Guest guest Posted April 3, 2005 Report Share Posted April 3, 2005 Sara, You nailed it right on the head. I have to laugh because it doesn't have as much punch in the areas where Scientologists are busy. The people that know them know those allegations are just bigotry used as a tool because they have seen for themselves that good work gets done by Scientologists just like all the other religions that work to help others, meaning all major religions. I believe it is a tactic like you say, I just see it fall flat so many times and backfire on the people saying it in my area. At the Texas legislature those kind of comments have backfired repeatedly. Bigoted comments only work when no one knows any of the targeted people. the Romans persecuted the Christians and now we have the Roman Catholic Church. To me the Christians comparitively civilized Europe from it's previous barbarism. It's just such a feeble defense for harming millions for profit, I have a feeling as more people meet real Scientologists comments like that will fall flat more and more often. To me it's a weak last defence. Jim I don't laugh at the Scientology charge. I have run into it twice. On the CABF (Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation) boards, there were hints from the moderators that my antidepressant views should be ignored because I must have been a Scientologist. One person who wasn't a moderator but was an " insider " came right out and said it. On the Court TV forum during the Pittman trial, there was a drive by posting by someone who posted just that once that the drugawareness.org site was a " Scientologist front " site. The people who were viciously out to hang and who didn't like to hear anything about antidepressants because, in their opinion, it was a defense designed only for the family to make money in a civil suit against the Pfizer, quickly latched on to the Scientology label for a few of us, including me. I had to point out the conflict between the Scientologist's total anti psychiatry position and the fact that drugsawareness.org has copies of, links to, and refereces about articles by psychiatrists and published in psychiatric journals before I got them to shut up. Even so, someone else would do it a few days later. Each time I debunked the alleged connection between drugawareness.org and the Scientologists I said that it was a means of discrediting people who were saying what the drug companies didn't want people to think about. I strongly suspect that the drug companies encourage if not started these allegations. Doctors who spoke out against SSRIs were (are?) labelled " quacks " while lay people were (are) labelled " Scientologists " . It is a means of discrediting so that the information the person is delivering can be dismissed. I hadn't seen it for about two years then all of a sudden during the Pittman trial it surfaced again. BTW, I am sure that drive by posting on the Court TV board was pre written and a copy and pasted to the forum. I honestly believe that during the Pittman trial the drug companies had an enployee searching for forums where there were positive posts about. drugawareness.com and, when he found one, posted the " Scientologist " allegation. But maybe I'm just too cynical but I don't believe the Scientologist should ever be taken lightly. > Ann is awesome and I love her work. She was years ahead with her > observations and she deserves credit for all her hard work. A true freedom > fighter. > > I laugh at the Scientology angle. Ann is a Mormon like the couple I > talked to today that I helped get out of a CPS drugged-children situation > working for CCHR. > > > Best, > > Jim > > http://tinyurl.com/3txqt > > > August 2004 > > Depressed over Prozac > Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News > > Ann knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit > her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in > the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and > then drank a can of Drano; the 12- year-old girl who strangled herself with > a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger on the wall. > > Sit with for an hour and pretty soon your head is swimming in details: > the shooting at Columbine, a study of violent mice, the conversation she had > with Rusty Yates, whose wife drowned their five children in a bathtub. > Yates was on maximum doses of Effexor and Remeron, she reminds you. > The world according to Ann is a place full of people who were put on > antidepressants and then went on to do horrible things. > > is executive director of the International Coalition for Drug > Awareness, which she operates out of her home office in West Jordan, a home > she has mortgaged twice to pay for her 15-year crusade against > antidepressants and the pharmaceutical companies who make them. > > She is heartened by recent scrutiny of the drugs. Last year, the British > version of the FDA banned all antidepressants other than Prozac for use in > children under 18. In March, the Food and Drug Administration issued a > Public Health Advisory about antidepressants - - urging doctors and families > to monitor adult and child patients on the drugs -- and then appointed a > panel of experts to reanalyze the incidence of suicide attempts during > clinical trials of teens. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer > sued the makers of Paxil for consumer fraud, and 30 Utahns joined a > nationwide class- action suit charging that GlaxoKline " concealed, > suppressed and downplayed " severe withdrawal reactions in people trying to > go off the antidepressant. > > But won't be happy until the drugs are banned altogether. They cause > people to become violently suicidal and homicidal, she argues. They cause > cancer, she says, and heart disease and diabetes and divorce. > > Some people call her a visionary. Others roll their eyes and call her > misinformed -- and worry that she is hurting the very people she wants to > help. > > Panacea or Pandora? > > In 1991, wrote an 80-page pamphlet called " Prozac: Panacea or > Pandora? " Three years later she expanded it into a 424-page book that she > published herself. She wrote a lot of it longhand, while sitting in the Salt > Lake LDS Temple: the one place, she says, where she was sure Satan didn't > have a foothold. > > Hers was one of the first books to criticize antidepressants, but others > followed: Dr. Breggin's 1995 " Talking Back to Prozac, " Dr. ph > Glenmullen's 2000 " Prozac Backlash, " Dr. Healy's 2004 " Let Them Eat > Prozac. " As the titles suggest, Prozac has become shorthand for > antidepressant, the way Kleenex is shorthand for tissue, because Prozac was > the first of a new class of antidepressants called SSRIs (selective > serotonin reuptake inhibitors). But there are now plenty of others, > including Paxil, Effexor, Zoloft and Luvox. > > According to IMS Health, a market research company for the pharmaceutical > industry, sales of antidepressants worldwide in 2003 reached $19.5 billion, > up 10 percent from 2002. Some of this growth, according to the IMS Web site, > can be attributed to the use of antidepressants in " lifestyle disorders, " > which now include or could feasibly include, according to IMS, premenstrual > dysphoric disorder, smoking cessation, weight loss and shyness -- a list > that causes some people, like Jim Harper of prozactruth.com, to complain > that antidepressants are now prescribed " if you bite your nails. " > > started the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in 1997. The > coalition has a Web site, www.drugawareness.org, volunteer directors in 30 > states and board members in Bulgaria and Singapore. The most celebrated > member of her board is Dr. Candace Pert, the town University School of > Medicine neuroscientist who a generation ago helped discover and map the > kind of receptors that regulate mood and health. > > On the case > > Distraught parents of suicidal teens, and the relatives and attorneys of > people accused of murder, call asking for her help. But also > keeps her antennae up for stories about violent deaths that might possibly > be linked to antidepressants. If she reads a newspaper account about a man, > say, who has gone on a shooting rampage at work -- as happened in July at a > ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas -- she will immediately get on the phone to > flesh out the details, trying to find out if the assailant had been on an > antidepressant. Occasionally the victims are famous, and sometimes the > assailants become famous for their horrific crimes, but either way is > not afraid to insert herself into their lives or their deaths. > > The day after she heard that Brynn Hartman had shot her husband, comedian > Phil Hartman, and then herself, called up Phil Hartman's brother, > whose number she found on the Internet. had just returned from being > an expert witness at the trial of a Wyoming woman on Paxil who had shot her > husband and later reported that she didn't remember anything about the > murder except standing there with the smoking gun. So told the > Hartmans: " Don't you stop till you find one of these drugs. " Brynn Hartman, > it turned out, had been on Zoloft; drugmaker Pfizer settled an eventual > wrongful death case for an undisclosed amount. > > After reading about Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader who killed his > family and then drove to work and killed nine more people before also > turning the gun on himself, phoned his mother. It wasn't until six > months later that Atlanta police reported that Prozac had been found in > Barton's car, so was operating on instinct when she urged Barton's > mother to have his body tested for antidepressants. " Not all coroners check > for these drugs, " explains. " It requires a few extra tests, and not > all states will pay for it. That's why you need to get to the families right > away. " > > But things don't always work out the way would hope. In the Atlanta > day trader case, she says, she had his body ready to be shipped to an > independent forensic toxicologist in Oklahoma City, but Barton's mother > changed her mind. Maybe, says, the coroner told Mrs. Barton that > was a Scientologist. > > The Scientology charge still surfaces occasionally, because Scientologists > are famous for their opposition to psychotropic drugs and in fact to > psychiatry in general. ( " Psychiatry is seeking to create a world where man > is reduced to a robotized or drugged, vegetablelike state so that he can be > controlled, " Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote.) > > Vicki Cottrell, executive director of the Utah chapter of the National > Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is sure has Scientology ties. > " She says she's not a Scientologist, but she has the same philosophy, " says > Cottrell. " Of course I don't have the thing on paper, in writing, but I > believe they finance her. " denies any connection to Scientology and > says in fact that Scientologists don't like her because she won't go after > psychiatrists. She says her war against antidepressants has put her $100,000 > in debt (mostly from phone bills and publishing her book). accuses > NAMI of getting money from drug companies. > > Cause and effect > > Emotions run high because, on both sides, there is a belief that lives are > at stake. Mental-health advocates argue that antidepressants have helped > millions of people, and they worry that crusades like 's will convince > the very people who need drugs to go off them. The stories of people who > have committed suicide or crimes while on antidepressants are sad and > regrettable, they agree, but anecdotes aren't scientific proof. > > Deseret Morning News graphic > > Antidepressants > > Requires Adobe Acrobat. > > Did Mark Barton, for example, kill his family and co-workers because he was > on Prozac orwhile he was on Prozac? > > " It's a cause-and-effect issue, " says Dr. Meredith Alden, president of the > Utah Psychiatric Association. " People make assumptions about cause and > effect when there is only an association. " > > Yes, sometimes people on antidepressants kill themselves or act violently, > she says, but that's because " you're already dealing with people who are > prone to violent behavior. " And, she says, " people who are depressed are > going to be at greater risk of hurting themselves. " > > Sometimes, concedes University of Utah psychiatry professor Dr. Tomb, > " some people will briefly feel more suicidal " when they're first put on > antidepressants, but that happens when they first go into psychotherapy, > too, he argues, " or just because they're getting better by tincture of > time. " Tomb, like a lot of people in the field, offers this explanation: A > really depressed person may not have the energy to kill himself; then he > starts taking medication, still feels depressed, but suddenly has enough > energy to follow through with his suicidal thoughts. > > But what about the people who weren't suicidal until they took the drugs, > asks. What about the people who had no history of violence but then > killed their own children? > > FDA weighs in > > The FDA, in its Health Advisory issued in March, asked drug companies to add > stronger warnings to their package inserts, cautioning physicians and > families to " closely monitor " both adults and children for suicidal > thinking, and " certain behaviors that are known to be associated with these > drugs, " including mania and hostility, especially at the beginning of > treatment, or when the doses are increased or decreased. The FDA stopped > short of requiring the companies to issue these warnings, though, and made > it clear that the matter of cause and effect has not been settled yet. > > The FDA appointed a panel of independent experts to review clinical trials > of antidepressant use in children and teens, trying to determine if these > studies report more suicide attempts in patients prescribed the drugs > compared to those given a placebo pill. The review follows allegations that > GlaxoKline failed to report trials that showed an increase in suicide > attempts, as well as those trials that showed that Paxil was no more > effective than a placebo for younger patients. According to the Wall Street > Journal, which obtained a draft of the panel's review last week, the > clinical trials show children and teens on the drugs were indeed more likely > to have thoughts that appeared to be suicidal. > > Earlier this month, Health Canada, the Canadian version of the FDA, issued a > warning that newborns may suffer withdrawal and other possible symptoms > (seizures, constant crying, etc.) when pregnant women take SSRIs during the > third trimester of their pregnancies. > > In June, the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy > Research Institute issued a report urging that psychotropic drugs should be > prescribed for children " only when the anticipated benefits outweigh the > risks. " Next month, a congressional committee will hold hearings about the > safety of antidepressants and the FDA's alleged censoring last winter of a > staff member who argued that the drugs are dangerous for young people. > > " From those who have seen the internal company documents, " says , " we > know that there is no distinction in age groups with these suicidal > reactions. These reactions are the same across the board, no matter the > age. " > > Utah cases > > argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's famous violent crimes > -- Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed herself and her three children in 1991; > Sergei Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family History Library in > 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his mother with an axe in 2001 -- were violent > because they were either on antidepressants or had gone off them too > abruptly. > > Lenny Gall's father, Len, contacted six months ago, before his son's > sentencing hearing. then went through Lenny's medical records, Gall > says, and found that " he had a very significant reaction to Paxil when he > was 16 " and was put on the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa " shortly before " the > murder. " He's never had a shred of violence in him, " Gall says. > > has served as an expert witness in a dozen criminal cases -- most > recently a land case against a teenage boy who fatally laced his best > friend's soda with cyanide -- and has been hired as a consultant in several > civil cases against drug companies, including one that tried to implicate > Luvox as the reason why shot students at Columbine High School. > She estimates that the number of people she has consulted with about > antidepressants -- how to safely get off them, how to find alternative > methods for treating depression, what to do when a family member is suicidal > or manic -- is now in the thousands. > > Atwood, who will be a senior this year at Copper Hills High School, > credits with helping him get off antidepressants, first prescribed for > him when he was 12. He tried suicide at least 15 times before reading > 's book and listening to her tape. It was then, he says, that he > discovered that odd symptoms -- persistent dreams of gouging his eyes out, > for example -- might be side effects of the drugs that were supposed to be > making him feel normal. Following 's advice, he slowly tapered off > Remeron and now tries to avoid sugar, meat and dairy products. " I still have > my moments of depression, " he says. " But I haven't attempted suicide for > over a year. " > > Ann Blake , according to the International Coalition for Drug Awareness > web site, has a doctorate in health sciences with an emphasis on psychology. > There is no mention of the institution that awarded her this degree -- > Wythe College, in Cedar City. explains that the Ph.D. was > awarded for " lifetime experience, " specifically for the writing of " Prozac: > Panacea or Pandora? " which she says she has been told is the equivalent of, > or " far beyond, " a dissertation. > > Self-published, the book contains spelling and punctuation errors and > incomplete sentences (although says an edited version will be > published in the next few weeks). It also contains page after page of > references to studies that seem to cast a cloud over the safety of > antidepressants. > > argues that the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is " backwards. " She > maintains that the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism > of serotonin, especially in the 7 to 10 percent of the population she says > that studies have shown don't have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in > the first place. The drugs, she charges, can also cause REM sleep behavior > disorder (RBD), which can cause people to act out their vivid, violent > dreams while in a dreamlike state. > > Deconstructing > > " It's hard to know where to begin to detail the cognitive errors she's > making, " says psychiatrist Tomb about 's book. " She is really taking > license with the scientific method. " Yes, is passionate about the > evils of antidepressants, Tomb says, " but passion has very little place in > the scientific method in terms of deciding what is accurate and truthful. " > The book is full of vignettes, but vignettes don't tell the whole story, he > argues. " You could take aspirin and do the same thing: comb the literature > and find horrible things that have occurred with aspirin. " > > But Dr. Marks, an internal medicine physician from Alabama who was > director of research at two large drug companies and now often testifies as > an expert witness against the drugs, calls " in many ways a visionary. " > She " has observed a phenomenon that is now being validated, " he says. > > " I do think there are some people who don't understand Dr. and don't > understand her passion and don't understand how smart she is, " says > Tierney, a North Carolina mother whose teenage daughter was put on Effexor > to treat her migraine headaches. > > In her darkest hours -- when her cheerful, straight-A daughter first became > " a monster " and later, in an effort to wean herself from Effexor, had > withdrawal symptoms that left her unable even to walk -- Tierney called > every antidepressant expert she could find on the Internet. Only > called her back. > > " Dr. never got one dime from me. She never mentioned money to me at > all. When she first called me back and I said, 'What can I pay you?' she > said, 'No. No.' You have to think that's pretty pure. And she helped me more > than anyone else. " > > " An unsung hero, " says Cassandra Dawn Casey, a Utah County woman who started > an antidepressant group called Aspire after her son's death two years ago. > " None of us would have known what was causing these problems in our lives if > it hadn't been for trailblazers like Ann. " > > The beginning > > 's interest in antidepressants began in 1989 when, she says, she > watched two LDS friends turn into alcoholics after being put on Prozac. > After that she started reading about the drugs, and soon she was hunting > down scientific studies, and then she got a button made that said " Just Say > No to Prozac. " After that she'd be at the grocery store or church and people > would come up to her and start telling her their stories. > > " There's great power in those stories, " says Texas trial attorney Andy > Vickery, who has been involved in more than 50 cases related to > antidepressants. " They have a power to persuade and even change the > bureaucratic forces of our country. " > > And that's just what expects to eventually happen. " I think these > drugs are history, " she says. Eventually, the stories told by parents, and > the investigations into the clinical trials that the drug companies have > suppressed, will add up to public outrage -- and then antidepressants will > be pulled from the market, she predicts. > > " What is sad, " she says, " is that so many have had to die or have their > lives ruined while we have learned that this was yet another terrible > mistake in our hope of 'Better Living Through Chemistry.' " > > E-mail: jarvik@d... > > Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co. > Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 3, 2005 Report Share Posted April 3, 2005 Jim, to the extent that shrinks think, I believe they really do think that any question about them or their poisonous and brain-destroying " therapies " MUST come from Scientologists, and only from Scientologists, because Time Magazine said so, a decade ago. That was my husband's shrink's first reaction to finding out that I questioned his use of 60mg Prozac daily with Trazadone (SP?) as a chaser. Re: Re: Dr. Ann article Sara, You nailed it right on the head. I have to laugh because it doesn't have as much punch in the areas where Scientologists are busy. The people that know them know those allegations are just bigotry used as a tool because they have seen for themselves that good work gets done by Scientologists just like all the other religions that work to help others, meaning all major religions. I believe it is a tactic like you say, I just see it fall flat so many times and backfire on the people saying it in my area. At the Texas legislature those kind of comments have backfired repeatedly. Bigoted comments only work when no one knows any of the targeted people. the Romans persecuted the Christians and now we have the Roman Catholic Church. To me the Christians comparitively civilized Europe from it's previous barbarism. It's just such a feeble defense for harming millions for profit, I have a feeling as more people meet real Scientologists comments like that will fall flat more and more often. To me it's a weak last defence. Jim I don't laugh at the Scientology charge. I have run into it twice. On the CABF (Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation) boards, there were hints from the moderators that my antidepressant views should be ignored because I must have been a Scientologist. One person who wasn't a moderator but was an " insider " came right out and said it. On the Court TV forum during the Pittman trial, there was a drive by posting by someone who posted just that once that the drugawareness.org site was a " Scientologist front " site. The people who were viciously out to hang and who didn't like to hear anything about antidepressants because, in their opinion, it was a defense designed only for the family to make money in a civil suit against the Pfizer, quickly latched on to the Scientology label for a few of us, including me. I had to point out the conflict between the Scientologist's total anti psychiatry position and the fact that drugsawareness.org has copies of, links to, and refereces about articles by psychiatrists and published in psychiatric journals before I got them to shut up. Even so, someone else would do it a few days later. Each time I debunked the alleged connection between drugawareness.org and the Scientologists I said that it was a means of discrediting people who were saying what the drug companies didn't want people to think about. I strongly suspect that the drug companies encourage if not started these allegations. Doctors who spoke out against SSRIs were (are?) labelled " quacks " while lay people were (are) labelled " Scientologists " . It is a means of discrediting so that the information the person is delivering can be dismissed. I hadn't seen it for about two years then all of a sudden during the Pittman trial it surfaced again. BTW, I am sure that drive by posting on the Court TV board was pre written and a copy and pasted to the forum. I honestly believe that during the Pittman trial the drug companies had an enployee searching for forums where there were positive posts about. drugawareness.com and, when he found one, posted the " Scientologist " allegation. But maybe I'm just too cynical but I don't believe the Scientologist should ever be taken lightly. > Ann is awesome and I love her work. She was years ahead with her > observations and she deserves credit for all her hard work. A true freedom > fighter. > > I laugh at the Scientology angle. Ann is a Mormon like the couple I > talked to today that I helped get out of a CPS drugged-children situation > working for CCHR. > > > Best, > > Jim > > http://tinyurl.com/3txqt > > > August 2004 > > Depressed over Prozac > Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News > > Ann knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit > her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in > the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and > then drank a can of Drano; the 12- year-old girl who strangled herself with > a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger on the wall. > > Sit with for an hour and pretty soon your head is swimming in details: > the shooting at Columbine, a study of violent mice, the conversation she had > with Rusty Yates, whose wife drowned their five children in a bathtub. > Yates was on maximum doses of Effexor and Remeron, she reminds you. > The world according to Ann is a place full of people who were put on > antidepressants and then went on to do horrible things. > > is executive director of the International Coalition for Drug > Awareness, which she operates out of her home office in West Jordan, a home > she has mortgaged twice to pay for her 15-year crusade against > antidepressants and the pharmaceutical companies who make them. > > She is heartened by recent scrutiny of the drugs. Last year, the British > version of the FDA banned all antidepressants other than Prozac for use in > children under 18. In March, the Food and Drug Administration issued a > Public Health Advisory about antidepressants - - urging doctors and families > to monitor adult and child patients on the drugs -- and then appointed a > panel of experts to reanalyze the incidence of suicide attempts during > clinical trials of teens. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer > sued the makers of Paxil for consumer fraud, and 30 Utahns joined a > nationwide class- action suit charging that GlaxoKline " concealed, > suppressed and downplayed " severe withdrawal reactions in people trying to > go off the antidepressant. > > But won't be happy until the drugs are banned altogether. They cause > people to become violently suicidal and homicidal, she argues. They cause > cancer, she says, and heart disease and diabetes and divorce. > > Some people call her a visionary. Others roll their eyes and call her > misinformed -- and worry that she is hurting the very people she wants to > help. > > Panacea or Pandora? > > In 1991, wrote an 80-page pamphlet called " Prozac: Panacea or > Pandora? " Three years later she expanded it into a 424-page book that she > published herself. She wrote a lot of it longhand, while sitting in the Salt > Lake LDS Temple: the one place, she says, where she was sure Satan didn't > have a foothold. > > Hers was one of the first books to criticize antidepressants, but others > followed: Dr. Breggin's 1995 " Talking Back to Prozac, " Dr. ph > Glenmullen's 2000 " Prozac Backlash, " Dr. Healy's 2004 " Let Them Eat > Prozac. " As the titles suggest, Prozac has become shorthand for > antidepressant, the way Kleenex is shorthand for tissue, because Prozac was > the first of a new class of antidepressants called SSRIs (selective > serotonin reuptake inhibitors). But there are now plenty of others, > including Paxil, Effexor, Zoloft and Luvox. > > According to IMS Health, a market research company for the pharmaceutical > industry, sales of antidepressants worldwide in 2003 reached $19.5 billion, > up 10 percent from 2002. Some of this growth, according to the IMS Web site, > can be attributed to the use of antidepressants in " lifestyle disorders, " > which now include or could feasibly include, according to IMS, premenstrual > dysphoric disorder, smoking cessation, weight loss and shyness -- a list > that causes some people, like Jim Harper of prozactruth.com, to complain > that antidepressants are now prescribed " if you bite your nails. " > > started the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in 1997. The > coalition has a Web site, www.drugawareness.org, volunteer directors in 30 > states and board members in Bulgaria and Singapore. The most celebrated > member of her board is Dr. Candace Pert, the town University School of > Medicine neuroscientist who a generation ago helped discover and map the > kind of receptors that regulate mood and health. > > On the case > > Distraught parents of suicidal teens, and the relatives and attorneys of > people accused of murder, call asking for her help. But also > keeps her antennae up for stories about violent deaths that might possibly > be linked to antidepressants. If she reads a newspaper account about a man, > say, who has gone on a shooting rampage at work -- as happened in July at a > ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas -- she will immediately get on the phone to > flesh out the details, trying to find out if the assailant had been on an > antidepressant. Occasionally the victims are famous, and sometimes the > assailants become famous for their horrific crimes, but either way is > not afraid to insert herself into their lives or their deaths. > > The day after she heard that Brynn Hartman had shot her husband, comedian > Phil Hartman, and then herself, called up Phil Hartman's brother, > whose number she found on the Internet. had just returned from being > an expert witness at the trial of a Wyoming woman on Paxil who had shot her > husband and later reported that she didn't remember anything about the > murder except standing there with the smoking gun. So told the > Hartmans: " Don't you stop till you find one of these drugs. " Brynn Hartman, > it turned out, had been on Zoloft; drugmaker Pfizer settled an eventual > wrongful death case for an undisclosed amount. > > After reading about Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader who killed his > family and then drove to work and killed nine more people before also > turning the gun on himself, phoned his mother. It wasn't until six > months later that Atlanta police reported that Prozac had been found in > Barton's car, so was operating on instinct when she urged Barton's > mother to have his body tested for antidepressants. " Not all coroners check > for these drugs, " explains. " It requires a few extra tests, and not > all states will pay for it. That's why you need to get to the families right > away. " > > But things don't always work out the way would hope. In the Atlanta > day trader case, she says, she had his body ready to be shipped to an > independent forensic toxicologist in Oklahoma City, but Barton's mother > changed her mind. Maybe, says, the coroner told Mrs. Barton that > was a Scientologist. > > The Scientology charge still surfaces occasionally, because Scientologists > are famous for their opposition to psychotropic drugs and in fact to > psychiatry in general. ( " Psychiatry is seeking to create a world where man > is reduced to a robotized or drugged, vegetablelike state so that he can be > controlled, " Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote.) > > Vicki Cottrell, executive director of the Utah chapter of the National > Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is sure has Scientology ties. > " She says she's not a Scientologist, but she has the same philosophy, " says > Cottrell. " Of course I don't have the thing on paper, in writing, but I > believe they finance her. " denies any connection to Scientology and > says in fact that Scientologists don't like her because she won't go after > psychiatrists. She says her war against antidepressants has put her $100,000 > in debt (mostly from phone bills and publishing her book). accuses > NAMI of getting money from drug companies. > > Cause and effect > > Emotions run high because, on both sides, there is a belief that lives are > at stake. Mental-health advocates argue that antidepressants have helped > millions of people, and they worry that crusades like 's will convince > the very people who need drugs to go off them. The stories of people who > have committed suicide or crimes while on antidepressants are sad and > regrettable, they agree, but anecdotes aren't scientific proof. > > Deseret Morning News graphic > > Antidepressants > > Requires Adobe Acrobat. > > Did Mark Barton, for example, kill his family and co-workers because he was > on Prozac orwhile he was on Prozac? > > " It's a cause-and-effect issue, " says Dr. Meredith Alden, president of the > Utah Psychiatric Association. " People make assumptions about cause and > effect when there is only an association. " > > Yes, sometimes people on antidepressants kill themselves or act violently, > she says, but that's because " you're already dealing with people who are > prone to violent behavior. " And, she says, " people who are depressed are > going to be at greater risk of hurting themselves. " > > Sometimes, concedes University of Utah psychiatry professor Dr. Tomb, > " some people will briefly feel more suicidal " when they're first put on > antidepressants, but that happens when they first go into psychotherapy, > too, he argues, " or just because they're getting better by tincture of > time. " Tomb, like a lot of people in the field, offers this explanation: A > really depressed person may not have the energy to kill himself; then he > starts taking medication, still feels depressed, but suddenly has enough > energy to follow through with his suicidal thoughts. > > But what about the people who weren't suicidal until they took the drugs, > asks. What about the people who had no history of violence but then > killed their own children? > > FDA weighs in > > The FDA, in its Health Advisory issued in March, asked drug companies to add > stronger warnings to their package inserts, cautioning physicians and > families to " closely monitor " both adults and children for suicidal > thinking, and " certain behaviors that are known to be associated with these > drugs, " including mania and hostility, especially at the beginning of > treatment, or when the doses are increased or decreased. The FDA stopped > short of requiring the companies to issue these warnings, though, and made > it clear that the matter of cause and effect has not been settled yet. > > The FDA appointed a panel of independent experts to review clinical trials > of antidepressant use in children and teens, trying to determine if these > studies report more suicide attempts in patients prescribed the drugs > compared to those given a placebo pill. The review follows allegations that > GlaxoKline failed to report trials that showed an increase in suicide > attempts, as well as those trials that showed that Paxil was no more > effective than a placebo for younger patients. According to the Wall Street > Journal, which obtained a draft of the panel's review last week, the > clinical trials show children and teens on the drugs were indeed more likely > to have thoughts that appeared to be suicidal. > > Earlier this month, Health Canada, the Canadian version of the FDA, issued a > warning that newborns may suffer withdrawal and other possible symptoms > (seizures, constant crying, etc.) when pregnant women take SSRIs during the > third trimester of their pregnancies. > > In June, the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy > Research Institute issued a report urging that psychotropic drugs should be > prescribed for children " only when the anticipated benefits outweigh the > risks. " Next month, a congressional committee will hold hearings about the > safety of antidepressants and the FDA's alleged censoring last winter of a > staff member who argued that the drugs are dangerous for young people. > > " From those who have seen the internal company documents, " says , " we > know that there is no distinction in age groups with these suicidal > reactions. These reactions are the same across the board, no matter the > age. " > > Utah cases > > argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's famous violent crimes > -- Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed herself and her three children in 1991; > Sergei Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family History Library in > 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his mother with an axe in 2001 -- were violent > because they were either on antidepressants or had gone off them too > abruptly. > > Lenny Gall's father, Len, contacted six months ago, before his son's > sentencing hearing. then went through Lenny's medical records, Gall > says, and found that " he had a very significant reaction to Paxil when he > was 16 " and was put on the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa " shortly before " the > murder. " He's never had a shred of violence in him, " Gall says. > > has served as an expert witness in a dozen criminal cases -- most > recently a land case against a teenage boy who fatally laced his best > friend's soda with cyanide -- and has been hired as a consultant in several > civil cases against drug companies, including one that tried to implicate > Luvox as the reason why shot students at Columbine High School. > She estimates that the number of people she has consulted with about > antidepressants -- how to safely get off them, how to find alternative > methods for treating depression, what to do when a family member is suicidal > or manic -- is now in the thousands. > > Atwood, who will be a senior this year at Copper Hills High School, > credits with helping him get off antidepressants, first prescribed for > him when he was 12. He tried suicide at least 15 times before reading > 's book and listening to her tape. It was then, he says, that he > discovered that odd symptoms -- persistent dreams of gouging his eyes out, > for example -- might be side effects of the drugs that were supposed to be > making him feel normal. Following 's advice, he slowly tapered off > Remeron and now tries to avoid sugar, meat and dairy products. " I still have > my moments of depression, " he says. " But I haven't attempted suicide for > over a year. " > > Ann Blake , according to the International Coalition for Drug Awareness > web site, has a doctorate in health sciences with an emphasis on psychology. > There is no mention of the institution that awarded her this degree -- > Wythe College, in Cedar City. explains that the Ph.D. was > awarded for " lifetime experience, " specifically for the writing of " Prozac: > Panacea or Pandora? " which she says she has been told is the equivalent of, > or " far beyond, " a dissertation. > > Self-published, the book contains spelling and punctuation errors and > incomplete sentences (although says an edited version will be > published in the next few weeks). It also contains page after page of > references to studies that seem to cast a cloud over the safety of > antidepressants. > > argues that the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is " backwards. " She > maintains that the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism > of serotonin, especially in the 7 to 10 percent of the population she says > that studies have shown don't have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in > the first place. The drugs, she charges, can also cause REM sleep behavior > disorder (RBD), which can cause people to act out their vivid, violent > dreams while in a dreamlike state. > > Deconstructing > > " It's hard to know where to begin to detail the cognitive errors she's > making, " says psychiatrist Tomb about 's book. " She is really taking > license with the scientific method. " Yes, is passionate about the > evils of antidepressants, Tomb says, " but passion has very little place in > the scientific method in terms of deciding what is accurate and truthful. " > The book is full of vignettes, but vignettes don't tell the whole story, he > argues. " You could take aspirin and do the same thing: comb the literature > and find horrible things that have occurred with aspirin. " > > But Dr. Marks, an internal medicine physician from Alabama who was > director of research at two large drug companies and now often testifies as > an expert witness against the drugs, calls " in many ways a visionary. " > She " has observed a phenomenon that is now being validated, " he says. > > " I do think there are some people who don't understand Dr. and don't > understand her passion and don't understand how smart she is, " says > Tierney, a North Carolina mother whose teenage daughter was put on Effexor > to treat her migraine headaches. > > In her darkest hours -- when her cheerful, straight-A daughter first became > " a monster " and later, in an effort to wean herself from Effexor, had > withdrawal symptoms that left her unable even to walk -- Tierney called > every antidepressant expert she could find on the Internet. Only > called her back. > > " Dr. never got one dime from me. She never mentioned money to me at > all. When she first called me back and I said, 'What can I pay you?' she > said, 'No. No.' You have to think that's pretty pure. And she helped me more > than anyone else. " > > " An unsung hero, " says Cassandra Dawn Casey, a Utah County woman who started > an antidepressant group called Aspire after her son's death two years ago. > " None of us would have known what was causing these problems in our lives if > it hadn't been for trailblazers like Ann. " > > The beginning > > 's interest in antidepressants began in 1989 when, she says, she > watched two LDS friends turn into alcoholics after being put on Prozac. > After that she started reading about the drugs, and soon she was hunting > down scientific studies, and then she got a button made that said " Just Say > No to Prozac. " After that she'd be at the grocery store or church and people > would come up to her and start telling her their stories. > > " There's great power in those stories, " says Texas trial attorney Andy > Vickery, who has been involved in more than 50 cases related to > antidepressants. " They have a power to persuade and even change the > bureaucratic forces of our country. " > > And that's just what expects to eventually happen. " I think these > drugs are history, " she says. Eventually, the stories told by parents, and > the investigations into the clinical trials that the drug companies have > suppressed, will add up to public outrage -- and then antidepressants will > be pulled from the market, she predicts. > > " What is sad, " she says, " is that so many have had to die or have their > lives ruined while we have learned that this was yet another terrible > mistake in our hope of 'Better Living Through Chemistry.' " > > E-mail: jarvik@d... > > Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co. > Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 3, 2005 Report Share Posted April 3, 2005 Yes, Time had to retract that article, but it had done it's damage and the retraction was not near as big as the article. But it worked well, everyone looked at Scientology as the bad guys and Prozac made several billion more dollars a year for the next decade. I had posted about a year ago an article by one the Eli Lilly guys admitting that he did a campaign against Scientology, that Time article was part of that campaign. There were a lot of lawsuits flying around back then. I wish something more could have been done then about Prozac, the rest of the " me-to " drugs might not have been around but then I look at the FDA and I know they probably would anyways. The FDA is in on it. Jim Re: Re: Dr. Ann article Sara, You nailed it right on the head. I have to laugh because it doesn't have as much punch in the areas where Scientologists are busy. The people that know them know those allegations are just bigotry used as a tool because they have seen for themselves that good work gets done by Scientologists just like all the other religions that work to help others, meaning all major religions. I believe it is a tactic like you say, I just see it fall flat so many times and backfire on the people saying it in my area. At the Texas legislature those kind of comments have backfired repeatedly. Bigoted comments only work when no one knows any of the targeted people. the Romans persecuted the Christians and now we have the Roman Catholic Church. To me the Christians comparitively civilized Europe from it's previous barbarism. It's just such a feeble defense for harming millions for profit, I have a feeling as more people meet real Scientologists comments like that will fall flat more and more often. To me it's a weak last defence. Jim I don't laugh at the Scientology charge. I have run into it twice. On the CABF (Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation) boards, there were hints from the moderators that my antidepressant views should be ignored because I must have been a Scientologist. One person who wasn't a moderator but was an " insider " came right out and said it. On the Court TV forum during the Pittman trial, there was a drive by posting by someone who posted just that once that the drugawareness.org site was a " Scientologist front " site. The people who were viciously out to hang and who didn't like to hear anything about antidepressants because, in their opinion, it was a defense designed only for the family to make money in a civil suit against the Pfizer, quickly latched on to the Scientology label for a few of us, including me. I had to point out the conflict between the Scientologist's total anti psychiatry position and the fact that drugsawareness.org has copies of, links to, and refereces about articles by psychiatrists and published in psychiatric journals before I got them to shut up. Even so, someone else would do it a few days later. Each time I debunked the alleged connection between drugawareness.org and the Scientologists I said that it was a means of discrediting people who were saying what the drug companies didn't want people to think about. I strongly suspect that the drug companies encourage if not started these allegations. Doctors who spoke out against SSRIs were (are?) labelled " quacks " while lay people were (are) labelled " Scientologists " . It is a means of discrediting so that the information the person is delivering can be dismissed. I hadn't seen it for about two years then all of a sudden during the Pittman trial it surfaced again. BTW, I am sure that drive by posting on the Court TV board was pre written and a copy and pasted to the forum. I honestly believe that during the Pittman trial the drug companies had an enployee searching for forums where there were positive posts about. drugawareness.com and, when he found one, posted the " Scientologist " allegation. But maybe I'm just too cynical but I don't believe the Scientologist should ever be taken lightly. > Ann is awesome and I love her work. She was years ahead with her > observations and she deserves credit for all her hard work. A true freedom > fighter. > > I laugh at the Scientology angle. Ann is a Mormon like the couple I > talked to today that I helped get out of a CPS drugged-children situation > working for CCHR. > > > Best, > > Jim > > http://tinyurl.com/3txqt > > > August 2004 > > Depressed over Prozac > Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News > > Ann knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit > her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in > the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and > then drank a can of Drano; the 12- year-old girl who strangled herself with > a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger on the wall. > > Sit with for an hour and pretty soon your head is swimming in details: > the shooting at Columbine, a study of violent mice, the conversation she had > with Rusty Yates, whose wife drowned their five children in a bathtub. > Yates was on maximum doses of Effexor and Remeron, she reminds you. > The world according to Ann is a place full of people who were put on > antidepressants and then went on to do horrible things. > > is executive director of the International Coalition for Drug > Awareness, which she operates out of her home office in West Jordan, a home > she has mortgaged twice to pay for her 15-year crusade against > antidepressants and the pharmaceutical companies who make them. > > She is heartened by recent scrutiny of the drugs. Last year, the British > version of the FDA banned all antidepressants other than Prozac for use in > children under 18. In March, the Food and Drug Administration issued a > Public Health Advisory about antidepressants - - urging doctors and families > to monitor adult and child patients on the drugs -- and then appointed a > panel of experts to reanalyze the incidence of suicide attempts during > clinical trials of teens. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer > sued the makers of Paxil for consumer fraud, and 30 Utahns joined a > nationwide class- action suit charging that GlaxoKline " concealed, > suppressed and downplayed " severe withdrawal reactions in people trying to > go off the antidepressant. > > But won't be happy until the drugs are banned altogether. They cause > people to become violently suicidal and homicidal, she argues. They cause > cancer, she says, and heart disease and diabetes and divorce. > > Some people call her a visionary. Others roll their eyes and call her > misinformed -- and worry that she is hurting the very people she wants to > help. > > Panacea or Pandora? > > In 1991, wrote an 80-page pamphlet called " Prozac: Panacea or > Pandora? " Three years later she expanded it into a 424-page book that she > published herself. She wrote a lot of it longhand, while sitting in the Salt > Lake LDS Temple: the one place, she says, where she was sure Satan didn't > have a foothold. > > Hers was one of the first books to criticize antidepressants, but others > followed: Dr. Breggin's 1995 " Talking Back to Prozac, " Dr. ph > Glenmullen's 2000 " Prozac Backlash, " Dr. Healy's 2004 " Let Them Eat > Prozac. " As the titles suggest, Prozac has become shorthand for > antidepressant, the way Kleenex is shorthand for tissue, because Prozac was > the first of a new class of antidepressants called SSRIs (selective > serotonin reuptake inhibitors). But there are now plenty of others, > including Paxil, Effexor, Zoloft and Luvox. > > According to IMS Health, a market research company for the pharmaceutical > industry, sales of antidepressants worldwide in 2003 reached $19.5 billion, > up 10 percent from 2002. Some of this growth, according to the IMS Web site, > can be attributed to the use of antidepressants in " lifestyle disorders, " > which now include or could feasibly include, according to IMS, premenstrual > dysphoric disorder, smoking cessation, weight loss and shyness -- a list > that causes some people, like Jim Harper of prozactruth.com, to complain > that antidepressants are now prescribed " if you bite your nails. " > > started the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in 1997. The > coalition has a Web site, www.drugawareness.org, volunteer directors in 30 > states and board members in Bulgaria and Singapore. The most celebrated > member of her board is Dr. Candace Pert, the town University School of > Medicine neuroscientist who a generation ago helped discover and map the > kind of receptors that regulate mood and health. > > On the case > > Distraught parents of suicidal teens, and the relatives and attorneys of > people accused of murder, call asking for her help. But also > keeps her antennae up for stories about violent deaths that might possibly > be linked to antidepressants. If she reads a newspaper account about a man, > say, who has gone on a shooting rampage at work -- as happened in July at a > ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas -- she will immediately get on the phone to > flesh out the details, trying to find out if the assailant had been on an > antidepressant. Occasionally the victims are famous, and sometimes the > assailants become famous for their horrific crimes, but either way is > not afraid to insert herself into their lives or their deaths. > > The day after she heard that Brynn Hartman had shot her husband, comedian > Phil Hartman, and then herself, called up Phil Hartman's brother, > whose number she found on the Internet. had just returned from being > an expert witness at the trial of a Wyoming woman on Paxil who had shot her > husband and later reported that she didn't remember anything about the > murder except standing there with the smoking gun. So told the > Hartmans: " Don't you stop till you find one of these drugs. " Brynn Hartman, > it turned out, had been on Zoloft; drugmaker Pfizer settled an eventual > wrongful death case for an undisclosed amount. > > After reading about Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader who killed his > family and then drove to work and killed nine more people before also > turning the gun on himself, phoned his mother. It wasn't until six > months later that Atlanta police reported that Prozac had been found in > Barton's car, so was operating on instinct when she urged Barton's > mother to have his body tested for antidepressants. " Not all coroners check > for these drugs, " explains. " It requires a few extra tests, and not > all states will pay for it. That's why you need to get to the families right > away. " > > But things don't always work out the way would hope. In the Atlanta > day trader case, she says, she had his body ready to be shipped to an > independent forensic toxicologist in Oklahoma City, but Barton's mother > changed her mind. Maybe, says, the coroner told Mrs. Barton that > was a Scientologist. > > The Scientology charge still surfaces occasionally, because Scientologists > are famous for their opposition to psychotropic drugs and in fact to > psychiatry in general. ( " Psychiatry is seeking to create a world where man > is reduced to a robotized or drugged, vegetablelike state so that he can be > controlled, " Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote.) > > Vicki Cottrell, executive director of the Utah chapter of the National > Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is sure has Scientology ties. > " She says she's not a Scientologist, but she has the same philosophy, " says > Cottrell. " Of course I don't have the thing on paper, in writing, but I > believe they finance her. " denies any connection to Scientology and > says in fact that Scientologists don't like her because she won't go after > psychiatrists. She says her war against antidepressants has put her $100,000 > in debt (mostly from phone bills and publishing her book). accuses > NAMI of getting money from drug companies. > > Cause and effect > > Emotions run high because, on both sides, there is a belief that lives are > at stake. Mental-health advocates argue that antidepressants have helped > millions of people, and they worry that crusades like 's will convince > the very people who need drugs to go off them. The stories of people who > have committed suicide or crimes while on antidepressants are sad and > regrettable, they agree, but anecdotes aren't scientific proof. > > Deseret Morning News graphic > > Antidepressants > > Requires Adobe Acrobat. > > Did Mark Barton, for example, kill his family and co-workers because he was > on Prozac orwhile he was on Prozac? > > " It's a cause-and-effect issue, " says Dr. Meredith Alden, president of the > Utah Psychiatric Association. " People make assumptions about cause and > effect when there is only an association. " > > Yes, sometimes people on antidepressants kill themselves or act violently, > she says, but that's because " you're already dealing with people who are > prone to violent behavior. " And, she says, " people who are depressed are > going to be at greater risk of hurting themselves. " > > Sometimes, concedes University of Utah psychiatry professor Dr. Tomb, > " some people will briefly feel more suicidal " when they're first put on > antidepressants, but that happens when they first go into psychotherapy, > too, he argues, " or just because they're getting better by tincture of > time. " Tomb, like a lot of people in the field, offers this explanation: A > really depressed person may not have the energy to kill himself; then he > starts taking medication, still feels depressed, but suddenly has enough > energy to follow through with his suicidal thoughts. > > But what about the people who weren't suicidal until they took the drugs, > asks. What about the people who had no history of violence but then > killed their own children? > > FDA weighs in > > The FDA, in its Health Advisory issued in March, asked drug companies to add > stronger warnings to their package inserts, cautioning physicians and > families to " closely monitor " both adults and children for suicidal > thinking, and " certain behaviors that are known to be associated with these > drugs, " including mania and hostility, especially at the beginning of > treatment, or when the doses are increased or decreased. The FDA stopped > short of requiring the companies to issue these warnings, though, and made > it clear that the matter of cause and effect has not been settled yet. > > The FDA appointed a panel of independent experts to review clinical trials > of antidepressant use in children and teens, trying to determine if these > studies report more suicide attempts in patients prescribed the drugs > compared to those given a placebo pill. The review follows allegations that > GlaxoKline failed to report trials that showed an increase in suicide > attempts, as well as those trials that showed that Paxil was no more > effective than a placebo for younger patients. According to the Wall Street > Journal, which obtained a draft of the panel's review last week, the > clinical trials show children and teens on the drugs were indeed more likely > to have thoughts that appeared to be suicidal. > > Earlier this month, Health Canada, the Canadian version of the FDA, issued a > warning that newborns may suffer withdrawal and other possible symptoms > (seizures, constant crying, etc.) when pregnant women take SSRIs during the > third trimester of their pregnancies. > > In June, the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy > Research Institute issued a report urging that psychotropic drugs should be > prescribed for children " only when the anticipated benefits outweigh the > risks. " Next month, a congressional committee will hold hearings about the > safety of antidepressants and the FDA's alleged censoring last winter of a > staff member who argued that the drugs are dangerous for young people. > > " From those who have seen the internal company documents, " says , " we > know that there is no distinction in age groups with these suicidal > reactions. These reactions are the same across the board, no matter the > age. " > > Utah cases > > argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's famous violent crimes > -- Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed herself and her three children in 1991; > Sergei Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family History Library in > 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his mother with an axe in 2001 -- were violent > because they were either on antidepressants or had gone off them too > abruptly. > > Lenny Gall's father, Len, contacted six months ago, before his son's > sentencing hearing. then went through Lenny's medical records, Gall > says, and found that " he had a very significant reaction to Paxil when he > was 16 " and was put on the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa " shortly before " the > murder. " He's never had a shred of violence in him, " Gall says. > > has served as an expert witness in a dozen criminal cases -- most > recently a land case against a teenage boy who fatally laced his best > friend's soda with cyanide -- and has been hired as a consultant in several > civil cases against drug companies, including one that tried to implicate > Luvox as the reason why shot students at Columbine High School. > She estimates that the number of people she has consulted with about > antidepressants -- how to safely get off them, how to find alternative > methods for treating depression, what to do when a family member is suicidal > or manic -- is now in the thousands. > > Atwood, who will be a senior this year at Copper Hills High School, > credits with helping him get off antidepressants, first prescribed for > him when he was 12. He tried suicide at least 15 times before reading > 's book and listening to her tape. It was then, he says, that he > discovered that odd symptoms -- persistent dreams of gouging his eyes out, > for example -- might be side effects of the drugs that were supposed to be > making him feel normal. Following 's advice, he slowly tapered off > Remeron and now tries to avoid sugar, meat and dairy products. " I still have > my moments of depression, " he says. " But I haven't attempted suicide for > over a year. " > > Ann Blake , according to the International Coalition for Drug Awareness > web site, has a doctorate in health sciences with an emphasis on psychology. > There is no mention of the institution that awarded her this degree -- > Wythe College, in Cedar City. explains that the Ph.D. was > awarded for " lifetime experience, " specifically for the writing of " Prozac: > Panacea or Pandora? " which she says she has been told is the equivalent of, > or " far beyond, " a dissertation. > > Self-published, the book contains spelling and punctuation errors and > incomplete sentences (although says an edited version will be > published in the next few weeks). It also contains page after page of > references to studies that seem to cast a cloud over the safety of > antidepressants. > > argues that the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is " backwards. " She > maintains that the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism > of serotonin, especially in the 7 to 10 percent of the population she says > that studies have shown don't have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in > the first place. The drugs, she charges, can also cause REM sleep behavior > disorder (RBD), which can cause people to act out their vivid, violent > dreams while in a dreamlike state. > > Deconstructing > > " It's hard to know where to begin to detail the cognitive errors she's > making, " says psychiatrist Tomb about 's book. " She is really taking > license with the scientific method. " Yes, is passionate about the > evils of antidepressants, Tomb says, " but passion has very little place in > the scientific method in terms of deciding what is accurate and truthful. " > The book is full of vignettes, but vignettes don't tell the whole story, he > argues. " You could take aspirin and do the same thing: comb the literature > and find horrible things that have occurred with aspirin. " > > But Dr. Marks, an internal medicine physician from Alabama who was > director of research at two large drug companies and now often testifies as > an expert witness against the drugs, calls " in many ways a visionary. " > She " has observed a phenomenon that is now being validated, " he says. > > " I do think there are some people who don't understand Dr. and don't > understand her passion and don't understand how smart she is, " says > Tierney, a North Carolina mother whose teenage daughter was put on Effexor > to treat her migraine headaches. > > In her darkest hours -- when her cheerful, straight-A daughter first became > " a monster " and later, in an effort to wean herself from Effexor, had > withdrawal symptoms that left her unable even to walk -- Tierney called > every antidepressant expert she could find on the Internet. Only > called her back. > > " Dr. never got one dime from me. She never mentioned money to me at > all. When she first called me back and I said, 'What can I pay you?' she > said, 'No. No.' You have to think that's pretty pure. And she helped me more > than anyone else. " > > " An unsung hero, " says Cassandra Dawn Casey, a Utah County woman who started > an antidepressant group called Aspire after her son's death two years ago. > " None of us would have known what was causing these problems in our lives if > it hadn't been for trailblazers like Ann. " > > The beginning > > 's interest in antidepressants began in 1989 when, she says, she > watched two LDS friends turn into alcoholics after being put on Prozac. > After that she started reading about the drugs, and soon she was hunting > down scientific studies, and then she got a button made that said " Just Say > No to Prozac. " After that she'd be at the grocery store or church and people > would come up to her and start telling her their stories. > > " There's great power in those stories, " says Texas trial attorney Andy > Vickery, who has been involved in more than 50 cases related to > antidepressants. " They have a power to persuade and even change the > bureaucratic forces of our country. " > > And that's just what expects to eventually happen. " I think these > drugs are history, " she says. Eventually, the stories told by parents, and > the investigations into the clinical trials that the drug companies have > suppressed, will add up to public outrage -- and then antidepressants will > be pulled from the market, she predicts. > > " What is sad, " she says, " is that so many have had to die or have their > lives ruined while we have learned that this was yet another terrible > mistake in our hope of 'Better Living Through Chemistry.' " > > E-mail: jarvik@d... > > Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co. > Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 6, 2005 Report Share Posted April 6, 2005 Jim, Of course, it is absolutely true that Scientology opposes psychiatry, so I don't know why Time Magazine would really need to retract a story pointing out Scientology's position. ( I did not see the article, perhaps it was unfair or inaccurate, regarding Scientology's position.). I have a stack of those excellent, if garish, 8 1/2 X 11 " booklets put out by their CCHR organization. I've attended hearings they held in Philadelphia. There is not any doubt in my mind that it is true that Scientology opposes psychiatry. And, I say, So what? That's hardly a crime. It is not just a whim on the part of Scientology, nor jealousy, or any other silly, empty thing. Scientology has made a well-documented case against psychiatry, when few other organizations, especially religious ones, with the most reason to do so, including my beloved Russian Orthodox Church, have done so. But the utter idiocy here is the lack of intellectual power on the part of these idiot shrinks who insist, and really, truly believe, that because Scientology has come out against them, then any criticism of them is ipso facto coming from Scientology. First, the dopes have failed to actually take in the substance of the case that has been made by Scientology against psychiatry, and in any case fail to address any of its findings, and second, we behold the logical lapse involved in concluding, as a result, that any criticism of psychiatry must necessarily be coming from Scientology and not from the facts that Scientology has assembled for all the world to consider, regarding the true nature of this dark and destructive religion which masquerades as science. . Re: Re: Dr. Ann article Sara, You nailed it right on the head. I have to laugh because it doesn't have as much punch in the areas where Scientologists are busy. The people that know them know those allegations are just bigotry used as a tool because they have seen for themselves that good work gets done by Scientologists just like all the other religions that work to help others, meaning all major religions. I believe it is a tactic like you say, I just see it fall flat so many times and backfire on the people saying it in my area. At the Texas legislature those kind of comments have backfired repeatedly. Bigoted comments only work when no one knows any of the targeted people. the Romans persecuted the Christians and now we have the Roman Catholic Church. To me the Christians comparitively civilized Europe from it's previous barbarism. It's just such a feeble defense for harming millions for profit, I have a feeling as more people meet real Scientologists comments like that will fall flat more and more often. To me it's a weak last defence. Jim I don't laugh at the Scientology charge. I have run into it twice. On the CABF (Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation) boards, there were hints from the moderators that my antidepressant views should be ignored because I must have been a Scientologist. One person who wasn't a moderator but was an " insider " came right out and said it. On the Court TV forum during the Pittman trial, there was a drive by posting by someone who posted just that once that the drugawareness.org site was a " Scientologist front " site. The people who were viciously out to hang and who didn't like to hear anything about antidepressants because, in their opinion, it was a defense designed only for the family to make money in a civil suit against the Pfizer, quickly latched on to the Scientology label for a few of us, including me. I had to point out the conflict between the Scientologist's total anti psychiatry position and the fact that drugsawareness.org has copies of, links to, and refereces about articles by psychiatrists and published in psychiatric journals before I got them to shut up. Even so, someone else would do it a few days later. Each time I debunked the alleged connection between drugawareness.org and the Scientologists I said that it was a means of discrediting people who were saying what the drug companies didn't want people to think about. I strongly suspect that the drug companies encourage if not started these allegations. Doctors who spoke out against SSRIs were (are?) labelled " quacks " while lay people were (are) labelled " Scientologists " . It is a means of discrediting so that the information the person is delivering can be dismissed. I hadn't seen it for about two years then all of a sudden during the Pittman trial it surfaced again. BTW, I am sure that drive by posting on the Court TV board was pre written and a copy and pasted to the forum. I honestly believe that during the Pittman trial the drug companies had an enployee searching for forums where there were positive posts about. drugawareness.com and, when he found one, posted the " Scientologist " allegation. But maybe I'm just too cynical but I don't believe the Scientologist should ever be taken lightly. > Ann is awesome and I love her work. She was years ahead with her > observations and she deserves credit for all her hard work. A true freedom > fighter. > > I laugh at the Scientology angle. Ann is a Mormon like the couple I > talked to today that I helped get out of a CPS drugged-children situation > working for CCHR. > > > Best, > > Jim > > http://tinyurl.com/3txqt > > > August 2004 > > Depressed over Prozac > Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News > > Ann knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit > her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in > the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and > then drank a can of Drano; the 12- year-old girl who strangled herself with > a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger on the wall. > > Sit with for an hour and pretty soon your head is swimming in details: > the shooting at Columbine, a study of violent mice, the conversation she had > with Rusty Yates, whose wife drowned their five children in a bathtub. > Yates was on maximum doses of Effexor and Remeron, she reminds you. > The world according to Ann is a place full of people who were put on > antidepressants and then went on to do horrible things. > > is executive director of the International Coalition for Drug > Awareness, which she operates out of her home office in West Jordan, a home > she has mortgaged twice to pay for her 15-year crusade against > antidepressants and the pharmaceutical companies who make them. > > She is heartened by recent scrutiny of the drugs. Last year, the British > version of the FDA banned all antidepressants other than Prozac for use in > children under 18. In March, the Food and Drug Administration issued a > Public Health Advisory about antidepressants - - urging doctors and families > to monitor adult and child patients on the drugs -- and then appointed a > panel of experts to reanalyze the incidence of suicide attempts during > clinical trials of teens. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer > sued the makers of Paxil for consumer fraud, and 30 Utahns joined a > nationwide class- action suit charging that GlaxoKline " concealed, > suppressed and downplayed " severe withdrawal reactions in people trying to > go off the antidepressant. > > But won't be happy until the drugs are banned altogether. They cause > people to become violently suicidal and homicidal, she argues. They cause > cancer, she says, and heart disease and diabetes and divorce. > > Some people call her a visionary. Others roll their eyes and call her > misinformed -- and worry that she is hurting the very people she wants to > help. > > Panacea or Pandora? > > In 1991, wrote an 80-page pamphlet called " Prozac: Panacea or > Pandora? " Three years later she expanded it into a 424-page book that she > published herself. She wrote a lot of it longhand, while sitting in the Salt > Lake LDS Temple: the one place, she says, where she was sure Satan didn't > have a foothold. > > Hers was one of the first books to criticize antidepressants, but others > followed: Dr. Breggin's 1995 " Talking Back to Prozac, " Dr. ph > Glenmullen's 2000 " Prozac Backlash, " Dr. Healy's 2004 " Let Them Eat > Prozac. " As the titles suggest, Prozac has become shorthand for > antidepressant, the way Kleenex is shorthand for tissue, because Prozac was > the first of a new class of antidepressants called SSRIs (selective > serotonin reuptake inhibitors). But there are now plenty of others, > including Paxil, Effexor, Zoloft and Luvox. > > According to IMS Health, a market research company for the pharmaceutical > industry, sales of antidepressants worldwide in 2003 reached $19.5 billion, > up 10 percent from 2002. Some of this growth, according to the IMS Web site, > can be attributed to the use of antidepressants in " lifestyle disorders, " > which now include or could feasibly include, according to IMS, premenstrual > dysphoric disorder, smoking cessation, weight loss and shyness -- a list > that causes some people, like Jim Harper of prozactruth.com, to complain > that antidepressants are now prescribed " if you bite your nails. " > > started the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in 1997. The > coalition has a Web site, www.drugawareness.org, volunteer directors in 30 > states and board members in Bulgaria and Singapore. The most celebrated > member of her board is Dr. Candace Pert, the town University School of > Medicine neuroscientist who a generation ago helped discover and map the > kind of receptors that regulate mood and health. > > On the case > > Distraught parents of suicidal teens, and the relatives and attorneys of > people accused of murder, call asking for her help. But also > keeps her antennae up for stories about violent deaths that might possibly > be linked to antidepressants. If she reads a newspaper account about a man, > say, who has gone on a shooting rampage at work -- as happened in July at a > ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas -- she will immediately get on the phone to > flesh out the details, trying to find out if the assailant had been on an > antidepressant. Occasionally the victims are famous, and sometimes the > assailants become famous for their horrific crimes, but either way is > not afraid to insert herself into their lives or their deaths. > > The day after she heard that Brynn Hartman had shot her husband, comedian > Phil Hartman, and then herself, called up Phil Hartman's brother, > whose number she found on the Internet. had just returned from being > an expert witness at the trial of a Wyoming woman on Paxil who had shot her > husband and later reported that she didn't remember anything about the > murder except standing there with the smoking gun. So told the > Hartmans: " Don't you stop till you find one of these drugs. " Brynn Hartman, > it turned out, had been on Zoloft; drugmaker Pfizer settled an eventual > wrongful death case for an undisclosed amount. > > After reading about Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader who killed his > family and then drove to work and killed nine more people before also > turning the gun on himself, phoned his mother. It wasn't until six > months later that Atlanta police reported that Prozac had been found in > Barton's car, so was operating on instinct when she urged Barton's > mother to have his body tested for antidepressants. " Not all coroners check > for these drugs, " explains. " It requires a few extra tests, and not > all states will pay for it. That's why you need to get to the families right > away. " > > But things don't always work out the way would hope. In the Atlanta > day trader case, she says, she had his body ready to be shipped to an > independent forensic toxicologist in Oklahoma City, but Barton's mother > changed her mind. Maybe, says, the coroner told Mrs. Barton that > was a Scientologist. > > The Scientology charge still surfaces occasionally, because Scientologists > are famous for their opposition to psychotropic drugs and in fact to > psychiatry in general. ( " Psychiatry is seeking to create a world where man > is reduced to a robotized or drugged, vegetablelike state so that he can be > controlled, " Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote.) > > Vicki Cottrell, executive director of the Utah chapter of the National > Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is sure has Scientology ties. > " She says she's not a Scientologist, but she has the same philosophy, " says > Cottrell. " Of course I don't have the thing on paper, in writing, but I > believe they finance her. " denies any connection to Scientology and > says in fact that Scientologists don't like her because she won't go after > psychiatrists. She says her war against antidepressants has put her $100,000 > in debt (mostly from phone bills and publishing her book). accuses > NAMI of getting money from drug companies. > > Cause and effect > > Emotions run high because, on both sides, there is a belief that lives are > at stake. Mental-health advocates argue that antidepressants have helped > millions of people, and they worry that crusades like 's will convince > the very people who need drugs to go off them. The stories of people who > have committed suicide or crimes while on antidepressants are sad and > regrettable, they agree, but anecdotes aren't scientific proof. > > Deseret Morning News graphic > > Antidepressants > > Requires Adobe Acrobat. > > Did Mark Barton, for example, kill his family and co-workers because he was > on Prozac orwhile he was on Prozac? > > " It's a cause-and-effect issue, " says Dr. Meredith Alden, president of the > Utah Psychiatric Association. " People make assumptions about cause and > effect when there is only an association. " > > Yes, sometimes people on antidepressants kill themselves or act violently, > she says, but that's because " you're already dealing with people who are > prone to violent behavior. " And, she says, " people who are depressed are > going to be at greater risk of hurting themselves. " > > Sometimes, concedes University of Utah psychiatry professor Dr. Tomb, > " some people will briefly feel more suicidal " when they're first put on > antidepressants, but that happens when they first go into psychotherapy, > too, he argues, " or just because they're getting better by tincture of > time. " Tomb, like a lot of people in the field, offers this explanation: A > really depressed person may not have the energy to kill himself; then he > starts taking medication, still feels depressed, but suddenly has enough > energy to follow through with his suicidal thoughts. > > But what about the people who weren't suicidal until they took the drugs, > asks. What about the people who had no history of violence but then > killed their own children? > > FDA weighs in > > The FDA, in its Health Advisory issued in March, asked drug companies to add > stronger warnings to their package inserts, cautioning physicians and > families to " closely monitor " both adults and children for suicidal > thinking, and " certain behaviors that are known to be associated with these > drugs, " including mania and hostility, especially at the beginning of > treatment, or when the doses are increased or decreased. The FDA stopped > short of requiring the companies to issue these warnings, though, and made > it clear that the matter of cause and effect has not been settled yet. > > The FDA appointed a panel of independent experts to review clinical trials > of antidepressant use in children and teens, trying to determine if these > studies report more suicide attempts in patients prescribed the drugs > compared to those given a placebo pill. The review follows allegations that > GlaxoKline failed to report trials that showed an increase in suicide > attempts, as well as those trials that showed that Paxil was no more > effective than a placebo for younger patients. According to the Wall Street > Journal, which obtained a draft of the panel's review last week, the > clinical trials show children and teens on the drugs were indeed more likely > to have thoughts that appeared to be suicidal. > > Earlier this month, Health Canada, the Canadian version of the FDA, issued a > warning that newborns may suffer withdrawal and other possible symptoms > (seizures, constant crying, etc.) when pregnant women take SSRIs during the > third trimester of their pregnancies. > > In June, the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy > Research Institute issued a report urging that psychotropic drugs should be > prescribed for children " only when the anticipated benefits outweigh the > risks. " Next month, a congressional committee will hold hearings about the > safety of antidepressants and the FDA's alleged censoring last winter of a > staff member who argued that the drugs are dangerous for young people. > > " From those who have seen the internal company documents, " says , " we > know that there is no distinction in age groups with these suicidal > reactions. These reactions are the same across the board, no matter the > age. " > > Utah cases > > argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's famous violent crimes > -- Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed herself and her three children in 1991; > Sergei Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family History Library in > 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his mother with an axe in 2001 -- were violent > because they were either on antidepressants or had gone off them too > abruptly. > > Lenny Gall's father, Len, contacted six months ago, before his son's > sentencing hearing. then went through Lenny's medical records, Gall > says, and found that " he had a very significant reaction to Paxil when he > was 16 " and was put on the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa " shortly before " the > murder. " He's never had a shred of violence in him, " Gall says. > > has served as an expert witness in a dozen criminal cases -- most > recently a land case against a teenage boy who fatally laced his best > friend's soda with cyanide -- and has been hired as a consultant in several > civil cases against drug companies, including one that tried to implicate > Luvox as the reason why shot students at Columbine High School. > She estimates that the number of people she has consulted with about > antidepressants -- how to safely get off them, how to find alternative > methods for treating depression, what to do when a family member is suicidal > or manic -- is now in the thousands. > > Atwood, who will be a senior this year at Copper Hills High School, > credits with helping him get off antidepressants, first prescribed for > him when he was 12. He tried suicide at least 15 times before reading > 's book and listening to her tape. It was then, he says, that he > discovered that odd symptoms -- persistent dreams of gouging his eyes out, > for example -- might be side effects of the drugs that were supposed to be > making him feel normal. Following 's advice, he slowly tapered off > Remeron and now tries to avoid sugar, meat and dairy products. " I still have > my moments of depression, " he says. " But I haven't attempted suicide for > over a year. " > > Ann Blake , according to the International Coalition for Drug Awareness > web site, has a doctorate in health sciences with an emphasis on psychology. > There is no mention of the institution that awarded her this degree -- > Wythe College, in Cedar City. explains that the Ph.D. was > awarded for " lifetime experience, " specifically for the writing of " Prozac: > Panacea or Pandora? " which she says she has been told is the equivalent of, > or " far beyond, " a dissertation. > > Self-published, the book contains spelling and punctuation errors and > incomplete sentences (although says an edited version will be > published in the next few weeks). It also contains page after page of > references to studies that seem to cast a cloud over the safety of > antidepressants. > > argues that the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is " backwards. " She > maintains that the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism > of serotonin, especially in the 7 to 10 percent of the population she says > that studies have shown don't have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in > the first place. The drugs, she charges, can also cause REM sleep behavior > disorder (RBD), which can cause people to act out their vivid, violent > dreams while in a dreamlike state. > > Deconstructing > > " It's hard to know where to begin to detail the cognitive errors she's > making, " says psychiatrist Tomb about 's book. " She is really taking > license with the scientific method. " Yes, is passionate about the > evils of antidepressants, Tomb says, " but passion has very little place in > the scientific method in terms of deciding what is accurate and truthful. " > The book is full of vignettes, but vignettes don't tell the whole story, he > argues. " You could take aspirin and do the same thing: comb the literature > and find horrible things that have occurred with aspirin. " > > But Dr. Marks, an internal medicine physician from Alabama who was > director of research at two large drug companies and now often testifies as > an expert witness against the drugs, calls " in many ways a visionary. " > She " has observed a phenomenon that is now being validated, " he says. > > " I do think there are some people who don't understand Dr. and don't > understand her passion and don't understand how smart she is, " says > Tierney, a North Carolina mother whose teenage daughter was put on Effexor > to treat her migraine headaches. > > In her darkest hours -- when her cheerful, straight-A daughter first became > " a monster " and later, in an effort to wean herself from Effexor, had > withdrawal symptoms that left her unable even to walk -- Tierney called > every antidepressant expert she could find on the Internet. Only > called her back. > > " Dr. never got one dime from me. She never mentioned money to me at > all. When she first called me back and I said, 'What can I pay you?' she > said, 'No. No.' You have to think that's pretty pure. And she helped me more > than anyone else. " > > " An unsung hero, " says Cassandra Dawn Casey, a Utah County woman who started > an antidepressant group called Aspire after her son's death two years ago. > " None of us would have known what was causing these problems in our lives if > it hadn't been for trailblazers like Ann. " > > The beginning > > 's interest in antidepressants began in 1989 when, she says, she > watched two LDS friends turn into alcoholics after being put on Prozac. > After that she started reading about the drugs, and soon she was hunting > down scientific studies, and then she got a button made that said " Just Say > No to Prozac. " After that she'd be at the grocery store or church and people > would come up to her and start telling her their stories. > > " There's great power in those stories, " says Texas trial attorney Andy > Vickery, who has been involved in more than 50 cases related to > antidepressants. " They have a power to persuade and even change the > bureaucratic forces of our country. " > > And that's just what expects to eventually happen. " I think these > drugs are history, " she says. Eventually, the stories told by parents, and > the investigations into the clinical trials that the drug companies have > suppressed, will add up to public outrage -- and then antidepressants will > be pulled from the market, she predicts. > > " What is sad, " she says, " is that so many have had to die or have their > lives ruined while we have learned that this was yet another terrible > mistake in our hope of 'Better Living Through Chemistry.' " > > E-mail: jarvik@d... > > Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co. > Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 6, 2005 Report Share Posted April 6, 2005 Jim, Of course, it is absolutely true that Scientology opposes psychiatry, so I don't know why Time Magazine would really need to retract a story pointing out Scientology's position. ( I did not see the article, perhaps it was unfair or inaccurate, regarding Scientology's position.). I have a stack of those excellent, if garish, 8 1/2 X 11 " booklets put out by their CCHR organization. I've attended hearings they held in Philadelphia. There is not any doubt in my mind that it is true that Scientology opposes psychiatry. And, I say, So what? That's hardly a crime. It is not just a whim on the part of Scientology, nor jealousy, or any other silly, empty thing. Scientology has made a well-documented case against psychiatry, when few other organizations, especially religious ones, with the most reason to do so, including my beloved Russian Orthodox Church, have done so. But the utter idiocy here is the lack of intellectual power on the part of these idiot shrinks who insist, and really, truly believe, that because Scientology has come out against them, then any criticism of them is ipso facto coming from Scientology. First, the dopes have failed to actually take in the substance of the case that has been made by Scientology against psychiatry, and in any case fail to address any of its findings, and second, we behold the logical lapse involved in concluding, as a result, that any criticism of psychiatry must necessarily be coming from Scientology and not from the facts that Scientology has assembled for all the world to consider, regarding the true nature of this dark and destructive religion which masquerades as science. . Re: Re: Dr. Ann article Sara, You nailed it right on the head. I have to laugh because it doesn't have as much punch in the areas where Scientologists are busy. The people that know them know those allegations are just bigotry used as a tool because they have seen for themselves that good work gets done by Scientologists just like all the other religions that work to help others, meaning all major religions. I believe it is a tactic like you say, I just see it fall flat so many times and backfire on the people saying it in my area. At the Texas legislature those kind of comments have backfired repeatedly. Bigoted comments only work when no one knows any of the targeted people. the Romans persecuted the Christians and now we have the Roman Catholic Church. To me the Christians comparitively civilized Europe from it's previous barbarism. It's just such a feeble defense for harming millions for profit, I have a feeling as more people meet real Scientologists comments like that will fall flat more and more often. To me it's a weak last defence. Jim I don't laugh at the Scientology charge. I have run into it twice. On the CABF (Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation) boards, there were hints from the moderators that my antidepressant views should be ignored because I must have been a Scientologist. One person who wasn't a moderator but was an " insider " came right out and said it. On the Court TV forum during the Pittman trial, there was a drive by posting by someone who posted just that once that the drugawareness.org site was a " Scientologist front " site. The people who were viciously out to hang and who didn't like to hear anything about antidepressants because, in their opinion, it was a defense designed only for the family to make money in a civil suit against the Pfizer, quickly latched on to the Scientology label for a few of us, including me. I had to point out the conflict between the Scientologist's total anti psychiatry position and the fact that drugsawareness.org has copies of, links to, and refereces about articles by psychiatrists and published in psychiatric journals before I got them to shut up. Even so, someone else would do it a few days later. Each time I debunked the alleged connection between drugawareness.org and the Scientologists I said that it was a means of discrediting people who were saying what the drug companies didn't want people to think about. I strongly suspect that the drug companies encourage if not started these allegations. Doctors who spoke out against SSRIs were (are?) labelled " quacks " while lay people were (are) labelled " Scientologists " . It is a means of discrediting so that the information the person is delivering can be dismissed. I hadn't seen it for about two years then all of a sudden during the Pittman trial it surfaced again. BTW, I am sure that drive by posting on the Court TV board was pre written and a copy and pasted to the forum. I honestly believe that during the Pittman trial the drug companies had an enployee searching for forums where there were positive posts about. drugawareness.com and, when he found one, posted the " Scientologist " allegation. But maybe I'm just too cynical but I don't believe the Scientologist should ever be taken lightly. > Ann is awesome and I love her work. She was years ahead with her > observations and she deserves credit for all her hard work. A true freedom > fighter. > > I laugh at the Scientology angle. Ann is a Mormon like the couple I > talked to today that I helped get out of a CPS drugged-children situation > working for CCHR. > > > Best, > > Jim > > http://tinyurl.com/3txqt > > > August 2004 > > Depressed over Prozac > Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News > > Ann knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit > her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in > the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and > then drank a can of Drano; the 12- year-old girl who strangled herself with > a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger on the wall. > > Sit with for an hour and pretty soon your head is swimming in details: > the shooting at Columbine, a study of violent mice, the conversation she had > with Rusty Yates, whose wife drowned their five children in a bathtub. > Yates was on maximum doses of Effexor and Remeron, she reminds you. > The world according to Ann is a place full of people who were put on > antidepressants and then went on to do horrible things. > > is executive director of the International Coalition for Drug > Awareness, which she operates out of her home office in West Jordan, a home > she has mortgaged twice to pay for her 15-year crusade against > antidepressants and the pharmaceutical companies who make them. > > She is heartened by recent scrutiny of the drugs. Last year, the British > version of the FDA banned all antidepressants other than Prozac for use in > children under 18. In March, the Food and Drug Administration issued a > Public Health Advisory about antidepressants - - urging doctors and families > to monitor adult and child patients on the drugs -- and then appointed a > panel of experts to reanalyze the incidence of suicide attempts during > clinical trials of teens. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer > sued the makers of Paxil for consumer fraud, and 30 Utahns joined a > nationwide class- action suit charging that GlaxoKline " concealed, > suppressed and downplayed " severe withdrawal reactions in people trying to > go off the antidepressant. > > But won't be happy until the drugs are banned altogether. They cause > people to become violently suicidal and homicidal, she argues. They cause > cancer, she says, and heart disease and diabetes and divorce. > > Some people call her a visionary. Others roll their eyes and call her > misinformed -- and worry that she is hurting the very people she wants to > help. > > Panacea or Pandora? > > In 1991, wrote an 80-page pamphlet called " Prozac: Panacea or > Pandora? " Three years later she expanded it into a 424-page book that she > published herself. She wrote a lot of it longhand, while sitting in the Salt > Lake LDS Temple: the one place, she says, where she was sure Satan didn't > have a foothold. > > Hers was one of the first books to criticize antidepressants, but others > followed: Dr. Breggin's 1995 " Talking Back to Prozac, " Dr. ph > Glenmullen's 2000 " Prozac Backlash, " Dr. Healy's 2004 " Let Them Eat > Prozac. " As the titles suggest, Prozac has become shorthand for > antidepressant, the way Kleenex is shorthand for tissue, because Prozac was > the first of a new class of antidepressants called SSRIs (selective > serotonin reuptake inhibitors). But there are now plenty of others, > including Paxil, Effexor, Zoloft and Luvox. > > According to IMS Health, a market research company for the pharmaceutical > industry, sales of antidepressants worldwide in 2003 reached $19.5 billion, > up 10 percent from 2002. Some of this growth, according to the IMS Web site, > can be attributed to the use of antidepressants in " lifestyle disorders, " > which now include or could feasibly include, according to IMS, premenstrual > dysphoric disorder, smoking cessation, weight loss and shyness -- a list > that causes some people, like Jim Harper of prozactruth.com, to complain > that antidepressants are now prescribed " if you bite your nails. " > > started the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in 1997. The > coalition has a Web site, www.drugawareness.org, volunteer directors in 30 > states and board members in Bulgaria and Singapore. The most celebrated > member of her board is Dr. Candace Pert, the town University School of > Medicine neuroscientist who a generation ago helped discover and map the > kind of receptors that regulate mood and health. > > On the case > > Distraught parents of suicidal teens, and the relatives and attorneys of > people accused of murder, call asking for her help. But also > keeps her antennae up for stories about violent deaths that might possibly > be linked to antidepressants. If she reads a newspaper account about a man, > say, who has gone on a shooting rampage at work -- as happened in July at a > ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas -- she will immediately get on the phone to > flesh out the details, trying to find out if the assailant had been on an > antidepressant. Occasionally the victims are famous, and sometimes the > assailants become famous for their horrific crimes, but either way is > not afraid to insert herself into their lives or their deaths. > > The day after she heard that Brynn Hartman had shot her husband, comedian > Phil Hartman, and then herself, called up Phil Hartman's brother, > whose number she found on the Internet. had just returned from being > an expert witness at the trial of a Wyoming woman on Paxil who had shot her > husband and later reported that she didn't remember anything about the > murder except standing there with the smoking gun. So told the > Hartmans: " Don't you stop till you find one of these drugs. " Brynn Hartman, > it turned out, had been on Zoloft; drugmaker Pfizer settled an eventual > wrongful death case for an undisclosed amount. > > After reading about Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader who killed his > family and then drove to work and killed nine more people before also > turning the gun on himself, phoned his mother. It wasn't until six > months later that Atlanta police reported that Prozac had been found in > Barton's car, so was operating on instinct when she urged Barton's > mother to have his body tested for antidepressants. " Not all coroners check > for these drugs, " explains. " It requires a few extra tests, and not > all states will pay for it. That's why you need to get to the families right > away. " > > But things don't always work out the way would hope. In the Atlanta > day trader case, she says, she had his body ready to be shipped to an > independent forensic toxicologist in Oklahoma City, but Barton's mother > changed her mind. Maybe, says, the coroner told Mrs. Barton that > was a Scientologist. > > The Scientology charge still surfaces occasionally, because Scientologists > are famous for their opposition to psychotropic drugs and in fact to > psychiatry in general. ( " Psychiatry is seeking to create a world where man > is reduced to a robotized or drugged, vegetablelike state so that he can be > controlled, " Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote.) > > Vicki Cottrell, executive director of the Utah chapter of the National > Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is sure has Scientology ties. > " She says she's not a Scientologist, but she has the same philosophy, " says > Cottrell. " Of course I don't have the thing on paper, in writing, but I > believe they finance her. " denies any connection to Scientology and > says in fact that Scientologists don't like her because she won't go after > psychiatrists. She says her war against antidepressants has put her $100,000 > in debt (mostly from phone bills and publishing her book). accuses > NAMI of getting money from drug companies. > > Cause and effect > > Emotions run high because, on both sides, there is a belief that lives are > at stake. Mental-health advocates argue that antidepressants have helped > millions of people, and they worry that crusades like 's will convince > the very people who need drugs to go off them. The stories of people who > have committed suicide or crimes while on antidepressants are sad and > regrettable, they agree, but anecdotes aren't scientific proof. > > Deseret Morning News graphic > > Antidepressants > > Requires Adobe Acrobat. > > Did Mark Barton, for example, kill his family and co-workers because he was > on Prozac orwhile he was on Prozac? > > " It's a cause-and-effect issue, " says Dr. Meredith Alden, president of the > Utah Psychiatric Association. " People make assumptions about cause and > effect when there is only an association. " > > Yes, sometimes people on antidepressants kill themselves or act violently, > she says, but that's because " you're already dealing with people who are > prone to violent behavior. " And, she says, " people who are depressed are > going to be at greater risk of hurting themselves. " > > Sometimes, concedes University of Utah psychiatry professor Dr. Tomb, > " some people will briefly feel more suicidal " when they're first put on > antidepressants, but that happens when they first go into psychotherapy, > too, he argues, " or just because they're getting better by tincture of > time. " Tomb, like a lot of people in the field, offers this explanation: A > really depressed person may not have the energy to kill himself; then he > starts taking medication, still feels depressed, but suddenly has enough > energy to follow through with his suicidal thoughts. > > But what about the people who weren't suicidal until they took the drugs, > asks. What about the people who had no history of violence but then > killed their own children? > > FDA weighs in > > The FDA, in its Health Advisory issued in March, asked drug companies to add > stronger warnings to their package inserts, cautioning physicians and > families to " closely monitor " both adults and children for suicidal > thinking, and " certain behaviors that are known to be associated with these > drugs, " including mania and hostility, especially at the beginning of > treatment, or when the doses are increased or decreased. The FDA stopped > short of requiring the companies to issue these warnings, though, and made > it clear that the matter of cause and effect has not been settled yet. > > The FDA appointed a panel of independent experts to review clinical trials > of antidepressant use in children and teens, trying to determine if these > studies report more suicide attempts in patients prescribed the drugs > compared to those given a placebo pill. The review follows allegations that > GlaxoKline failed to report trials that showed an increase in suicide > attempts, as well as those trials that showed that Paxil was no more > effective than a placebo for younger patients. According to the Wall Street > Journal, which obtained a draft of the panel's review last week, the > clinical trials show children and teens on the drugs were indeed more likely > to have thoughts that appeared to be suicidal. > > Earlier this month, Health Canada, the Canadian version of the FDA, issued a > warning that newborns may suffer withdrawal and other possible symptoms > (seizures, constant crying, etc.) when pregnant women take SSRIs during the > third trimester of their pregnancies. > > In June, the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy > Research Institute issued a report urging that psychotropic drugs should be > prescribed for children " only when the anticipated benefits outweigh the > risks. " Next month, a congressional committee will hold hearings about the > safety of antidepressants and the FDA's alleged censoring last winter of a > staff member who argued that the drugs are dangerous for young people. > > " From those who have seen the internal company documents, " says , " we > know that there is no distinction in age groups with these suicidal > reactions. These reactions are the same across the board, no matter the > age. " > > Utah cases > > argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's famous violent crimes > -- Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed herself and her three children in 1991; > Sergei Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family History Library in > 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his mother with an axe in 2001 -- were violent > because they were either on antidepressants or had gone off them too > abruptly. > > Lenny Gall's father, Len, contacted six months ago, before his son's > sentencing hearing. then went through Lenny's medical records, Gall > says, and found that " he had a very significant reaction to Paxil when he > was 16 " and was put on the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa " shortly before " the > murder. " He's never had a shred of violence in him, " Gall says. > > has served as an expert witness in a dozen criminal cases -- most > recently a land case against a teenage boy who fatally laced his best > friend's soda with cyanide -- and has been hired as a consultant in several > civil cases against drug companies, including one that tried to implicate > Luvox as the reason why shot students at Columbine High School. > She estimates that the number of people she has consulted with about > antidepressants -- how to safely get off them, how to find alternative > methods for treating depression, what to do when a family member is suicidal > or manic -- is now in the thousands. > > Atwood, who will be a senior this year at Copper Hills High School, > credits with helping him get off antidepressants, first prescribed for > him when he was 12. He tried suicide at least 15 times before reading > 's book and listening to her tape. It was then, he says, that he > discovered that odd symptoms -- persistent dreams of gouging his eyes out, > for example -- might be side effects of the drugs that were supposed to be > making him feel normal. Following 's advice, he slowly tapered off > Remeron and now tries to avoid sugar, meat and dairy products. " I still have > my moments of depression, " he says. " But I haven't attempted suicide for > over a year. " > > Ann Blake , according to the International Coalition for Drug Awareness > web site, has a doctorate in health sciences with an emphasis on psychology. > There is no mention of the institution that awarded her this degree -- > Wythe College, in Cedar City. explains that the Ph.D. was > awarded for " lifetime experience, " specifically for the writing of " Prozac: > Panacea or Pandora? " which she says she has been told is the equivalent of, > or " far beyond, " a dissertation. > > Self-published, the book contains spelling and punctuation errors and > incomplete sentences (although says an edited version will be > published in the next few weeks). It also contains page after page of > references to studies that seem to cast a cloud over the safety of > antidepressants. > > argues that the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is " backwards. " She > maintains that the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism > of serotonin, especially in the 7 to 10 percent of the population she says > that studies have shown don't have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in > the first place. The drugs, she charges, can also cause REM sleep behavior > disorder (RBD), which can cause people to act out their vivid, violent > dreams while in a dreamlike state. > > Deconstructing > > " It's hard to know where to begin to detail the cognitive errors she's > making, " says psychiatrist Tomb about 's book. " She is really taking > license with the scientific method. " Yes, is passionate about the > evils of antidepressants, Tomb says, " but passion has very little place in > the scientific method in terms of deciding what is accurate and truthful. " > The book is full of vignettes, but vignettes don't tell the whole story, he > argues. " You could take aspirin and do the same thing: comb the literature > and find horrible things that have occurred with aspirin. " > > But Dr. Marks, an internal medicine physician from Alabama who was > director of research at two large drug companies and now often testifies as > an expert witness against the drugs, calls " in many ways a visionary. " > She " has observed a phenomenon that is now being validated, " he says. > > " I do think there are some people who don't understand Dr. and don't > understand her passion and don't understand how smart she is, " says > Tierney, a North Carolina mother whose teenage daughter was put on Effexor > to treat her migraine headaches. > > In her darkest hours -- when her cheerful, straight-A daughter first became > " a monster " and later, in an effort to wean herself from Effexor, had > withdrawal symptoms that left her unable even to walk -- Tierney called > every antidepressant expert she could find on the Internet. Only > called her back. > > " Dr. never got one dime from me. She never mentioned money to me at > all. When she first called me back and I said, 'What can I pay you?' she > said, 'No. No.' You have to think that's pretty pure. And she helped me more > than anyone else. " > > " An unsung hero, " says Cassandra Dawn Casey, a Utah County woman who started > an antidepressant group called Aspire after her son's death two years ago. > " None of us would have known what was causing these problems in our lives if > it hadn't been for trailblazers like Ann. " > > The beginning > > 's interest in antidepressants began in 1989 when, she says, she > watched two LDS friends turn into alcoholics after being put on Prozac. > After that she started reading about the drugs, and soon she was hunting > down scientific studies, and then she got a button made that said " Just Say > No to Prozac. " After that she'd be at the grocery store or church and people > would come up to her and start telling her their stories. > > " There's great power in those stories, " says Texas trial attorney Andy > Vickery, who has been involved in more than 50 cases related to > antidepressants. " They have a power to persuade and even change the > bureaucratic forces of our country. " > > And that's just what expects to eventually happen. " I think these > drugs are history, " she says. Eventually, the stories told by parents, and > the investigations into the clinical trials that the drug companies have > suppressed, will add up to public outrage -- and then antidepressants will > be pulled from the market, she predicts. > > " What is sad, " she says, " is that so many have had to die or have their > lives ruined while we have learned that this was yet another terrible > mistake in our hope of 'Better Living Through Chemistry.' " > > E-mail: jarvik@d... > > Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co. > Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 7, 2005 Report Share Posted April 7, 2005 Hi Gertie, LOL, yeah the CCHR booklets are a little over the top. All true but I feel they are garish also and so don't communicate as well to some people. They are getting better. I watched a CCHR DVD the other day and it was simply strait documented stories but even then it was hard for even ME to watch and I help document those kinds of cases. I couldn't finish it and haven't gone back yet. The subject matter is so upsetting I think many simply cannot comfront it. Sadly I think those stories really need to be seen and known. I can burn it for anyone brave enough to check it out. I know there are some good psychiatric doctors, CCHR has worked with many and when we find a good one we are very thrilled. Sadly it's just like you said, the majority of psychiatrists at least in the press and practically every single one I have investigated are soaked in sexual abuse or sex with patients, billing fraud, headhunting for good insurance and then committing people and appalling massive overdrugging of patients....especially upsetting are the children in Texas foster care. I see repeatedly psych drug reactions missed and new mental illnesses diagnosed and treated leaving the patient poisoned and confused. Many times for life. I think psychiatry as a whole is terrified of Scientologists because we know what they are up to and call them on it. It's confusing for the public because they are sold psychiatry is good and safe in the media and it's simply not true most of the time. Best, Jim Jim, Of course, it is absolutely true that Scientology opposes psychiatry, so I don't know why Time Magazine would really need to retract a story pointing out Scientology's position. ( I did not see the article, perhaps it was unfair or inaccurate, regarding Scientology's position.). I have a stack of those excellent, if garish, 8 1/2 X 11 " booklets put out by their CCHR organization. I've attended hearings they held in Philadelphia. There is not any doubt in my mind that it is true that Scientology opposes psychiatry. And, I say, So what? That's hardly a crime. It is not just a whim on the part of Scientology, nor jealousy, or any other silly, empty thing. Scientology has made a well-documented case against psychiatry, when few other organizations, especially religious ones, with the most reason to do so, including my beloved Russian Orthodox Church, have done so. But the utter idiocy here is the lack of intellectual power on the part of these idiot shrinks who insist, and really, truly believe, that because Scientology has come out against them, then any criticism of them is ipso facto coming from Scientology. First, the dopes have failed to actually take in the substance of the case that has been made by Scientology against psychiatry, and in any case fail to address any of its findings, and second, we behold the logical lapse involved in concluding, as a result, that any criticism of psychiatry must necessarily be coming from Scientology and not from the facts that Scientology has assembled for all the world to consider, regarding the true nature of this dark and destructive religion which masquerades as science. . Re: Re: Dr. Ann article Sara, You nailed it right on the head. I have to laugh because it doesn't have as much punch in the areas where Scientologists are busy. The people that know them know those allegations are just bigotry used as a tool because they have seen for themselves that good work gets done by Scientologists just like all the other religions that work to help others, meaning all major religions. I believe it is a tactic like you say, I just see it fall flat so many times and backfire on the people saying it in my area. At the Texas legislature those kind of comments have backfired repeatedly. Bigoted comments only work when no one knows any of the targeted people. the Romans persecuted the Christians and now we have the Roman Catholic Church. To me the Christians comparitively civilized Europe from it's previous barbarism. It's just such a feeble defense for harming millions for profit, I have a feeling as more people meet real Scientologists comments like that will fall flat more and more often. To me it's a weak last defence. Jim I don't laugh at the Scientology charge. I have run into it twice. On the CABF (Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation) boards, there were hints from the moderators that my antidepressant views should be ignored because I must have been a Scientologist. One person who wasn't a moderator but was an " insider " came right out and said it. On the Court TV forum during the Pittman trial, there was a drive by posting by someone who posted just that once that the drugawareness.org site was a " Scientologist front " site. The people who were viciously out to hang and who didn't like to hear anything about antidepressants because, in their opinion, it was a defense designed only for the family to make money in a civil suit against the Pfizer, quickly latched on to the Scientology label for a few of us, including me. I had to point out the conflict between the Scientologist's total anti psychiatry position and the fact that drugsawareness.org has copies of, links to, and refereces about articles by psychiatrists and published in psychiatric journals before I got them to shut up. Even so, someone else would do it a few days later. Each time I debunked the alleged connection between drugawareness.org and the Scientologists I said that it was a means of discrediting people who were saying what the drug companies didn't want people to think about. I strongly suspect that the drug companies encourage if not started these allegations. Doctors who spoke out against SSRIs were (are?) labelled " quacks " while lay people were (are) labelled " Scientologists " . It is a means of discrediting so that the information the person is delivering can be dismissed. I hadn't seen it for about two years then all of a sudden during the Pittman trial it surfaced again. BTW, I am sure that drive by posting on the Court TV board was pre written and a copy and pasted to the forum. I honestly believe that during the Pittman trial the drug companies had an enployee searching for forums where there were positive posts about. drugawareness.com and, when he found one, posted the " Scientologist " allegation. But maybe I'm just too cynical but I don't believe the Scientologist should ever be taken lightly. > Ann is awesome and I love her work. She was years ahead with her > observations and she deserves credit for all her hard work. A true freedom > fighter. > > I laugh at the Scientology angle. Ann is a Mormon like the couple I > talked to today that I helped get out of a CPS drugged-children situation > working for CCHR. > > > Best, > > Jim > > http://tinyurl.com/3txqt > > > August 2004 > > Depressed over Prozac > Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News > > Ann knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit > her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in > the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and > then drank a can of Drano; the 12- year-old girl who strangled herself with > a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger on the wall. > > Sit with for an hour and pretty soon your head is swimming in details: > the shooting at Columbine, a study of violent mice, the conversation she had > with Rusty Yates, whose wife drowned their five children in a bathtub. > Yates was on maximum doses of Effexor and Remeron, she reminds you. > The world according to Ann is a place full of people who were put on > antidepressants and then went on to do horrible things. > > is executive director of the International Coalition for Drug > Awareness, which she operates out of her home office in West Jordan, a home > she has mortgaged twice to pay for her 15-year crusade against > antidepressants and the pharmaceutical companies who make them. > > She is heartened by recent scrutiny of the drugs. Last year, the British > version of the FDA banned all antidepressants other than Prozac for use in > children under 18. In March, the Food and Drug Administration issued a > Public Health Advisory about antidepressants - - urging doctors and families > to monitor adult and child patients on the drugs -- and then appointed a > panel of experts to reanalyze the incidence of suicide attempts during > clinical trials of teens. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer > sued the makers of Paxil for consumer fraud, and 30 Utahns joined a > nationwide class- action suit charging that GlaxoKline " concealed, > suppressed and downplayed " severe withdrawal reactions in people trying to > go off the antidepressant. > > But won't be happy until the drugs are banned altogether. They cause > people to become violently suicidal and homicidal, she argues. They cause > cancer, she says, and heart disease and diabetes and divorce. > > Some people call her a visionary. Others roll their eyes and call her > misinformed -- and worry that she is hurting the very people she wants to > help. > > Panacea or Pandora? > > In 1991, wrote an 80-page pamphlet called " Prozac: Panacea or > Pandora? " Three years later she expanded it into a 424-page book that she > published herself. She wrote a lot of it longhand, while sitting in the Salt > Lake LDS Temple: the one place, she says, where she was sure Satan didn't > have a foothold. > > Hers was one of the first books to criticize antidepressants, but others > followed: Dr. Breggin's 1995 " Talking Back to Prozac, " Dr. ph > Glenmullen's 2000 " Prozac Backlash, " Dr. Healy's 2004 " Let Them Eat > Prozac. " As the titles suggest, Prozac has become shorthand for > antidepressant, the way Kleenex is shorthand for tissue, because Prozac was > the first of a new class of antidepressants called SSRIs (selective > serotonin reuptake inhibitors). But there are now plenty of others, > including Paxil, Effexor, Zoloft and Luvox. > > According to IMS Health, a market research company for the pharmaceutical > industry, sales of antidepressants worldwide in 2003 reached $19.5 billion, > up 10 percent from 2002. Some of this growth, according to the IMS Web site, > can be attributed to the use of antidepressants in " lifestyle disorders, " > which now include or could feasibly include, according to IMS, premenstrual > dysphoric disorder, smoking cessation, weight loss and shyness -- a list > that causes some people, like Jim Harper of prozactruth.com, to complain > that antidepressants are now prescribed " if you bite your nails. " > > started the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in 1997. The > coalition has a Web site, www.drugawareness.org, volunteer directors in 30 > states and board members in Bulgaria and Singapore. The most celebrated > member of her board is Dr. Candace Pert, the town University School of > Medicine neuroscientist who a generation ago helped discover and map the > kind of receptors that regulate mood and health. > > On the case > > Distraught parents of suicidal teens, and the relatives and attorneys of > people accused of murder, call asking for her help. But also > keeps her antennae up for stories about violent deaths that might possibly > be linked to antidepressants. If she reads a newspaper account about a man, > say, who has gone on a shooting rampage at work -- as happened in July at a > ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas -- she will immediately get on the phone to > flesh out the details, trying to find out if the assailant had been on an > antidepressant. Occasionally the victims are famous, and sometimes the > assailants become famous for their horrific crimes, but either way is > not afraid to insert herself into their lives or their deaths. > > The day after she heard that Brynn Hartman had shot her husband, comedian > Phil Hartman, and then herself, called up Phil Hartman's brother, > whose number she found on the Internet. had just returned from being > an expert witness at the trial of a Wyoming woman on Paxil who had shot her > husband and later reported that she didn't remember anything about the > murder except standing there with the smoking gun. So told the > Hartmans: " Don't you stop till you find one of these drugs. " Brynn Hartman, > it turned out, had been on Zoloft; drugmaker Pfizer settled an eventual > wrongful death case for an undisclosed amount. > > After reading about Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader who killed his > family and then drove to work and killed nine more people before also > turning the gun on himself, phoned his mother. It wasn't until six > months later that Atlanta police reported that Prozac had been found in > Barton's car, so was operating on instinct when she urged Barton's > mother to have his body tested for antidepressants. " Not all coroners check > for these drugs, " explains. " It requires a few extra tests, and not > all states will pay for it. That's why you need to get to the families right > away. " > > But things don't always work out the way would hope. In the Atlanta > day trader case, she says, she had his body ready to be shipped to an > independent forensic toxicologist in Oklahoma City, but Barton's mother > changed her mind. Maybe, says, the coroner told Mrs. Barton that > was a Scientologist. > > The Scientology charge still surfaces occasionally, because Scientologists > are famous for their opposition to psychotropic drugs and in fact to > psychiatry in general. ( " Psychiatry is seeking to create a world where man > is reduced to a robotized or drugged, vegetablelike state so that he can be > controlled, " Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote.) > > Vicki Cottrell, executive director of the Utah chapter of the National > Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is sure has Scientology ties. > " She says she's not a Scientologist, but she has the same philosophy, " says > Cottrell. " Of course I don't have the thing on paper, in writing, but I > believe they finance her. " denies any connection to Scientology and > says in fact that Scientologists don't like her because she won't go after > psychiatrists. She says her war against antidepressants has put her $100,000 > in debt (mostly from phone bills and publishing her book). accuses > NAMI of getting money from drug companies. > > Cause and effect > > Emotions run high because, on both sides, there is a belief that lives are > at stake. Mental-health advocates argue that antidepressants have helped > millions of people, and they worry that crusades like 's will convince > the very people who need drugs to go off them. The stories of people who > have committed suicide or crimes while on antidepressants are sad and > regrettable, they agree, but anecdotes aren't scientific proof. > > Deseret Morning News graphic > > Antidepressants > > Requires Adobe Acrobat. > > Did Mark Barton, for example, kill his family and co-workers because he was > on Prozac orwhile he was on Prozac? > > " It's a cause-and-effect issue, " says Dr. Meredith Alden, president of the > Utah Psychiatric Association. " People make assumptions about cause and > effect when there is only an association. " > > Yes, sometimes people on antidepressants kill themselves or act violently, > she says, but that's because " you're already dealing with people who are > prone to violent behavior. " And, she says, " people who are depressed are > going to be at greater risk of hurting themselves. " > > Sometimes, concedes University of Utah psychiatry professor Dr. Tomb, > " some people will briefly feel more suicidal " when they're first put on > antidepressants, but that happens when they first go into psychotherapy, > too, he argues, " or just because they're getting better by tincture of > time. " Tomb, like a lot of people in the field, offers this explanation: A > really depressed person may not have the energy to kill himself; then he > starts taking medication, still feels depressed, but suddenly has enough > energy to follow through with his suicidal thoughts. > > But what about the people who weren't suicidal until they took the drugs, > asks. What about the people who had no history of violence but then > killed their own children? > > FDA weighs in > > The FDA, in its Health Advisory issued in March, asked drug companies to add > stronger warnings to their package inserts, cautioning physicians and > families to " closely monitor " both adults and children for suicidal > thinking, and " certain behaviors that are known to be associated with these > drugs, " including mania and hostility, especially at the beginning of > treatment, or when the doses are increased or decreased. The FDA stopped > short of requiring the companies to issue these warnings, though, and made > it clear that the matter of cause and effect has not been settled yet. > > The FDA appointed a panel of independent experts to review clinical trials > of antidepressant use in children and teens, trying to determine if these > studies report more suicide attempts in patients prescribed the drugs > compared to those given a placebo pill. The review follows allegations that > GlaxoKline failed to report trials that showed an increase in suicide > attempts, as well as those trials that showed that Paxil was no more > effective than a placebo for younger patients. According to the Wall Street > Journal, which obtained a draft of the panel's review last week, the > clinical trials show children and teens on the drugs were indeed more likely > to have thoughts that appeared to be suicidal. > > Earlier this month, Health Canada, the Canadian version of the FDA, issued a > warning that newborns may suffer withdrawal and other possible symptoms > (seizures, constant crying, etc.) when pregnant women take SSRIs during the > third trimester of their pregnancies. > > In June, the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy > Research Institute issued a report urging that psychotropic drugs should be > prescribed for children " only when the anticipated benefits outweigh the > risks. " Next month, a congressional committee will hold hearings about the > safety of antidepressants and the FDA's alleged censoring last winter of a > staff member who argued that the drugs are dangerous for young people. > > " From those who have seen the internal company documents, " says , " we > know that there is no distinction in age groups with these suicidal > reactions. These reactions are the same across the board, no matter the > age. " > > Utah cases > > argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's famous violent crimes > -- Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed herself and her three children in 1991; > Sergei Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family History Library in > 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his mother with an axe in 2001 -- were violent > because they were either on antidepressants or had gone off them too > abruptly. > > Lenny Gall's father, Len, contacted six months ago, before his son's > sentencing hearing. then went through Lenny's medical records, Gall > says, and found that " he had a very significant reaction to Paxil when he > was 16 " and was put on the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa " shortly before " the > murder. " He's never had a shred of violence in him, " Gall says. > > has served as an expert witness in a dozen criminal cases -- most > recently a land case against a teenage boy who fatally laced his best > friend's soda with cyanide -- and has been hired as a consultant in several > civil cases against drug companies, including one that tried to implicate > Luvox as the reason why shot students at Columbine High School. > She estimates that the number of people she has consulted with about > antidepressants -- how to safely get off them, how to find alternative > methods for treating depression, what to do when a family member is suicidal > or manic -- is now in the thousands. > > Atwood, who will be a senior this year at Copper Hills High School, > credits with helping him get off antidepressants, first prescribed for > him when he was 12. He tried suicide at least 15 times before reading > 's book and listening to her tape. It was then, he says, that he > discovered that odd symptoms -- persistent dreams of gouging his eyes out, > for example -- might be side effects of the drugs that were supposed to be > making him feel normal. Following 's advice, he slowly tapered off > Remeron and now tries to avoid sugar, meat and dairy products. " I still have > my moments of depression, " he says. " But I haven't attempted suicide for > over a year. " > > Ann Blake , according to the International Coalition for Drug Awareness > web site, has a doctorate in health sciences with an emphasis on psychology. > There is no mention of the institution that awarded her this degree -- > Wythe College, in Cedar City. explains that the Ph.D. was > awarded for " lifetime experience, " specifically for the writing of " Prozac: > Panacea or Pandora? " which she says she has been told is the equivalent of, > or " far beyond, " a dissertation. > > Self-published, the book contains spelling and punctuation errors and > incomplete sentences (although says an edited version will be > published in the next few weeks). It also contains page after page of > references to studies that seem to cast a cloud over the safety of > antidepressants. > > argues that the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is " backwards. " She > maintains that the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism > of serotonin, especially in the 7 to 10 percent of the population she says > that studies have shown don't have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in > the first place. The drugs, she charges, can also cause REM sleep behavior > disorder (RBD), which can cause people to act out their vivid, violent > dreams while in a dreamlike state. > > Deconstructing > > " It's hard to know where to begin to detail the cognitive errors she's > making, " says psychiatrist Tomb about 's book. " She is really taking > license with the scientific method. " Yes, is passionate about the > evils of antidepressants, Tomb says, " but passion has very little place in > the scientific method in terms of deciding what is accurate and truthful. " > The book is full of vignettes, but vignettes don't tell the whole story, he > argues. " You could take aspirin and do the same thing: comb the literature > and find horrible things that have occurred with aspirin. " > > But Dr. Marks, an internal medicine physician from Alabama who was > director of research at two large drug companies and now often testifies as > an expert witness against the drugs, calls " in many ways a visionary. " > She " has observed a phenomenon that is now being validated, " he says. > > " I do think there are some people who don't understand Dr. and don't > understand her passion and don't understand how smart she is, " says > Tierney, a North Carolina mother whose teenage daughter was put on Effexor > to treat her migraine headaches. > > In her darkest hours -- when her cheerful, straight-A daughter first became > " a monster " and later, in an effort to wean herself from Effexor, had > withdrawal symptoms that left her unable even to walk -- Tierney called > every antidepressant expert she could find on the Internet. Only > called her back. > > " Dr. never got one dime from me. She never mentioned money to me at > all. When she first called me back and I said, 'What can I pay you?' she > said, 'No. No.' You have to think that's pretty pure. And she helped me more > than anyone else. " > > " An unsung hero, " says Cassandra Dawn Casey, a Utah County woman who started > an antidepressant group called Aspire after her son's death two years ago. > " None of us would have known what was causing these problems in our lives if > it hadn't been for trailblazers like Ann. " > > The beginning > > 's interest in antidepressants began in 1989 when, she says, she > watched two LDS friends turn into alcoholics after being put on Prozac. > After that she started reading about the drugs, and soon she was hunting > down scientific studies, and then she got a button made that said " Just Say > No to Prozac. " After that she'd be at the grocery store or church and people > would come up to her and start telling her their stories. > > " There's great power in those stories, " says Texas trial attorney Andy > Vickery, who has been involved in more than 50 cases related to > antidepressants. " They have a power to persuade and even change the > bureaucratic forces of our country. " > > And that's just what expects to eventually happen. " I think these > drugs are history, " she says. Eventually, the stories told by parents, and > the investigations into the clinical trials that the drug companies have > suppressed, will add up to public outrage -- and then antidepressants will > be pulled from the market, she predicts. > > " What is sad, " she says, " is that so many have had to die or have their > lives ruined while we have learned that this was yet another terrible > mistake in our hope of 'Better Living Through Chemistry.' " > > E-mail: jarvik@d... > > Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co. > Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 7, 2005 Report Share Posted April 7, 2005 Hi Gertie, LOL, yeah the CCHR booklets are a little over the top. All true but I feel they are garish also and so don't communicate as well to some people. They are getting better. I watched a CCHR DVD the other day and it was simply strait documented stories but even then it was hard for even ME to watch and I help document those kinds of cases. I couldn't finish it and haven't gone back yet. The subject matter is so upsetting I think many simply cannot comfront it. Sadly I think those stories really need to be seen and known. I can burn it for anyone brave enough to check it out. I know there are some good psychiatric doctors, CCHR has worked with many and when we find a good one we are very thrilled. Sadly it's just like you said, the majority of psychiatrists at least in the press and practically every single one I have investigated are soaked in sexual abuse or sex with patients, billing fraud, headhunting for good insurance and then committing people and appalling massive overdrugging of patients....especially upsetting are the children in Texas foster care. I see repeatedly psych drug reactions missed and new mental illnesses diagnosed and treated leaving the patient poisoned and confused. Many times for life. I think psychiatry as a whole is terrified of Scientologists because we know what they are up to and call them on it. It's confusing for the public because they are sold psychiatry is good and safe in the media and it's simply not true most of the time. Best, Jim Jim, Of course, it is absolutely true that Scientology opposes psychiatry, so I don't know why Time Magazine would really need to retract a story pointing out Scientology's position. ( I did not see the article, perhaps it was unfair or inaccurate, regarding Scientology's position.). I have a stack of those excellent, if garish, 8 1/2 X 11 " booklets put out by their CCHR organization. I've attended hearings they held in Philadelphia. There is not any doubt in my mind that it is true that Scientology opposes psychiatry. And, I say, So what? That's hardly a crime. It is not just a whim on the part of Scientology, nor jealousy, or any other silly, empty thing. Scientology has made a well-documented case against psychiatry, when few other organizations, especially religious ones, with the most reason to do so, including my beloved Russian Orthodox Church, have done so. But the utter idiocy here is the lack of intellectual power on the part of these idiot shrinks who insist, and really, truly believe, that because Scientology has come out against them, then any criticism of them is ipso facto coming from Scientology. First, the dopes have failed to actually take in the substance of the case that has been made by Scientology against psychiatry, and in any case fail to address any of its findings, and second, we behold the logical lapse involved in concluding, as a result, that any criticism of psychiatry must necessarily be coming from Scientology and not from the facts that Scientology has assembled for all the world to consider, regarding the true nature of this dark and destructive religion which masquerades as science. . Re: Re: Dr. Ann article Sara, You nailed it right on the head. I have to laugh because it doesn't have as much punch in the areas where Scientologists are busy. The people that know them know those allegations are just bigotry used as a tool because they have seen for themselves that good work gets done by Scientologists just like all the other religions that work to help others, meaning all major religions. I believe it is a tactic like you say, I just see it fall flat so many times and backfire on the people saying it in my area. At the Texas legislature those kind of comments have backfired repeatedly. Bigoted comments only work when no one knows any of the targeted people. the Romans persecuted the Christians and now we have the Roman Catholic Church. To me the Christians comparitively civilized Europe from it's previous barbarism. It's just such a feeble defense for harming millions for profit, I have a feeling as more people meet real Scientologists comments like that will fall flat more and more often. To me it's a weak last defence. Jim I don't laugh at the Scientology charge. I have run into it twice. On the CABF (Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation) boards, there were hints from the moderators that my antidepressant views should be ignored because I must have been a Scientologist. One person who wasn't a moderator but was an " insider " came right out and said it. On the Court TV forum during the Pittman trial, there was a drive by posting by someone who posted just that once that the drugawareness.org site was a " Scientologist front " site. The people who were viciously out to hang and who didn't like to hear anything about antidepressants because, in their opinion, it was a defense designed only for the family to make money in a civil suit against the Pfizer, quickly latched on to the Scientology label for a few of us, including me. I had to point out the conflict between the Scientologist's total anti psychiatry position and the fact that drugsawareness.org has copies of, links to, and refereces about articles by psychiatrists and published in psychiatric journals before I got them to shut up. Even so, someone else would do it a few days later. Each time I debunked the alleged connection between drugawareness.org and the Scientologists I said that it was a means of discrediting people who were saying what the drug companies didn't want people to think about. I strongly suspect that the drug companies encourage if not started these allegations. Doctors who spoke out against SSRIs were (are?) labelled " quacks " while lay people were (are) labelled " Scientologists " . It is a means of discrediting so that the information the person is delivering can be dismissed. I hadn't seen it for about two years then all of a sudden during the Pittman trial it surfaced again. BTW, I am sure that drive by posting on the Court TV board was pre written and a copy and pasted to the forum. I honestly believe that during the Pittman trial the drug companies had an enployee searching for forums where there were positive posts about. drugawareness.com and, when he found one, posted the " Scientologist " allegation. But maybe I'm just too cynical but I don't believe the Scientologist should ever be taken lightly. > Ann is awesome and I love her work. She was years ahead with her > observations and she deserves credit for all her hard work. A true freedom > fighter. > > I laugh at the Scientology angle. Ann is a Mormon like the couple I > talked to today that I helped get out of a CPS drugged-children situation > working for CCHR. > > > Best, > > Jim > > http://tinyurl.com/3txqt > > > August 2004 > > Depressed over Prozac > Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News > > Ann knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit > her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in > the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and > then drank a can of Drano; the 12- year-old girl who strangled herself with > a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger on the wall. > > Sit with for an hour and pretty soon your head is swimming in details: > the shooting at Columbine, a study of violent mice, the conversation she had > with Rusty Yates, whose wife drowned their five children in a bathtub. > Yates was on maximum doses of Effexor and Remeron, she reminds you. > The world according to Ann is a place full of people who were put on > antidepressants and then went on to do horrible things. > > is executive director of the International Coalition for Drug > Awareness, which she operates out of her home office in West Jordan, a home > she has mortgaged twice to pay for her 15-year crusade against > antidepressants and the pharmaceutical companies who make them. > > She is heartened by recent scrutiny of the drugs. Last year, the British > version of the FDA banned all antidepressants other than Prozac for use in > children under 18. In March, the Food and Drug Administration issued a > Public Health Advisory about antidepressants - - urging doctors and families > to monitor adult and child patients on the drugs -- and then appointed a > panel of experts to reanalyze the incidence of suicide attempts during > clinical trials of teens. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer > sued the makers of Paxil for consumer fraud, and 30 Utahns joined a > nationwide class- action suit charging that GlaxoKline " concealed, > suppressed and downplayed " severe withdrawal reactions in people trying to > go off the antidepressant. > > But won't be happy until the drugs are banned altogether. They cause > people to become violently suicidal and homicidal, she argues. They cause > cancer, she says, and heart disease and diabetes and divorce. > > Some people call her a visionary. Others roll their eyes and call her > misinformed -- and worry that she is hurting the very people she wants to > help. > > Panacea or Pandora? > > In 1991, wrote an 80-page pamphlet called " Prozac: Panacea or > Pandora? " Three years later she expanded it into a 424-page book that she > published herself. She wrote a lot of it longhand, while sitting in the Salt > Lake LDS Temple: the one place, she says, where she was sure Satan didn't > have a foothold. > > Hers was one of the first books to criticize antidepressants, but others > followed: Dr. Breggin's 1995 " Talking Back to Prozac, " Dr. ph > Glenmullen's 2000 " Prozac Backlash, " Dr. Healy's 2004 " Let Them Eat > Prozac. " As the titles suggest, Prozac has become shorthand for > antidepressant, the way Kleenex is shorthand for tissue, because Prozac was > the first of a new class of antidepressants called SSRIs (selective > serotonin reuptake inhibitors). But there are now plenty of others, > including Paxil, Effexor, Zoloft and Luvox. > > According to IMS Health, a market research company for the pharmaceutical > industry, sales of antidepressants worldwide in 2003 reached $19.5 billion, > up 10 percent from 2002. Some of this growth, according to the IMS Web site, > can be attributed to the use of antidepressants in " lifestyle disorders, " > which now include or could feasibly include, according to IMS, premenstrual > dysphoric disorder, smoking cessation, weight loss and shyness -- a list > that causes some people, like Jim Harper of prozactruth.com, to complain > that antidepressants are now prescribed " if you bite your nails. " > > started the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in 1997. The > coalition has a Web site, www.drugawareness.org, volunteer directors in 30 > states and board members in Bulgaria and Singapore. The most celebrated > member of her board is Dr. Candace Pert, the town University School of > Medicine neuroscientist who a generation ago helped discover and map the > kind of receptors that regulate mood and health. > > On the case > > Distraught parents of suicidal teens, and the relatives and attorneys of > people accused of murder, call asking for her help. But also > keeps her antennae up for stories about violent deaths that might possibly > be linked to antidepressants. If she reads a newspaper account about a man, > say, who has gone on a shooting rampage at work -- as happened in July at a > ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas -- she will immediately get on the phone to > flesh out the details, trying to find out if the assailant had been on an > antidepressant. Occasionally the victims are famous, and sometimes the > assailants become famous for their horrific crimes, but either way is > not afraid to insert herself into their lives or their deaths. > > The day after she heard that Brynn Hartman had shot her husband, comedian > Phil Hartman, and then herself, called up Phil Hartman's brother, > whose number she found on the Internet. had just returned from being > an expert witness at the trial of a Wyoming woman on Paxil who had shot her > husband and later reported that she didn't remember anything about the > murder except standing there with the smoking gun. So told the > Hartmans: " Don't you stop till you find one of these drugs. " Brynn Hartman, > it turned out, had been on Zoloft; drugmaker Pfizer settled an eventual > wrongful death case for an undisclosed amount. > > After reading about Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader who killed his > family and then drove to work and killed nine more people before also > turning the gun on himself, phoned his mother. It wasn't until six > months later that Atlanta police reported that Prozac had been found in > Barton's car, so was operating on instinct when she urged Barton's > mother to have his body tested for antidepressants. " Not all coroners check > for these drugs, " explains. " It requires a few extra tests, and not > all states will pay for it. That's why you need to get to the families right > away. " > > But things don't always work out the way would hope. In the Atlanta > day trader case, she says, she had his body ready to be shipped to an > independent forensic toxicologist in Oklahoma City, but Barton's mother > changed her mind. Maybe, says, the coroner told Mrs. Barton that > was a Scientologist. > > The Scientology charge still surfaces occasionally, because Scientologists > are famous for their opposition to psychotropic drugs and in fact to > psychiatry in general. ( " Psychiatry is seeking to create a world where man > is reduced to a robotized or drugged, vegetablelike state so that he can be > controlled, " Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote.) > > Vicki Cottrell, executive director of the Utah chapter of the National > Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is sure has Scientology ties. > " She says she's not a Scientologist, but she has the same philosophy, " says > Cottrell. " Of course I don't have the thing on paper, in writing, but I > believe they finance her. " denies any connection to Scientology and > says in fact that Scientologists don't like her because she won't go after > psychiatrists. She says her war against antidepressants has put her $100,000 > in debt (mostly from phone bills and publishing her book). accuses > NAMI of getting money from drug companies. > > Cause and effect > > Emotions run high because, on both sides, there is a belief that lives are > at stake. Mental-health advocates argue that antidepressants have helped > millions of people, and they worry that crusades like 's will convince > the very people who need drugs to go off them. The stories of people who > have committed suicide or crimes while on antidepressants are sad and > regrettable, they agree, but anecdotes aren't scientific proof. > > Deseret Morning News graphic > > Antidepressants > > Requires Adobe Acrobat. > > Did Mark Barton, for example, kill his family and co-workers because he was > on Prozac orwhile he was on Prozac? > > " It's a cause-and-effect issue, " says Dr. Meredith Alden, president of the > Utah Psychiatric Association. " People make assumptions about cause and > effect when there is only an association. " > > Yes, sometimes people on antidepressants kill themselves or act violently, > she says, but that's because " you're already dealing with people who are > prone to violent behavior. " And, she says, " people who are depressed are > going to be at greater risk of hurting themselves. " > > Sometimes, concedes University of Utah psychiatry professor Dr. Tomb, > " some people will briefly feel more suicidal " when they're first put on > antidepressants, but that happens when they first go into psychotherapy, > too, he argues, " or just because they're getting better by tincture of > time. " Tomb, like a lot of people in the field, offers this explanation: A > really depressed person may not have the energy to kill himself; then he > starts taking medication, still feels depressed, but suddenly has enough > energy to follow through with his suicidal thoughts. > > But what about the people who weren't suicidal until they took the drugs, > asks. What about the people who had no history of violence but then > killed their own children? > > FDA weighs in > > The FDA, in its Health Advisory issued in March, asked drug companies to add > stronger warnings to their package inserts, cautioning physicians and > families to " closely monitor " both adults and children for suicidal > thinking, and " certain behaviors that are known to be associated with these > drugs, " including mania and hostility, especially at the beginning of > treatment, or when the doses are increased or decreased. The FDA stopped > short of requiring the companies to issue these warnings, though, and made > it clear that the matter of cause and effect has not been settled yet. > > The FDA appointed a panel of independent experts to review clinical trials > of antidepressant use in children and teens, trying to determine if these > studies report more suicide attempts in patients prescribed the drugs > compared to those given a placebo pill. The review follows allegations that > GlaxoKline failed to report trials that showed an increase in suicide > attempts, as well as those trials that showed that Paxil was no more > effective than a placebo for younger patients. According to the Wall Street > Journal, which obtained a draft of the panel's review last week, the > clinical trials show children and teens on the drugs were indeed more likely > to have thoughts that appeared to be suicidal. > > Earlier this month, Health Canada, the Canadian version of the FDA, issued a > warning that newborns may suffer withdrawal and other possible symptoms > (seizures, constant crying, etc.) when pregnant women take SSRIs during the > third trimester of their pregnancies. > > In June, the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy > Research Institute issued a report urging that psychotropic drugs should be > prescribed for children " only when the anticipated benefits outweigh the > risks. " Next month, a congressional committee will hold hearings about the > safety of antidepressants and the FDA's alleged censoring last winter of a > staff member who argued that the drugs are dangerous for young people. > > " From those who have seen the internal company documents, " says , " we > know that there is no distinction in age groups with these suicidal > reactions. These reactions are the same across the board, no matter the > age. " > > Utah cases > > argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's famous violent crimes > -- Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed herself and her three children in 1991; > Sergei Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family History Library in > 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his mother with an axe in 2001 -- were violent > because they were either on antidepressants or had gone off them too > abruptly. > > Lenny Gall's father, Len, contacted six months ago, before his son's > sentencing hearing. then went through Lenny's medical records, Gall > says, and found that " he had a very significant reaction to Paxil when he > was 16 " and was put on the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa " shortly before " the > murder. " He's never had a shred of violence in him, " Gall says. > > has served as an expert witness in a dozen criminal cases -- most > recently a land case against a teenage boy who fatally laced his best > friend's soda with cyanide -- and has been hired as a consultant in several > civil cases against drug companies, including one that tried to implicate > Luvox as the reason why shot students at Columbine High School. > She estimates that the number of people she has consulted with about > antidepressants -- how to safely get off them, how to find alternative > methods for treating depression, what to do when a family member is suicidal > or manic -- is now in the thousands. > > Atwood, who will be a senior this year at Copper Hills High School, > credits with helping him get off antidepressants, first prescribed for > him when he was 12. He tried suicide at least 15 times before reading > 's book and listening to her tape. It was then, he says, that he > discovered that odd symptoms -- persistent dreams of gouging his eyes out, > for example -- might be side effects of the drugs that were supposed to be > making him feel normal. Following 's advice, he slowly tapered off > Remeron and now tries to avoid sugar, meat and dairy products. " I still have > my moments of depression, " he says. " But I haven't attempted suicide for > over a year. " > > Ann Blake , according to the International Coalition for Drug Awareness > web site, has a doctorate in health sciences with an emphasis on psychology. > There is no mention of the institution that awarded her this degree -- > Wythe College, in Cedar City. explains that the Ph.D. was > awarded for " lifetime experience, " specifically for the writing of " Prozac: > Panacea or Pandora? " which she says she has been told is the equivalent of, > or " far beyond, " a dissertation. > > Self-published, the book contains spelling and punctuation errors and > incomplete sentences (although says an edited version will be > published in the next few weeks). It also contains page after page of > references to studies that seem to cast a cloud over the safety of > antidepressants. > > argues that the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is " backwards. " She > maintains that the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism > of serotonin, especially in the 7 to 10 percent of the population she says > that studies have shown don't have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in > the first place. The drugs, she charges, can also cause REM sleep behavior > disorder (RBD), which can cause people to act out their vivid, violent > dreams while in a dreamlike state. > > Deconstructing > > " It's hard to know where to begin to detail the cognitive errors she's > making, " says psychiatrist Tomb about 's book. " She is really taking > license with the scientific method. " Yes, is passionate about the > evils of antidepressants, Tomb says, " but passion has very little place in > the scientific method in terms of deciding what is accurate and truthful. " > The book is full of vignettes, but vignettes don't tell the whole story, he > argues. " You could take aspirin and do the same thing: comb the literature > and find horrible things that have occurred with aspirin. " > > But Dr. Marks, an internal medicine physician from Alabama who was > director of research at two large drug companies and now often testifies as > an expert witness against the drugs, calls " in many ways a visionary. " > She " has observed a phenomenon that is now being validated, " he says. > > " I do think there are some people who don't understand Dr. and don't > understand her passion and don't understand how smart she is, " says > Tierney, a North Carolina mother whose teenage daughter was put on Effexor > to treat her migraine headaches. > > In her darkest hours -- when her cheerful, straight-A daughter first became > " a monster " and later, in an effort to wean herself from Effexor, had > withdrawal symptoms that left her unable even to walk -- Tierney called > every antidepressant expert she could find on the Internet. Only > called her back. > > " Dr. never got one dime from me. She never mentioned money to me at > all. When she first called me back and I said, 'What can I pay you?' she > said, 'No. No.' You have to think that's pretty pure. And she helped me more > than anyone else. " > > " An unsung hero, " says Cassandra Dawn Casey, a Utah County woman who started > an antidepressant group called Aspire after her son's death two years ago. > " None of us would have known what was causing these problems in our lives if > it hadn't been for trailblazers like Ann. " > > The beginning > > 's interest in antidepressants began in 1989 when, she says, she > watched two LDS friends turn into alcoholics after being put on Prozac. > After that she started reading about the drugs, and soon she was hunting > down scientific studies, and then she got a button made that said " Just Say > No to Prozac. " After that she'd be at the grocery store or church and people > would come up to her and start telling her their stories. > > " There's great power in those stories, " says Texas trial attorney Andy > Vickery, who has been involved in more than 50 cases related to > antidepressants. " They have a power to persuade and even change the > bureaucratic forces of our country. " > > And that's just what expects to eventually happen. " I think these > drugs are history, " she says. Eventually, the stories told by parents, and > the investigations into the clinical trials that the drug companies have > suppressed, will add up to public outrage -- and then antidepressants will > be pulled from the market, she predicts. > > " What is sad, " she says, " is that so many have had to die or have their > lives ruined while we have learned that this was yet another terrible > mistake in our hope of 'Better Living Through Chemistry.' " > > E-mail: jarvik@d... > > Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co. > Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 7, 2005 Report Share Posted April 7, 2005 Hi Gertie, LOL, yeah the CCHR booklets are a little over the top. All true but I feel they are garish also and so don't communicate as well to some people. They are getting better. I watched a CCHR DVD the other day and it was simply strait documented stories but even then it was hard for even ME to watch and I help document those kinds of cases. I couldn't finish it and haven't gone back yet. The subject matter is so upsetting I think many simply cannot comfront it. Sadly I think those stories really need to be seen and known. I can burn it for anyone brave enough to check it out. I know there are some good psychiatric doctors, CCHR has worked with many and when we find a good one we are very thrilled. Sadly it's just like you said, the majority of psychiatrists at least in the press and practically every single one I have investigated are soaked in sexual abuse or sex with patients, billing fraud, headhunting for good insurance and then committing people and appalling massive overdrugging of patients....especially upsetting are the children in Texas foster care. I see repeatedly psych drug reactions missed and new mental illnesses diagnosed and treated leaving the patient poisoned and confused. Many times for life. I think psychiatry as a whole is terrified of Scientologists because we know what they are up to and call them on it. It's confusing for the public because they are sold psychiatry is good and safe in the media and it's simply not true most of the time. Best, Jim Jim, Of course, it is absolutely true that Scientology opposes psychiatry, so I don't know why Time Magazine would really need to retract a story pointing out Scientology's position. ( I did not see the article, perhaps it was unfair or inaccurate, regarding Scientology's position.). I have a stack of those excellent, if garish, 8 1/2 X 11 " booklets put out by their CCHR organization. I've attended hearings they held in Philadelphia. There is not any doubt in my mind that it is true that Scientology opposes psychiatry. And, I say, So what? That's hardly a crime. It is not just a whim on the part of Scientology, nor jealousy, or any other silly, empty thing. Scientology has made a well-documented case against psychiatry, when few other organizations, especially religious ones, with the most reason to do so, including my beloved Russian Orthodox Church, have done so. But the utter idiocy here is the lack of intellectual power on the part of these idiot shrinks who insist, and really, truly believe, that because Scientology has come out against them, then any criticism of them is ipso facto coming from Scientology. First, the dopes have failed to actually take in the substance of the case that has been made by Scientology against psychiatry, and in any case fail to address any of its findings, and second, we behold the logical lapse involved in concluding, as a result, that any criticism of psychiatry must necessarily be coming from Scientology and not from the facts that Scientology has assembled for all the world to consider, regarding the true nature of this dark and destructive religion which masquerades as science. . Re: Re: Dr. Ann article Sara, You nailed it right on the head. I have to laugh because it doesn't have as much punch in the areas where Scientologists are busy. The people that know them know those allegations are just bigotry used as a tool because they have seen for themselves that good work gets done by Scientologists just like all the other religions that work to help others, meaning all major religions. I believe it is a tactic like you say, I just see it fall flat so many times and backfire on the people saying it in my area. At the Texas legislature those kind of comments have backfired repeatedly. Bigoted comments only work when no one knows any of the targeted people. the Romans persecuted the Christians and now we have the Roman Catholic Church. To me the Christians comparitively civilized Europe from it's previous barbarism. It's just such a feeble defense for harming millions for profit, I have a feeling as more people meet real Scientologists comments like that will fall flat more and more often. To me it's a weak last defence. Jim I don't laugh at the Scientology charge. I have run into it twice. On the CABF (Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation) boards, there were hints from the moderators that my antidepressant views should be ignored because I must have been a Scientologist. One person who wasn't a moderator but was an " insider " came right out and said it. On the Court TV forum during the Pittman trial, there was a drive by posting by someone who posted just that once that the drugawareness.org site was a " Scientologist front " site. The people who were viciously out to hang and who didn't like to hear anything about antidepressants because, in their opinion, it was a defense designed only for the family to make money in a civil suit against the Pfizer, quickly latched on to the Scientology label for a few of us, including me. I had to point out the conflict between the Scientologist's total anti psychiatry position and the fact that drugsawareness.org has copies of, links to, and refereces about articles by psychiatrists and published in psychiatric journals before I got them to shut up. Even so, someone else would do it a few days later. Each time I debunked the alleged connection between drugawareness.org and the Scientologists I said that it was a means of discrediting people who were saying what the drug companies didn't want people to think about. I strongly suspect that the drug companies encourage if not started these allegations. Doctors who spoke out against SSRIs were (are?) labelled " quacks " while lay people were (are) labelled " Scientologists " . It is a means of discrediting so that the information the person is delivering can be dismissed. I hadn't seen it for about two years then all of a sudden during the Pittman trial it surfaced again. BTW, I am sure that drive by posting on the Court TV board was pre written and a copy and pasted to the forum. I honestly believe that during the Pittman trial the drug companies had an enployee searching for forums where there were positive posts about. drugawareness.com and, when he found one, posted the " Scientologist " allegation. But maybe I'm just too cynical but I don't believe the Scientologist should ever be taken lightly. > Ann is awesome and I love her work. She was years ahead with her > observations and she deserves credit for all her hard work. A true freedom > fighter. > > I laugh at the Scientology angle. Ann is a Mormon like the couple I > talked to today that I helped get out of a CPS drugged-children situation > working for CCHR. > > > Best, > > Jim > > http://tinyurl.com/3txqt > > > August 2004 > > Depressed over Prozac > Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News > > Ann knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit > her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in > the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and > then drank a can of Drano; the 12- year-old girl who strangled herself with > a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger on the wall. > > Sit with for an hour and pretty soon your head is swimming in details: > the shooting at Columbine, a study of violent mice, the conversation she had > with Rusty Yates, whose wife drowned their five children in a bathtub. > Yates was on maximum doses of Effexor and Remeron, she reminds you. > The world according to Ann is a place full of people who were put on > antidepressants and then went on to do horrible things. > > is executive director of the International Coalition for Drug > Awareness, which she operates out of her home office in West Jordan, a home > she has mortgaged twice to pay for her 15-year crusade against > antidepressants and the pharmaceutical companies who make them. > > She is heartened by recent scrutiny of the drugs. Last year, the British > version of the FDA banned all antidepressants other than Prozac for use in > children under 18. In March, the Food and Drug Administration issued a > Public Health Advisory about antidepressants - - urging doctors and families > to monitor adult and child patients on the drugs -- and then appointed a > panel of experts to reanalyze the incidence of suicide attempts during > clinical trials of teens. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer > sued the makers of Paxil for consumer fraud, and 30 Utahns joined a > nationwide class- action suit charging that GlaxoKline " concealed, > suppressed and downplayed " severe withdrawal reactions in people trying to > go off the antidepressant. > > But won't be happy until the drugs are banned altogether. They cause > people to become violently suicidal and homicidal, she argues. They cause > cancer, she says, and heart disease and diabetes and divorce. > > Some people call her a visionary. Others roll their eyes and call her > misinformed -- and worry that she is hurting the very people she wants to > help. > > Panacea or Pandora? > > In 1991, wrote an 80-page pamphlet called " Prozac: Panacea or > Pandora? " Three years later she expanded it into a 424-page book that she > published herself. She wrote a lot of it longhand, while sitting in the Salt > Lake LDS Temple: the one place, she says, where she was sure Satan didn't > have a foothold. > > Hers was one of the first books to criticize antidepressants, but others > followed: Dr. Breggin's 1995 " Talking Back to Prozac, " Dr. ph > Glenmullen's 2000 " Prozac Backlash, " Dr. Healy's 2004 " Let Them Eat > Prozac. " As the titles suggest, Prozac has become shorthand for > antidepressant, the way Kleenex is shorthand for tissue, because Prozac was > the first of a new class of antidepressants called SSRIs (selective > serotonin reuptake inhibitors). But there are now plenty of others, > including Paxil, Effexor, Zoloft and Luvox. > > According to IMS Health, a market research company for the pharmaceutical > industry, sales of antidepressants worldwide in 2003 reached $19.5 billion, > up 10 percent from 2002. Some of this growth, according to the IMS Web site, > can be attributed to the use of antidepressants in " lifestyle disorders, " > which now include or could feasibly include, according to IMS, premenstrual > dysphoric disorder, smoking cessation, weight loss and shyness -- a list > that causes some people, like Jim Harper of prozactruth.com, to complain > that antidepressants are now prescribed " if you bite your nails. " > > started the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in 1997. The > coalition has a Web site, www.drugawareness.org, volunteer directors in 30 > states and board members in Bulgaria and Singapore. The most celebrated > member of her board is Dr. Candace Pert, the town University School of > Medicine neuroscientist who a generation ago helped discover and map the > kind of receptors that regulate mood and health. > > On the case > > Distraught parents of suicidal teens, and the relatives and attorneys of > people accused of murder, call asking for her help. But also > keeps her antennae up for stories about violent deaths that might possibly > be linked to antidepressants. If she reads a newspaper account about a man, > say, who has gone on a shooting rampage at work -- as happened in July at a > ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas -- she will immediately get on the phone to > flesh out the details, trying to find out if the assailant had been on an > antidepressant. Occasionally the victims are famous, and sometimes the > assailants become famous for their horrific crimes, but either way is > not afraid to insert herself into their lives or their deaths. > > The day after she heard that Brynn Hartman had shot her husband, comedian > Phil Hartman, and then herself, called up Phil Hartman's brother, > whose number she found on the Internet. had just returned from being > an expert witness at the trial of a Wyoming woman on Paxil who had shot her > husband and later reported that she didn't remember anything about the > murder except standing there with the smoking gun. So told the > Hartmans: " Don't you stop till you find one of these drugs. " Brynn Hartman, > it turned out, had been on Zoloft; drugmaker Pfizer settled an eventual > wrongful death case for an undisclosed amount. > > After reading about Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader who killed his > family and then drove to work and killed nine more people before also > turning the gun on himself, phoned his mother. It wasn't until six > months later that Atlanta police reported that Prozac had been found in > Barton's car, so was operating on instinct when she urged Barton's > mother to have his body tested for antidepressants. " Not all coroners check > for these drugs, " explains. " It requires a few extra tests, and not > all states will pay for it. That's why you need to get to the families right > away. " > > But things don't always work out the way would hope. In the Atlanta > day trader case, she says, she had his body ready to be shipped to an > independent forensic toxicologist in Oklahoma City, but Barton's mother > changed her mind. Maybe, says, the coroner told Mrs. Barton that > was a Scientologist. > > The Scientology charge still surfaces occasionally, because Scientologists > are famous for their opposition to psychotropic drugs and in fact to > psychiatry in general. ( " Psychiatry is seeking to create a world where man > is reduced to a robotized or drugged, vegetablelike state so that he can be > controlled, " Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote.) > > Vicki Cottrell, executive director of the Utah chapter of the National > Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is sure has Scientology ties. > " She says she's not a Scientologist, but she has the same philosophy, " says > Cottrell. " Of course I don't have the thing on paper, in writing, but I > believe they finance her. " denies any connection to Scientology and > says in fact that Scientologists don't like her because she won't go after > psychiatrists. She says her war against antidepressants has put her $100,000 > in debt (mostly from phone bills and publishing her book). accuses > NAMI of getting money from drug companies. > > Cause and effect > > Emotions run high because, on both sides, there is a belief that lives are > at stake. Mental-health advocates argue that antidepressants have helped > millions of people, and they worry that crusades like 's will convince > the very people who need drugs to go off them. The stories of people who > have committed suicide or crimes while on antidepressants are sad and > regrettable, they agree, but anecdotes aren't scientific proof. > > Deseret Morning News graphic > > Antidepressants > > Requires Adobe Acrobat. > > Did Mark Barton, for example, kill his family and co-workers because he was > on Prozac orwhile he was on Prozac? > > " It's a cause-and-effect issue, " says Dr. Meredith Alden, president of the > Utah Psychiatric Association. " People make assumptions about cause and > effect when there is only an association. " > > Yes, sometimes people on antidepressants kill themselves or act violently, > she says, but that's because " you're already dealing with people who are > prone to violent behavior. " And, she says, " people who are depressed are > going to be at greater risk of hurting themselves. " > > Sometimes, concedes University of Utah psychiatry professor Dr. Tomb, > " some people will briefly feel more suicidal " when they're first put on > antidepressants, but that happens when they first go into psychotherapy, > too, he argues, " or just because they're getting better by tincture of > time. " Tomb, like a lot of people in the field, offers this explanation: A > really depressed person may not have the energy to kill himself; then he > starts taking medication, still feels depressed, but suddenly has enough > energy to follow through with his suicidal thoughts. > > But what about the people who weren't suicidal until they took the drugs, > asks. What about the people who had no history of violence but then > killed their own children? > > FDA weighs in > > The FDA, in its Health Advisory issued in March, asked drug companies to add > stronger warnings to their package inserts, cautioning physicians and > families to " closely monitor " both adults and children for suicidal > thinking, and " certain behaviors that are known to be associated with these > drugs, " including mania and hostility, especially at the beginning of > treatment, or when the doses are increased or decreased. The FDA stopped > short of requiring the companies to issue these warnings, though, and made > it clear that the matter of cause and effect has not been settled yet. > > The FDA appointed a panel of independent experts to review clinical trials > of antidepressant use in children and teens, trying to determine if these > studies report more suicide attempts in patients prescribed the drugs > compared to those given a placebo pill. The review follows allegations that > GlaxoKline failed to report trials that showed an increase in suicide > attempts, as well as those trials that showed that Paxil was no more > effective than a placebo for younger patients. According to the Wall Street > Journal, which obtained a draft of the panel's review last week, the > clinical trials show children and teens on the drugs were indeed more likely > to have thoughts that appeared to be suicidal. > > Earlier this month, Health Canada, the Canadian version of the FDA, issued a > warning that newborns may suffer withdrawal and other possible symptoms > (seizures, constant crying, etc.) when pregnant women take SSRIs during the > third trimester of their pregnancies. > > In June, the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy > Research Institute issued a report urging that psychotropic drugs should be > prescribed for children " only when the anticipated benefits outweigh the > risks. " Next month, a congressional committee will hold hearings about the > safety of antidepressants and the FDA's alleged censoring last winter of a > staff member who argued that the drugs are dangerous for young people. > > " From those who have seen the internal company documents, " says , " we > know that there is no distinction in age groups with these suicidal > reactions. These reactions are the same across the board, no matter the > age. " > > Utah cases > > argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's famous violent crimes > -- Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed herself and her three children in 1991; > Sergei Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family History Library in > 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his mother with an axe in 2001 -- were violent > because they were either on antidepressants or had gone off them too > abruptly. > > Lenny Gall's father, Len, contacted six months ago, before his son's > sentencing hearing. then went through Lenny's medical records, Gall > says, and found that " he had a very significant reaction to Paxil when he > was 16 " and was put on the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa " shortly before " the > murder. " He's never had a shred of violence in him, " Gall says. > > has served as an expert witness in a dozen criminal cases -- most > recently a land case against a teenage boy who fatally laced his best > friend's soda with cyanide -- and has been hired as a consultant in several > civil cases against drug companies, including one that tried to implicate > Luvox as the reason why shot students at Columbine High School. > She estimates that the number of people she has consulted with about > antidepressants -- how to safely get off them, how to find alternative > methods for treating depression, what to do when a family member is suicidal > or manic -- is now in the thousands. > > Atwood, who will be a senior this year at Copper Hills High School, > credits with helping him get off antidepressants, first prescribed for > him when he was 12. He tried suicide at least 15 times before reading > 's book and listening to her tape. It was then, he says, that he > discovered that odd symptoms -- persistent dreams of gouging his eyes out, > for example -- might be side effects of the drugs that were supposed to be > making him feel normal. Following 's advice, he slowly tapered off > Remeron and now tries to avoid sugar, meat and dairy products. " I still have > my moments of depression, " he says. " But I haven't attempted suicide for > over a year. " > > Ann Blake , according to the International Coalition for Drug Awareness > web site, has a doctorate in health sciences with an emphasis on psychology. > There is no mention of the institution that awarded her this degree -- > Wythe College, in Cedar City. explains that the Ph.D. was > awarded for " lifetime experience, " specifically for the writing of " Prozac: > Panacea or Pandora? " which she says she has been told is the equivalent of, > or " far beyond, " a dissertation. > > Self-published, the book contains spelling and punctuation errors and > incomplete sentences (although says an edited version will be > published in the next few weeks). It also contains page after page of > references to studies that seem to cast a cloud over the safety of > antidepressants. > > argues that the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is " backwards. " She > maintains that the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism > of serotonin, especially in the 7 to 10 percent of the population she says > that studies have shown don't have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in > the first place. The drugs, she charges, can also cause REM sleep behavior > disorder (RBD), which can cause people to act out their vivid, violent > dreams while in a dreamlike state. > > Deconstructing > > " It's hard to know where to begin to detail the cognitive errors she's > making, " says psychiatrist Tomb about 's book. " She is really taking > license with the scientific method. " Yes, is passionate about the > evils of antidepressants, Tomb says, " but passion has very little place in > the scientific method in terms of deciding what is accurate and truthful. " > The book is full of vignettes, but vignettes don't tell the whole story, he > argues. " You could take aspirin and do the same thing: comb the literature > and find horrible things that have occurred with aspirin. " > > But Dr. Marks, an internal medicine physician from Alabama who was > director of research at two large drug companies and now often testifies as > an expert witness against the drugs, calls " in many ways a visionary. " > She " has observed a phenomenon that is now being validated, " he says. > > " I do think there are some people who don't understand Dr. and don't > understand her passion and don't understand how smart she is, " says > Tierney, a North Carolina mother whose teenage daughter was put on Effexor > to treat her migraine headaches. > > In her darkest hours -- when her cheerful, straight-A daughter first became > " a monster " and later, in an effort to wean herself from Effexor, had > withdrawal symptoms that left her unable even to walk -- Tierney called > every antidepressant expert she could find on the Internet. Only > called her back. > > " Dr. never got one dime from me. She never mentioned money to me at > all. When she first called me back and I said, 'What can I pay you?' she > said, 'No. No.' You have to think that's pretty pure. And she helped me more > than anyone else. " > > " An unsung hero, " says Cassandra Dawn Casey, a Utah County woman who started > an antidepressant group called Aspire after her son's death two years ago. > " None of us would have known what was causing these problems in our lives if > it hadn't been for trailblazers like Ann. " > > The beginning > > 's interest in antidepressants began in 1989 when, she says, she > watched two LDS friends turn into alcoholics after being put on Prozac. > After that she started reading about the drugs, and soon she was hunting > down scientific studies, and then she got a button made that said " Just Say > No to Prozac. " After that she'd be at the grocery store or church and people > would come up to her and start telling her their stories. > > " There's great power in those stories, " says Texas trial attorney Andy > Vickery, who has been involved in more than 50 cases related to > antidepressants. " They have a power to persuade and even change the > bureaucratic forces of our country. " > > And that's just what expects to eventually happen. " I think these > drugs are history, " she says. Eventually, the stories told by parents, and > the investigations into the clinical trials that the drug companies have > suppressed, will add up to public outrage -- and then antidepressants will > be pulled from the market, she predicts. > > " What is sad, " she says, " is that so many have had to die or have their > lives ruined while we have learned that this was yet another terrible > mistake in our hope of 'Better Living Through Chemistry.' " > > E-mail: jarvik@d... > > Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co. > Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 7, 2005 Report Share Posted April 7, 2005 Hi Gertie, LOL, yeah the CCHR booklets are a little over the top. All true but I feel they are garish also and so don't communicate as well to some people. They are getting better. I watched a CCHR DVD the other day and it was simply strait documented stories but even then it was hard for even ME to watch and I help document those kinds of cases. I couldn't finish it and haven't gone back yet. The subject matter is so upsetting I think many simply cannot comfront it. Sadly I think those stories really need to be seen and known. I can burn it for anyone brave enough to check it out. I know there are some good psychiatric doctors, CCHR has worked with many and when we find a good one we are very thrilled. Sadly it's just like you said, the majority of psychiatrists at least in the press and practically every single one I have investigated are soaked in sexual abuse or sex with patients, billing fraud, headhunting for good insurance and then committing people and appalling massive overdrugging of patients....especially upsetting are the children in Texas foster care. I see repeatedly psych drug reactions missed and new mental illnesses diagnosed and treated leaving the patient poisoned and confused. Many times for life. I think psychiatry as a whole is terrified of Scientologists because we know what they are up to and call them on it. It's confusing for the public because they are sold psychiatry is good and safe in the media and it's simply not true most of the time. Best, Jim Jim, Of course, it is absolutely true that Scientology opposes psychiatry, so I don't know why Time Magazine would really need to retract a story pointing out Scientology's position. ( I did not see the article, perhaps it was unfair or inaccurate, regarding Scientology's position.). I have a stack of those excellent, if garish, 8 1/2 X 11 " booklets put out by their CCHR organization. I've attended hearings they held in Philadelphia. There is not any doubt in my mind that it is true that Scientology opposes psychiatry. And, I say, So what? That's hardly a crime. It is not just a whim on the part of Scientology, nor jealousy, or any other silly, empty thing. Scientology has made a well-documented case against psychiatry, when few other organizations, especially religious ones, with the most reason to do so, including my beloved Russian Orthodox Church, have done so. But the utter idiocy here is the lack of intellectual power on the part of these idiot shrinks who insist, and really, truly believe, that because Scientology has come out against them, then any criticism of them is ipso facto coming from Scientology. First, the dopes have failed to actually take in the substance of the case that has been made by Scientology against psychiatry, and in any case fail to address any of its findings, and second, we behold the logical lapse involved in concluding, as a result, that any criticism of psychiatry must necessarily be coming from Scientology and not from the facts that Scientology has assembled for all the world to consider, regarding the true nature of this dark and destructive religion which masquerades as science. . Re: Re: Dr. Ann article Sara, You nailed it right on the head. I have to laugh because it doesn't have as much punch in the areas where Scientologists are busy. The people that know them know those allegations are just bigotry used as a tool because they have seen for themselves that good work gets done by Scientologists just like all the other religions that work to help others, meaning all major religions. I believe it is a tactic like you say, I just see it fall flat so many times and backfire on the people saying it in my area. At the Texas legislature those kind of comments have backfired repeatedly. Bigoted comments only work when no one knows any of the targeted people. the Romans persecuted the Christians and now we have the Roman Catholic Church. To me the Christians comparitively civilized Europe from it's previous barbarism. It's just such a feeble defense for harming millions for profit, I have a feeling as more people meet real Scientologists comments like that will fall flat more and more often. To me it's a weak last defence. Jim I don't laugh at the Scientology charge. I have run into it twice. On the CABF (Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation) boards, there were hints from the moderators that my antidepressant views should be ignored because I must have been a Scientologist. One person who wasn't a moderator but was an " insider " came right out and said it. On the Court TV forum during the Pittman trial, there was a drive by posting by someone who posted just that once that the drugawareness.org site was a " Scientologist front " site. The people who were viciously out to hang and who didn't like to hear anything about antidepressants because, in their opinion, it was a defense designed only for the family to make money in a civil suit against the Pfizer, quickly latched on to the Scientology label for a few of us, including me. I had to point out the conflict between the Scientologist's total anti psychiatry position and the fact that drugsawareness.org has copies of, links to, and refereces about articles by psychiatrists and published in psychiatric journals before I got them to shut up. Even so, someone else would do it a few days later. Each time I debunked the alleged connection between drugawareness.org and the Scientologists I said that it was a means of discrediting people who were saying what the drug companies didn't want people to think about. I strongly suspect that the drug companies encourage if not started these allegations. Doctors who spoke out against SSRIs were (are?) labelled " quacks " while lay people were (are) labelled " Scientologists " . It is a means of discrediting so that the information the person is delivering can be dismissed. I hadn't seen it for about two years then all of a sudden during the Pittman trial it surfaced again. BTW, I am sure that drive by posting on the Court TV board was pre written and a copy and pasted to the forum. I honestly believe that during the Pittman trial the drug companies had an enployee searching for forums where there were positive posts about. drugawareness.com and, when he found one, posted the " Scientologist " allegation. But maybe I'm just too cynical but I don't believe the Scientologist should ever be taken lightly. > Ann is awesome and I love her work. She was years ahead with her > observations and she deserves credit for all her hard work. A true freedom > fighter. > > I laugh at the Scientology angle. Ann is a Mormon like the couple I > talked to today that I helped get out of a CPS drugged-children situation > working for CCHR. > > > Best, > > Jim > > http://tinyurl.com/3txqt > > > August 2004 > > Depressed over Prozac > Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News > > Ann knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit > her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in > the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and > then drank a can of Drano; the 12- year-old girl who strangled herself with > a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger on the wall. > > Sit with for an hour and pretty soon your head is swimming in details: > the shooting at Columbine, a study of violent mice, the conversation she had > with Rusty Yates, whose wife drowned their five children in a bathtub. > Yates was on maximum doses of Effexor and Remeron, she reminds you. > The world according to Ann is a place full of people who were put on > antidepressants and then went on to do horrible things. > > is executive director of the International Coalition for Drug > Awareness, which she operates out of her home office in West Jordan, a home > she has mortgaged twice to pay for her 15-year crusade against > antidepressants and the pharmaceutical companies who make them. > > She is heartened by recent scrutiny of the drugs. Last year, the British > version of the FDA banned all antidepressants other than Prozac for use in > children under 18. In March, the Food and Drug Administration issued a > Public Health Advisory about antidepressants - - urging doctors and families > to monitor adult and child patients on the drugs -- and then appointed a > panel of experts to reanalyze the incidence of suicide attempts during > clinical trials of teens. In June, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer > sued the makers of Paxil for consumer fraud, and 30 Utahns joined a > nationwide class- action suit charging that GlaxoKline " concealed, > suppressed and downplayed " severe withdrawal reactions in people trying to > go off the antidepressant. > > But won't be happy until the drugs are banned altogether. They cause > people to become violently suicidal and homicidal, she argues. They cause > cancer, she says, and heart disease and diabetes and divorce. > > Some people call her a visionary. Others roll their eyes and call her > misinformed -- and worry that she is hurting the very people she wants to > help. > > Panacea or Pandora? > > In 1991, wrote an 80-page pamphlet called " Prozac: Panacea or > Pandora? " Three years later she expanded it into a 424-page book that she > published herself. She wrote a lot of it longhand, while sitting in the Salt > Lake LDS Temple: the one place, she says, where she was sure Satan didn't > have a foothold. > > Hers was one of the first books to criticize antidepressants, but others > followed: Dr. Breggin's 1995 " Talking Back to Prozac, " Dr. ph > Glenmullen's 2000 " Prozac Backlash, " Dr. Healy's 2004 " Let Them Eat > Prozac. " As the titles suggest, Prozac has become shorthand for > antidepressant, the way Kleenex is shorthand for tissue, because Prozac was > the first of a new class of antidepressants called SSRIs (selective > serotonin reuptake inhibitors). But there are now plenty of others, > including Paxil, Effexor, Zoloft and Luvox. > > According to IMS Health, a market research company for the pharmaceutical > industry, sales of antidepressants worldwide in 2003 reached $19.5 billion, > up 10 percent from 2002. Some of this growth, according to the IMS Web site, > can be attributed to the use of antidepressants in " lifestyle disorders, " > which now include or could feasibly include, according to IMS, premenstrual > dysphoric disorder, smoking cessation, weight loss and shyness -- a list > that causes some people, like Jim Harper of prozactruth.com, to complain > that antidepressants are now prescribed " if you bite your nails. " > > started the International Coalition for Drug Awareness in 1997. The > coalition has a Web site, www.drugawareness.org, volunteer directors in 30 > states and board members in Bulgaria and Singapore. The most celebrated > member of her board is Dr. Candace Pert, the town University School of > Medicine neuroscientist who a generation ago helped discover and map the > kind of receptors that regulate mood and health. > > On the case > > Distraught parents of suicidal teens, and the relatives and attorneys of > people accused of murder, call asking for her help. But also > keeps her antennae up for stories about violent deaths that might possibly > be linked to antidepressants. If she reads a newspaper account about a man, > say, who has gone on a shooting rampage at work -- as happened in July at a > ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas -- she will immediately get on the phone to > flesh out the details, trying to find out if the assailant had been on an > antidepressant. Occasionally the victims are famous, and sometimes the > assailants become famous for their horrific crimes, but either way is > not afraid to insert herself into their lives or their deaths. > > The day after she heard that Brynn Hartman had shot her husband, comedian > Phil Hartman, and then herself, called up Phil Hartman's brother, > whose number she found on the Internet. had just returned from being > an expert witness at the trial of a Wyoming woman on Paxil who had shot her > husband and later reported that she didn't remember anything about the > murder except standing there with the smoking gun. So told the > Hartmans: " Don't you stop till you find one of these drugs. " Brynn Hartman, > it turned out, had been on Zoloft; drugmaker Pfizer settled an eventual > wrongful death case for an undisclosed amount. > > After reading about Mark Barton, the Atlanta day trader who killed his > family and then drove to work and killed nine more people before also > turning the gun on himself, phoned his mother. It wasn't until six > months later that Atlanta police reported that Prozac had been found in > Barton's car, so was operating on instinct when she urged Barton's > mother to have his body tested for antidepressants. " Not all coroners check > for these drugs, " explains. " It requires a few extra tests, and not > all states will pay for it. That's why you need to get to the families right > away. " > > But things don't always work out the way would hope. In the Atlanta > day trader case, she says, she had his body ready to be shipped to an > independent forensic toxicologist in Oklahoma City, but Barton's mother > changed her mind. Maybe, says, the coroner told Mrs. Barton that > was a Scientologist. > > The Scientology charge still surfaces occasionally, because Scientologists > are famous for their opposition to psychotropic drugs and in fact to > psychiatry in general. ( " Psychiatry is seeking to create a world where man > is reduced to a robotized or drugged, vegetablelike state so that he can be > controlled, " Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote.) > > Vicki Cottrell, executive director of the Utah chapter of the National > Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is sure has Scientology ties. > " She says she's not a Scientologist, but she has the same philosophy, " says > Cottrell. " Of course I don't have the thing on paper, in writing, but I > believe they finance her. " denies any connection to Scientology and > says in fact that Scientologists don't like her because she won't go after > psychiatrists. She says her war against antidepressants has put her $100,000 > in debt (mostly from phone bills and publishing her book). accuses > NAMI of getting money from drug companies. > > Cause and effect > > Emotions run high because, on both sides, there is a belief that lives are > at stake. Mental-health advocates argue that antidepressants have helped > millions of people, and they worry that crusades like 's will convince > the very people who need drugs to go off them. The stories of people who > have committed suicide or crimes while on antidepressants are sad and > regrettable, they agree, but anecdotes aren't scientific proof. > > Deseret Morning News graphic > > Antidepressants > > Requires Adobe Acrobat. > > Did Mark Barton, for example, kill his family and co-workers because he was > on Prozac orwhile he was on Prozac? > > " It's a cause-and-effect issue, " says Dr. Meredith Alden, president of the > Utah Psychiatric Association. " People make assumptions about cause and > effect when there is only an association. " > > Yes, sometimes people on antidepressants kill themselves or act violently, > she says, but that's because " you're already dealing with people who are > prone to violent behavior. " And, she says, " people who are depressed are > going to be at greater risk of hurting themselves. " > > Sometimes, concedes University of Utah psychiatry professor Dr. Tomb, > " some people will briefly feel more suicidal " when they're first put on > antidepressants, but that happens when they first go into psychotherapy, > too, he argues, " or just because they're getting better by tincture of > time. " Tomb, like a lot of people in the field, offers this explanation: A > really depressed person may not have the energy to kill himself; then he > starts taking medication, still feels depressed, but suddenly has enough > energy to follow through with his suicidal thoughts. > > But what about the people who weren't suicidal until they took the drugs, > asks. What about the people who had no history of violence but then > killed their own children? > > FDA weighs in > > The FDA, in its Health Advisory issued in March, asked drug companies to add > stronger warnings to their package inserts, cautioning physicians and > families to " closely monitor " both adults and children for suicidal > thinking, and " certain behaviors that are known to be associated with these > drugs, " including mania and hostility, especially at the beginning of > treatment, or when the doses are increased or decreased. The FDA stopped > short of requiring the companies to issue these warnings, though, and made > it clear that the matter of cause and effect has not been settled yet. > > The FDA appointed a panel of independent experts to review clinical trials > of antidepressant use in children and teens, trying to determine if these > studies report more suicide attempts in patients prescribed the drugs > compared to those given a placebo pill. The review follows allegations that > GlaxoKline failed to report trials that showed an increase in suicide > attempts, as well as those trials that showed that Paxil was no more > effective than a placebo for younger patients. According to the Wall Street > Journal, which obtained a draft of the panel's review last week, the > clinical trials show children and teens on the drugs were indeed more likely > to have thoughts that appeared to be suicidal. > > Earlier this month, Health Canada, the Canadian version of the FDA, issued a > warning that newborns may suffer withdrawal and other possible symptoms > (seizures, constant crying, etc.) when pregnant women take SSRIs during the > third trimester of their pregnancies. > > In June, the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Policy > Research Institute issued a report urging that psychotropic drugs should be > prescribed for children " only when the anticipated benefits outweigh the > risks. " Next month, a congressional committee will hold hearings about the > safety of antidepressants and the FDA's alleged censoring last winter of a > staff member who argued that the drugs are dangerous for young people. > > " From those who have seen the internal company documents, " says , " we > know that there is no distinction in age groups with these suicidal > reactions. These reactions are the same across the board, no matter the > age. " > > Utah cases > > argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's famous violent crimes > -- Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed herself and her three children in 1991; > Sergei Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family History Library in > 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his mother with an axe in 2001 -- were violent > because they were either on antidepressants or had gone off them too > abruptly. > > Lenny Gall's father, Len, contacted six months ago, before his son's > sentencing hearing. then went through Lenny's medical records, Gall > says, and found that " he had a very significant reaction to Paxil when he > was 16 " and was put on the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa " shortly before " the > murder. " He's never had a shred of violence in him, " Gall says. > > has served as an expert witness in a dozen criminal cases -- most > recently a land case against a teenage boy who fatally laced his best > friend's soda with cyanide -- and has been hired as a consultant in several > civil cases against drug companies, including one that tried to implicate > Luvox as the reason why shot students at Columbine High School. > She estimates that the number of people she has consulted with about > antidepressants -- how to safely get off them, how to find alternative > methods for treating depression, what to do when a family member is suicidal > or manic -- is now in the thousands. > > Atwood, who will be a senior this year at Copper Hills High School, > credits with helping him get off antidepressants, first prescribed for > him when he was 12. He tried suicide at least 15 times before reading > 's book and listening to her tape. It was then, he says, that he > discovered that odd symptoms -- persistent dreams of gouging his eyes out, > for example -- might be side effects of the drugs that were supposed to be > making him feel normal. Following 's advice, he slowly tapered off > Remeron and now tries to avoid sugar, meat and dairy products. " I still have > my moments of depression, " he says. " But I haven't attempted suicide for > over a year. " > > Ann Blake , according to the International Coalition for Drug Awareness > web site, has a doctorate in health sciences with an emphasis on psychology. > There is no mention of the institution that awarded her this degree -- > Wythe College, in Cedar City. explains that the Ph.D. was > awarded for " lifetime experience, " specifically for the writing of " Prozac: > Panacea or Pandora? " which she says she has been told is the equivalent of, > or " far beyond, " a dissertation. > > Self-published, the book contains spelling and punctuation errors and > incomplete sentences (although says an edited version will be > published in the next few weeks). It also contains page after page of > references to studies that seem to cast a cloud over the safety of > antidepressants. > > argues that the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is " backwards. " She > maintains that the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism > of serotonin, especially in the 7 to 10 percent of the population she says > that studies have shown don't have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in > the first place. The drugs, she charges, can also cause REM sleep behavior > disorder (RBD), which can cause people to act out their vivid, violent > dreams while in a dreamlike state. > > Deconstructing > > " It's hard to know where to begin to detail the cognitive errors she's > making, " says psychiatrist Tomb about 's book. " She is really taking > license with the scientific method. " Yes, is passionate about the > evils of antidepressants, Tomb says, " but passion has very little place in > the scientific method in terms of deciding what is accurate and truthful. " > The book is full of vignettes, but vignettes don't tell the whole story, he > argues. " You could take aspirin and do the same thing: comb the literature > and find horrible things that have occurred with aspirin. " > > But Dr. Marks, an internal medicine physician from Alabama who was > director of research at two large drug companies and now often testifies as > an expert witness against the drugs, calls " in many ways a visionary. " > She " has observed a phenomenon that is now being validated, " he says. > > " I do think there are some people who don't understand Dr. and don't > understand her passion and don't understand how smart she is, " says > Tierney, a North Carolina mother whose teenage daughter was put on Effexor > to treat her migraine headaches. > > In her darkest hours -- when her cheerful, straight-A daughter first became > " a monster " and later, in an effort to wean herself from Effexor, had > withdrawal symptoms that left her unable even to walk -- Tierney called > every antidepressant expert she could find on the Internet. Only > called her back. > > " Dr. never got one dime from me. She never mentioned money to me at > all. When she first called me back and I said, 'What can I pay you?' she > said, 'No. No.' You have to think that's pretty pure. And she helped me more > than anyone else. " > > " An unsung hero, " says Cassandra Dawn Casey, a Utah County woman who started > an antidepressant group called Aspire after her son's death two years ago. > " None of us would have known what was causing these problems in our lives if > it hadn't been for trailblazers like Ann. " > > The beginning > > 's interest in antidepressants began in 1989 when, she says, she > watched two LDS friends turn into alcoholics after being put on Prozac. > After that she started reading about the drugs, and soon she was hunting > down scientific studies, and then she got a button made that said " Just Say > No to Prozac. " After that she'd be at the grocery store or church and people > would come up to her and start telling her their stories. > > " There's great power in those stories, " says Texas trial attorney Andy > Vickery, who has been involved in more than 50 cases related to > antidepressants. " They have a power to persuade and even change the > bureaucratic forces of our country. " > > And that's just what expects to eventually happen. " I think these > drugs are history, " she says. Eventually, the stories told by parents, and > the investigations into the clinical trials that the drug companies have > suppressed, will add up to public outrage -- and then antidepressants will > be pulled from the market, she predicts. > > " What is sad, " she says, " is that so many have had to die or have their > lives ruined while we have learned that this was yet another terrible > mistake in our hope of 'Better Living Through Chemistry.' " > > E-mail: jarvik@d... > > Copyright C 2004 Deseret News Publishing Co. > Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved. > > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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