THE BIG PICTURE: THE FAUSTIAN, PSYCHO-PHARM PROPOSITION - by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD 6/13/01

  THE BIG PICTURE: THE FAUSTIAN, PSYCHO-PHARM PROPOSITION

  by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD  6/13/01

  It all gets back to the psycho-pharm, Faustian proposition--take
  a chemical balancer/pill for every painful emotion/deliterious behavior
  from cradle to grave, and you will be the better off for it.  The
  problem is these are all normal pains, trials and errors from which we
  have to learn, to which we must adapt; this is our magnificent,
  infinitely intricate, wondrous, entirely normal, brain/body giving us
  messages we need to recieve and heed.  The last thing in the world they
  are, are signs of disease; signs of abnormality to be made normal or to
  be made more nearly normal.  Blunt every one with a drug, erase discomfort,
  erase embarassment, and we will arrive at the end of life's journey--the
  grave, the better off for it, or so psychopharm tells us; tells our
  government, who buys it for us, even requires it for us.  What we forget is
  that all of their chemicals, chemical balancers, all they would mandate for
  our brains, are foreign, are poisons, are chemical imbalancers causing
  chemical imbalances, the first and only chemical imbalances we are to have.
  No scientist worth his salt, no scientist, not paid to say otherwise could
  bring themselves to conclude that this is a formula for disaster:  We are
  as happy, content, achieved, satisfied, sated, as our normal brain allows
  us to be by granting us success in learning, adapting, surmounting
  succeeding--we are not the sum of our emotional ups and downs nor are we
  the better off for never having tried and failed.  But this is what they
  ask you to believe and they have the Big Pharma product, or ECT or
  cingulotomy or some other kind of "otomy"  at the ready to smooth out your
  every bump and turn in the road.  The only problem is that their every
  product is brain damaging, their every product can not do other than make
  you less able over the long run in any way you want to name because they
  claim to improve upon your God-given brain (and body) that having only a
  psychiatric 'disease' was normal going in.  That is, your primary organ
  which was normal going in, which is the organ of learning, everything,
  adapting to everything, protecting against everything, comprehending
  danger, comprehending fraud in the name of help, in the name of
  treatment--cannot possibly do other than impair you and in the long run,
  cradle-to-grave, impede you. But as we are seeing in unprecedented numbers
  that officialdom refused to track, kill and maim you as well, or kill and
  maim your child. Wake up America, for God's sake, for your's your child's,
  your nation's--wake up.



> Subject: [drugawareness] Paxil: Murder, suicide. A bitter aftertaste for the
> 'wonder' depression drug
>
> Sarah Boseley, health editor of the Guardian in the UK reminds us in this
> article that, "One of the main selling points of the SSRIs when they arrived
> in the early 1990s was that people did not become physically dependent on
> them as they had on older antidepressants."
>
> This claim of no withdrawal has continued to sicken me every time I have
> heard it over the last decade or so! You all know, if you have read my book
> or any of my writings, that I have continued for years warning of the very
> serious and dangerous withdrawal associated with the SSRIs. And if you have
> heard me lecture or do radio shows you know that I have also consistantly
> warned that until Celexa was approved, Paxil was the strongest of the SSRIs
> in the reuptake of serotonin, making it one of the most deadly of the SSRIs.
> To now have the inside information on what the manufacturer already knew
> before is maddening to say the least! Why we as a society continue to allow
> these companies to do this to us is beyond me!
>
> What did we learn from those internal documents? Dr. David Healy reports that
> "More than 50% of people may have significant withdrawal problems that they
> should be warned about. This is way beyond what was happening with the older
> drugs." AND that in the early trials with Paxil "the company, then SmithKline
> Beecham, realised in the 80s that healthy volunteers were suffering
> withdrawal symptoms when they stopped taking the drug after only a couple of
> weeks." AND that "85% of the volunteers - who were company employees with no
> hint of depression - suffered agitation, abnormal dreams, insomnia and other
> adverse effects."
>
> We can all be grateful for a few good men who are working hard to expose this
> in courts around the world. If it were not for them bringing these documents
> to light, the mayhem would continue at a more rapid pace than it is already.
>
> Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, Executive Director,
> International Coalition for Drug Awareness
> www.drugawareness.org   and author of
> Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? (800-280-0730)
>
>
> Murder, suicide. A bitter aftertaste for the 'wonder' depression drug
>
> Antidepressant Seroxat under scrutiny as firm pays out $6.4m
>
> Sarah Boseley, health editor
> Monday June 11, 2001
>
> The Guardian
>
> Thousands of people in the UK and around the world could be physically hooked
> on the antidepressant drug Seroxat, the British sister of Prozac, without
> knowing it, according to a psychiatrist who was allowed access to the
> archives of its manufacturers, GlaxoSmithKline.
>
> David Healy, director of the North Wales department of psychological medicine
> and the UK's foremost expert in antidepressants, found studies in archives in
> Harlow, Essex, which show that the company, then SmithKline Beecham, realised
> in the 80s that healthy volunteers were suffering withdrawal symptoms when
> they stopped taking the drug after only a couple of weeks.
>
> Yet the company has failed to warn patients or doctors, he says, and it has
> argued that people suffering problems when they stop taking the drug have
> suffered a recurrence of depression and need to go back on the medication.
>
> Warnings of physical dependency follow the increasing credence given to
> allegations that the Prozac class of drugs can cause a small minority of
> people to become violent and kill themselves or others.
>
> Last week a jury in the US ordered GlaxoSmithKline to pay $6.4m (£4.6m) to
> the family of Donald Schell, 60, who killed his wife, daughter and
> granddaughter then himself after two days on Seroxat. Two weeks earlier, an
> Australian judge ruled that another drug in the class, Sertraline, caused
> David Hawkins to murder his wife and attempt to kill himself.
>
> Dr Healy was given access to the archives during the Schell case and found
> what he considered alarming evidence of withdrawal problems. One study
> showed that as many as 85% of the volunteers - who were company employees with no
> hint of depression - suffered agitation, abnormal dreams, insomnia and other
> adverse effects.
>
> On average about half the volunteers taking part in a group of studies
> specifically designed to detect withdrawal problems suffered symptoms which
> suggest they had become physically dependent on the drug.
>
> Dr Healy believes all the drugs of the SSRI (selective serotonin re-uptake
> inhibitor) class can cause physical dependency in some people to some
> degree. "All the major SSRIs cause withdrawal problems although paroxetine
> (Seroxat - now outselling Prozac in the UK - or Paxil in the United States)
> may be worse than the others," he said.
>
> "In the case of some this isn't an infrequent occurrence. More than 50% of
> people may have significant withdrawal problems that they should be warned
> about. This is way beyond what was happening with the older drugs."
>
> One of the main selling points of the SSRIs when they arrived in the early
> 1990s was that people did not become physically dependent on them as they had
> on older antidepressants - the benzodiazepines such as Valium and Librium.
>
> But a World Health Organisation league table of the drugs that doctors think
> cause people most problems when they are trying to quit puts paroxetine
> (Seroxat) in the number one slot with twice as many reports as the next
> highest, another SSRI called venlafaxine (Efexor). Sertraline (Lustral) is
> fourth and fluoxetine (Prozac) is seventh in the table compiled by the
> Uppsala monitoring centre. The benzodiazepines Ativan (lorazipam) and Valium
> (diazepam) come 11th and 13th.
>
> "The SSRIs are drugs for which withdrawal symptoms are most reported
> worldwide," said Charles Medawar of the group Social Audit, which has battled
> to get the authorities to recognise there is a problem. "Yet they are nothing
> like as widely used as benzodiazepines were."
>
> The firms maintain that people who feel worse after stopping the drugs are
> suffering a recurrence of depression. They are advised to go back on the
> drugs.
>
> But Dr Healy says any immediate return of symptoms is probably withdrawal and
> that if it were another bout of depression, it would be unlikely to show up
> for months or even a year. Some people, he says, have been on the SSRIs for
> as long as five years because each time they stop, they feel worse.
>
> "The drugs are not being given to people who are severely ill," he said.
> "These are people who are miserable, with lower grade mood disorders. They
> are people who should not be on these drugs for this length of time."
>
> Seroxat's original licence was simply to treat an episode of mild to moderate
> depression, but the company later commissioned a study which looked at the
> effect of stopping Seroxat in people who had been treated successfully for
> depression. Half continued to take Seroxat and the other half were given a
> placebo.
>
> Many of those on placebo got worse which proved, the company argued, that the
> drug should be given a licence for long-term use to prevent the recurrence of
> depression.
>
> "Their presentation of the study to the Medicines Control Agency was
> intentionally or unintentionally deceitful. They were saying this was a
> long-term treatment for depression but what they had was a trial design that
> was going to produce withdrawal symptoms," said Dr Healy.
>
> Violent reaction
>
> Dr Healy was given access to the papers in GlaxoSmithKline's archives
> following legal representations before the Schell trial, in Cheyenne,Wyoming,
> in which he was a witness. Tim Tobin, Schell's son-in-law, whose wife and
> only child died, together with other family members had sued GlaxoSmithKline.
> The jury agreed that Schell had suffered a violent reaction to the
> Paxil/Seroxat he had taken.
>
> The court heard how 34 studies of healthy volunteer company workers, carried
> out before the drug received its licence, showed that 25% of them became
> agitated on the drug. Dr Healy believes a small minority can be so disturbed
> by the effects of the SSRIs that they are capable of killing others or
> themselves.
>
> The studies were not carried out by doctors with any psychiatric training who
> might have looked further at the mental problems that occurred in otherwise
> normal healthy individuals. Most of them were general hospital doctors with
> an interest in gut disorders.
>
> Although Dr Healy was supposed to have had access to all the studies, four
> apparently done by psychiatrists were missing. But in a note relating to one
> of these the investigating psychiatrist running that research had written
> that he had never seen such a high level of problems in healthy volunteers.
>
> Dr Healy has written to the Medicines Control Agency, which grants UK drugs
> licences, spelling out his concern over the implications of these studies.
>
> Some of the volunteers involved, he wrote, later "went on to suicidal acts.
> The relationship between their intake of paroxetine (Paxil) and later
> suicidal acts is a matter about which neither you nor SmithKlineBeecham
> should be sanguine."
>
> GlaxoSmithKline denies both that their drug can cause people to murder and
> commit suicide or that there are withdrawal problems. David Wheadon, its
> director of US regulatory affairs, insisted Dr Healy had not seen all the
> data and said there was "no credence" to the 25% agitation rate that he gave
> in court.
>
> Dr Healy says he examined every one of the healthy volunteer studies carried
> out before the drug was licensed except for some material that was
> unaccountably not there. During his deposition in March for the court case,
> the company conceded he had seen a representative sample.
>
> On withdrawal problems, Dr Wheadon said: "This is a very rare occurrence
> based on the data available. It is extraordinarily difficult to ferret out if
> it is a withdrawal effect or resurgence of the disease being treated."
>
> If somebody who stopped Paxil suddenly could not sleep, he said, "I challenge
> anyone to be able to tell me whether that is disease or discontinuation."
>
> Dr Healy counters that if the person had no sleep problems before taking the
> drug, it is withdrawal, and that in healthy volunteers who were not
> originally depressed, agitation, insomnia or abnormal dreams are
> self-evidently caused by the drug.