NYT: Do Toxins Cause Autism?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 24, 2010
Autism was first identified in 1943 in an obscure medical journal. Since then it has become a frighteningly common affliction, with the Centers for Disease Control reporting recently that autism disorders now affect almost 1 percent of children.

Over recent decades, other development disorders also appear to have proliferated, along with certain cancers in children and adults. Why? No one knows for certain. And despite their financial and human cost, they presumably won’t be discussed much at Thursday’s White House summit on health care.

Yet they constitute a huge national health burden, and suspicions are growing that one culprit may be chemicals in the environment. An article in a forthcoming issue of a peer-reviewed medical journal, Current Opinion in Pediatrics, just posted online, makes this explicit.

The article cites “historically important, proof-of-concept studies that specifically link autism to environmental exposures experienced prenatally.” It adds that the “likelihood is high” that many chemicals “have potential to cause injury to the developing brain and to produce neurodevelopmental disorders.”

...Continues at Link

Five Reasons Not to Take SSRI Antidepressants

Great article from Psychology Today. Edited for brevity; please visit the link

Lennard J. Davis is professor of disability studies, medical education, and English literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of Obsession: A History.

Now that SSRIs don't work for depression, don't take them!
Published on January 7, 2010

For the past five years, and in my recent book OBSESSION: A HISTORY, I have been questioning the effectiveness of Prozac-like drugs known as SSRIs. I've pointed out that when the drugs first came out in the early 1990's there was a wildly enthusiastic uptake in the prescribing of such drugs. Doctors were jubilantly claiming that the drugs were 80-90 per cent effective in treating depression and related conditions like OCD. In the last few years those success rates have been going down, with the NY Times pointing out that the initial numbers had been inflated by drug companies supressing the studies that were less encouraging. But few if any doctors or patients were willing to hear anything disparaging said about these "wonder" drugs.

Now the tune has changed.

Reason One: A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that SSRI's like Paxil and Prozac are no more effective in treating depression than a placebo pill.
...

Reason Two: A January 4 article in MedPage Today cites a study done at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins. The study says that doctors routinely prescribe not one but two or three SSRI's and other psychopharmological drugs in combination with few if any serious studies to back up the multiple usage.
...

Reason Three: More and more psychiatric disorders are appearing that might be called "lifestyle" diseases. What was called shyness, sadness, restlessness, shopping too much, high sex drive, low sex drive, and so on have increasingly been seen as diseases and many more will appear in the new DSM
...

Reason Four: We're an over-medicated society, and the goal of drug companies and a compliant and harried medical establishment is ultimately to have some drug coursing through every individuals' s bloodstream.
...
Reason Five: The whole serotonin hypothesis is challenged by these findings.
...
What Should You Do? Think twice, be skeptical, and question a simplistic diagnosis you might receive after discussing your condition for a short time with a rushed practitioner.
...

Link

e-Patients

"Because health professionals can't do it alone"

'Society for Participatory Medicine
e-Patients.net is an ongoing project of the Society for Participatory Medicine.
Participatory medicine is a cooperative model of healthcare that encourages and expects active involvement by all connected parties (patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, etc.) as integral to the full continuum of care. The ‘participatory’ concept may also be applied to fitness, nutrition, mental health, end-of-life care, and all issues broadly related to an individual’s health.
The Society was founded to learn about and promote Participatory Medicine through writing, speaking, social networking, and other channels.
You can learn more about our work and join the Society on the website of the Society for Participatory Medicine.'

Recommended
"I felt I was looking over Thomas Paine's shoulder"
e-Patients White Paper
126 page PDF on the experience and wisdom of patients who research health conditions - and the reactions of their doctors

Why Doesn't My Doctor Know This?

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association reviewed by The National Institute of Medicine reports that there is an unacceptable lag between the discovery of new treatment modalities and their acceptance into routine care. They state, “The lag between the discovery of more effective forms of treatment and their incorporation into routine patient care averages 17 years.”7,8

In response to this unacceptable lag, an amendment to the Business and Professions Code, relating to healing arts, was passed. This amendment, CA Assembly Bill 592; An act to amend Section 2234.1 of the Business and Professions Code, relating to healing arts, states, “Since the National Institute of Medicine has reported that it can take up to 17 years for a new best practice to reach the average physician and surgeon, it is prudent to give attention to new developments not only in general medical care but in the actual treatment of specific diseases, particularly those that are not yet broadly recognized [such as the concept of tissue hypothyroidism, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Fibromyalgia]...”9

The Principals of Medical Ethics adopted by the American Medical Association in 1980 states, “A physician shall continue to study, apply, and advance scientific knowledge, make relevant information available to patients, colleagues, and the public.”10

This has unfortunately been replaced with an apathetical goal to merely provide so-called adequate care.

Video Animation - Harvard's The Inner Life of the Cell

Animation from Harvard University. Full length version
http://multimedia.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_innerlife_hi.html

Hooked on happy pills: The long term effects can be terrifying

Antidepressants: Internal bleeding. Strokes. Birth defects. Falls. And more.

"We estimate more than two million people are taking antidepressants for more than five years and the largest group are women aged 18 to 45,' says lead researcher Tony Kendrick, professor of general practice at Southampton University.
'Many young women today are picking up repeat prescriptions for months and years apparently without any checks - in many cases these are women who want to stop but can't.
Even those who make a deliberate choice to stay on the medication long-term may not be aware of the dangers, not least the risk of missing out on the normal ups and downs of ordinary life.'"

Link

How to get free? Two helpful links from the resources in our Friends column - to the right

Dr. David Healey on stopping antidepressants safely

Dr. Heather Ashton's manual on stopping benzodiazepines

Schizophrenia, neuroleptic medication and mortality

Schizophrenic patients given neuroleptic medication die at an alarming rate.

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/188/2/122

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/reprint/188/2/122

http://www.springerlink.com/content/v87mlpbdv096lf0v/

http://www.gims.tcu.edu.tw/981%A4%BD%BD%C3%B1M%B0Q/1103%B6%C0%A6%B6%A7%C2.pdf

That's too high a price for the patients, their families and society to pay.
Patients need and deserve proper medical workups.

Evelyn Pringle: Paxil Birth Defect Litigation - First Trial a Bust for Glaxo

Evelyn Pringle reports on the Paxil/Seroxat suit brought by Andy Vickery on behalf of plaintiffs.

From the page:

A number of birth defect cases are set for trial in 2010. Andy Vickery, who practices at the Houston firm of Vickery, Waldner and Mallia, is handling several cases, with the Novak trial set to start first. The case is unique in that it involves an infant born with heart birth defects to Derek and Laura Novak on April 4, 2002, after Laura was prescribed Paxil during pregnancy for the off-label treatment of migraine headaches.

"Although one might worry that this would cause a jury to blame the prescribing doctor," says Vickery, "in this case, we can show that GSK encouraged this use, by sending out over 1500 "medical information" letters touting the benefits of Paxil for migraine headaches, and by leaving "approved WLF reprint" articles with the prescribing doctors."

...

During opening statements in the first trial on September 15, 2009, Sean Tracey told the jury they were "going to see documents in this case that have never seen the light of day before."

"You will see internal GlaxoSmith documents that the FDA hasn't seen, that the United States Congress hasn't seen, and that no jury has ever laid their eyes on before," he said. "They have been under seal for over three years."

Many of the sealed documents related to the Paxil studies conducted on rats and rabbits. The world-renowned expert from the UK, Dr David Healy, testified on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Paxil was originally owned by a Danish company called Ferrosan, and that company did the preliminary animal studies on rats and rabbits to look at teratogenicity around 1979 and 1980.

Healy explained that a teratogen is an agent that will cause birth defects and "it could be a drug or maybe a virus or maybe an illness."

In addition to birth defects, he said, a teratogen can cause a fetus to be born dead or cause a miscarriage, which is death before birth.

Article here