THE 11TH BLOG FOR THE OUTLAW OF PSYCHIATRY NOW !

2008-05-17T14:58:00.001-07:00

Weekend Edition
May 17 / 18, 2008

Drug Marketing to Doctors

Pharmaceutical Payola

By ROBERT WEISSMAN

(counterpunch.org)

Last week, a Congressional committee properly raked Big Pharma over the coals for misleading advertising of pharmaceuticals.

A hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight subcommittee focused on advertising campaigns for three drugs, including the remarkable case of Robert Jarvik. Jarvik is featured in endlessly re-run ads for Pfizer's blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor. Known as the inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, he is not a cardiologist, not a licensed medical doctor and not authorized to prescribe pharmaceuticals. He's shown in the ads engaged in vigorous rowing activity, but in fact he doesn't row. Pfizer pulled the ads in February after controversy started brewing.

Among industrialized countries, only the United States and New Zealand permit drug companies to market directly to consumers. It's a bad idea, it drives bad medicine, and it should be banned.

But although it has the highest profile, direct-to-consumer advertising is a small part of Pharma's marketing machine. Researchers Marc-André Gagnon and Joel Lexchin conclude in a recent issue of the journal PLOS Medicine that direct-to-consumer ads make up less than a tenth of industry marketing expenditures ($4 billion of $57.5 billion in 2004). And Gagnon and Lexchin's estimate of $57.5 billion on marketing excludes many industry expenditures that are really driven by marketing, including clinical trials conducted for marketing purposes.

The bulk of the industry marketing effort -- more than 70 percent by Gagnon and Lexchin's calculation -- is directed at doctors.

Why?

Because it works.

The companies spend huge amounts paying firms that carefully track what doctors prescribe, and then they use the information to tailor messages to doctors, distribute samples and develop continuing medical education programs.

Gagnon and Lexchin report that Pharma spends more than $20 billion a year on "detailers" -- the pharma reps that knock on doctor doors, ply the staff with free coffee and lunches, distribute samples ($16 billion worth), and prod docs to prescribe their drugs.

This is complemented by a host of tactics that in other circumstances might be called bribes.

"Virtually all physicians in America take cash or gifts from the drug companies," says Melody Petersen, author of Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs, and a former New York Times reporter. "A recent survey said 94 percent of physicians took something of value from the drug companies. Some doctors take hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from these companies, and there’s no law that says they can’t."

Petersen says she "had no idea this was so extensive until one day I was writing a story about Celebrex and Vioxx -- this was before Vioxx was taken off the market. The story was about the marketing battle between these two pain drugs. I called one of the large societies of rheumatologists and asked for an expert on arthritis. I specifically said I needed an expert who was not being paid as a consultant to one of the manufacturers of these drugs. A staff person said, 'We have lots of people you can talk to, but all of these doctors are consultants to one or both of the drug companies.'"

Drug companies hire doctors to give lectures, and they hire other doctors as "consultants" to go to fancy dinners and listen to the lectures. "There are more than 500,000 of these dinners or events in America every year," Petersen says.

The drug companies weave these diverse strategems into an elaborate tapestry -- not infrequently to push drugs for inappropriate purposes. One eye-opening case that Petersen details in Our Daily Meds concerns Neurontin, a mediocre drug for epilepsy that Warner-Lambert illegally peddled as an unapproved treatment for bipolar disorder, migraines, attention deficit disorder in children and other conditions. The drug does not work for most of these conditions. Many persons were injured by taking excessive doses of Neurontin, and many others wasted money and emotional energy on hopeless Neurontin treatment strategies. Warner-Lambert ultimately paid $430 million to settle criminal and civil charges related to Neurontin marketing, but Petersen says that, even so, the illegal marketing scheme was clearly profitable for Warner-Lambert (and Pfizer, which acquired Warner-Lambert in 2000).

Petersen's account of the Neurontin nightmare draws heavily on a whistleblower, David Franklin. She summarizes the central theme of the story Franklin revealed: "The company got doctors to prescribe the drug for all these experimental uses by paying them. They paid physicians to give speeches to other physicians at restaurants or hotels or resorts. The doctors not only enjoyed a nice meal or a weekend vacation, they often also received a $500 check for attending. The physicians giving lectures at these parties were often trained by the drug company’s ad firm to describe how Neurontin could work for conditions like bipolar. … The company tracked the doctors’ prescriptions before and after these dinners or weekend retreats. The executives saw how well it worked."

Which raises an interesting question: How is that industry can so effectively manipulate highly trained doctors?

Answers Adriane Fugh-Berman, a doctor and Georgetown University professor who runs PharmedOut, a project that focuses on how pharmaceutical companies influence prescribing decisions and encourages physicians to educate themselves from non-industry sources: "Physicians are trained in medicine, not psychological manipulation. Every bit of flattery, friendship and information offered by reps is aimed at selling drugs."

There is no simple solution to these problems, though ending patent-based marketing monopolies would transform pharmaceutical marketing practices and likely eliminate most abuses.

In the meantime, a ban on Pharma gifts to doctors would be a modest step forward. In the United States, notes Petersen, "radio disc jockeys can’t take cash from music companies. But when it comes to something like medicines -- which mean life or death for people -- doctors can take as much money as they want from the drug companies. We need a law to stop that."

Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor and director of Essential Action.

2008-05-16T15:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.mentalnurse.org.uk/2008/05/16/does-mental-illness-exist/

Does Mental illness exist?

Following on from the debate sparked off by “on the borderline” as well my own philosophical musing on the nature of mental illness and Psychiatry it appears clear to me that Psychiatry obviously involves a theory of mind. This often leads to mental health professionals being accused of playing “mind games” or seeking to control and manipulate patients’ thoughts either with therapy or with mind altering drugs. Psychiatry as a form of social control is a subject that has been written about by Roy Porter (2002) and Michael Foucault (2001) at great length

The mainstream view in Western Psychiatry is that mental illness exists and that it can be objectively described and treated. A relativist view however would argue that what we call mental illness is not an absolute transcultural or temporal fact and that descriptions of abnormal social behaviour change across time and geographical boundaries. A broken arm may be a broken arm in 14th century Florence and in the Kalahari desert of today, but ideas of madness vary considerably between these times and places.

We have not always used the language of medicine to describe what we now think of as mental disorder. In earlier times behaviour that we would now describe as an “illness” would has been thought of as immoral, wicked, criminal, evidence of demonic possession, or even normal if a little eccentric. Other behaviours that were labelled as psychological disturbances in the past have now been dropped entirely. The term “hysteria” literally “wandering womb” was a condition thought to afflict only women and was coined by Hippocrates but is now no longer in use. Hysteria described the madness caused by the uterus wandering up the body because it had become light and dry due to a lack of sexual intercourse and compressing the heart and lungs causing suffocation and panic.

Studying other cultures also reveals individuals engaging in certain behaviours that if seen here would be seen as a sign of mental illness but when seen within the context of a different culture are viewed as perfectly normal. It is even possible that some cultures may not even have a concept of mental illness that equates with our own at all seeing mental illnesses in spiritual or religious terms.

Some extreme views see Western notions of mental illness as a social construct relating to our time and place and have likened psychiatry to pseudo sciences popular in the past such as alchemy or astrology. According to Ssasz mental illness does not exists for the same reason that phlogiston or astral influences do not exist, because it is an empirical mistake based on flawed methodology. Western psychiatry’s continued adherence to these outdated concepts is based more on dogma and a pseudoscientific approach than a rational evaluation of social behaviour according to Ssasz.

“The belief in mental illness rests on a serious, albeit simple, error: It rests on confusing what is real with what is imitation; literal meaning with metaphorical meaning, medicine with morals” Szasz(1984)

Ssasz (1984) says that mental illness does not exist by definition because disease means bodily disease and the mind is not part of the body, hence mental illness is at best a metaphor used to describe socially unacceptable behaviour. The idea that psychiatry is any way objective is false according to Ssasz because notions of culturally acceptable behaviour and illness change with time and across cultural boundaries.

But is it true that disease by definition can only be physical and if so is the mind a part of the body or separate to it? If the mind is separate to the physical body either in substance or type then what precisely is it and how does a non corporal entity such as a mind effect a physical thing like the body anyway? A non physical mind separate from the body it inhabits while intuitively having some appeal especially to theologians would be for some scientists like trying to play snooker with an imaginary cue ball. Philosophers from Descartes* to the present day are still arguing over these questions while Cognitive scientists and Psycho pharmacologists using the most recent advances in neural imaging have yet to adequately describe the relationship between consciousness, brain chemistry, and behaviour which presumably lies at the heart of a deeper understanding of psychiatry.

Perhaps more importantly we should be asking, is psychiatry an instrument of social control used by those in authority to morally censure the behaviour of those who see themselves as free spirits and thinkers? Or is the business of psychiatry a scientific attempt to help those in emotional distress to achieve peace of mind? Clearly at different times and in different it has, and is, being used for both purposes.

Answers on a post card please.

References
1. Roy Porter (2002) Madness, A brief history, Oxford University Press
2. Michael Foucault (2001) Routledge, New Ed edition
3. Thomas Szasz, (1984) The Myth of mental illness, Harper and Row; revised edition

2008-05-13T03:48:00.000-07:00

CRIMINALISE PSYCHIATRY - NOT ITS VICTIMS !
by Justice Lover

I received today the following message from Black Mental Health UK :

"The Guardian is running a blog on Black Mental Health and the DNA d'base your comments would really be appreciated.

See link below:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/joepublic/2008/05/the_scandal_of_criminalising_m.html

Here is the article for this link :

"The scandal of 'criminalising' mental health patients

Mary O'Hara on a new campaign that aims to force a government U-turn on the national DNA database

May 12, 2008 10:49 AM

The human rights group Black Mental Health UK (BMHUK) will this week aim to ratchet up pressure for a government rethink on the national DNA database, although not (as has much of the critique to date) based on general civil liberties arguments. BMHUK is taking on the government specifically on the contention that the policy is "criminalising" people with mental health problems. And what's worse, it will argue, it is going largely unnoticed and undebated.

The group, which campaigns on the over-representation of people from African Caribbean backgrounds within the mental health system (they are 44% more likely to be sectioned than the wider population for example), has identified what it calls "a disturbing trend" of people in need of health care who have committed no crime ending up on police DNA databases.

Kicking off the new campaign, Matilda MacCattram, spokeswoman for the group, pointed out: "African Caribbean communities are 50% more likely to be referred to mental health services through the courts or after being detained in police custody and so will have their DNA taken during this process. Those who are innocent of any crime should have the right to have their details removed. It is very worrying to know that anyone who gets involved with the police inadvertently as a result of their mental health problems could have their DNA taken as a result."

MacCattram points out that while the issue can affect anyone with a mental health problem caught up in the criminal justice system, it is "likely to affect black people more than others". Certainly, the statistics on the broader experience of people from African Caribbean backgrounds in the mental health system support her argument. People from this group are, for example, 29% more likely to be forcibly restrained, 50% more likely to be placed in seclusion and account for 30% of inpatients in medium secure wards.

BMHUK will deliver a petition to Downing Street later this week calling for the removal of patients' DNA details if they are not convicted of any crime. A letter will also go to health minister Ivan Lewis and MPs will be lobbied to raise questions in the House of Commons.

MacCattram argues that the difficulties experienced by black people in the mental health system - especially young black men and especially when their route to health care is via the courts or the police - "stays below the radar when it absolutely needs to be addressed". She is hoping the campaign, which is backed by a range of organisations including the National BME Mental Health Network and the National Assembly of Black Social Care Professionals will force government's hand on the "new phenomenon" of DNA data collection.

She says lobbying has so far come to nothing but that the issue is "simply too serious" not to find another way to stop it in its tracks. "This is the thin end of the wedge," MacCattram says. "The government needs to listen and to act." But is it really possible that a new campaign can achieve what months of lobbying hasn't?"

It is obvious that the main reasons for the victimisation of black "mental patients" is psychiatry with its fraudulent dogma, and the government - any government in the West ! - which had let the shrinks paralyse its ability to change course. If psychiatry would be outlawed then there would be,of course ,no "mental patients" to discriminate against and/or to victimise.

There is absolutely no justification for the existence of psychiatry, as it is a fascist quackery. Its claim to be a "medical specialty" has no scientific foundation ; its dogma of "mental Illness"is a big lie, as was pointed out by several qualified psychiatrists ; its practitioners are acting as Big Pharma reps ( rather than as medical practitioners ) to secure colossal profits for Big
Pharma in return for heavy bribes.

When people have emotional/mental problems psychiatry can only exacerbate them, and there are numerous effective alternatives to coercive psychiatry. They range from social, nutritional or personal lifestyle problem solving methods to radical change of the political system. The DNA Data Base itself is a very serious violation of human rights, and the discrimination of black people on a "mental health" basis is the most outrageous manifestation of it. It must be abolished too !

2008-05-09T05:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.cspinet.org/integrity/watch/200805051.html#2

FDA Scraps Helsinki Declaration on Protecting Human Subjects

Drug companies got a green light last week to start using data from foreign clinical trials in new drug applications even if the trials only compare new products to placebos instead of best available treatments. The change marks a sharp departure from the 1989 Declaration of Helsinki protecting human subjects in clinical research, the Food and Drug Administration's previous standard.

The new rule, which goes into effect next October, was pushed by drug and device manufacturers, but opposed by numerous public interest, patient advocacy, and consumer groups. The Declaration of Helsinki "is the standard-bearer for international research ethics and enjoys particular respect in the developing world," said Peter Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group. Its rejection is "in line with other U.S. efforts to flout international mores."

The new rule's substitute standard says foreign trials should follow good clinical practices (GCP) and include a review and approval by an independent ethics committee. A major difference between the Helsinki Declaration and GCP is the former's insistence on using existing treatments instead of placebos if they are available. The Helsinki Declaration had the effect of extending existing treatments to people in poor countries if they participated in clinical trials.

The change is likely to push more clinical trials abroad, where an estimated 35 percent of all trials submitted to the FDA in new drug applications now take place. Unlike trials conducted in the U.S., companies do not have to submit an investigative new drug application (IND) to the FDA before beginning research in foreign countries. The FDA estimates about 575 of the foreign trials submitted to the agency each year as part of new drug applications do not go through the IND process.

The FDA rejected the notion that adopting the self-regulating GCP standard and eliminating references to the Helsinki Declaration "will hurt subjects in developing countries or result in less protection for subjects in foreign studies." GCP requires trial sponsors closely monitor trial behavior and report adverse events, the agency noted.

(Emphasis by Justice lover)

2008-05-07T16:29:00.001-07:00

Thursday, May 8, 2008

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/psychiatry-handbook-linked-to-drug-industry/

May 6, 2008, 12:54 pm

Psychiatry Handbook Linked to Drug Industry

The D.S.M. is used to diagnose a wide range of mental disorders. (Cary Conover)

More than half of the task force members who will oversee the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s most important diagnostic handbook have ties to the drug industry, reports a consumer watchdog group.

The Web site for Integrity in Science, a project of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, highlights the link between the drug industry and the all-important psychiatric manual, called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The handbook is the most-used guide for diagnosing mental disorders in the United States. The guide has gone through several revisions since it was first published, and the next version will be the D.S.M.-V, to be published in 2012.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Web site has posted the financial disclosure of most of the the 28 task force members who will oversee the revision of the D.S.M.

It’s not the first time the D.S.M. has been linked to the drug industry. Tufts University researchers in 2006 reported that 95 — or 56 percent — of 170 experts who worked on the 1994 edition of the manual had at least one monetary relationship with a drug maker in the years from 1989 to 2004. The percentage was higher — 100 percent in some cases — for experts who worked on sections of the manual devoted to severe mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, the study found. (For a Times story on that report, click here.)

The American Psychiatric Association allows members who work on the upcoming fifth edition of the handbook to accept money from drug firms. However, from the time of their appointment until the completion of the work, their annual individual income from industry sources cannot exceed $10,000. “We have made every effort to ensure that D.S.M.-V will be based on the best and latest scientific research, and to eliminate conflicts of interest in its development,” said Dr. Carolyn B. Robinowitz, president of the organization, in a press release.

The Integrity in Science group described the financial conflicts of interest by the task force members as ranging from “small to extensive,'’ including one member who over the past five years worked as a consultant for 13 drug companies, including Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Wyeth, Merck, AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

(Emphasis by Justice lover)

2008-05-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

THE LUCKY COUNTRIES WHERE "MENTAL ILLNESSES ARE UNDER-TREATED"
by Justice Lover

The following news item does not mention the results of the "under-treatment of mental illnesses". I remember reading an old report which showed that wherever
"mental illnesses are under-treated" there are far less suicides, homicides, sudden deaths etc. but such results are not mentioned in this news item.

The reasons for the positive "under-treatment" results are
obvious : no Big Pharma poisons are forced on the population (therefore
the local shrinks don't get Big Pharma bribes, and it does not pay to be the
local state shrink); no electric shocks torture ("ECT") ; and no butchery of people's brains ("psychosurgery").

Besides, why torture ("treat") people for "mental illnesses", which do not
exists ,in accordance with a psychiatric dogma which has no scientific basis,
and its only true "justification" is the "need" of Big Pharma to maintain and
increase its colossal profits ?

http://www.craegmoor.co.uk/news/industry/18580907/new_study_says_mental_illnesses_are_under-treated.aspx

New study says mental illnesses are under-treated

A World Health Organisation study has said that mental illnesses are under-treated when compared to physical illnesses.

The new study, which was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, examined 15 countries to establish the treatment of specific mental and physical disorders. Six low-and-middle-income countries and nine classed as high-income were included in the World Mental Health survey.The treatment sought and received for both physical and mental disorders were investigated and several key findings were identified. According to the survey, respondents attributed more disability to their mental than their physical disorder and this was found to be held as strongly in low-and-middle-income countries as in high-income countries. The proportion of people receiving treatment was found to be much lower for mental than for physical disorders in high-income countries and even more in low-and-middle-income countries.Researchers have said that the low treatment rates calls for more attention to be paid to mental disorders.Figures from the Mental Health Foundation state that one in four people will experience some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year.

2008-04-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

Call for the Remembrance & Resistance day on May 2nd, 2008

from
René Talbot
to
Verborgene_Empfaenger,
date
Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 11:18 PM
subject
Call for the Remembrance & Resistance day on May 2nd, 2008

[please snowball this message on newsboards and your own e-mail address lists]

Call for the Remembrance & Resistance day on May 2nd, 2008

May 2nd, 2008 is the tenth anniversary of the Verdict of the Foucault Tribunal. This is a great opportunity to celebrate this special anniversary because on the next day (May 3rd) in accordance with the contractual rules, the UN-Disability Convention will enter into force internationally.

Thus ends the first phase of applying this convention: 20 states must have ratified the convention before it can become valid internationally. The fact that this goal has been reached now is particularly opportune for us, because now there is no more reason to promote a rapid ratification of the convention, rather we can now concentrate on the fact that BEFORE the ratification in further countries our demand for the abolition of all mental health laws must be fulfilled.

Only by the fulfillment of these minimalistic defense rights from torture-like psychiatric coercion treatment and arbitrary detention in psychiatric prisons, can the Disability Convention not become an additional shield of coercive psychiatry.

Without prior consent to this demand, the convention and those ratifying it become a caricature of the human rights which they pretend to strengthen, because the fulfillment of economic, social and cultural rights has as a precondition that the fundamental rights to liberty, in particular the abolition of torture (e.g. by means of psychiatric coercive treatment), is assured.

Even if, by the use of the optional protocol, an attempt is made after the ratification to prompt states to fulfill the convention, it is particularly necessary with regard to psychiatric assault that the legislator abolishes the mental health laws which legalise these crimes.

If the legislator should refuse our explicit demand to do this before the ratification, then there is hardly any chance thereafter, since he obviously perceives the Disability Convention only as an alibi anyway. That, in the 24 states which have ratified the convention in the meantime, there is not the least sign of a loosening of the violent regime of coercive psychiatry, is blatant proof of this.

Our demand for abolition of the mental health laws now - before a ratification - is a great opportunity, which we celebrate with the Remembrance & Resistance day. This celebration we link to a commemoration of our ca. 300,000 sisters and brothers systematically murdered by doctors in Germany, Poland and Austria in 1939-1949 (see also here). A slanderous diagnosis was their death sentence.

This is the Resolution Point # 1 of the General Assembly of the International Association Against Psychiatric Assault of April 22, 2008

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-04-18T19:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.naturalnews.com/023052.html

Merck Caught in Massive Scientific Fraud as In-House Authors were Disguised as Independent Scientists (opinion)

by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) Drug giant Merck has been caught red-handed in a scheme to deceive the FDA and the public over the integrity of its scientific studies, say top medical authorities. According to reports that were (amazingly!) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and detailed in the Washington Post, Merck waged a "campaign of deception" to disguise its in-house study authors as independent scientists working for universities. This scheme made the studies appear independent and unbiased, allowing them to carry more apparent credibility to FDA officials, doctors and other scientists.

This fraud was conducted to boost the apparent scientific credibility of the studies backing Vioxx, a drug that has caused well over 100,000 heart attacks and likely killed well over 50,000 Americans, according to Senate testimony by the FDA's own senior drug safety researcher Dr. David Graham. Vioxx earned Merck $2.3 billion in 2003 alone, and was one of the most lucrative drugs ever sold by any company. But since 2004, when some of the real dangers of the drug became known, a tremendous amount of evidence leading to fraud has surfaced.

It now appears quite clear that Merck deliberately lied about the dangers of the drug, misrepresented the results of scientific studies, deceived the FDA to win drug approval, knowingly covered up evidence of the drug's dangers, and now it seems Merck even conducted a deliberate campaign of deceptive ghostwriting designed to attach independent-sounding names to in-house studies that were essentially pro-Vioxx promotional pieces disguised as scientific reports.

NaturalNews has reported on many of the fraudulent actions conducted by Merck over the years. See our reporting on Merck here: www.NaturalNews.com/Merck.html

... and read our stories about Vioxx here: www.NaturalNews.com/Vioxx.html

Why Merck wants to keep the truth hidden from the public

What's interesting about this latest revelation of Merck fraud is that the documents revealing the depth of this fraud were only made public due to lawsuits filed by citizens who claim they were harmed by Merck's drugs. And yet at the same time, Merck and the FDA are arguing that such lawsuits should not be allowed at all -- that they should be "preempted" by FDA approval for drugs, thereby keeping Merck's dirty secrets buried forever, even as consumers harmed by Merck's drugs are denied any right to sue for damages caused by such drugs!

It is now rather obvious why drug companies like Merck so desperately want immunity from lawsuits -- because the "discovery" phase of these lawsuits is causing Merck's dirty science to be publicly aired! It's allowing the public to have a peek at the skeletons in Merck's closet. Merck no doubt wants its secrets to remain secret so that nobody is really aware of the scientific fraud we're now learning so much about. I often wonder: What else is Merck hiding that it doesn't want to become public knowledge?

Shouldn't Merck be brought to justice?

Now, I have an important question to ask you. Given the magnitude of the scientific fraud being discovered about Merck, and the number of people who have reportedly been killed by Merck's products, why does Merck still manage to escape any real scrutiny from the Dept. of Justice and the FDA? Why does Merck seem to have an unlimited "get out of jail free" pass from the U.S. government? Even while it's arguing for immunity from public lawsuits, it seems Merck has already achieved a silent, practical immunity from U.S. government regulators and law enforcers.

Can you think of any other corporation that, if caught engaging in widespread fraud that resulted in the death of over 50,000 Americans, wouldn't be hung out to dry by Congressional investigations and Justice Dept. arrests? It is flatly unbelievable to me that a corporation engaged in such massive campaigns of deception and death could be allowed to continue conducting business as usual in the United States. It's far worse than what Enron engaged in. We're not talking about simple white-collar crimes here; we're talking about an ever-expanding collection of body bags, corruption, bribery, secret payoffs, science fraud and, in my opinion, crimes against humanity. And yet the mainstream media keeps on running Merck's deceptive ads, holding their noses while they pocket Merck's illegitimately-earned cash.

When individuals commit fraud and engage in deceptive practices that result in the deaths of other people, we charge them with crimes: Involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide or even murder. So why, then, does a powerful corporation get to go free for committing essentially the same crimes?

In other words, shouldn't corporations be held to the same laws as the People? Why, in our nation, are individuals charged with murder or manslaughter when they kill people, but corporations are allowed to kill any number of people with absolutely no consequence? They are not arrested, not charged with crimes and not prosecuted. And on top of that, they have the audacity to argue that they should be granted legal immunity from ALL lawsuits that might be filed by the people their products harm or kill! It's truly astounding...

Do not allow Merck to conduct further business in this country

I believe that law enforcement authorities in America have both the right and the responsibility to arrest top Merck executives, seize Merck's inventory, and deny Merck the right to conduct any further business in this nation by cancelling its corporate charter. I believe Merck is engaged in serious crimes against the People and that its business practices are clearly being conducted in violation of federal law (not to mention in violation of basic business ethics and human compassion). If this was any other corporation we were talking about here -- and not Merck -- this company would be subjected to a massive campaign of media scrutiny and Congressional scrutiny. But not Merck. It's too powerful, too influential.

Merck should be renamed "The Teflon Company" because even though it's pushing dangerous chemicals, nothing seems to stick.

Let me break it down for you and tell you what's really happening here. It's the same old story, after all: Rich, powerful white-collar criminals get away with murder, while the poor, the disadvantaged and the sick get shafted.

I pray for the day that Merck is put out of business, shut down by law enforcement authorities who finally decide to apply existing federal law and prosecute this dangerous, destructive corporation for its organized-crime-like operations. Americans would be far safer if Merck were shut down. In fact, the threat to Americans' health from Merck far outweighs any threat to national security by terrorists. Think about it: The current war in Iraq has killed 4,000 Americans. Just one drug from Merck has killed over 50,000 (and that's a conservative estimate). That's more than ten times the number of Americans killed in our current war!

Is Merck a terrorist organization? No, it's a dishonest, corrupt corporation that pretends to be engaged in good deeds and genuine science. But if you peek behind the curtain, you find nothing but fraud, deception, and the complete disregard for human life. Merck isn't a terrorist organization, but it's killed far more Americans than any terrorist organization could. Even a dirty bomb set off at the Superbowl (which was one of the FBI's recent terrorist concerns) wouldn't kill as many Americans as Merck's drugs have in the last five years. That's no exaggeration.

In my opinion, Merck is an evil, out-of-control corporation that's destroying lives and obliterating any remaining credibility of the pharmaceutical industry. One day, when the truth finally emerges about the totality of Merck's crimes against the People and the depth of its willful deception, the public will be stunned, frozen in a state of disbelief that they could have tolerated such heinous crimes right under their noses. They will think the same thoughts of Nazi supporters seeing Hitler's concentration camps for the first time... How could we have allowed this to happen right here, on our own soil? To our own children? To our own families?

It's time to apply federal laws to Merck and start making arrests. Too many lives have been lost already, and the extreme fraud being routinely exhibited by Merck should not go unpunished. It's time to finally protect Americans from Big Pharma.

Also worth reading: Merck Engaged in Blatant Scientific Fraud with Vytorin Cholesterol Study? http://www.naturalnews.com/022485.html

Merck denied blood pressure screening services to doctors that did not prescribe its brand-name drugs http://www.naturalnews.com/020604.html

FDA, Merck may have conspired to discredit whistleblower, says U.S. Senator http://www.naturalnews.com/019728.html

2008-04-16T07:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.time-etc.com/2008/04/psychiatry-and-drugs.html
psychiatry and drugs

Here's a skeptical view of psychiatry by Charles Barber:

"The ultimate indicator of our newfound faith in scientific psychiatry may be the mysterious growth of the placebo effect in tests of the drugs the new psychiatry dispenses. When Columbia University psychiatrist B. Timothy Walsh analyzed 75 trials of antidepressants conducted between 1981 and 2000, he discovered that the rate of response to placebos, which are, of course, nothing more than sugar pills, increased by about seven percent per decade. Simply because people thought they were taking the all-powerful medicines, they thought they were getting better.All of the evidence points to the conclusion that today’s full embrace of biological psychiatry is terribly premature, especially since we have available an increasing number of nondrug therapies of proven effectiveness.

We are only in the very early stages of understanding how the brain works and what alters its functioning. Somewhere along the way we seem to have misplaced the notion that, at this stage of our scientific evolution at least, the brain’s capacity to understand itself is minimal."

Barber has a point. The advent of massive prescription of drugs for mental illnesses is based on some shaky foundations. *

mental illness is still poorly understood. What causes them? How do they work? What exactly are the disruptive mechanisms that are impairing function in the brain? These are unanswered questions. There is a stark contrast between a drug treatment for, say cancer or pneumonia, and a drug treatment for schizophrenia or bipolar. Cancer and pneumonia are understood from the cellular level right up to the epidemiological level, and pretty much everything in between. The same cannot be said for schizophrenia, bipolar, personality disorders, ADHD or many other mental illnesses.

*non-drug treatments have taken a back seat. This is despite the fact that there is probably more evidence of the effectiveness of social and lifestyle factors in treating mental illness of almost every variety than there is of the effectiveness of drugs. For instance there is pervasive comorbidity between many forms of mental illness and recreational drug use (I include alcohol in that category). Stress, social isolation and poverty are all also risk factors for many mental illnesses.

* The definitions of various categories of mental illness are dubious- the problems with the DSM are well known. Unfortunately, this problem has been oversold by critics of psychiatry, mental illness skeptics, and other radical fringe thinkers. I don't want to side with those who deny the existence of mental illness or who say that the whole thing is a social construct. It is a real problem. But we really don't know what we're dealing with. What exactly is schizotypal personality disorder, for example? What causes it, and what are the physical manifestations in the brain? What about body dysmorphic disorder? In a scientific sense, we know almost nothing about them.

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-04-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

THE TESTIMONY OF TWO DOCTORS WHO SAVED THEMSELVES BY NOT LETTING THE SHRINKS "TREAT" THEM AS CHRONIC SCHIZOPHRENICS

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/the-mad-doctor-the-extraordinary-story-of-dr-rufus-may-the-former-psychiatric-patient-440381.html

The mad doctor: The extraordinary story of Dr Rufus May, the former psychiatric patient

At the age of 18, Rufus May was diagnosed as an incurable schizophrenic and locked up in a psychiatric hospital. Now, he is a respected psychologist and a passionate campaigner on mental health issues. He is also the guest editor of this special issue. Here, he tells his extraordinary tale

Sunday, 18 March 2007

When I was aged 18, I witnessed first hand how society's approach to mental health wasn't working. I was admitted to Hackney hospital - a psychiatric hospital - and told that I could not leave. On the verge of adulthood, and feeling lost after my girlfriend had left me, I had invested in a spiritual search for guidance. The messages I picked up from the Bible convinced me I had a mission. Seeking to discover what my mission was, I slowly deduced that I was quite possibly an apprentice spy for the British secret service. I was eventually admitted to hospital when I became convinced that I had a gadget in my chest that was being used to control my actions.

Psychiatric hospital was like another world entirely. Queues for the medication trolley punctuated the boredom and general sense of hopelessness. Any resistance to the regime was quashed by forcible restraints and powerful injections. Many friends felt too scared to visit me.

That experience coupled with being given a diagnosis of schizophrenia made me feel like a social outcast. When my parents were told my condition was probably genetically inherited, the die seemed irrevocably cast. Ward rounds felt like elaborate religious rituals conducted by the consultant psychiatrist, with an audience of medical students and student nurses observing, while my insanity was confirmed and long-term drug treatment prophesied. I found the medication made me feel empty and soulless; I could not think past considering my basic needs. The drugs made me physically weaker and affected my hormones so I became impotent.

I was concerned about this. However, to the outside world, because of the mind-numbing effects of the drugs, I was less focused on my spy and spiritual beliefs. The doctors pronounced that I was responding well to the medication. I was determined to stop taking the tablets and injections as soon as I could find other ways of staying calm and centred.

The majority of fellow patients were revolving-door patients. I myself was told I'd be back. It was true: I was readmitted twice before I managed to escape the role of mentally ill regular customer. But I was luckier than most: as well as my parents visiting me daily, a close friend came back from selling pots and pans to US servicemen in Germany and began visiting me daily too. I started to pick up on her belief that this breakdown, or whatever it was I was having, was something I could get over.

When I was 12 years old, I had witnessed my mother make a strong recovery from a disabling brain hemorrhage, so instinctively I knew that I could turn my life around with the right support. So I decided not to believe in the doctor's wisdom and planned to get a job as soon as I left hospital. While I was still in hospital, I started going to churches and community centres offering to do voluntary work. Although I must have seemed a bit odd, I found many kind people who were willing to give me tasks to do and slowly I started to rebuild some social skills.

When a friend and fellow patient, Celine, took her own life after being heavily over-medicated, it became a turning point for me. It was a Caribbean funeral and hundreds of people turned up for it. It contrasted strongly with the absence of support she had had when she had been alive and hearing abusive voices from her past.

I realised then that I had found a cause that needed no delusions to support it. Like Celine, I had gone through the strange process of being talked to as if I was not there, of professionals trying to suppress my odd and disturbing behaviour with drugs without trying to understand why I was acting as I was. No one seemed willing to think what was it like to walk in my shoes.

We, as a society, were making people madder and maybe I could do something about changing that. What if I could make a different kind of come-back to the psychiatric ward, as a mental health professional? Then perhaps, in Trojan horse style, I could help dismantle the myths of the psychiatric hierarchy. The more I thought about this, the more I realised I would have to keep my former identity as a psychiatric patient strictly under-cover.

When a junior psychologist informally questioned my diagnosis of schizophrenia, suggesting I had had a temporary psychotic episode instead, it made me think maybe psychology was a way of doing things differently. So my mission was becoming clearer: I would train as a psychologist. I knew I needed to sort myself out to some extent before attempting this journey.

My first job, straight out of psychiatric hospital, was working as a night security guard in north London's Highgate Cemetery. I now think that patrolling the heavily wooded grounds in the dark was a deeply therapeutic activity. With no time to daydream, I had to stay aware and face my fears of the dark and the unknown. I also think just walking in close proximity to nature was a very healing process.

It was during this time that I successfully came off my psychiatric medication, against doctors' advice. I then spent several years doing a range of jobs and learning creative ways to express myself, using dance and drama. I shifted my focus from thinking about myself to trying to help others, while making sure I looked after my mind and body. I used the outdoor gym on Parliament Hill, sport and breathing exercises as natural ways to manage my moods. I was careful to avoid unreliable or abusive friends and stick with people who had stuck by me. Studying sociology helped me understand the wider structures of society, demystifying such things as the class system and power relations between men and women.

I was reminded of the prejudice against the subject of mental illness when a right-on community centre refused to support me and a group of amateur drama students putting on a play about a nervous breakdown. Nevertheless, from drama classes I learnt the art of re-inventing oneself through improvisation. I will always remember how one of my drama teachers impressed upon us all the message that "this life is not a rehearsal". My confidence in acting was to become useful over the next 10 years of care work and psychology training, where I chose to keep quiet about my previous role as a psychiatric patient, to avoid the possibility of discrimination.

For me, the dividing line between the mentally ill and the sane was more a question of social boundaries than actuality. I had found some very mad people in hospital very helpful and some of the so-called "well" nurses quite bullying and hostile, it suggested to me that to some extent madness was in eyes of the beholder. I also knew that my own madness had been meaningful; for example, my fantasies about being a spy had given my life meaning and my search for a spying mission was a metaphoric search for a meaningful quest in my life.

My training as a psychologist in the early 1990s, coincided with a time when psychology as a profession was beginning to interest itself in trying to understand and work with madness, an area which was usually associated with the more medical, drug-prescribing profession of psychiatry. For the past 10 years I have been working as a psychologist covering a broad range of mental-health problems. I know that to really help someone who is deeply suffering or confused, we need to be very creative and offer a wide range of resources.

In Bradford we have self-help groups where people are encouraged to help others as well as themselves. We also create spaces where for example art, spirituality and physical relaxation can be explored in a number of different ways. We have Tai Chi classes, dance classes and African art classes, as well as political and cultural discussion groups. If people hear troubling voices, I want to understand these beings that haunt them. I will sometimes communicate directly with the voices and try to facilitate a peace process between the voices and the person hearing them.

I must be living proof that people can resist so-called command hallucinations, because initially many voices feel threatened by me and tell the voice hearer to attack me. I am still unscathed, which is a strong testimony to the fact that people who hear voices can learn to resist the most bullying and aggressive of them. So instead of encouraging people to suppress their experiences, which I think generally makes them worse, I try to assist people to face their demons in their own time.

Is society any madder than 20 years ago when I was in hospital? It seems to me that some things are getting worse and some things are getting better. People are getting bolder in talking about their experiences of distress and madness. This is refreshing; the status quo, in which well-meaning professionals and charity heads are the only experts, is starting to be challenged. Britain is a leading light in this consciousness raising, where people are coming out more and more about their experiences of emotional distress. Consequently, a broader range of ideas and approaches to what helps us heal troubled minds is being listened to.

At the same time, the might of the pharmaceutical industry is stronger than ever before; drug companies are ruthlessly promoting the simplistic and misleading "chemical imbalance" theory of mental distress, while marketing our discontent as diagnosable medical illnesses. In the US, they have been very successful, with roughly 10 per cent of women taking anti-depressants and an astonishing 10 per cent of children being treated for ADHD with the amphetamine derivative Ritalin. Each year in this country, prescription rates rise for psychiatric medication.

While I am not against all use of mind-altering drugs, this trend is worrying. I think that when drugs appear to work, the main effect is that of masking a patient's problems, but as soon as you remove them the problems bounce back, often with a little more oomph due to the fact they have been artificially suppressed. You also need more and more of the drug to achieve the same effect, because our brains build up a resistance to all mood-altering substances. We are then likely to experience the more negative effects of the medication and develop a dependence.

So drugs are limited in their usefulness and are perhaps best used as a last resort and for short periods of time. This is not going to be popular in the board rooms of Big Pharma, the Big Brother of mental health. But if we are going to make progress in our quest for healthier communities, we are going to have to limit the pharmaceutical industry's influence on how we understand our minds and approach the recovery process.

============================

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/features/a-dialogue-with-myself-808941.html

A dialogue with myself

When Ruth began hearing voices, she turned to a controversial drug-free therapy programme. Now, her story is told in a powerful TV film, says Jeremy Laurance

Channel 4

Actress Ruth Wilson playing junior doctor Ruth for 'The Doctor Who Hears Voices'

Tuesday, 15 April 2008

Ruth is a junior doctor like any other, facing daily decisions of life and death. More than a year ago, she became depressed and suicidal, was put on medication and suspended from her job. What she didn't tell her employers was that she had begun to hear voices. She thought she was going mad.

Most mental health specialists would at that point have said Ruth should be admitted to psychiatric hospital and treated with drugs, forcibly if necessary. Hearing voices is regarded as a key delusion that marks out the insane from the sane. But she feared that if that happened she might never be allowed to practise medicine again.

Instead, she consulted Rufus May, a clinical psychologist with the Bradford District Care Trust, who has become something of a celebrity in the mental health world for his radical approach to treatment. He agreed to treat her privately (waiving his fee) because she was from outside the trust area. She stopped her medication and together they began a six-month course of therapy, which included a mock fight in the street, getting half drowned in a stream, chatting in a tree and a visit to May's home.

Her therapy, and its conclusion, was minutely documented and has been recreated for a Channel 4 film, The Doctor Who Hears Voices, to be shown next week. An actress plays Ruth. The result is an extraordinary drama-documentary with a powerful performance by Ruth Wilson, known for her Bafta-nominated role in Jane Eyre.

The film challenges our notions of mental health and how to treat it. May doesn't think Ruth is mentally ill and rejects the idea of treating her with powerful antipsychotic drugs. Instead, he teaches her to talk back to the voices in her head, with the aim of identifying and getting a grip on them and ultimately coming to control them. The voices are abusive or derogatory – "You are a worthless piece of shit" gives a flavour. It's scary stuff; at one point Ruth reveals that she is convinced that a fish tank on the ward is controlling patients' heartbeats.

Would anyone be comfortable having a doctor who suffers such delusions in charge of their care? Or their child's? Watching the film, you have to wonder. Ruth has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and told she will be on drugs for the rest of her life – but Rufus May is convinced that she will make a good and safe doctor without them.

It is a high-risk strategy, which few psychiatrists would be comfortable pursuing. May has his doubts when Ruth goes missing for several days and he wonders if she's committed suicide. About 1,200 people with mental problems take their own lives each year, and another 50 kill someone else, many of them while not taking their medication.

May is no stranger to the risks. For a decade, he has run self-help groups for voice-hearers, where he supports a drug-free approach to treatment. He's softly spoken, thoughtful, yet he has a cheerfulness that disarms patients and professionals alike. (His trust has asked him to contribute a blog to its website, recognising his popularity with mental patients.)

He is himself a "recovered schizophrenic", diagnosed at 18, treated with drugs and told his problems would be lifelong. Having found a way back to health, he is committed to guiding others on the same journey and has become a leading advocate of drug-free psychiatry. At one point in the film he urges Ruth: "You can recover. Too many people have been lost. We don't want to lose you."

His nemesis in the film is orthodox psychiatry, represented by Trevor Turner, a consultant at HomertonNT> hospital in east London. He is one of few conventional psychiatrists prepared to engage in this debate. Turner agrees that supporting patients to manage their voices is helpful – but it is not enough, he says. "No doctor would dream of saying, 'I am just going to treat the voices.' If I assessed there was a risk – and in this case 'Ruth' was talking about suicide and hearing voices and was out on the streets – I would definitely have taken action to protect her. If there was no other way, I would have battered down the door and taken her into hospital."

2008-04-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

Drug Makers Near Old Goal: A Legal Shield

new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/washington/06patch.html

By GARDINER HARRIS and ALEX BERENSON
Published: April 6, 2008

For years, Johnson & Johnson obscured evidence that its popular Ortho Evra birth control patch delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to internal company documents.

Tom Uhlman for The New York Times
An Ortho Evra birth control patch from Johnson & Johnson.
Related
Times Topics: Food and Drug Administration
Times Topics: Supreme Court, U.S.

But because the Food and Drug Administration approved the patch, the company is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women who claim that they were injured by the product — even though its old label inaccurately described the amount of estrogen it released.

This legal argument is called pre-emption. After decades of being dismissed by courts, the tactic now appears to be on the verge of success, lawyers for plaintiffs and drug companies say.
The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine, which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts.

The (USA) Supreme Court is to rule on a case next term that could make pre-emption a legal standard for drug cases. The court already ruled in February that many suits against the makers of medical devices like pacemakers are pre-empted.

More than 3,000 women and their families have sued Johnson & Johnson, asserting that users of the Ortho Evra patch suffered heart attacks, strokes and, in 40 cases, death. From 2002 to 2006, the food and drug agency received reports of at least 50 deaths associated with the drug.
Documents and e-mail messages from Johnson & Johnson, made public as part of the lawsuits against the company, show that even before the drug agency approved the product in 2001, the company’s own researchers found that the patch delivered far more estrogen each day than low-dose pills. When it reported the results publicly, the company reduced the numbers by 40 percent.

The F.D.A. did not warn the public of the potential risks until November 2005 — six years after the company’s own study showed the high estrogen releases. At that point, the product’s label was changed, and prescriptions fell 80 percent, to 187,000 by last February from 900,000 in March 2004.

Gloria Vanderham, a Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman, said the company acted responsibly.
“We have regularly disclosed data to the F.D.A., the medical community and the public in a timely manner,” Ms. Vanderham said. “Ortho Evra is a safe and effective birth control option for women when used according to the labeling.”

But Janet Abaray, a plaintiff’s lawyer from Cincinnati, said that Johnson & Johnson took advantage of an agency overwhelmed by its many responsibilities.
“Johnson & Johnson knew that F.D.A. does not have the funding or the manpower to police drug companies,” Ms. Abaray said.

A series of independent assessments have concluded that the agency is poorly organized, scientifically deficient and short of money. In February, its commissioner, Andrew C. von Eschenbach, acknowledged that the agency faces a crisis and may not be “adequate to regulate the food and drugs of the 21st century.”

The F.D.A. does not test experimental medicines but relies on drug makers to report the results of their own tests completely and honestly. Even when companies fail to follow agency rules, officials rarely seek to penalize them. “These are scientists, not cops,” said David Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown Law School.

Last month, at a trial over the schizophrenia drug Zyprexa, Dr. John Gueriguian, a scientist who worked at the F.D.A. for two decades, testified that the agency did not always ask for strong warnings even if it believed a drug was risky. Companies typically oppose warnings, and the agency knows it must compromise on its requests or face years of delay, Dr. Gueriguian said.
“We at the F.D.A. know what we can obtain and we cannot obtain,” Dr. Gueriguian said. “We have many, many problems, and we have a management system — what we can’t obtain we will not ask.”

For years, top officials at the agency acknowledged that lawsuits could aid the agency’s oversight of safety issues. In the last decade, suits over Zyprexa, the withdrawn pain pill Vioxx, the withdrawn diabetes medicine Rezulin, the withdrawn heartburn medicine Propulsid and several antidepressants have shown that companies played down the risks of their medicines and failed to disclose clinical trials to the public even as they have aggressively marketed their drugs.

But now, the agency says a proliferation of lawsuits could lead to an overlapping patchwork of rules that would burden companies and might discourage patients from taking useful medicines.
The Ortho case, however, suggests that Johnson & Johnson, like other drug makers, is not always quick to tell the F.D.A. about potential problems with its medicines.

In 1996, the company told the agency it planned to develop the Ortho Evra patch in part because it would be likely to expose women to less estrogen than pills. The company suggested that the body would not break down hormones delivered via the patch as readily as the pill, so lower doses could be used to achieve contraception. And unlike the pill, which must be taken daily, the patch is changed weekly.

High doses of estrogen are known to raise the risk for blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes.

But a crucial trial completed in 1999 showed that the patch delivered 30 to 38 micrograms of estrogen into the bloodstream each day, according to company documents.
Because up to half of the estrogen in pills is lost in the digestive tract before it reaches the blood, the study suggested that the patch delivered an amount of estrogen that could be as high as a pill containing 76 micrograms of estrogen. In 1988, the F.D.A. banned birth control pills with more than 50 micrograms of estrogen.

But the study’s author, Dr. Larry Abrams, who has since retired from Johnson & Johnson, decided to apply a “correction factor” to the results of the 1999 trial, according to documents. He claimed that the patch actually delivered about 40 percent less estrogen than the trial results showed — about 20 micrograms a day.

Dr. Abrams made the change, according to his deposition, to adjust for the different ways the body metabolizes hormones from pills and patches. This adjustment was never part of the study protocol, a plan filed with the F.D.A..

“The judgment was made by the pharmacokeneticists at the time that in doing the calculation, it was probably appropriate to make that correction,” Bob Tucker, a lawyer representing Johnson & Johnson, said in an interview Thursday. “Later on when people looked at it in a different time frame, they concluded that probably the correction shouldn’t be applied.” The company mentioned its decision to use the “correction factor” only once in a 435-page report filed with the F.D.A., and then only in a complex mathematical formula. When the study was published in 2002, there was no reference to the alteration.

Mr. Tucker said that the F.D.A. was aware of the “correction factor.”
Clinical trials conducted before the patch was approved raised other red flags, as patients complained of breast soreness and nausea. “The side effects seem related” to high estrogen doses, one company scientist wrote in an e-mail message.

Two other studies, one conducted in 1999 and another in 2003, confirmed that the patch released more estrogen than the pill. Still, Johnson & Johnson delayed reporting those results to the food and drug agency, according to documents that have been made public in lawsuits.

After the patch was approved, the company marketed it as releasing 20 micrograms of estrogen to the blood every 24 hours, a figure it now acknowledges was inaccurate. It also acknowledges that the patch releases more estrogen than the pill but says that the estrogen released under the two methods cannot be directly compared.

The New York Times provided the drug agency with a copy of a court brief and asked whether agency medical reviewers were aware of the “correction factor.”
Rita Chappelle, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, replied, “At present, we are reviewing the allegations and cannot comment further at this time.”

Prescriptions for the patch grew rapidly after its introduction, reaching more than 900,000 by March 2004, according to data from Wolters Kluwer, a company that tracks prescription trends. But as the use of the patch rose, so did reports of side effects.

By 2004, after the death of Zakiya Kennedy, an 18-year-old college freshman in New York, food and drug officials had become concerned.

In November 2005, the agency announced that it had placed a warning that the patch “exposes women to higher levels of estrogen than most birth control pills.”

Since then, an epidemiological study has shown that women on the patch can have as much as double the risk of blood clots than those taking pills. And prescriptions for the patch have fallen 80 percent.

Still, lawyers for Johnson & Johnson say that patients should not be allowed to sue the company because the F.D.A. approved the patch and its label.

“F.D.A. is responsible for making those decisions,” said John Winter, a lawyer for the company.
Judge David A. Katz of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Ohio is expected to rule soon on whether any of the lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson can go forward.

In the fall, the Supreme Court will hear a separate pre-emption case involving Wyeth, another drug company. Chris Seeger, a plaintiffs’ lawyer who has about 125 Ortho Evra cases, said he expected the court to rule in Wyeth’s favor.

“Our lawsuits are the ultimate check against the mistake made by the government, or fraud made by the companies against the government, or just an underfunded bureaucracy stretched thin,” he said.

Janet Roberts contributed reporting.

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

2008-03-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

PSYCHIATRY IS THE EFFECTIVE TOOL TO PUT DOWN AND SUBJUGATE THE PEOPLE TO THE RULE OF BIG BUSINESS UNDER THE COVER-UP OF FALSE "MEDICAL TREATMENT"
by Justice lover

The following article by a most worried American academic discovers nothing new, yet serves well to highlight the growing dangers of psychiatry to the entire humanity. However, it seems that the author did not spend enough time investigating the history of psychiatry, as he wrongly concludes that psychiatry should be reformed. Psychiatry is not based on science, has nothing to do with healing, and its one thousand year old history is manifestly barbaric, with torture and killing of innocent people under the pretext of "treatment". Therefore it cannot be reformed.

Eugen Bleuler (1857 – 1940), for example, one of the fathers of Modern Psychiatry, was the Swiss psychiatrist who invented the "mental illness schizophrenia". He was also the first to use extermination of patients' future offsprings as "treatment", thus paving the way for Hitler's psychiatrists who mass murdered some 250, 000 mental patients in Germany. As the head of a mental hospital he ordered the forced sterilization of all his patients.

Ugo Cerletti, the fascist Italian psychiatrist, as another example, who under the Musslini regime in 1938 invented the electric shocks ("ECT") torture, recalled how he came up with this idea. He said that when he visited a slaughter house for pigs, he noticed that the pigs were effectively led to their slaughter by proding them with electricity, hence his invention for humans.

Over the past ten years, two popular tribunals have declared psychiatry guilty of crimes against humanity, and both demanded an immediate end to psychiatric coercion and demanded reform of psychiatry, but no reform was ever attempted. The barbaric history of psychiatry shows that to expect any reform there is as realistic as expecting reform of the professions of executioners and of torturers.

Besides, it goes against the interests of Big Pharma to abolish psychiatric coercion or get rid of the psychiatric poisons. For the Big Pharma owners many billions of dollars profits are at stake, and Big Pharma dominates psychiatry. No reform would be allowed to risk billions of dollars profits !

Here is the article :

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/are-we-really-ill

Are We Really That Ill?
By CHRISTOPHER LANE March 26, 2008

CHICAGO - America has reached a point where almost half its population is described as being in some way mentally ill, and nearly a quarter of its citizens - 67.5 million - have taken antidepressants.

These statistics have sparked a widespread, sometimes rancorous debate about whether people are taking far more medication than is needed for problems that may not even be mental disorders. Studies indicate that 40% of all patients fall short of the diagnoses that doctors and psychiatrists give them, yet 200 million prescriptions are written annually in America to treat depression and anxiety.

Those who defend such widespread use of prescription drugs insist that a significant part of the population is under-treated and, by inference, under-medicated. Those opposed to such rampant use of drugs note that diagnostic rates for bipolar disorder, in particular, have skyrocketed by 4,000% and that overmedication is impossible without over-diagnosis.

To help settle this long-standing dispute, I studied why the number of recognized psychiatric disorders has ballooned so dramatically in recent decades. In 1980, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders added 112 new mental disorders to its third edition, DSM-III. Fifty-eight more disorders appeared in the revised third edition in 1987 and fourth edition in 1994.

With over a million copies in print, the manual is known as the bible of American psychiatry; certainly it is an invoked chapter and verse in schools, prisons, courts, and by mental-health professionals around the world. The addition of even one new diagnostic code has serious practical consequences. What, then, was the rationale for adding so many in 1980?

After several requests to the American Psychiatric Association, I was granted complete access to the hundreds of unpublished memos, letters, and even votes from the period between 1973 and 1979, when the DSM-III task force debated each new and existing disorder. Some of the work was meticulous and commendable. But the overall approval process was more capricious than scientific.

DSM-III grew out of meetings that many participants described as chaotic. One observer later remarked that the small amount of research drawn upon was "really a hodgepodge - scattered, inconsistent, and ambiguous." The interest and expertise of the task force was limited to one branch of psychiatry: neuropsychiatry. That group met for four years before it occurred to members that such one-sidedness might result in bias.

Incredibly, the lists of symptoms for some disorders were knocked out in minutes. The field studies used to justify their inclusion sometimes involved a single patient evaluated by the person advocating the new disease. Experts pressed for the inclusion of illnesses as questionable as "chronic undifferentiated unhappiness disorder" and "chronic complaint disorder," whose traits included moaning about taxes, the weather, and even sports results.

Social phobia, later dubbed "social anxiety disorder," was one of seven new anxiety disorders created in 1980. At first it struck me as a serious condition. By the 1990s experts were calling it "the disorder of the decade," insisting that as many as one in five Americans suffers from it. Yet the complete story turned out to be rather more complicated. For starters, the specialist who in the 1960s originally recognized social anxiety - London-based Isaac Marks, a renowned expert on fear and panic - strongly resisted its inclusion in DSM-III as a separate disease category. The list of common behaviors associated with the disorder gave him pause: fear of eating alone in restaurants, avoidance of public toilets, and concern about trembling hands. By the time a revised task force added dislike of public speaking in 1987, the disorder seemed sufficiently elastic to include virtually everyone on the planet.

To counter the impression that it was turning common fears into treatable conditions, DSM-IV added a clause stipulating that social anxiety behaviors had to be "impairing" before a diagnosis was possible. But who was holding the prescribers to such standards? Doubtless, their understanding of impairment was looser than that of the task force. After all, despite the impairment clause, the anxiety disorder mushroomed; by 2000, it was the third most common psychiatric disorder in America, behind only depression and alcoholism.

Over-medication would affect fewer Americans if we could rein in such clear examples of over-diagnosis. We would have to set the thresholds for psychiatric diagnosis a lot higher, resurrecting the distinction between chronic illness and mild suffering. But there is fierce resistance to this by those who say they are fighting grave mental disorders, for which medication is the only viable treatment.

Failure to reform psychiatry will be disastrous for public health. Consider that apathy, excessive shopping, and overuse of the Internet are all serious contenders for inclusion in the next edition of the DSM, due to appear in 2012. If the history of psychiatry is any guide, a new class of medication will soon be touted to treat them. Sanity must prevail: if everyone is mentally ill, then no one is.

Mr. Lane, a professor of English at Northwestern University, is the author of "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness."

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)