
government sponsored, systematic review of patients’ views on ECT (2003)
[25] was so compelling, it led the UK National Institute for Health and
Clinical Excellence (NICE) to issue new guidelines recommending cognitive
assessment after each ECT for memory loss; that treatment be stopped if
adverse cognitive effects manifest; the use of validated psychometric
scales; and inclusion of user perspectives on the impact of ECT, and the
incidence and impact of important side effects such as cognitive
functioning. [26]

The review analyzed 26 studies, 19 conducted by scientists, 7 by former
patients. The findings confirmed other independent analyses: ECT’s efficacy
is short-lived while 30% of patients suffer lasting biographical memory loss
after ECT. The authors of “Shock Therapy” disparage the review because of
the presence of former patients on the NICE committee, suggesting: “the line
between research and advocacy can be a thin one.” [p. 249]
“it is not inconceivable that…the Mind representatives heavily influenced
the document.” [p. 250]

Instead of addressing the legitimate medical concerns and the evidence, the
authors invoke a mystery-shrouded faith: “Why convulsive therapy, giving
patients epileptic seizures, should be restorative in psychiatric illness
remains a mystery even today.” [p.6]

“The charge of brain damage from ECT is an urban myth, one first put forward
by the development of a rival therapy, Vienna’s Manfred Sakel, who tried
hard to subvert his competition.” [p. 3]

The book was launched on Oct. 24, 3007 at the New York Academy of Medicine
by Edward Shorter, Max Fink, and Lee Wachtel, MD, who comprised a panel
discussing: The History of Convulsive Therapy from Depression to Autism:
Past Uses, Future Possibilities.
http://www.nyam.org/initiatives/im-histearch.shtml

Dr. Wachtel is Medical Director and attending child psychiatrist of the
Neurobehavioral Unit at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, with particular
interest in the use of ECT for autistic children. So this book's launching
was a step toward market expansion with Dr. Fink leading the way by
targeting children for Shock therapy—just as psychiatry's other radical
practitioners are targeting children for expanded use of antipsychotics. Dr.
David Healy did not attend the book launching.

Accompanying articles to be posted on the AHRP blog:

1. Peter Sterling, MD. Testimony to: New York State Assembly Committee on
Mental Health Mental Retardation & Developmental Disabilities, July 18,
2001.
2. Sackeim, Harold A. Memory and ECT: From Polarization to Reconciliation.
Journal of ECT. 16(2):87-96, June 2000.

REFERENCES

1. Richard Abrams, MD Food and Drug Administration Action Is Required,
editorial, Arch Gen Psychiatry 2000; 57:445-446

2. Sterling, P. Testimony Prepared for the Standing Committee on Mental
Health of the Assembly of the State of New York. October 5, 1978.
http://www.ect.org/effects/testimony.html;

3. Kallinowsky, L. Cited by Whitaker, Mad In America, p. 99 Ref. 2.

4. Myerson, A. Borderline cases treated by Shock, Amer. J Psychiatry, 100
(1943): 355-357.

5. UK ECT Review Group (2003) Efficacy and safety of electroconvulsive
therapy in depressive disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Lancet, 361, 799–808

6. Fink, M. Effect of anticholinergic agent, Diethazine, on EEG and
behavior, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 80 (1958):380-386.
In 1966, Fink indicated that his research showed a positive "relation
between clinical improvement and the production of brain damage or an
altered state of brain function." See: Fink, M. Cholinergic aspects of
convulsive therapy, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 142
(1966):475-481. And in his 1979 textbook, Dr. Fink wrote: “A more prominent
neurological sequel to seizures is the change in mental state and the
development of an organic mental syndrome…an organic psychosis may occur
with few treatments.” See: Fink, M. Convulsive Therapy: Theory and
Practice, Raven Press, New York, 1979. Cited by Whitaker, R. Mad in America,
p. 102, Ref. 2.

7. For example, Richard Abrams, MD does not usually disclose in his academic
writings that he is President of Somantics, the manufacturer of the
Thymatron ECT device. See: Cameron D. ECT: Sham Statistics, the Myth of
Convulsive Therapy, and the Case for Consumer Misinformation, Journal of
Mind and Behavior Winter and Spring 1994, Vol. 15, Pages 177-198. See also:
Dukakis, K., & Tye, L. Shock: The healing power of electroconvulsive
therapy. (2006). New York: Avery. Furthermore, in sworn court testimony, ECT
proponents acknowledged their financial conflicts of interest—as will be
documented in a forthcoming book by Linda Andre.

8. Dr. Fink’s videotaped informed consent instructions for ECT are
distributed by Somantics, manufactures of ECT machines. Its owner, Richard
Abrams, is a close ally of Dr. Fink. [See Ref. 1 above] Given Dr. Fink’s
adamant denial that ECT efficacy is short lived, whereas memory loss and
cognitive impairments for as many as 30% of patients persist—his standard
for informed consent is invalid. However, such signed consents may serve as
liability protection for practitioners.

9. American Psychiatric Association. Report of the Task Force on
Electroconvulsive Therapy. 1978. Survey pp..1-6.

10. Fink M. “Efficacy and safety of induced seizures (ES) in Man.
Comprehensive Psychiatry 19, 1978. Cited by Peter Breggin MD, psychiatry’s
most dreaded, evidence-based critic, in: Toxic Psychiatry, p.199, Ref. 23.

11. Evidence of brain damage,1980+
See: Templer DI, Veleber DM. Can ECT permanently harm the brain? Clinical
Neuropsychology 1982; 4(2): 62-66; Calloway SP, Dolan RJ, Jacoby RJ, Levy R.
ECT and cerebral atrophy. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 1981; 64: 442-445.
A retrospective CAT-scan and case review study of 41; Calloway SP and Dolan
RJ. Ect and cerebral damage Br J Psychiatry.1982; 140: 103a; Templer, DI and
Veleber, DM. Can ECT permanently harm the brain? Clinical Neuropsychology
(1982), 4(2): 62-66; Devinsky O, Duchowny MS. Seizures after convulsive
therapy: a retrospective case survey, Neurology. 1983 Jul;33(7):921-5;
Templer DI. “ECT and permanent brain damage.” In Preventable Brain Damage,
Templer DI, Hartlage LC, Cannon WG, eds. New York: Springer Publishing Co.,
1992; Yousseff and Yousseff Time to Abandon Electroconvulsion as a Treatment
in Modern Psychiatry, Advances In Therapy Volume 16 No. 1, 1999; Sha PJ,
Glabus MF, Goodwin GM, Embeier KP. Chronic, treatment-resistant depression
and right fronto-striatal atrophy. British Journal of Psychiatry 2002; 180:
434-440.

See also: comprehensive ECT bibliography on PsychRights Law Project:
http://psychrights.org/index.htm
See also: annotated bibliography by Linda Andre:
http://psychrights.org/Research/Digest/Electroshock/AndreBibliography.htm
See also: links to many ECT studies:
http://www.ect.org/resources/studies.html

12. Electroconvulsive Therapy. National Institutes of Health Consensus
Development Conference Statement June 10-12, 1985, 5 (11):1-23.

13. Fink M. ECT-Verdict: Not Guilty, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7,
1984:26-27.
14. Fink quoted in Boodman, SG. Shock Therapy…It’s Back, The Washington Post
September 24 1996, Page Z14
15. Fink M, Convulsive therapy: a review of the first 55 years, J Affective
Disorders 2001 Mar;63 (1-3):1-15.
16. Fink, M. ELECTROSHOCK: Restoring the Mind. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999.
17. Fink, M. Pediatric ECT: Electroconvulsive Therapy in Adolescents and
Children; Catatonia in Adolescents and Children, Psychiatric Times September
2002 Vol. XIX Issue 9.

18. Sackeim, Harold A. Memory and ECT: From Polarization to Reconciliation.
Journal of ECT. 16(2):87-96, June 2000.

19. Sackeim HA, Haskett RF, Mulsant BH, Thase ME, Mann JJ, Pettinati HM,
Greenberg RM, Crowe RR, Cooper TB, Prudic J. Continuation pharmacotherapy in
the prevention of relapse following electroconvulsive therapy: a randomized
controlled trial. JAMA. 2001 Mar 14;285(10):1299-307.

20. Sackeim H, Prudic J, Fuller R, Keilp J, Lavori P, Olfson M. The
Cognitive Effects of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Community Settings
Neuropsychopharmacology (2007) 32, 244–254.
http://www.ect.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/1301180a.pdf

21. Friedberg, J. Shock Treatment is Not Good for Your Brain, San Francisco,
Glide Publications, 1976; Friedberg, J. Shock Treatment, Brain Damage, and
Memory Loss: A Neurological Perspective, American Journal of Psychiatry,
134(9) September 1977. pp: 1010-1013.

22. Evidence of memory loss, 1980+
Freeman CP, Weeks D, Kendell RE. ECT II: Patients who complain. Br J
Psychiatry 1980; 137:8-16; Squire LR, Slater PC. Electroconvulsive therapy
and complaints of memory dysfunction: a prospective three-year follow-up
study. British Journal of Psychiatry 1983; 142: 1-8; Daniel WF, and Crovitz
H.F.. Acute memory impairment following electroconvulsive therapy, Veterans
Administration Hospital, Acta psychiatr. Scand. 1983:67:1-7; Weiner RD,
Rogers HJ, Davidson JR, Squire LR. Effects of stimulus parameters on
cognitive side effects. Ann NY Acad Sci 1986;462: 315-325; Squire LR,
Slater PC. Electroconvulsive therapy and complaints of memory dysfunction: a
prospective three-year follow-up study. British Journal of Psychiatry 1983;
142: 1-8; Weiner RD, Rogers HJ, Davidson JR, Squire LR. Effects of stimulus
parameters on cognitive side effects. Ann NY Acad Sci 1986;462: 315-325;
Squire LR, Zouzounis JA. Self-ratings of memory dysfunction: different
findings in depression and amnesia. Journul of CIIRICLII und Experimental
Neuropsychology 1988; I O(6): 727-738. Diehl DJ, Keshavan MS, Kanal E, et al
Post-ECT increases in T2 relaxation times and their relationship to
cognitive side effects: a pilot study. Psychiatry Res 1994 (November);
54(2): 177-184; Calev A, Gaudino E, Squires N.K, Zervas I.M and Fink M.
ECT and non-memory cognition: A review, British Journal of Clinical
Psychology 34 (1995), 505-515; Coleman EZ, Sackeim HA, Prudic J, Devanand
DP, McElhiney MC. Moody BJ. Subjective memory complaints prior to and
following electroconvulsive therapy. Biol Psychiatry 1996; 39:346-356.

See also: comprehensive ECT bibliography on PsychRights Law Project:
http://psychrights.org/index.htm
See also: annotated bibliography by Linda Andre:
http://psychrights.org/Research/Digest/Electroshock/AndreBibliography.htm
See also: links to many ECT studies:
http://www.ect.org/resources/studies.html

23. Dolan et al. The cerebral appearance in depressed patients.
Psychological Medicine 1986; 16: 775-779. See also: Freeman C.P.L., Basson
J.V., and Crighton A. Double-Blind Controlled Trial of Electroconvulsive
Therapy (E.C.T.) and Simulated E.C.T. in Depressive Illness, The Lancet,
April 8, 1978; Squire LR, Slater PC. Electroconvulsive therapy and
complaints of memory dysfunction: a prospective three-year follow-up study.
British Journal of Psychiatry 1983; 142: 1-8;

24. Janis, I. (1948) Memory loss following electric convulsive treatments.
J. Personality 17:29; Janis, I. (1950a) Psychologic effects of electric
convulsive treatments. I. Post-treatment amnesias. J. Nerv. & Ment. Dis
111:359-382; Janis, I. (1950b) Psychologic effects of electric convulsive
treatments. II. Changes in word association reactions. J. Nerv. & Ment. Dis
111:383-397; Janis, I. and Astrachan, M. (1951) The effects of
electroconvulsive treatments on memory efficiency. J. Abnormal & Soc.
Psychol. 46:501

25. Robertson H & Pryor R. Memory and cognitive effects of ECT: informing
and assessing patients, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2006), vol. 12,
228–238
http://apt.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/12/3/228

26. NICE ECT Guidelines, 2003: http://www.nice.org.uk/TA059

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-01-28T21:40:00.000-08:00

Dr. Betty Martini, Founder of Mission Possible International, Exposing the Crimes Against Humanity by Big Pharma, and by the Shrinks
by Justice lover

In reply to my brief article,Did the Shrinks and Big Pharma Kill Heath Ledger ?, Dr. Betty Martini, emailed to me her comments in her very important article below. She gave me
permission to publish it and to disseminate it.

Here is her article :

The aspartame in diet soda can cause sudden death, and it interacts with drugs and vaccines. Heath Ledger didn't have a chance!

Justice Lover almost has the picture of why Heath Ledger
died. Maybe you could forward the report below to the writer. You
see on Friday there was a study that linked diet soda to heart
disease which I answered, and we've known for years. Aspartame
experts have written many reports, several listed below the article
on aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal/Spoonful/Canderel, E951, etc.) and
cardiac problems and sudden death. Perhaps you would like to read
them.

In Dr. H. J. Roberts medical text, Aspartame Disease: An
Ignored Epidemic, www.sunsentpress.com it explains that aspartame
interacts with all antidepressants. Aspartame is not an additive, its
an addictive excitoneurotoxic carcinogenic drug masquerading as an
additive, and it interacts with
drugs: http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_interacts.htm

From the reports that have been released I've heard he was on Zoloft
and Ambien CR for sleep and others. So as bad as Zoloft is, it
interacts with aspartame, a psycho drug itself.

I would like to see the autopsy. You might look for something with the heart like
enlargement, cardiomegaly, a fatty liver, pulmonary edema, etc. Read
the doctor's reports below for full understanding of the problem.

Justice Lover is right, if they had found Heath near some herbs the
media would have been in a frenzy with stories by the FDA. Look at
Pilcher, the athlete who dropped dead in West Palm Beach. They found
out he was using Ephedra and took it off the market. But what caused
Pilcher's death? Articles state his weight fluctuated so he would go
a couple of days without eating and then drink nothing but Diet Coke
all day.

That's why today you find the Athlete alerts below to try
and prevent it from happening to more athletes. Dr. John Olney
reviewed the ephedra complaints from the FDA and found ephedra to be
perfectly safe. http://www.wnho.net/ephedrastory.htm

Diane Fleming remains in a prison in Troy Virginia convicted of
poisoning her husband with methanol, even after taking and passing
three lie detector tests. She had no idea aspartame liberates free
methyl alcohol. It's classified as a narcotic. That's how victims
become addicted as it causes chronic methanol poisoning. This
effects the dopamine system of the brain and causes the
addiction.

Charles Fleming was an athlete who played a lot of
basketball, the most aerobic, was addicted to Diet Coke and used
other aspartame products and drugs.
http://www.namastepublishing.co.uk/Diane%20Fleming%20Story%20.htm

You can see Diane interviewed in prison in the aspartame documentary,
Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, www.soundandfury.tv There was no
evidence, of course, and the only thing that could be found was a
bottle of sealed windshield wiper fluid in the garage which the
police tested and found to be the exact amount of methanol you would
expect in a sealed, unopened bottle. So the jury was asked how they
could convict a woman without evidence. They said because she could
show no emotion. Diane had been a basketcase over being indicted
since she was the one who called the police so the doctor put her on
Zoloft. That made her like a zombie because she too was using
aspartame, not realizing it interacts.

They just keeping dying, and the FDA, Big Pharma's Washington Branch
Office, continues to ignore the problem of mass poisoning of the
American public and more than 100 countries of the world.

How does chronic methanol poisoning become acute: Dr. James Bowen
says "Only after longer aspartame usage does liver damage cause blood
methanol levels to measurably rise because the liver mitochondria are
so damaged that the liver no longer quickly processes either methyl
or ethyl (drink) alcohol. Then the acute methanol poisoning is
directly measurable from lab results, as the blood methanol level
elevates. This entire sequence or "toxic axis" begins with your very
first dose of aspartame. Both acute and chronic poisonings from this
methanol toxic axis, and other additive and synergistic aspartame
poisonings, steadily accumulate in the aspartame consumer."

Fleming like Heath was an accident about to happen. Fleming had used
so much aspartame for so long think of him as standing on a
cliff. Then he drank three times the amount of creatine and it was
the "tipping point" that knocked him off the cliff. His body just
couldn't take anymore. Aspartame causes shortness of breath and the
autopsy admits he was having that problem 30 days prior to his death.
So he could have been dying then.

While I don't know how much Diet Coke Heath used I've certainly
received an abundance of emails that it was well known. Nor do I
know all the drugs he was using. But I can provide the aspartame
expert's reports below which tells you how aspartame can cause sudden
death, and list their material which discloses this poison interacts
with drugs. Adding 2 and 2 makes 4.

A citizen petition for ban was sent to the FDA 6 years ago and they
refuse to answer it. An amendment based on an imminent health hazard
was sent in October and they only have a couple of weeks to answer -
they have not. The Fatal Drugs Allowed folks serve above the law, so
the people keep dying. They prefer to protect Big Pharma and betray
the public's trust.

One last question would be why Heath was put on Zoloft or other such
drugs. Could it be because the phenylalanine in aspartame lowers the
seizure threshold and depletes serotonin triggering psychiatric
problems. http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_and_psychiatric_disorders.htm

All my best,
Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder
Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770 242-2599

www.mpwhi.com, www.dorway.com and www.wnho.net
Aspartame toxicity Center, www.holisticmed.com/aspartame

Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:32:40 -0500
To: bettym19@mindspring.com
From: "Dr. Betty Martini,D.Hum." <bettym19@mindspring.com>
Subject: Meat, Diet Soda Linked to Heart Disease: Study (Reuters)

Meat, diet soda linked to heart disease: study (Reuters)
By Ed Stoddard Tue Jan 22, 7:26 PM ET

People who eat two or more servings of red meat a day are much more
likely to develop conditions leading to heart disease and diabetes,
U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
Eating two or more servings of meat a day increases the risk of
suffering from a cluster of risk factors known as metabolic syndrome
by 25 percent compared to those who had only two servings of meat a
week, the researchers reported in the journal Circulation.

The symptoms of metabolic syndrome include excessive fat around the
waist, high cholesterol, high blood sugar and high blood pressure.

The study also found that diet soda consumption was linked to these
elevated risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, echoing the
findings of a study published in July.

"When we found that diet soda promoted risk we were surprised," said
Dr. Lyn Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the
University of Minnesota.

"But then we thought about other behavior patterns," she added in a
telephone interview.
"It may be associated with compensating for eating higher calorie
food. People may say, 'I can eat this cookie because I am drinking
this diet soda."'

Lots of meat, fried foods and diet soda add up to heart disease, the
researchers said, and the conclusions add to a swelling body of
evidence linking fast food with unhealthy lifestyles.
Steffen's team examined the diets of 9,514 people in a study funded
by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. In a departure from
related studies, this one went into a detailed look at precisely what
people were eating.

Most were aged 45 to 64.
Based on a 66-item food frequency questionnaire, the volunteers were
categorized into two groups: those with a "western-pattern" diet,
heavy on processed meat, fried foods, red meat; and a
"prudent-pattern" diet with more fruit and vegetables, with small
amounts of fish and poultry.

After nine years, nearly 40 percent of those involved developed three
or more of the factors linked to metabolic syndrome, they wrote. This
was clear even when smoking and exercise were factored in.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and Mohammad Zargham)

_________________________________________________________________________________

Note from Martini: The reason diet soda is linked to heart disease
is that aspartame causes an irregular heart rhythm and interacts with
all cardiac medication. It damages the cardiac conduction system and
causes sudden death. Below are the medical reports.

Aspartame Induced Arrhythmias and Sudden Death by H. J. Roberts,
M.D. http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_and_arrhythmias.htm

Athlete Alert: Sudden Cardiac Death by Russell Blaylock, M.D.,
http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_msg_scd.htm

Sudden Cardiac Death and Aspartame
(Martini) http://www.wnho.net/scdandaspartame.htm

Report by Dr. H. J. Roberts: Aspartame and Cardiac Symptoms and
Interaction with Other Drugs

From: betty martini <bettym19@mindspring.com
Subject: Aspartame and Cardiac Symptoms, and interaction with other
drugs by H. J. Roberts, M.D.

Statement of H. J. Roberts, M.D. Concerning Cardiac and CHEST Complaints
Attributed to Aspartame (NUTRASWEET (R))

Many patients and correspondents have asked whether products
containing aspartame can cause or aggravate symptoms relating to the
heart, blood pressure and chest. Based on my experience, as detailed
in multiple publications and books (see below), the answer is YES.

Hundreds of such instances have been documented in my database of
over 950 aspartame reactors. There was dramatic improvement after
avoiding aspartame, and a prompt and predictable recurrence of these
problems when the patient resumed aspartame products ... knowingly or
inadvertently.

ABNORMAL HEART RHYTHM

More than 120 individuals experienced a detectable change in their
heart rate and rhythm after consuming aspartame - including gum and
products that did not contain caffeine. This included "fluttering",
(palpitations) and rapid heart action (tachycardia). A number had
even undergone heart monitoring (Holter testing) and other studies,
especially for the associated weakness and faint.

One patient developed a slow pulse and complete heart block within
hours after consuming an aspartame drink for the first time. His
attack spontaneously subsided within a day without a pacemaker; and
there has been no recurrence.

This subject has obvious relevance to reports of unexplained sudden
death in persons who had been consuming considerable aspartame.

HYPERTENSION

Dozens of aspartame reactors without known hypertension were found to
have elevation of their blood pressure - systolic, diastolic or
both, Some were in their twenties. While aspartame products
unequivocally cause headaches, the superimposed hypertension probably
was a contributing factor.

Other patients who had been treated for hypertension could not be
adequately controlled on their maintenance medication as long as they
used aspartame. This reflects its interaction with various
drugs. Aspartame originally devised as a drug to treat peptic ulcer.

The rapid heart action and the elevation of blood pressure presumably
reflect the effects of phenylalanine (an aspartame component) and its
metabolic products. They include dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine.

ATYPICAL CHEST PAIN

More than 50 aspartame reactors experienced unexplained pain in the
chest. (Many others have atypical pain elsewhere in the body). A
number underwent stress tests and coronary angioplasty for suspected
coronary heart disease; they proved normal in the majority.

SHORTNESS OF BREATH

Over 70 aspartame reactors with "shortness of breath" promptly
improved after abstaining from these products, and predictably
suffered a recurrence on rechallenge. Clinical sleep apnea also dramatically
stopped in these patients when they avoided aspartame.

RELATED COMMENTS

These issues are elaborated in my two books on the subject: ASPARTAME
(NUTRASWEET):IS IT SAFE? (Charles Press) and SWEET'NER
DEAREST: www.sunsentpress.com

BITTERSWEET VIGNETTES ABOUT ASPARTAME (NUTRASWEET(R)) Sunshine Sentinel
Press, P. O. Box 17799, West Palm Beach, Florida 33416, 1 800 827
7991 They are also summarized in an updated discussion on two
cassettes, IS ASPARTAME (NUTRASWEET(R)) SAFE? A MEDICAL PUBLIC HEALTH
AND LEGAL OVERVIEW, Sunshine Sentinel Press, P. O. Box 17799, West
Palm Beach, Florida 33416.

I have asserted in my publications, testimony to Congress and in
letters to Congressmen and the FDA, that the current wholesale
ingestion of aspartame products by over half the adult population
constitutes an "imminent public health hazard." Yet this warning
continues to be ignored by the medical profession and the FDA. This
is particular
concern for high risk groups, most notably patients with diabetes and
hypoglycemia, pregnant women, children, patients with epilepsy,
liver, heart, kidney disease and eating disorders, older persons with
memory impairment, the relatives of aspartame reactors, and patients
having Phenylketonuria.

H. J. Roberts, M.D. (Dr. Roberts wrote this in 1998 and his data
base grew so there are more cases) He has since written the medical
text on the world epidemic of Aspartame Disease listed below.

Based on above reports was Heath Ledger's death caused by aspartame?
This well known actor was found dead on Tuesday. He was reportedly
using Ambien CR and Zoloft, and other drugs and he drank Diet Coke
with aspartame. Here again you have to consider aspartame and the
drug interaction as responsible for his death. Since sudden death is
well documented caused by aspartame this should be taken into
consideration during the investigation.

Resources:

Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, H. J. Roberts, M.D.,
www.sunsentpress.com or 1 800 827 7991 Also: Protecting
Mankind: One Physician's Quest.

Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills, Russell Blaylock, M.D.,
www.russellblaylockmd.com Also Health & Nutrition Secrets To Save
Your Life. "The Truth About Aspartame", CD, www.atavistik.com

Aspartame Documentary: Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, www.soundandfury.tv

"What To Do If You Have Used Aspartame" by Russell Blaylock, M.D.,
www.sunsentpress.com

Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder
Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770 242-2599
www.mpwhi.com, www.dorway.com and www.wnho.net
Aspartame Toxicity Center, www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
Aspartame Information List, www.mpwhi.com, click on banner

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-01-28T00:50:00.000-08:00

"A Dramatic Case of Data Distortion
The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants
By STAN COX (counterpunch.com)

A paper published January 17 in a prestigious medical journal demonstrated in the starkest of terms how pharmaceutical companies tend to publish research that's favorable to their products and leave unfavorable results tucked away in their files. It's a problem that everyone outside the industry already recognizes, but the results of this most recent study should really set off alarms.

Led by Dr. Erick Turner of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland and published in the New England Journal of Medicine [1], the study took the results of 74 Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-registered trials of antidepressant medications (trials done by the companies that developed the drugs) and compared them with the results that the drug companies published in peer-reviewed medical journals. The study involved 12 antidepressants approved between 1987 and 2004.

In seeking approval of new drugs, companies are required by law to register their clinical trials with the FDA before conducting them, and then report results to the agency when they're done. Of those 74 trials, the survey found 38 that showed antidepressants to be effective, and all but one of those was duly published. But stunningly, out of 36 trials that showed the drugs to be of questionable or no benefit, the results from only 3 trials were published accurately. Of the rest, 22 were not published at all. All of the other 11 that were published concluded that the drugs did have a positive benefit, in direct contradiction of FDA's conclusion.

So, in the authors' words, "studies that the FDA judged as positive were approximately 12 times as likely to be published in a way that agreed with the FDA as were studies with nonpositive results." And it wasn't just a matter of holding back results. Trial-by-trial, the beneficial effects of antidepressants as published in medical journals were 18 percent bigger than those recorded in the official FDA data. The authors don't speculate on how this effectiveness-inflation occurred, but combined with selective publication of positive results, it made antidepressants look a lot better than they really are.

Antidepressants are the most frequently prescribed class of drugs in the US, with about 60,000 prescriptions written every working hour. Encouraged by all those favorable journal papers, doctors tripled their prescription-writing for antidepressants between 1988 and 1998 [2], and prescriptions had shot up another 31 percent by 2005. The greatest increase has come among doctors who are not psychiatrists. The products have become a convenient way to deal with people who find themselves in rough situations. Soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq are reportedly being given "bags of antidepressants" and upwards of one-third of nursing-home residents are taking antidepressants at any given time.

FDA registration is designed to curtail the kind of deceptive publication practices that can boost unnecessary prescribing, and their data for more recently developed drugs are available on the agency's website. (But getting data for the eight older drugs examined by Turner and colleagues required use of the Freedom of Information Act). Most academics, journalists, and others looking to inform the public on a drug's overall usefulness rely on studies published in medical journals as being the "gold standard" for reliability. So biased publishing, coming on top of heavy advertising [pdf], overtesting [3], and close interaction between sales reps and doctors, is a highly effective way to improve the market for a drug.

Turner's study looked only for exaggeration of antidepressants' benefits, not at their often terrible side effects. But selective publication can also keep the public in the dark about serious harm that drugs can do. Most infamously, Merck & Co. was accused of leaving out some negative results and spinning others from trials of the pain-reliever Vioxx, when a study of the drug's association with an increased risk of heart attack was submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine. By the time Vioxx was withdrawn in 2004, FDA estimated that it had caused in the range of 25,000 to 50,000 fatal heart attacks.

Each year, the drug industry churns out enough product to fill more than 15 prescriptions per American, and that adds up to more than $200 billion in annual sales. An international survey of the medical literature showing that around 5 percent of hospital admissions result from avoidable adverse drug reactions [4]; that means about 2 million of the pharmaceutical industry's customers end up needlessly hospitalized each year. Countless other people are suffering side effects without even taking the drugs; they are simply living too close to pharmaceutical factories in India and other countries that export to the US.

It's a depressing situation, one that can be resolved only by taking drug testing out of the hands of the corporations themselves.

Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kansas. His book Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine will be published by Pluto Press in April. They can be reached at: t.stan@cox.net.

Notes

1. E.H. Turner et al., 'Selective publication of antidepressant trials and its influence on apparent efficacy', New England Journal of Medicine, 358: 252 (2008)
2. S.M. Foote and L. Etheredge, 'Increasing use of new prescription drugs: a case study', Health Affairs, Jul-Aug, 2000
3. D. Studdert et al., 'Defensive medicine among high-risk specialist physicians in a volatile malpractice environment', Journal of the American Medical Association 293: 2609 (2005) and D. Merenstein et al., 'Use and costs of nonrecommended tests during routine preventive health exams', American Journal of Preventive Medicine 30: 521 (2006).
4. H.J.M. Beijer and C.J. de Blaey, 'Hospitalisations caused by adverse drug reactions (ADR): a meta-analysis of observational studies', Pharmacy World and Science 24: 46 (2002)

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-01-27T00:10:00.000-08:00

DID THE SHRINKS AND BIG PHARMA KILL HEATH LEDGER, AS THEY KILLED THOUSANDS OF
OTHERS BEFORE HIM ?

by Justice Lover

The following are two articles downloaded from different sites. The first concerns the sudden recent death of Heath Ledger, a young Australian actor, as a result of taking psychiatric prescription drugs. The second concerns the danger of anti-depressant drugs (SSRI) to the general public. The same website has got a detailed list of the deadly effects of of the psychiatric poisons in individual cases over the past 6-7 years. You are advised to visit the site and see for yourself the deadly reality of Big Pharma's poisons as peddled by the shrinks to the unsuspecting public worldwide.

http://randomandpic.blogspot.com/2008/01/media-blames-heath-ledger-refuses-to.html

Media Blames Heath Ledger, Refuses to Examine Dangers of the Pharmaceuticals Found Beside His Body

Can you imagine the outcry if Heath Ledger's body was found next to a pile of Chinese herbs? The media outcry would be deafening, and nearly everyone would leap to the conclusion that the herbs must have killed Ledger. But when Ledger's body is found next to bottles of FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, there's hardly even a whisper about the deadly side effects of such pharmaceuticals (and the likelihood that Ledger was, indeed, killed by FDA-approved medicines).

The mainstream media is wearing blinders when it comes to accurately reporting stories involving pharmaceuticals. The silly presumption is that all pharmaceuticals are safe. They were approved by the FDA, weren't they? And yet FDA-approved pharmaceuticals kill twice as many Americans each year as the entire Vietnam War. There is no industry that kills more people each year than Big Pharma -- not even the war and munitions giants kill that many people.

So why does the mainstream media routinely give drug companies a "get out of jail free" card when all the evidence clearly points to the fact that Heath Ledger was killed by pharmaceuticals? (The answer: Conflicts of interest. Media is funded by pharma.)

Look at the reported facts:

1. There was no evidence of illegal drugs or alcohol at Ledger's apartment.
2. There was no evidence of intent to commit suicide (no suicide note, no message to friends, etc.)
3. The pharmaceuticals found at the scene were prescribed in Ledger's name (one bottle was over-the-counter, meaning it was also legally purchased).
4. Early autopsy results showed no evidence of illegal drug use or attempted suicide.
5. There was no evidence of foul play (i.e. Ledger wasn't murdered).

So what, then, killed Heath Ledger?

What would Sherlock Holmes conclude?

By normal standards of sleuthwork, this scene is hardly a mystery. It certainly doesn't require a genius to figure out the likely culprit behind Ledger's death. Once you eliminate all the things that couldn't have been responsible for his death, you're left with only one remaining likely cause: The two bottles of pharmaceuticals (antidepressant drugs and sleeping pills) found adjacent to Ledger's body.

Think about this for a moment:

Hmmm... there's no evidence of foul play, drug use or suicide. Heath was young and not suffering from any known cardiovascular health problems (ruling out a heart attack). Pharmaceuticals were found near his body. Heath obviously didn't just spontaneously die for no reason. There had to be a cause. Isn't it obvious that the most likely cause here was the chemical toxicity of the pharmaceuticals he was taking?

The media isn't interested in the REAL cause of Ledger's death

I find it amazing that the mainstream media appears to have no interest whatsoever in examining the chemical cause of Ledger's death. The question we need to be asking right now is: What killed Heath Ledger? He obviously didn't simply expire due to old age (Ledger was 28).

The mainstream reporting on this issue is limited to one word: "Overdose." It was an "overdose" that killed Ledger, the media keeps reporting. The drugs didn't kill him, the "overdose" did. An interesting twist of logic, isn't it? The drugs are perfectly safe because they're FDA approved, and it's all Ledger's fault that he's dead.

It's the same old "blame the victim" scam that's been pushed by food and drug companies for generations. It sure is convenient to blame Ledger for his fatality -- that way, nobody has to ask tough questions about the safety of the pharmaceuticals he was taking at the time.

The mainstream media, of course, is financially supported by the very same drug companies who profit from the drugs Ledger was apparently taking when he died. How's that for an Inconvenient Truth that the mainstream media (MSM) won't dare report?

No, blame the celebrity. Blame the victim and ignore the cause. Don't even consider the fact that pharmaceuticals are synthetic chemicals backed by fraudulent science and a corrupt Food and Drug Administration that actually goes out of its way to boost Big Pharma profits at the expense of human lives. Pay no attention to the outright fraudulent marketing and criminal conspiracy between Big Pharma and the FDA -- an organized crime operation that monopolizes drug prices, oppresses alternatives, censors free speech about natural medicine and allows drug companies to advertise dangerous chemicals on television like they were PEZ candies.

You can bet, as I hinted earlier, that if Ledger's body had been found next to bottles of Chinese Medicine herbs, the headlines would be far different from what we're seeing today. They'd be something like, "Chinese Herbs Implicated in Death of Heath Ledger" and everybody would be pointing their fingers at the herbs, calling them dangerous and "unapproved by the FDA." Well, antidepressant drugs and sleeping pills are approved by the FDA, and it seems they managed to kill Heath Ledger anyway. The fact that something is approved by the FDA doesn't make it safe. In fact, most FDA-approved medicines are far more dangerous than the non-FDA-approved natural alternatives!

Ledger becomes yet another victim of a deadly system of pharmaceutical medicine

Based on the evidence currently available, I believe Heath Ledger was killed by pharmaceuticals. I also believe the MSM is whitewashing this story, refusing to report the truth and instead attempting to blame the victim for this utterly unnecessary death.

If the available evidence changes following further toxicology studies due out in 10 - 14 days, then I will of course update my opinion on this. And if it turns out that Ledger's body contained heroin or other illegal drugs, then I will openly retract my statements that currently point the finger of blame at the prescription drugs he was taking.

But based on the evidence available right now, the only logical conclusion is that Heath Ledger was killed by FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, and that means at least part of the blame rests with the drug companies that manufacture and aggressively sell those drugs. It's standard product liability reasoning: If cigarettes cause cancer, Big Tobacco should be sued. If pharmaceuticals keep killing people, they should be sued, too.

But you won't find that reported anywhere in the MSM. They won't touch that angle of the story. It's easier to just blame the victim and keep on pushing drug ads that promote the aggressive use of those very same drugs in children, teens and young adults. There are billions of dollars at stake in this marketing sham, and the media certainly isn't going to rock that boat by asking honest questions about Ledger's death.

That's business as usual in America today: Dangerous medicines, media lies and innocent casualties. Ledger wasn't born in America, but he died in America, steeped in deadly American medicine and American media lies. May he rest in peace. And somehow, may his death serve as a warning to all his adoring young fans around the world: Pharmaceutical medicines can kill you.

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

http://www.ssristories.com/index.html

SSRI Stories
Antidepressant Nightmares

This website is a collection of 2000+ news stories with the full media article available, mainly criminal in nature, that have appeared in the media or that were part of FDA testimony in either 1991, 2004 or 2006, in which antidepressants are mentioned.

Antidepressants have been recognized as potential inducers of mania and psychosis since their introduction in the 1950s. Klein and Fink1 described psychosis as an adverse effect of the older tricyclic antidepressant imipramine. Since the introduction of Prozac in December, 1987, there has been a massive increase in the number of people taking antidepressants. Preda and Bowers2 reported that over 200,000 people a year enter a hospital with antidepressant-associated mania and/or psychosis. The subsequent harm from this prescribing can be seen in these 2000+ stories.

These stories have been collected over a period of years by two directors of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness (ICFDA). Their focus has been on Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), of which Prozac was the first. Other SSRIs are Zoloft, Paxil (Seroxat), Celexa, Sarafem (Prozac in a pink pill), Lexapro, and Luvox. Other newer antidepressants included in this list are Remeron, Anafranil and the SNRIs Effexor, Serzone and Cymbalta as well as the dopamine reuptake inhibitor antidepressant Wellbutrin (also marketed as Zyban).

A public health problem of epidemic proportions
The Physicians' Desk Reference lists the following adverse reactions (side effects) to antidepressants among a host of other physical and neuropsychiatric effects: manic reaction (mania, e.g. kleptomania, pyromania, dipsomania), emotional lability (or instability), abnormal thinking, alcohol abuse, hallucinations, hostility, lack of emotion, paranoid reaction, amnesia, confusion, agitation, delirum, delusions, hysteria, psychosis, sleep disorders, abnormal dreams, and discontinuation (withdrawal) syndrome.
Adverse reactions are especially likely when starting or discontinuing the drug, increasing or lowering the dose or when switching from one SSRI to another SSRI. Adverse reactions are often diagnosed as bipolar disorder when the symptoms could be entirely iatrogenic (treatment induced). Withdrawal, especially abrupt withdrawal, from any of these medications can also cause severe neuropsychiatric and physical symptoms. It is important to withdraw extremely slowly from these drugs, usually over a period of a year or more, under the supervision of a qualified and experienced specialist.
In addition to the adverse reactions listed in the Physicians' Desk Reference, the FDA published a Public Health Advisory on March 22, 2004 which states (in part): "Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric." (Click Links button at bottom of this page for a direct link to this FDA Warning.)
Most of the stories on this site describe events which occurred after the year 2000. The increase in online news material and the efficiency of search engines has greatly increased the ability to track stories. Even these 2000+ documented stories only represent the tip of an iceberg since most stories do not make it into the media. There are 45 cases of bizarre behavior, 28 school shootings/incidents, 49 road rage tragedies, 10 air rage incidents, 32 postpartum depression cases, over 500 murders (homicides), over 180 murder-suicides and other acts of violence including workplace violence on this site.

There is a grave concern among advocates that adverse reactions are greatly underestimated by the public, the medical profession and the regulatory authorities. Each of these stories in our list can be interpreted as an adverse reaction and in most cases we have highlighted the portion of the article that refers to evidence of bizarre behavioral change consistent with drug reaction. In some stories causation is acknowledged and the juxtaposition of these stories with those where it goes unrecognized as well as the repetition of themes and circumstances is chilling. If indeed medications played a significant role in all these tragedies, then this is a public health problem of epidemic proportions on a global scale."
(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-01-19T13:33:00.000-08:00

MORE ON THE CRIMES OF PSYCHIATRY AND ITS PRACTITIONERS
by Justice Lover

Here is Vera :

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

FYI

On Monday, Jan. 21, at 9:00 PM, Public Broadcasting stations will be airing
The LOBOTOMIST, a riveting documentary on the American Experience based on
the 2005 biography of Walter Freeman, who performed ice pick lobotomies on
more than 2,900 people, the last lobotomy in 1967.

The Washington Post reports (below) that hour-long "American Experience"
documentary "The Lobotomist" makes clear that Freeman's operation reflected
the neurologist's peculiar combination of zealotry, talent, hubris and, as
one of his trainees noted, craziness. Sometimes Freeman, who relished
putting on a show, used a carpenter's mallet instead of a surgical hammer
during demonstrations of his operation. At other times, he would operate
left-handed rather than right-handed.

The same can be said about the proponents of Electro Shock, and psychiatry's
other brain damaging somatic interventions, including:
Magnetic Seizure Therapy (MST), Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
Vagus Nerve Stimulation (TMS), Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).
None of these invasive interventions is supported by scientific evidence of
safety or lasting efficacy.

Psychiatry's increasingly toxic pharmacologic treatments also lack
scientific evidence of safety and efficacy to justify their wide use; yet
they have become industry's blockbuster profit-makers thanks to aggressive marketing and a complicit FDA.

Most disturbing is that each of these brain damaging experimental treatments
became fashionable due to the propaganda spread by its coterie of zealous
proponents whose hubris, positions of authority and financial stakes, led to
their acceptance. FDA officials abdicate the agency's mission by turning a
blind eye and deaf ear to fraudulent promotional claims refuted by the
scientific data buried within FDA's files.

Those who expose their patients to harm-producing interventions violate the
Hippocratic Oath--"First, do no harm."
In the absence of scientifically valid evidence-based medicine; in the
absence of mandatory monitoring and reporting of drug and/or device adverse
effects, to determine safety--it is better to do nothing.

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

The relevant press article is here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011401
484.html
THE WASHINGTON POST
'Lobotomist' Serves as a Warning
Documentary Shows Damage Done When Medicine Goes Awry
By Sandra G. Boodman
Tuesday, January 15, 2008; Page HE01

(Emphasis added by Justice Lover)

2008-01-19T12:19:00.000-08:00

AS BIG PHARMA GOES DOWN, ITS JUNIOR PARTNER PSYCHIATRY WILL HAVE TO FOLLOW AND GO DOWN TOO
by Justice Lover

The following article points out that even the ruling class in the USA is beginning to abandon Big Pharma, one of its most important members. This new trend is manifested in the increasingly bad press the pharmaceutical drug corporations are getting, the scientific reports which expose their crimes, and the heavy losses they sustain as a result of damages paid to consumer plaintiffs. When psychiatry and its shrink practitioners would be left on their own, without the heavy bribes they have been getting from big pharma, then they would lose their incentives to perpetrate their crimes against humanity on their victim-patients.

Here is the article as published by counterpunch.org this weekend :

Weekend Edition
January 19 / 20, 2008
Burying Clinical Data, Spinning Journal Articles, Selling Bad Drugs
The Drug Industry Takes Another Hit
By MARTHA ROSENBERG

If Hillary and Obama think the press is picking on them, they should look at Big Pharma.The ink isn't even dry on the massive Vioxx settlement and already Big Pharma's been accused of burying clinical data, spinning journal articles and selling drugs that cause the conditions they're supposed to fix. Sound familiar?

Merck and Schering-Plough, it turns out, were sitting on the ENHANCE clinical trial results of cholesterol lowering drug, Vytorin for a reason. Rather than reducing the growth of fatty plaque in the arteries, Vytorin, a combination of Zetia and Zocor, almost doubled the growth in the trials.Not only did it take a Congressional committee to pry the truth out of the Big Pharma giants, their response to the clinical belly flop was that they "would be changing the ENHANCE study's endpoint"--the actual result the study was meant to measure.In other words, the sun was in their eyes.

Nor was it just TV that Big Pharma is accused of using in service to half truths like "Vytorin treats cholesterol from two sources: food and family."

Ninety-four percent of positive studies about antidepressants found their way into medical journals versus 14 percent of negative ones says an article in the January 17, 2008 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine called Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy.

Publishing only pro drug articles deprives researchers of accurate data, wastes resources, squanders the contributions of investigators and patients and misleads doctors says lead author Erick Turner, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University.

New bone medications also took a hit in a medical literature analysis in 2008.

After screening 1,825 published papers from 1966 to 2007, researchers found no evidence that bisphosphonates such as Fosamax or Actonel are superior to older bone drugs in Systematic Review: Comparative Effectiveness of Treatments to Prevent Fractures in Men and Women with Low Bone Density or Osteoporosis in the February 8 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. They did find the newer drugs can have serious side effects such as strokes, blood clots in the lungs or bleeding in the uterus (a January 15, 2008 Journal of Rheumatology paper finds oral bisphosphonate drugs nearly triple the risk of developing bone necrosis) and that "data are insufficient to determine the relative efficacy or safety" of all the studied drugs.

Some will notice the antidepressant article in the New England Journal of Medicine and bone drug article in the Annals of Internal Medicine are unusually short. They lack the obligatory six inches of drug company financial support to the researchers which most journal articles show at the end. (In a pro Cox-2 inhibitor article in the December 22, 2007 issue of Lancet author Vibeke Strand lists 49 drug companies she's received money from. Who even knew there were 49 drug companies?)

Thanks to the Vioxx, HRT and Avandia scandals, the public is no longer shocked to learn that Big Pharma hides side effects like heart attacks or sells drugs that actually cause the conditions they are supposed to alleviate like antidepressants and suicide or bisphosphonates and fractures.

But disease mongering still seems a violation of First Do No Harm.

In January thousands of Northwestern students found a "Kick Crohn's Back" brochure in their daily newspaper replete with checklist--Does abnormal pain or other Crohn's symptoms force you to miss school, work or events with friends or family?-- and photo of glowing young couple "going out to dinner and actually eating dinner."

What percentage of 19-years-olds gets Crohn's disease to justify use of Humira whose side effects include lethal infections and cancer? Or is the insert meant for the set of all 19-year-olds with rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis, the other diseases Humira treats?

And then there's fibromyalgia, another amorphous, no cause/no cure/no clear definition condition that lends itself to lucrative direct-to-consumer self-diagnosis .

Pfizer spent $40 million advertising Lyrica, approved for fibromyalgia in June, in 2007 buttressed by free PSAs from the National Fibromyalgia Association (NFA) which directed people to a web site with the Pfizer logo and phone number.

This "unbranded," "condition-awareness" marketing as it's called in the industry, sponsored by Pfizer but funneled through the NFA helped Lyrica post 118,871 new and 203,737 total prescriptions in December noted Bear Stearns analyst John Boris saying he was impressed with the data points' upward trajectory.

But it also moved the New York Times to ask on its front page in January "Drug Approved. Is Disease Real?"

And even if the disease is real and not another self fulfilling prophesy, Big Pharma will no doubt find itself back in court with suits over fibro drugs' Zyprexa-like weight gain side effects which start early in therapy with gains of as much as seven percent that do not taper off.

Yes, thanks to a bad start in 2008 Pharma has a lot of "negatives" to overcome. But unlike the presidential candidates, its troubles won't end in eleven months. They may even get worse.

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-01-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

MORE ON BIG PHARMA LIES AND THE SHRINKS WHO COLLABORATE WITH THEM
Justice Lover

Here are some more of Vera's findings :

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

FYI

Highly recommended: Douglas Kennedy's hard hitting report on Fox News, a follow-up to yesterday's New England Journal report documenting pervasive Pharmaceutical company misrepresentation of clinical trial findings. See,http://youtube.com/watch?v=U2Sd73DQ2J0

Whereas the published "peer reviewed" journal reports would have doctors believe that 94% of the antidepressant drug trials found the drugs effective, those reports were manipulated by concealing the actual findings.That, as Eliot Spitzer, then NYS Attorney General, stated--is fraud.

When scientists under contract with manufacturers pen their names to deceptive reports based on partial data, they are engaging in fraud as well.

Such scientists are equally responsible for deceiving physicians who rely on journal reports to guide their prescribing, and they bear responsibility for the harm that was caused to consumers who were prescribed ineffective drugs.In the case of antidepressants, the serious risks of harm include anincreased risk of suicide.

We commend Lynn Michaels who (on short notice ) agreed to be interviewed and share her harrowing personal experience. She has struggled for 8 years trying to get off antidepressants--which she had been told were not addictive. If not addictive, why do so many people suffer severe withdrawal symptoms???

Doug Kennedy and Fox News are to be commended for a balanced report that gave consumers a voice. All too often, the media relies on "authorities"with vested interests, whose industry ties are mostly concealed, much as thenegative clinical trial data remains concealed.

Your comments can be emailed to: bigstory@foxnews.com
http://youtube.com/watch?v=U2Sd73DQ2J0

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

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-01-16T12:33:00.000-08:00

US Psychiatry's

Unapproved,

Uncontrolled Harm Producing

Experiments on Children

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

FYI

An editorial in the Daytona Beach News Journal (below) acknowledges the duty
to protect children from antipsychotics, among the most harmful prescribed
medications:

"Florida owes a more important duty to the thousands of children across the
state who are taking powerful medications."

This sense of responsibility is what is lacking in psychiatry, which is the
reason that millions of children are being exposed to toxic psychotropic
drugs that are damaging their central nervous system, their developing
brain, and their vital biologic systems.

In sharp contrast to other medical specialties, psychiatry's prescribing
practices are governed by conjecture--i.e. faith--rather than scientific
evidence to support clinical practice. And, as is acknowledged by Thomas Insel, MD director of the National Institute of Mental Health, psychiatry's practices have always been governed by the personal preference--i.e., bias--of the psychiatrist:

"One of the things I think that people struggle with the most is that the
treatment they are likely to be given may depend much more on who they call
and not on what problem they're dealing with. And that's a bit of a change.
That's not as true in cancer. It's not quite as true in heart disease,
although there's some of that. But in the case of mental disorders, there's
still this huge variation in the treatments that people are given, and a lot
of it depends not so much on a thorough understanding of these disorders,
[but] much more on what it is the therapist is most comfortable in doing."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/interviews/insel.html

Medicines' precautionary ethical principle, "First, do no harm" is largely
violated by psychiatrists who expose patients to serious harm caused by
faith-based, invasive biological interventions--be they pharmacologic,
magnetic, electric, or surgical. In the absence of scientific evidence to
support them, such prescribing practices are unethical.

Last week, Public Broadcasting aired a report on Frontline, the Medicated
Child, focusing on US psychiatrists who misinterpret children's exuberant
behavior as pathological, "diagnosing" a million American children as
"bipolar" for which they prescribe toxic brain damaging drugs--primarily
antipsychotics singly and in cocktails--without a shred of scientific
support the risks.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/etc/synopsis.html

Frontline interviewed leading child psychiatrists who have been in the
forefront promoting pharmacological interventions. When asked, Why has there
been a 4,000 percent increase over the past 10 years in the number of
children diagnosed with bipolar? None of them could provide convincing
evidence to support this phenomenon. Indeed, many of them now acknowledge
that the problem of misdiagnosing and misprescribing psychotropic drugs for
children has increased exponentially in the absence of science to justify
current practice. For example,

Dr. Thomas Insel: "What's not really clear is whether many of the kids who
are called bipolar have anything that's related to this very well-studied
disorder in adults. It's not clear that people with that adult illness
started with what we're now calling bipolar in children. Nor is it clear
that the kids who have this disorder are going to grow up to have what we
used to call manic-depressive illness in adulthood."

Dr. John March, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Duke University:
"We're using these medications. We don't know how they work, if they work or
at what cost, and it amounts to a huge experiment with the lives of American
kids."

Dr. Patrick Bacon, a child psychiatrist who loosely prescribes
antipsychotics for children: "It's really to some extent an experiment,
trying medications in these children of this age. It's a gamble. And I tell
parents there's no way to know what's going to work."

Dr. Marianne Wamboldt, the chief of psychiatry at Denver Children's
Hospital: "We're dealing with developing minds and brains, and medications
have a whole different impact in the young developing child than they do in
an adult. We don't understand that impact very well. That's where we're
still in the Dark Ages."

Dr. David Shaffer, chairman of child psychiatry, Columbia University,
acknowledges: "The whole area of bipolar is filled with dispute and
uncertainty and argument. So I don't think that there are too many people
out there saying that we're sure this is the way it is, at least not among
the leaders in the field....A lot of symptoms that you see in disturbed
children could be quite normal if you just looked at them by themselves. How
do we decide? Well.. There are very few of what are called pathognomonic
symptoms... Almost every symptom that you can name may occur in normal
kids."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/interviews/shaffer.ht
ml

When asked, Why is bipolar popular? Dr. Shaffer replied:
"I think bipolar is fashionable because for many years it was thought to not
exist in children, and then, all of a sudden, it became fashionable because
it was common:
Out of nowhere bipolar disorder suddenly was being diagnosed left, right and
center."

"Out of nowhere"- without any supporting evidence-psychiatrists diagnose and medicate irresponsibly prescribing the most toxic interventions -violating with impunity, ethical constraints of standard medical practice, which is governed by evidence, and the "do no harm" principle.

Some psychiatrists now urge caution when it comes to diagnosing children
with bipolar. But, as FRONTLINE noted, others--foremost among these, Dr.
Joseph Biederman, of Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital, and his
disciple, Dr. Kiki Chang, director of pediatric bipolar disorders, Stanford
University--argue for even more radical "treatments" at even younger ages
for children who they "believe" to be genetically predisposed to "bipolar
disorder." However, their "belief" is not supported by evidence, just
speculation.

"We believe it's a disorder that kind of takes on a life of its own. There's
this theory in the literature -- the kindling theory -- that was first
presented by Bob Post [Dr. Robert M. Post], and the theory is that you have
some genetic predisposition, some genes to get this disorder later
on.Certain stressful events or a stressful environment, together with these
genes, are going to send you in a certain direction. If you have those
bipolar genes, you're going to go toward a bipolar direction."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/interviews/chang.html

"The theory is that if you get in early, before the first full mood episode,
then PERHAPS we can delay the onset to full mania. And IF that's the case,
PERHAPS finding the right medication early on can protect a brain so that
these children never do progress to full bipolar disorder."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/etc/synopsis.html

Neither the kindling theory nor the rush to medicate are backed by science.The "early intervention" rationale for prescribing antipsychotics for children falls within the realm of unethical, faith-based medicine whose serious risks of harm are measurable, and documented.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2006/11/psychiatrist-challenges-ethics-of-yale.html

Psychiatrists whose knowledge base about the cause, the diagnostic criteria,
the natural course of illness, and the ill effects of interventions they
prescribe, are engaging in irresponsible practices. Their ignorance is
guided by the preferences of zealous "authorities" rather than medical
science. Read interview with Dr. Chang:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/interviews/chang.html

US psychiatrists who disregard the serious harmful consequences of the
interventions they prescribe pose a very real threat to the health and
well-being of children (and others). As acknowledged by John March, MD,chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center:

"We're conducting a giant experiment with the lives of America's children by providing them not just one drug, but often two or three drugs incombination, with no data to know whether these drugs are effective or safeover the short term, much less the long term." -John March, MD
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/health/06psych.html

Such unethical experimental practices open the door to liability charges.

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
~~~~~~~~~~
Daytona Beach News Journal
Editorial: Drugs for children? Prescriptions of anti-psychotics troubling
January 16, 2008

Parents at their wits' end, wearing long sleeves to hide bruises and bite
marks inflicted by their own offspring. Psychiatrists struggling to cope
with children as young as 2 who show intractable behavior problems. Drug
companies ready to suggest powerful drugs that can produce marked changes in
a child's behavior -- getting heavily involved in state-level determinations
of which drugs should be prescribed for which conditions. And a state
struggling to keep up with rapid changes that have pushed Medicaid costs for
powerful anti-psychotic drugs from $9 million seven years ago to almost $30
million in 2006.

Something doesn't add up. Do all these children need the drugs they're being
prescribed? Without a careful review of individual medical records, it's
difficult to say -- but the trend is disturbing. Other states are already
pushing hard for answers, and Florida should join in.

The drugs in question are known as atypical anti-psychotics and include
Risperdal, Abilify, Geodon and Seroquel. Originally intended to treat major
mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar mania, they have become
increasingly widely prescribed for children with autism and
attention-deficit disorder with tics.

Yet, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved few of these drugs
for use with children -- especially in conjunction with many of the
conditions for which the powerful drugs are prescribed. There's little
research on the effects of the drugs, and a growing number of reports
suggest that the medication could be responsible for deaths or serious side
effects, including tardive dyskinisa (involuntary jerking of the limbs and
grimacing).

State Medicaid programs across the country have found themselves paying for
increasing quantities of these drugs. In Florida, the number of child
Medicaid recipients taking atypical anti-psychotics has doubled since 1999,
despite a lack of evidence suggesting that they're any more effective than
other cheaper drugs.

Twenty-six states are exploring legal action against drug companies for
unfair trade practices or consumer-protection violations (Florida is one of
them; the Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit served drug
manufacturer Eli Lilly with a request in 2005 for information regarding its
marketing of the drug Zyprexa.) Other states are being more aggressive;
several have actually filed suit seeking to reclaim some of the millions
spent on these drugs.

But Florida owes a more important duty to the thousands of children across
the state who are taking powerful medications. Immediately discontinuing
Medicaid reimbursement for the medications would be a mistake -- too many
children are currently stabilized on drugs and might actually be benefiting.
But the state should move to develop better standards for when the drugs
should be prescribed. And this time around, the state should look first to
public-health officials and the FDA.

Comments here:
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/opnOP
N28011608.htm

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-01-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

Important Written Testimony by Amy Philo for FDA hearing (in USA) on Zyprexa

Amy Philo wrote:

Diem-Kieu H. Ngo, Pharm.D., BCPS
LCDR, U.S. Public Health Service
Program Management Officer
Food and Drug Administration
Office of Executive Programs
Advisors and Consultants Staff (HFD-21)
5630 Fishers Lane Room 1093, Rockville MD, 20857
Telephone: 301-827-6765
Fax: 301-827-6778
diem.ngo@fda.hhs.gov

Dear Dr. Ngo,

I am unable to attend the Feb. 6 hearing on Zyprexa but I am sending in a written objection to the NDA for the new formulation. I hope you will also consider the arguments and information I have supplied in this letter as you develop any warnings or bans or restrictions on the current formulations of Zyprexa or similar drugs. Please distribute my letter to anyone at the FDA who is able to vote or influence such matters, or anyone who is monitoring the safety of psychoactive drugs, and make sure that my written testimony is entered into the docket and recorded in the proceedings of the Feb. 6 hearing.

Thank you. My testimony follows.
==========================================

January 14,2008

To the FDA Advisory Committee or anyone concerned with policy on Zyprexa and other psychoactive drugs:

I submit this testimony as an extreme objection to possible approval of any NDAs for new formulations of the highly dangerous drug Zyprexa, and particularly to the proposed intramuscular, extended-release, long-acting (2 week) version. A 2-week-long extended-release formulation which could potentially threaten children who are incapable of efficiently metabolizing it (such as breastfeeding infants), and which carries increased somnolence effects compared to older formulations, will inevitably lead to "SIDS" in some infants if the drug is allowed to be given to breastfeeding women. Should this occur, increased cases of depression in mothers who lose their infants because of drugs will increase subsequent profits for Eli Lilly through additional sales and continued drugging of grieving mothers and families.

For the sake of expediency I'll assume you understand that psychosis is commonly caused in postpartum women by administration of SSRIs. (I know that it is, because I survived the dose-dependent worsening of homicidal and suicidal urges and even one hallucination which started after only 3 days on Zoloft. My family and I suffered through for about 5 months - starting with Zoloft samples at 6 days postpartum following the birth and near death of my son in July 2004, and continuing through months of frightening urges, expensive hospital bills and visits to psychiatrists and therapists, my condition worsening to the point of near loss of control over my own thoughts or actions until I discontinued the drug. I also know this from the research that I have read over the past 3 years.)

I believe that the push to medicate mothers with antipsychotic drugs serves more than the purpose of attempting to control psychosis, bipolar disorder, or extreme depression (which Zyprexa does not do - recent studies undertaken on "antipsychotic" drugs have revealed that patients on placebo actually improved more than those taking atypical antipsychotics, like Zyprexa).

Even if Zyprexa were discontinued by someone who tried it, in favor of a lesser poison, an SSRI would only lead people back to a place where they feel they cannot function without antipsychotic drugs. And so the cycle of sacrifice on the altar of profit and power will continue...

Among the effects produced by Zyprexa (and there are almost 3,000 known side effects), somnolence seems to be the most advantageous to the psychiatric staff who will be dealing with patients. With or without breastfeeding mothers' use, a long-lasting extended-release version which increases somnolence beyond what these major tranquilizers already do will make the task of filling beds and subduing psychiatric patients much easier and more profitable. And it will pose a serious threat to young children whose parents and doctors are quick to medicate them for the "symptoms" which are nothing more than the effects of other toxic drugs and foods - things that your organization should never have allowed to be legally fed to and injected into children.

The current cost of atypical antipsychotics is $300-$600 more per month than older antipsychotic agents and sales are steadily increasing. This is Eli Lilly's best-selling drug, and with all the new users of SSRIs and other psychosis-inducing, FDA-approved drugs, it is likely to remain a profitable drug as long as it enjoys FDA approval, patent protection and inadequate warnings, and even potentially bring in huge sales as a generic drug.

Even though Zyprexa has not been studied in under 18s, I can tell you that every day parents feed their children antipsychotic drugs like Zyprexa because of court orders. Why in a country supposedly regulated by your agency is this allowed to happen? This is criminal! If you do approve the new intramuscular version of Zyprexa extended-release I hope you will do the right thing and create requirements for this drug to be severely controlled. It should be illegal for a psychiatrist to force-drug a child with this medication or any medication which causes permanent neurological damage and tics. It should be illegal for a pregnant or breastfeeding mother to take it.

According to the package label for current formulations, intramuscular administration of Zyprexa results in a plasma level 5 times that of oral dosage tablets and reaches that concentration within 15-45 minutes, compared to 6 hours for the oral version. What will be the speed and exposure level of a longer-acting version? In addition, the somnolence effect is more pronounced in current intramuscular versions compared to oral tablets, and it is reported to be worse in the newer version for which Lilly seeks the patent.

And what are intramuscular injections used for? Most commonly they are used in cases of forced treatment for hospitalized patients. Given the fact that almost every patient who enters a psych ward will be given an antipsychotic agent, the potential for worsened adverse events is profound. The situation which we are faced with is one where the order of a doctor - even one who has never met the patient - but is told of her situation over the phone - can legally require a patient to be locked up, deprived of informed consent, and force-drugged with poisons approved by your organization. So I ask, are you the FDA, charged with regulating drugs and foods that the public faithfully trusts are safe or "safe enough," or are you merely a tool drug companies use to persuade the public to trust in their so-called science, proprietary and twisted as it may be?

The label for Zyprexa includes a warning against nursing an infant while taking the medication. However, recently Dr. Thomas Hale and Kathleen Kendall-Tackett (among others) have encouraged breastfeeding mothers who experience psychotic episodes to make their way immediately to a hospital and get treatment with Zyprexa without interrupting breastfeeding. According to Mothering Magazine, psychotic breastfeeding mothers can safely continue nursing while taking Zyprexa if they avoid feeding during peak plasma concentration.

What is the likelihood that a doctor will know when the peak concentration in a nursing mother will be, when only one study has been cited by advocates of this position as an excuse for evidence of safety, and this was conducted on a sample with 7 women? Most breastfeeding studies have samples this small, even for drugs like Zoloft, with samples as small as 4 women, and totaling around 30 women in all. In addition, many studies purporting to study breastfeeding women have actually involved mostly women who were not exclusively breastfeeding, with the infant who was exclusively breastfed being the one who experienced seizures and coma and other serious effects.

Not to mention that psychiatric patients are often given multiple drugs which cause concentrations of Zyprexa to become elevated and increase the somnolence effect. The Zyprexa package label also cites reports of pregnant women using Zyprexa which led to 1 neonatal death, 3 therapeutic abortions, and 1 spontaneous abortion (or miscarriage). Though the package label states that infant exposure through breast milk is as high as 1.8% of the maternal dose, the article cited by Thomas Hale in his recommendations that Olanzapine is an acceptable drug for breastfeeding mothers claims that out of the six "evaluable" samples... the exposure was only 1% of the maternal dose. They only studied 7 people, 6 of whom were "evaluable", yet on this weak basis the drug is recommended to breastfeeding mothers for psychosis, bipolar disorder and extreme depression.

How can we in good conscience expose infants to risks like excessive somnolence, hypotension, seizures, tardive dyskinesia and multiple other effects? This drug has not been studied or approved for children under 18, yet it is now being prescribed to breastfeeding mothers and apparently some pregnant mothers as well.

This is completely irresponsible, and even though the advice of breastfeeding advocates differs from what the package inserts say (as to the the level of exposure to the baby, the claims of no side effects in babies, and in the attitude about the reasoning behind the claims being based on liability versus risk), people are currently going along in droves with the most dangerous advice, rather than heeding the most cautious approach.

How is a mother who is under the influence of a drug which causes extreme somnolence supposed to prevent the baby from nursing at peak concentration times? Anyone who has ever seen a patient under the influence of antipsychotic agents knows that the other profound effects of Zyprexa can incapacitate you to the point that you would not even be able to care for yourself, much less an infant. A drooling, barely able to walk or talk woman, whose bodily functions have been disrupted cannot be expected to do anything to take care of a baby safely, and the expectation that she would is dangerous. If any woman taking the drug actually were able to continue caring for her baby she would at minimum be severely impaired. Perhaps she could lie around nursing her child 24 hours a day and increase the exposure, but it is doubtful she could do much more.

A mother who is told to take Zyprexa while nursing cannot be expected to manage breastfeeding in a way that would minimize exposure at a peak concentration time, particularly if she is also taking another agent like Prozac which enhances plasma levels of olanzapine. If concomitant medications or intramuscular injection are used, the concentration multiplies 5 times or more, and could reach peak concentration in a shorter amount of time (according to the package label, 15-45 minutes from intramuscular injection alone and potentially faster if mixed with other drugs). How is a mother supposed to guess how all the factors play a role? Furthermore, Zyprexa increases prolactin levels and will thus increase milk supply and overall exposure for the baby (especially by increasing the likelihood of engorgement and mastitis, thereby encouraging the mother to nurse more frequently, especially during potentially peak concentration times).

Most women who would be so insistent on nursing as to continue doing so while taking this medication would be those who are also co-sleeping and night nursing. Increased somnolence above and beyond current levels caused by existing formulations, in this type of co-sleeping situation, would be even more dangerous than somnolence in other patients due to the lack of the awareness of the baby's whereabouts and the potential for a mother to fail to notice whether her baby is nursing when a potentially peak concentration time is taking place.

Is increased bonding worth the risk that these drugs pose to infants? Somnolence, seizures, coma, inability to regulate temperature, all effects of Zyprexa... these pose so much risk to babies for SIDS that it sounds like population control or eugenics to recommend them. Even if all psychotic mothers and their babies were accidentally killed by drugs we will still have more come along because of SSRIs and other FDA-approved drugs.

Infants cannot metabolize drugs at the same rate as adults - drugs are more readily absorbed, more free-floating drug courses through their veins, their kidneys work at 30-40% the capacity of adults, and brain concentrations are always higher than the dose would suggest (10 to 30 times higher) due to the immature blood-brain barrier. It takes infants much longer to rid themselves of a single dose. How long will it take an infant exposed to Zyprexa to eliminate it - especially if the child is a newborn? If the toxic effects are noted in an infant who is exposed to an even longer-lasting formulation (such as a 2-week formulation), it will already be too late to do anything to save the child. Prozac has caused coma in infants exposed through mother's milk... why would we put them at risk with a drug much more toxic?

Involuntary injection with a formulation of a highly dangerous drug which will not wear off for 2 weeks will pose a particularly serious threat in any case of a breastfeeding mother who comes to the hospital for psychosis. It is not unreasonable to assume that psychiatric staff may at some point inject a woman with this prior to learning that a mother is breastfeeding, nor is it unlikely that the mother may insist on the basis of Hale's endorsement that she can continue nursing her baby on this drug. If this is allowed, there is no doubt that mothers who start the treatment will probably continue an oral version if they are sent home. If the drug were to be banned to breastfeeding women (a burdensome choice you could easily enact by declaration due to safety concerns), then any mother mistakenly forcibly injected with this drug will also be forced to discontinue breastfeeding, most likely permanently.

If the FDA approves the New Drug Application and hands Eli Lilly another several years of patent protection in a market that has grown to over 4 billion dollars per year and is ever-expanding, we will have a dire situation on our hands.

Doctors do not abide by your recommendations, or even necessarily those of drug companies, and currently even though the package insert says that pregnant and breastfeeding women should not use Zyprexa - or women who use it should not breastfeed, this advice is not being heeded. Three years ago I was told that I should wean my baby and take Zyprexa - that the "symptoms" I was having stood a better chance of relief with a toxic drug that my baby could not have. I chose not to go on Zyprexa or wean my son. Instead I eventually realized that no matter how long I gave Zoloft to work, it was only going to make me more homicidal. I was even told it was not Zoloft, but that I was just crazy, and ought never to have more children. But I got off Zoloft and as a result I got better. I had a second child (an un-interfered-with home birth attended by a CNM), and experienced no PPD whatsoever in the past 16 months since my second son was born.

Psychiatrists have demonstrated no concern for safety whatsoever, even prescribing cocktails of drugs to very young children for completely ridiculous reasons despite the evidence that children can die from being given these medications (not to mention that adults can too).

You go after chiropractors or doctors who administer unapproved hormone treatments, sandwich carts that serve tainted food, and vaccine manufacturers who put contaminated drugs into vials intended for injection into newborns, and you should equally go after judges who court-order parents to drug their children, psychiatrists who prescribe these drugs and others in a cocktail, and any hospital that force-treats someone with harmful medications. There should be some sort of improved warning or prescription process that applies to Zyprexa and the entire class of drugs so that mothers will not be led astray and into dangerous territory by people who haphazardly attempt to be their advocates.

We have entered a brave new world where drug companies seek FDA approval for new versions of old drugs for financial reasons alone. Much of the public has seen how dangerous Zyprexa is, yet it remains a growing market for those who are unaware, or for those who are forced, or for those who mistakenly believe they have chemical imbalances which can only be corrected by the "right" medication. To consider approving a more dangerous version of Zyprexa simply for the financial gain of Eli Lilly, knowing that it puts patients at even greater risk is unthinkable. This drug currently costs several hundred dollars more per month than older antipsychotic agents. The very clear incentive to prescribe such an expensive drug or forcibly inject it into a patient should make you all pause and ask yourselves if you are in this organization for the ultimate mission of ensuring the safety of Americans or for keeping the drug companies profitable and powerful.

On behalf of the 257 members of CHAADA (Children and Adults Against Drugging America) and on behalf of members and friends who are unable to attend this meeting or submit written testimony due to the fact that they are currently in the midst of having their children forcibly poisoned and ruined by these drugs, I urge you to do the right thing and consider what possible implications your actions will have. The Eli Lilly corporation does not need more patent protections for a drug that is already causing so much disease in our country, especially in an even more dangerous form than the current formulation. Hopefully by the time their existing patent expires in 2011, this drug and others will already have suffered a ban, or the government will rein in their out of control actions and regulate them like a company that claims to promote health should be regulated instead of a company out for profit and more disease markets.

Your SSRI black box warning for suicide played a role in saving my life in 2004, secured my son's safety with me as his sole caregiver for the first time in his life, and made it possible for me to go on to have another child. The public has been deluded for too long and it is your responsibility to issue the types of warnings, bans, and denials of drug approval applications that will ensure public safety. We do not need more Zyprexa, more expensive Zyprexa, or more long-lasting Zyprexa. There are enough generic, less toxic drugs and placebos for doctors to experiment on us with to last us until the sun implodes or explodes, our planet is destroyed, and the solar system gets its claws on Eli Lilly and pulls it straight to Hell (unless I am mistaken and we are already living in it).

Sincerely,

Amy Philo
Breastfeeding mother of two boys

Founder, www.uniteforlife.org
Co-Founder, www.chaada.org
Founder, www.babywhys.org

2008-01-11T22:57:00.000-08:00

Fwd: A Response To New Mexico Officials

	from	sarinasvoice@aol.com
to		sarinasvoice@aol.com,
date		Jan 12, 2008 1:59 PM
subject		Fwd: A Response To New Mexico Officials
mailed-by		aol.com

THIS IS SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS OUR CRUSADE, WHO UNDERSTANDS THAT WE HAVE QUIT OUR FULL TIME JOBS AND SACRIFICED "EVERYTHING" TO MAKE CERTAIN NO MORE PEOPLE DIE. YOU ARE ALL UPSET THAT YOU HAVE A FEW SPAM EMAILS?!? MY DAUGHTER DIED, HOW UPSET DO YOU THINK I AM?!? SPAM EMAILS SHOULD BE THE LEAST OF YOUR PROBLEMS WITH WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS WORLD. YOU SHOULD BE THANKING ME FOR THIS INFORMATION SO YOU CAN KNOW THE SIGNS BEFORE IT HAPPENS TO YOU -

Camille Milke, Eternal "Mommy" of Sarina Angel
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow and Forever........
My Beautiful Baby Girl, 1/26/86 - 10/28/07, 21 years 9 months 3 days
COPES Foundation (Coalition Of Parents Enduring Suicide)
Founder and President, Main - 505-269-2286, Fax - 505-213-0999
www.COPESFoundation.com
www.ILoveYouSarina21.last-memories.com

From: terrylc@sbcglobal.net
To: sarinasvoice@aol.com
Sent: 1/11/2008 8:20:31 A.M. Mountain Standard Time
Subj: A Response To New Mexico Officials

For New Mexico officials who object to the information being provided by Sarina's Voice:

The US Constitution provides that, "Congress shall make no law...bridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

It is rather obvious that Sarina's parents are attempting to get the government of New Mexico to respond to their grievances. It is likewise clear that some in the government of New Mexico are in the pockets of the pharmaceutical drug cartel.

But this really comes as no surprise for a state that helped George Bu$h steal the Presidency in 2004, http://www.gregpalast.com/recipe-for-a-cooked-election, so that his corporate buddies could continue to loot the treasury and poison our children for obscene profit.

A state that was one of the last to finally ban cockfighting, after its current Governor for years failed to take a stand, http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/42629.html. Not exactly a state where morality is the government's job one.

So unsubscribe all you want. The people of this country are fed up with seeing the government poison their children, disgusted with lives destroyed due to the inaction of those feeding at the public trough. Close your eyes, take your drugs, line your pockets. We the people are on to you.

Terry L. Clark

2008-01-07T14:32:00.000-08:00

AWAY NOW WITH ALL PSYCHIATRIC PESTS ON THE PAYROLL OF THE CRIMINAL BIG PHARMA ! ENOUGH OF THEIR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY !
by Justice Lover

The following is the latest AHRP report :

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

Reminder!

Tomorrow, Tuesday evening, at 9:00 PM (ET) Public Broadcasting System will be airing a vitally important report, "The Medicated Child".

The report produced by Marcela Gaviria, promises to shed light on a powerful juggernaut undermining the health, welfare, and safety of America's children. Big Pharma and their paid psychiatrists--clinicians and researchers at prestigious universities alike--are prescribing toxic drugs to millions of American children without any evidence of a favorable risk/benefit for children.

The FDA has turned its back on protecting the public from unsafe drugs to shield companies from liability. [1]
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/07/follow-up-fda-back-door-pediatric.html

For example, FDA approved Johnson & Johnson’s application to expand approval of its antipsychotic, Risperdal, for autistic children—even after J & J withdrew its application from the UK when strict monitoring requirements to ensure children's safety were recommended. [2] http://tinyurl.com/yqvp3d

Psychiatrists who prescribe antipsychotic drugs for children--and those who recommend these drugs--are following a lethal paradigm of treatment. They are sacrificing lives to promote pharmaceutical industry marketing goals for which they receive payment. [3, 4]
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/03/minnesota-is-first-of-handful-of-states.html

A 40-fold increase in the "diagnosis" of bipolar disorder in children (0 to 19 years old) has been documented within a 10-year period (1994-2003): [5] http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/09/bipolar-soars-as-diagnosis-for-young.html

The soaring “bipolar diagnosis” for children is generated by psychiatrists mislabeling children [6] [Link] then irresponsibly prescribing antipsychotic drugs. These psychiatrists are disregarding the documented, measurable damage to children’s brain and vital biological systems--including, hormonal, endocrine, metabolic, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems.
Psychiatrists are prescribing these hazardous drugs to otherwise healthy children, some as young as two. Psychiatrists are playing Russian roulette by prescribing drugs that are shown to induce irreversible disabling chronic conditions--including diabetes, hyperglycemia, akathisia, and sudden death. The lives of adults taking these same drugs are cut short by 25 years. See [7,8,9] [Link] [Link] [Link]

The question is not IF the drugs will shorten children's lives, the question is by how many years will children's lives be cut short by the toxic effects of antipsychotic drugs?

American children in the twenty-first century are being sacrificed with toxic chemicals much as children in Biblical times were sacrificed to Moloch (Molekh), and in Mexico children were sacrificed to placate the rain god Tlaloc.

Today children's lives and health are being sacrificed for financial gain.

If you missed CBS 60 Minutes report, September 2007: What Killed Rebecca Riley?
Below [after the FRONTLINE announcement] is the 60 Minute transcript.
See, video: http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3312826n

References:

1. Gradiner Harris Follow-up FDA Back-Door Pediatric Antipsychotic Drug Approvals, New York Times, July 2007: http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/07/follow-up-fda-back-door-pediatric.html
2. Committee on Safety in Medicine. Risperdal Assessment Report. December 10, 2006.
http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/idcplg?IdcService=GET_FILE&dDocName=con2025027&RevisionSelectionMethod=Latest
3. Medical Prostitution documented by the NYT, March 2007: http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/03/minnesota-is-first-of-handful-of-states.html
4. Gardiner Harris, Benedict Carey and Janet Roberts. Psychiatrists, Children and Drug Industry's Role, New York Times, May 10, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/health/10psyche.html http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychiatrists-retained-by-drug-industry.html
5. Benedict Carey. Bipolar Soars As Diagnosis For the Young, THE NEW YORK TIMES, September 3, 2007 [Link]
6. Denise Gellene. Bipolar Disorder In Youths May Be Over-Diagnosed A New Study Says A Fortyfold Increase Can Be Partly Attributed To Doctors Mislabeling Children And Teens With The Illness, Los Angeles Times September 4, 2007 [Link]
7. Marilyn Elias. New antipsychotic drugs carry risks for children, USA Today, May 2, 2006: [Link] [Link]
8. M. Joukamaa, M. Heliovaara, P. Knekt, H. Vaara, A. Aromaa, R. Raitasalo and V. Lehtinen. Schizophrenia, neuroleptic medication and mortality, British Journal of Psychiatry (2006), 188, 122-127. [Link]
9. Colton CW, Manderscheid RW. Congruencies in increased mortality rates, years of potential life lost, and causes of death among public mental health clients in eight states. Prev Chronic Dis 2006 Apr. Available from: [Link]

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

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)