Blowing the Whistle on Big Pharma

This is an awesome video! An ex-pharmaceutical drug rep tells you the truth about the intentions of big pharma:

Top Ten Violence Inducing Drugs

A survey of the FDA adverse reactions database has produced a list of the top ten prescription drugs linked to violent behavior. You can see the list here: Study reveals top ten violence-inducing prescription drugs.

Not surprisingly the majority of the top ten are anti-depressants and all but one of the rest are psychiatric or psychiatric type drugs.

So next time you see an ad for the latest wonder drug that will save you from some terrible mental problem (addiction to cigarettes, depression, ADHD, etc.) realize that it's an ad. It's not reality. The reality is the FDA adverse reactions database.

Big Pharma is lower key, but still in control at Psychiatric Convention

As reported in the article, No Free Pens But Pharma Influence Still Felt at Psychiatric Meeting, Big Pharma is trying to be less noticeable, but is still in control of the psychiatric industry.

And you thought "Men who stare at goats" was bad

The movie "Men who stare at goats" was not very good. It had great potential - based on a true story of the military trying out "psychic warriors" - but it never delivered on the humor. However, we find that reality - what the military and the CIA were really up to - is even weirder and far worse than anything in the movie.

New documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that "human experiments … not easily justifiable on medical-therapeutic grounds" were not a problem for the CIA and its willing accomplices in the psychiatric community. Experimenting on unwitting subjects? No problemo. Pentagon officials are said to have “work[ed] directly with the CIA” and dosed “thousands” of military subjects with LSD and other drugs.

And what has changed to make us think they ever stopped?

Read more at: Chemical Concussions and Secret LSD: Pentagon Details Cold War Mind-Control Tests

I'm mad as hell and ... they're giving me medication

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) is the "bible" of psychiatry. It is the book in which psychs list everything they think they can make a fast buck out of ... oops, I mean, in which psychs list all mental illnesses that can be billed against medical insurance.

Every new edition contains more and more illnesses and every new edition adds more and more normal behavior to the list of illnesses.

Take for example the famous monologue by Peter Finch that won him an Oscar in the movie "Network" (a must-see movie from the 1970's). According to the latest proposed DSM, rather than receive an Oscar, Finch would instead be put on psychiatric drugs because his speech clearly shows that he has a disorder. Yes folks, getting mad is now a psychiatric disorder: Psychiatrists say that being angry is a mental illness.

FYI: Here is the monologue:

Green Mental Health: An Alternative to Toxic Psychiatric Drugs

For more information go to Green Mental Health.

Antipsychotic Drugs Kill One in Twenty Elderly Patients

From the Guardian, May 26, 2008:

Elderly dementia patients prescribed antipsychotic drugs are at three times the risk of a serious health problem or dying within a month of treatment, compared to those not given the drugs, Canadian researchers said on Monday.

The medications have been used by doctors to treat aggression in people who are not psychotic or schizophrenic, but there are risks for elderly dementia patients prescribed the drugs, according to Dr. Paula Rochon of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto, and colleagues.

"Of residents newly admitted to a nursing home, 17 percent are started on antipsychotic drugs within 100 days of their admission," often for short periods to control delirium, delusions or aggressive behavior, Rochon wrote.

"Antipsychotic drugs should be prescribed with caution even for short-term therapy," she concluded in the report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Three years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required warnings on antipsychotic drugs notifying patients and doctors of the risks of heart problems or infections in elderly dementia patients.

Previous research has suggested the drugs cause dry mouth and difficulty swallowing, which can lead to pneumonia. Side effects such as dizziness can increase the risk of falls.
The seven-year study of more than 40,000 people age 65 or older -- half in nursing homes -- found 5.2 percent of the nursing homes residents died within a month of being given one of the newer class of so-called atypical antipsychotic drugs...

Atypical antipsychotic drugs, which the study said had been available for about a decade, include risperidone, marketed by Johnson & Johnson as Risperdal; olanzapine, made by Eli Lilly and Co under the brand name Zyprexa; and quetiapine, sold by AstraZeneca Plc under the brand name Seroquel.

Complete article here: The Guardian: Antipsychotics given for dementia pose risks-study

Incredible new antidepressant (satire)

Pharmaceutical maker, LillyGlaxoWyeth, has just announced the launch of their latest product, Placebozac.

Placebozac (also known my its chemical name "placebo") is an antidepressant that was proven in a recent study to be just as effective as fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Seroxat), venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone). You can read the results of the study by the University of Hull here: "Prozac Doesn't Work"

"The great advantage with Placebozac over the traditional antidepressants," said spokesperson Ima Fake, "is that it doesn't have the usual minor side-effects of psychiatric drugs such as suicide, violent behavior, depression, anxiety, bizarre dreams, emotional numbing, delusions, hallucinations, headaches, heart attacks, hostility, impotence, psychotic episode, paranoia, seizures, sexual dysfunction, homicidal ideation and all the rest. There is even a possibility that if people switch to Placebozac the number of school shootings may decrease. Although, as a member of the pharmaceutical industry, I will say right here and now that antidepressants have nothing whatsoever to do with school, postal or any other kind of shootings, however, our marketing department insisted I mention it."

The new drug will be available soon at only $200 for a bottle of 40, 10mg tablets. In the mean time you can get a sample at a reduced introductory price from your local candy store - just ask for "sugar pills".

Prozac Doesn't Work

The new study on the ineffectiveness of antidepressants is being reported all over the place.

The Guardian (UK) Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists

Another article in the Guardian examines how the "depression" myth was created, The creation of the Prozac myth. This article is a must for anyone who wonders how could 40 million people be using a drug that not only doesn't work but has very serious side-effects?

The writers make some very pertinent observations, such as:

This process of marketing depression helped create the clinical category itself. If the new drugs affected mood, appetite and sleep patterns, then depression consisted of a problem with mood, appetite and sleep patterns. A subtle shift in the defining symptoms of depression took place over the years, so that the category itself became taken for granted. Lost here was the simple idea that there is a difference between surface symptoms (insomnia, loss of appetite, feeling low) and underlying causes, which may be different from case to case. The creation of the antidepressant market effectively disallowed this once crucial distinction.

From Darian Leader

and

Some people will be shocked to discover that Prozac has been prescribed so widely for decades when, in fact, it barely works. However, the real story is even worse. First, the findings are not new, and it is not only the Prozac group of antidepressants that we should be concerned about; second, the findings point to a general medical inability to understand evidence; and, finally, they reveal the dark side of company marketing, and the role of regulators.

From Prof. David Healy

I hope this isn't the last we hear about this.

Study shows that Antidepressants don't work

A fellow blogger (Antidepressants Not Effective!) put me onto a new study from the University of Hull in the UK which proves that antidepressants don't work.

“The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking anti-depressants is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments. Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients.” The drugs included fluoxetine (Prozac), venlafaxine (Efexor), and Paroxetine (Seroxat).

Study casts doubt on anti-depressants

I bet you a couple of billion dollars that the drug companies and their mouth pieces in the psychiatric industry come out swinging on this one. They'll do everything they possibly can (other than tell the truth) to invalidate this study. There are tens of billions of dollars at stake here. The marketing and PR departments of Big Pharma are going to try to destroy the scientists who did this study just like they tried to destroy Professor David Healy after he wrote books, did studies, published papers and gave a lecture critical of antidepressants and the power of the pharmaceutical industry over psychiatry: The David Healy Affair.

As the old proverb says "Muck and money go together" (muck being dirt, filth, etc.) and there sure is a lot of money and muck in the pharmaceutical industry where the prevailing attitude seems to be, "Our drugs don't do anything for depressed people and are causing suicide? Not a problem, we're making plenty of money out of it."

Feeling depressed about depression?

Here is a great article that addresses the question "What really is depression?" Seems even the "experts" don't really know:

When it Comes to Depression - Does Anyone Really Know What They Are Talking About?

But despite not knowing the "experts" still push drugs as the solution and the pharmaceutical companies still make billions.

Another Shooter = Another Guy on Antidepressants

The evidence is overwhelming. How many more people have to die before these drugs are banned?

More on Drug Companies Hiding Negative Findings

This from the New York Times: Researchers Find a Bias Toward Upbeat Findings on Antidepressants

The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs’ true effectiveness, a new analysis has found.

Some of us have known this for a long time but it is good to see it finally validated by "authority". Perhaps some lives will now be saved by people deciding not to take these drugs. What would be even better is if some legal action were taken against these drug companies for the damage they have done to people over the years because of the lies they've told.

Pharmaceutical Companies Are Hiding Negative Studies of Antidepressants

A report just published in the New England Journal of Medicine says that nearly a third of antidepressant drug studies are never published in the medical literature and nearly all these unpublished studies happen to show that the drug being tested did not work.

The researchers say it in the most polite and unaccusative way, but the obvious interpretation is that if a drug study comes up negative then the drug companies hide it.

The report found that the few negative studies that were published were rewritten to present the study as if it were successful. In the words of the researchers, "Not only were positive results more likely to be published, but studies that were not positive, in our opinion, were often published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome."

As I said the researchers were very polite, but not me. As far as I'm concerned Big Pharma is hiding the negative results because they think it will hurt their profits. They don't care that their drugs harm people, they only care if something harms their profits.

Read about the study here: Data on Antidepressants Often Shelved

News Host Experiences The Truth about Drugs

CNN News Headlines host, Glenn Beck, experienced first hand the truth about drugs when he went to an emergency room in great pain.

What was expected to be an outpatient procedure put Beck in the hospital for five days, with doctors offering a medicine cabinet's worth of drugs to ease his pain. The drugs made him hallucinate and briefly suicidal, Beck said. "By Saturday night if they had come into my room with a handgun and said, `OK, we can give you some more medication or take this gun and blow your head off' ... I would have honestly taken the handgun at that point and ended it." (read the article)

The suicide inducing effects of certain medical drugs has been well documented, so it really shouldn't come as a surprise, but unfortunately few people know that some drugs, especially psychiatric drugs such as antidepressants, cause a condition called "suicidal ideation," a state in which the person on the drug fixates on thoughts of suicide and may actually commit suicide.

Pharmaceutical companies are forced to publish the side effects of their drugs, so next time you see an ad for a drug in a magazine or newspaper go find the list of side-effects. If you look hard enough and use a magnifying glass, you'll see them. Of course, at that point you have to wade through the carefully worded medical-speak that is used to hide the horrendous side effects these drugs have.

For more information check this page: Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs

Study Proves that Hyperactivity is a Symptom, not a Disease

A new study proves what smart parents have been saying for years: Food additives cause hyperactivity in children.

"The researchers discovered that children in both age groups were significantly more hyperactive and that they had shorter attention spans if they had consumed the drink containing the additives. The study did not try to link specific consumption with specific behaviors. The study’s authors noted that other research suggested that the hyperactivity could increase in as little as an hour after artificial additives were consumed."

The most ridiculous comment about the study I've heard so far was from ... you guessed it ... a specialist in Pediatric Psychopharmacology (read "a psychiatrist who specializes in drugging kids") who said, “Is it powerful enough that you want to ostracize your kid? It is very socially impacting if children can’t eat the things that their friends do.” Sure doctor, let's not take away the toxic chemicals that are making the poor kids bounce off the walls. Let's give them something else instead. I know how about some nice psychiatric drugs that only have mild side-effects like suicide and homicide. After all we don't want the kids to feel left out, do we.

Honestly!

You are not alone. So SPEAK UP!

According to a recent survey by Consumer Reports National Research Center the majority of Americans know about the problems with the corrupt relationship between the FDA and the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Consumer Advocate Mike Adams gives details of the survey in his article, Americans fed up with drug industry influence, FDA corruption, reveals remarkable Consumer Reports survey.

In case you didn't know, right now:

• The FDA does NOT have the power to require warning labels on drugs with known safety problems. The Food and Drug Administration must negotiate safety warning labels with a drug maker. Isn't it nice to know that your health and life are points of negotiation.
• Pharmaceutical companies PAY THE FDA to review and approve their drugs.
• Pharmaceutical companies can bury negative drug trials, and the FDA has in fact been caught conspiring with drug companies to keep negative drug data secret from the public.
• Currently, doctors who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in "consulting fees" from drug companies are not only allowed to vote on the recommendations for FDA approval of their drugs, there is not even any FDA requirement to disclose such conflicts of interest.
• And more! Read about it in Mike Adams' article.
  

Once you realize that the survey showed that the majority of Americans are outraged over this corruption then perhaps you won't be shy about raising your voice and demanding reforms.

History Repeating Itself - The Medical Industry Makes a Profit while People Die

I just read this fascinating piece that covers the history of the relationship between the American Medical Association and Big Tobacco: Doctors, American Medical Association hawked cigarettes as healthy for consumers. You may not believe this but for 30 years the medical establishment defended Big Tobacco and for another 30 various medical "experts" continued to pretend that cigarettes didn't damage your health.

It is frightening to realize that for decades "experts" and "authorities" on health promoted something that kills people slowly and painfully. The first study linking cigarettes to cancer came out in 1930 and it wasn't until 1964 that the Surgeon General published a report on the dangers of cigarettes, that's 34 years. Following this Big Tobacco continued to pay doctors to defend them and it wasn't until the late 1990's that court cases and whistleblowers finally made it impossible for anyone to claim that cigarettes were not linked to all sorts of diseases.

It is a sad commentary on the educational system that this sort of criminality can be repeated and the majority of the population has no clue. From 1930 to the late 1990's it was Big Tobacco that was pouring millions into the PR machine and into the pockets of doctors to hide the truth about the dangers of cigarettes. Now we have Big Pharma doing exactly the same thing to hide the fact that their hugely profitable drugs are killing and damaging people.

How many more decades and how many more deaths before the truth is finally acknowledged and the criminals are brought to justice?

Zoloft - A true story

Here is an interview with a woman who took Zoloft on the recommendation of her doctor. She tells what happened and what the long term effects have been:

Pharmaceutical Reps Manipulating Doctors

So you think doctors make informed decisions about the drugs they prescribe? Think again:

Read more about Gwen Olsen and her book Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher