NAMI: Pharma Companies are its biggest donors

"Drug Makers Are Advocacy Group’s Biggest Donors

By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: October 21, 2009
WASHINGTON — A majority of the donations made to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one of the nation’s most influential disease advocacy groups, have come from drug makers in recent years, according to Congressional investigators.

The alliance, known as NAMI, has long been criticized for coordinating some of its lobbying efforts with drug makers and for pushing legislation that also benefits industry.

Last spring, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent letters to the alliance and about a dozen other influential disease and patient advocacy organizations asking about their ties to drug and device makers. The request was part of his investigation into the drug industry’s influence on the practice of medicine.

The mental health alliance, which is hugely influential in many state capitols, has refused for years to disclose specifics of its fund-raising, saying the details were private.

But according to investigators in Mr. Grassley’s office and documents obtained by The New York Times, drug makers from 2006 to 2008 contributed nearly $23 million to the alliance, about three-quarters of its donations."

New York Times Link

Search for "grassley" to see our previous posts on this matter; here is one -
http://pharmaceuticalsanonymous.blogspot.com/2009/05/most-nami-money-is-from-psychiatric.html

Some day NAMI will have an interesting section at Little Sis.

How LSD leads to mental illness

"The father of Jaycee Lee Dugard's alleged kidnapper said his son was never 'in his right head' since becoming hooked on LSD after a motorcycle crash as a young man.

Speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, 88-year-old Manuel Garrido revealed his son Phillip started to hear voices in his head - even believing that God was talking to him - when he became addic-ted to the hallucinogenic drug.

He said Phillip had been a talented, well-behaved and kind child but everything changed after he started taking LSD after the crash.

Manuel, from Brentwood in northern California, said he felt sorry for Jaycee, but his son could not be held responsible for his actions because the drug had 'killed his brain'.

'He had a motorcycle wreck, and hit his head. He was never the same again.
'He fell in with a bad crowd of Mexicans, started taking LSD, and it f***** him up. He went nuts. He's not in his right head. The little bastard doesn't know what he's doing."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...oices-God.html

LSD figured heavily in the Merritt case in British Columbia, Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/10/21/bc-merritt-murder-trial-schoenborn-testifies.html?ref=rss

We think of Charlie Manson and his "Family" too.
Bugliosi's HELTER SKELTER on Google Books http://preview.tinyurl.com/yjd24op


Dr. Abram Hoffer, a giant of Orthomolecular medicine explains the chemical reasons why LSD and schizophrenia are related. He called this aspect of chemistry the mauve factor or pyrroluria.
This scourge of mental health can be corrected with vitamins:

"The presence of the mauve factor in urine became a valuable indicator to use vitamin B3. Later, when Dr. C. C. Pfeiffer showed that kp bound pyridoxine and zinc and described the syndrome pyroluria, this became another important indicator that vitamin B6 and zinc must be used."
http://www.healthy.net/scr/article.asp?id=703

Pyroluria at Nutritional Healing

WHY, we ask, is this condition not routinely screened for and this simple, inexpensive and harmless nutritional treatment offered?

Viral cause of CFS/ME found?

"Researchers in the US have discovered that a high proportion of people with the debilitating neuroimmune disease Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), have a retrovirus called XMRV in their blood.

The groundbreaking study was the work of scientists from the Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI), located at the University of Nevada, Reno, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Cleveland Clinic, and was published online on 8 October in the journal Science.

CFS is a debilitating disease that affects millions of people worldwide, including an estimated 1 to 4 million Americans, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The illness is hard to diagnose and the mystery surrounding the condition leads some people to suspect that patients are somehow either imagining their symptoms or malingering, or that they have some underlying psychiatric problem."

NOT!

Link
Link

OSLER'S WEB author Hilary Johnson has written a moving essay on this discovery and its implications. Read it here.

Giant Babies, Obesity: Are chemicals in plastics to blame?

Are plastic chemical compounds in the environment behind the birth of giant babies and the epidemic of obesity?
Link
Our Stolen Future

UK: Scandalous abuse of the elderly - prescribed antipsychotics

From the page:

It is the first time the scale of the abuse in hospital wards is exposed, following warnings that 100,000 dementia patients in care homes are prescribed the drugs leading to the deaths of 23,000 a year

Three quarters of nurses have seen people with dementia in general wards in hospital prescribed antipsychotic drugs that are known to double the risk of death and triple the risk of a stroke in these patients, research has shown.

It is the first time the scale of the abuse in hospital wards is exposed, following warnings that 100,000 dementia patients in care homes are prescribed the drugs leading to the deaths of 23,000 a year.

Ten leading charities, carers groups and experts have written to The Daily Telegraph saying: "We cannot stand by while this scandalous abuse of vulnerable citizens continues."

Neil Hunt, Chief Executive of Alzheimer’s Society said: "The massive over prescription of antipsychotics to people with dementia is an abuse of human rights, causing serious side effects and increasing risk of death. These powerful drugs should only be used in a small number of cases. The Government must take action to ensure that these drugs are only ever used as a last resort."

They have called on the government to publish its long-overdue review of the use of antipsychotics which ministers promised would be out in May of this year.

Rebecca Wood, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: "While the Department of Health prevaricates, thousands of people are being put at risk through the misuse of antipsychotics."

There are 700,000 people in Britain with dementia and the numbers are rising rapidly.
Antipsychotics have a sedative effect and are not licensed for use in dementia but are prescribed when patients become agitated or difficult and often then are left on them for long periods.

Link

Canada: Recipients of flu vaccine more likely to catch H1N1

From the page:

...according to Dr. Rubinstein, the research shows that people who received the seasonal shot during the 2007-08 flu season remained vulnerable to swine flu well into 2009 – an interval that should provide most immune systems ample restoration time.

“We don't understand the mechanism,” Dr. Rubinstein said. “At the present time it is quite perplexing.”

Link

Placebos are Getting More Effective - and Drugmakers are Desperate to Know Why

Article at WIRED Magazine