"...although ideas like the serotonin theory of depression have been widely publicised, scientific research has not detected any reliable abnormalities of the serotonin system in people who are depressed. Second, it is often said the fact that drug treatment "works" proves there's an underlying biological deficiency. But there is another explanation for how psychiatric drugs affect people with emotional problems. It is frequently overlooked that drugs used in psychiatry are psychoactive drugs, like alcohol and cannabis. Psychoactive drugs make people feel different; they put people into an altered mental and physical state."
This is absolutely true. Pharmaceutical companies put the information right in their products. Package inserts and patient information on SSRI's and other psychoactive drugs often list "altered mental status" as a side effect.
In some countries physicians are not even required to tell patients about such adverse drug effects; legally, they are permitted to leave that job to the pharmacist who fills the script. Once you have decided to fill a script, it may already be too late.
Did you know that American mathematician John Nash, played by Russell Crowe in the film A BEAUTIFUL MIND, got well on his own and never took drugs for schizophrenia? Link -NAMISCC His wife Sylvia Nasar thought Nash's refusal to take drugs "may have been fortunate," since their side effects "would have made his gentle re-entry into the world of mathematics a near impossibility". But worse, if he had, he might not have survived - almost certainly not to become an octogenarian.
Lying about mental health for profit is wrong. NAMI - and Ron Howard - sure are a long way from the simple truths and decency of Mayberry.
Is the Schizophrenia Mortality Study in The Lancet CREDIBLE? Friday, 17 July 2009 Unless the overall treatment and services provided to schizophrenia patients in Finland is unique and especially protective—which the authors do not suggest—their claimed findings of lowered mortality rates for antipsychotic drug users are belied by a consistent body of evidence.
A study purporting to analyze mortality rates of 66, 881 schizophrenia patients in Finland (1973 to 2005) was published in the prestigious journal, The Lancet. [Abstract below]
The study has received much media attention because the authors claim—contrary to well documented previous reports about spiraling mortality rates among schizophrenia patients treated between the 1970s and 2000 [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]—that the use of the second generation antipsychotic drugs in Finland was associated with lower mortality rate compared to no drug treatment.
What’s more, the authors claim that Clozaril (clozapine) among all antipsychotics was associated with the lowest number of deaths, and its restricted use should therefore be reassessed for use a first-line treatment. Unless the overall treatment and services provided to schizophrenia patients in Finland is unique and especially protective—which the authors do not suggest—their claimed findings are belied by a consistent body of evidence.
To whit, an eight year study of FDA MedWatch adverse drug reports (between 1998 to 2005) found that Clozapine was linked to 3,277 deaths, making it the third most dangerous prescribed drug in the U.S. Clozapine was also linked to over 4,300 adverse drug events that led to disability or required serious medical intervention. [7]
A critical analysis by psychiatrist, Grace Jackson, MD (below), identifies fatal flaws in the study design and numerous methodological artifacts that introduced bias which minimized the detection of drug-related mortality. AHRP Link
Read about Archie Kalokerinos's book on death through vaccination - EVERY SECOND CHILD here
THE SWINE FLU FIASCO
Archie Kalokerinos M.D.
"In 1976 I was working in the far north of Australia amongst Aborigines. I observed, in one community of only a few hundred people, when they were given the flu vaccine (probably the Victorian strain but this detail does not really matter because nobody outside a few selected individuals really knows what is in any particular batch), six men died suddenly soon afterwards. They were not all 'old’. One was in his early twenties. A few weeks later, in another community I found that individuals with heart or potential heart problems or diabetes were particularly likely to drop dead soon after being given the vaccine.
Obviously, there was a problem with some batches of the flu vaccine.
A few months later I was in America. President Ford had been told by his health advisers that there was going to be a huge epidemic of ‘swine flu’, that this could kill may thousands and the only way to prevent this catastrophe was to vaccinate the entire population of America – every man woman and child - with a specific vaccine.
So the vaccine was manufactured and the biggest vaccination campaign in history was begun. I was concerned because the vaccine could not be properly tested in a short period. None of the recipients would know anything about what they were being injected with and the chances were that many would die suddenly. Furthermore, it was extremely unlikely that an epidemic of swine flu would occur. So I spoke out. At first the newspapers got hold of what I said and headlined, ‘Australian Physician Call It Mass Murder’. Then I appeared on Kathy Crosby’s television program.
Watching that was a man in New York who did not like a gentleman named Gambino the Mafia boss. Gambino was about 70 years old and had a history of heart problems. It was a simple matter to get someone to persuade Gambino to have the flu shot and Gambino obliged by dropping dead. The newspapers got it right when they stated, ‘Mafia Flu Jab Conspiracy’.
People were dropping dead in the buildings where they received their shots. Others became paralyzed. The whole program ground to a halt.
President Ford decided to settle the matter quickly. In front of the whole world, on television, he rolled up his sleeve and ‘had his shot’. I claimed at the time that he was given a ‘dud’ shot and I am certain that this was actually done. Then President Ford invited all the news media men and women who were milling around to line up and have their shots. Only one man volunteered and he happened to be the White House press secretary. All the others refused the invitation.
There was not a single case of swine flu. There never was going to be an epidemic of swine flu. How was it that the world’s most powerful man with the world's greatest department of health got it all so wrong? No one really knows the answer but what ever it is it is certainly not clean and tidy." Link
Something's definitely not right with Cherie Blair - perhaps political pork or a bad case of PR - but we doubt that the problem is Swine Flu.
Updates - NEWS (AP) -US vaccine makers to be immune from lawsuits Link
UK - (Independent) Safety questions over swine flu jab - Link
From Alternet: "For decades, the majority of American doctors, mental health professionals, the media, and the general public have yielded to the disseminations of Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biedeman who successfully evangelized for more children -- and younger children -- to be medicated with powerful psychiatric drugs.
The blowback from ADHD drugs is reported in the current July 2009 Scientific American Mind article "Do ADHD Drugs Take a Toll on the Brain?" a comprehensive report of the long-term dangers of ADHD drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, and Vyvanse.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated in 2005 that 9% of boys and 4% of girls in the U.S. were taking ADHD stimulant medications; and according to a 2007 study, ADHD-drug prescriptions rose by almost 12 percent a year between 2000 and 2005.
ADHD drugs are either the "amphetamine-like" methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin and Concerta) or actual amphetamines (e.g., Adderall and Vyvanse), so it should not be surprising that long-term use is associated with many hazards. The current Scientific American Mind piece, authored by Edmund S. Higgins, clinical associate professor of family medicine and psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina states, "Methylphenidate has a chemical structure similar to that of cocaine and acts on the brain in a very similar way." In February 2009, neuroscientists at the Rockefeller University reported cocaine-like structural and chemical alterations in the brains of mice given methylphenidate." Link
ADVERTISING... AS LONG AS PEOPLE DON'T THINK, IT WORKS!!
Mothers Act Fuels Multibillion Dollar Drug Industry - Evelyn Pringle Link FDA Throws Lifeline to Antipsychotic Pushers - Evelyn Pringle Link Mothers Act Disease Mongering Campaign - Evelyn Pringle Link
Want to contact your congresscritter? Find out what to do at Unitedforlife's Action Page
Do cats cause schizophrenia? - an interview with E. Fuller Torrey
Pet Theory Do Cats Cause Schizophrenia? by Stephen Mihm The New York Times Magazine on the Web "I THINK CATS ARE GREAT," says E. Fuller Torrey. His office decor would seem to confirm this statement: A cat poster hangs on one wall; a cat calendar sits on his desk; and a framed picture of a friend's cat leans against the windowsill. He even admits to having a "cat library" at home. But Torrey's interest in felines is a bit different from that of your typical cat lover. That's because Torrey, a psychiatry professor at the Uniformed Services University of Health Science and the enfant terrible of mental health research, believes that Felis domestica may carry infectious diseases that could cause schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. "My wife thinks I'm going to be assassinated by cat owners," says Torrey with a sigh. "In fact, I like cats. Unfortunately, if we are correct that they transmit infections..." Here his voice trails off, and he pensively fingers his closely cropped beard.
Torrey often speaks in a self-deprecating manner of his "delusional" notions, but he's dead serious about the cat connection. He thinks "typhoid tabbies" are passing along Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that causes brain lesions and, if Torrey is right, schizophrenia. Torrey first made the argument nearly thirty years ago. "It was considered psychotic," he admits. But since then, his ideas, though still outside the mainstream, have attracted converts, most notably the Johns Hopkins virologist Robert Yolken, with whom he now collaborates. Together, they're trying to prove that toxoplasmosis is but one of several infectious diseases that cause most cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It helps their case that previous explanations -- bad mothering, bad genes -- have proven deficient to varying degrees. But Torrey and Yolken have also uncovered some hard evidence to support their claims, and they are about to put their theory to the test with clinical trials of drugs that are new to the psychopharmacological arsenal: antibiotics and antivirals similar to those used by AIDS patients. If the duo finds that such drugs alter the course of schizophrenia, Yolken observes, their results "would represent a major advance in the treatment of this devastating disease as well as in understanding its basic etiology."
"SCHIZOPHRENIA is a cruel disease," Torrey has written, with considerable understatement. Although it affects only 1 percent of the population, schizophrenia is among the most debilitating forms of mental illness. Trapped in a world of private delusions, a schizophrenic might cling, for example, to the belief that he is Jesus Christ, or that the government has implanted a monitoring device in his mouth during a routine dental procedure. Visual and auditory hallucinations can range from the terrifying to the merely strange: gigantic spiders, voices that insult or instruct. Some schizophrenics withdraw, becoming mute or catatonic; others remain communicative but incoherent, jumping from one topic to another without logical connections."
Treating the 29 KNOWN and PROVEN causes of schizophrenia instead of chasing a theory would help a lot of sick people. It wouldn't fund research, help keep jobs or sell drugs. But a theory that cats are behind madness apparently does... and to quote Torrey, though in a different context, "that is a definition of insanity".
here
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