Nicotinic receptor - and Niacin

"AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical group, today announced its biggest deal of the year with a plan to tap into the global market for antidepressants, estimated to be worth more than $20bn (£12bn).

The company, headed by David Brennan, is teaming up with US biotech specialist Targacept, which is developing an antidepressant drug that works on the brain in a different way to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac and Seroxat, known as Paxil in the United States.

Under the terms of the transaction, AstraZeneca will pay Targacept $200m and a further $1bn if the medicine gets regulatory clearance and meets certain sales targets. The drug will undergo final clinical trials over the next year and is expected to be filed with the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, in 2012.

The licensing agreement means that Brennan's company will contribute to further development costs and market the drug worldwide, providing it gets regulatory clearance.

According to AstraZeneca, the deal is significant because the new product could offer a new alternative to millions of people whose depression fails to respond to SSRIs. A recent study found that SSRIs did not work for up to two-thirds of patients."

Link


"Targacept, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the design, discovery and development of NNR Therapeutics(TM), a new class of drugs for the treatment of multiple diseases and disorders of the central nervous system. Our NNR Therapeutics selectively target neuronal nicotinic receptors, or NNRs. NNRs are found on nerve cells throughout the nervous system and serve as key regulators of nervous system activity.

We currently have a robust clinical-stage product pipeline and multiple preclinical product candidates. Our most advanced product candidates are in development for major depressive disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia.

Targacept is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina."
Targacept

Nicotinic receptors indicate NIACIN - Vitamin B3 - which has health-restoring effects in ALL of the conditions
mentioned above. If Niacin does no harm and is cheap, why not try B3 first?




Image: The Emperor's New Clothes

NATURE: Pharmaceutical industry financial UNDERperformance

Pharmaceutical industry financial performance
doi:10.1038/nrd3049
Only 2 of the 14 large–cap pharmaceutical companies are predicted to have a positive net present value gap against a 5% compound annual growth rate in revenue for the period 2009–2015.

Oh noes...

Link

USA: Pennsylvania Prisons Allegedly Bribed Judges to Sentence Kids

"Spread over two years of court cases, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are accused of taking more than $2.6 million in payoffs to sentence minors to detention centers.

Dealing exclusively with private institutions, as Conahan had helped shutter the county-run center in 2002, the judges are alleged to have received bribes from detention facilities that were paid by the county on a daily basis.

Though they had agreed to contracts with the county, the centers would ultimately receive payment according to the number of offenders they housed.

The high number of incarcerations, the fact that many underage offenders were presented without an attorney and the excessive punishments doled out for small, often first-time offenses raised suspicions among the local legal community.

Both judges have been removed from the bench and are expected to plead guilty.

Although the Wilkes-Barre case is exceptional for the high number and value of the bribes paid, it is hardly an isolated case on the international stage.

According to a 2007 study conducted by Transparency International, of 62 nations surveyed, 25 found that 1 in 10 households reported having paid a bride to access their court system."

We ask: How many of these kids were put on psychotropic drugs?

To read the rest of the article and to access important documents regarding the case, please go to this link.

To read our previous entries on the prison industry, go here.

NYT: Mystery Shoppers Check Out Conditions in Psychiatric Ward

EDE, the Netherlands

Surrounded by manicured greenery, the closed-off ward of the complex, known as De Riethorst, recalls a suburban dental clinic, and its sunny gymnasium and carpeted hallways do little to suggest that it houses up to a dozen acute psychiatric patients, many of whom are there involuntarily.

And that is why the undercover participants were all experienced psychiatric nurses. “You couldn’t have done it otherwise,” said Edo De Vries, the director of De Gelderse Roos, which released the results of the project last summer.

It and Clearfields are working on a project for 2010, most likely to involve five to eight psychiatric hospitals in the Netherlands.

Mr. De Vries said the impetus for the project came in part from a pair of patient deaths last year in psychiatric facilities in Amsterdam — one involving a suicide, the other a man who choked on food while locked in an isolation cell. Several managers and staff members were fired as a result, and others were suspended.

“Of course, incidents can happen anywhere,” Mr. De Vries said. “But what if there is something structurally wrong that we don’t know about? We have to be more transparent, and I think this method is a good tool for that.”

Link
The Rosenhan "Thud" Experiment

Canada's NAMI Publishes a Document

And it doesn't mention NUTRITION or VITAMINS anywhere. What do they think our brains need to be nourished with - PR*ZAC? We say Proceed with caution...


"The Mental Health Commission of Canada
Announces a Framework for a Mental Health Strategy for Canada:
We are extremely pleased to provide you with a link to the Mental Health Commission of Canada document Toward Recovery and Wellbeing: A Framework for a Mental Health Strategy for Canada.

The framework is truly the product of a remarkable amount of input from all corners of Canada over the past year and half. It draws on the wide diversity of experiences, voices and thinking of thousands of people like you or your organization for what a mental health strategy for Canada must achieve. It has also built on the efforts undertaken by so many over the years to champion the importance of a mental health strategy for Canada.

Seven interconnected goals are presented to point the way to a comprehensive and person-centred mental health system for our country: one that both promotes the recovery of people living with mental health problems and illnesses, and fosters the mental health and well-being of everyone living in Canada.

This document is not yet a strategy - it is the framework to help us create one. The ongoing input from people like you from every part of the country will be essential to the success of the next phase of developing a Mental Health Strategy for Canada. We are confident that working together we will be able to define practical solutions and develop action plans to achieve our shared vision for the long awaited mental health strategy for Canada.

In the coming months we will be communicating more details about how the next phase of our work will be structured."

Here is the PDF - and it's a big one -
http://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/boarddocs/15507_MHCC_EN_final.pdf

The Mental Health Commission of Canada has been given both charity and governmental status. Health Canada is a source of concern because of corruption (see Shiv Chopra) and compliance to lobbyists and the FDA (Terence Young). How much of the funding of the MHCC comes from Big Pharma? We'll be watching...

"This Is Bad Enough"

Elspeth Murray recites the poem that was included at the International Initiative in Mental Health Leadership Conference in Edinburgh in 2006, where she conducted poetry workshops.

Video: How Cults Work