Transcript: Fox News Antidepressant Special - Please send letter of thanks...

[Guest guest]

Friends,

This was just sent to me by one of my associates. If you missed the first

segment of the FOX News special on antidepressants, here's the full text.

It would be great if you'd help to get this out to everyone you know, and

please write a letter of thanks to Fox's " On The Record " team of

investigative reporters.

~The Avenging Angel

In case you missed it, here is a transcript from last night's show on FOX

NATIONAL TV; " On the Record " . This was a no holds barred look at the

connection between violent inducing psychiatric drugs and the recent school

shootings. The producer, Kennedy should be acknowledged for

exposing the facts.

Please email the show after reading the below transcript and acknowledge

both FOX News and producer Kennedy for this groundbreaking piece.

email ontherecord@...

P.S. Stay tuned for tonights follow up piece...

Best

Marla Filidei

VP CCHR International

Note: The segment will air sometime within the hour (10 p.m. EST Fox News

Channel). The show host is Vester, not Greta Van Susteren.

SHOW: FOX ON THE RECORD WITH GRETA VAN SUSTEREN (22:40)

November 25, 2002 Monday

HEADLINE: Interview With Bruce Wiseman, Joan Kinlin

GUESTS: Bruce Wiseman, Joan Kinlin

BYLINE: Vester, Kennedy, Steve Harrigan

BODY:

VESTER: It has happened all too often. A troubled teenager gets his hand on

a weapon, and lives are changed forever. But why? ON THE RECORD

investigates, and, as Fox's Kennedy found out, the trail can often

lead right to the medicine chest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DOUGLAS KENNEDY, FOX CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two years ago 16-year- old

Cory Baadsgaard took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates

hostage.

(on camera): Describe around that time how you were feeling. CORY

BAADSGAARD, TOOK GUN TO SCHOOL: In the morning, I just -- I didn't feel like

going to school. I felt sick. I didn't feel like really -- you know, like I

could get up very well, and so I went back to bed, and the next thing I

remember, I'm in juvy in the detention center where I used to live.

KENNEDY (voice-over): Just one more apparently unexplainable violent

outburst at school, unexplainable to everyone but Cory's dad.

(on camera): So, in your mind, there's no doubt what happened here?

JAY BAADSGAARD, CORY'S FATHER: I had no doubt that the medication did this.

I mean, he was -- had amnesia, you know, hallucinations earlier, abnormal

dreams, which are all side effects of the medication.

KENNEDY (voice-over): That morning, Cory was on a mix of antidepressants

prescribed for what doctors called situational depression. His father says

the pills turned Cory from a sensitive teenage boy to a volatile marauder

susceptible to blind rage.

JAY BAADSGAARD: He was never a violent kid. I mean, he's always been a good

kid, loved us, hugged us all. You know, he's never watched violent videos,

and, until the medication, he started -- you know, after that, then we

realized that he was having aggression problems, and -- you know, it was out

of character.

KENNEDY (on camera): At Fox News, we found the Baadsgaard story with

antidepressants compelling. So we investigated further. We found a

disturbing number of recent school shooters were either on medication or

were experiencing withdrawal.

(voice-over): The list includes: 15-year-old Kip Kinkle withdrawing from

Prozac when he shot 22 classmates, killing two, after murdering his mother

and stepfather at his home in Springfield, Oregon; 14-year-old

Bush on Prozac when she blasted away at fellow students in port,

Pennsylvania, wounding one; 18-year-old Hoffman on Effexor and Celexa

when he opened fire at his California high school wounding five; 15-year-old

on a mix of antidepressants when he shot students in Idaho;

15-year-old T.J. , also on a mix of antidepressants when he aimed his

shotgun at classmates in Conyers, Georgia, wounding six; and 17-year-old

on Luvox when he and partner, Dylan Klebold, killed 12

classmates and a teacher in the bloodiest school massacre yet, Columbine.

DR. PETER BREGGIN, PSYCHIATRIST: One of the things that in the past we've

known about depression is that it very, very rarely leads to violence. It's

only been since the advent of these new SSRI drugs that we have murderers,

sometimes even mass murderers taking antidepressant drugs.

KENNEDY: This man sees another explanation for the students' violence.

DR. ERIC HOLLANDER, MT. SINAI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: They may not be getting

adequate diagnostic evaluation. They may not be in intense enough treatment.

They may not be on the right dose for the right length of time.

KENNEDY: Dr. Hollander is a consultant for various drug companies,

including the maker of Paxil.

HOLLANDER: There is no evidence that being on an antidepressant medicine

would increase the likelihood of homicide or suicide.

BRUCE WISEMAN, CITIZENS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS: As the number of drugs

increased, so, too, have the number of school shootings.

KENNEDY: Bruce Wiseman runs a group that has monitored long-term effects of

antidepressants on kids for years.

WISEMAN: The drugs have got documented side effects of mania, of psychoses

in some cases, of violence, of suicidal tendencies, and you have studies

documenting the fact that these kids were not violent, took the drugs, and

became so.

KENNEDY: Indeed, Fox News recently obtained confidential documents belonging

to the maker of Paxil, the drug Cory Baadsgaard had been taking when he

snapped. The document suggests a patient taking Paxil is eight times more

likely to attempt or commit suicide than patients taking placebo.

And data publicly available from the drug companies show a small percentage

of patients on all antidepressants experience mania, a state of mind

sometimes associated with violent outbursts.

WISEMAN: When you take the figures of -- one drug manufacturer talked about

maniacal behavior of 4 percent. Well, if there are, as some reports say,

two-million kids on these drugs, that's 80,000 time bombs waiting to

explode.

KENNEDY (on camera): Waiting to explode. That's exactly what Cory

Baadsgaard's father said happened to Cory on antidepressants. He says the

solution is simple: Stop drugging our children.

JAY BAADSGAARD: Just stop medicating the kids, and they -- I don't think

we'll have these problems. Or as many as we do now.

KENNEDY (voice-over): And Cory agrees. He's out of jail and off the drugs,

and he says he's doing just fine.

In Washington state, Kennedy, Fox News.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VESTER: So what happens when the drugs designed to save your life make you

want to take it? We're going to have that in part two of our series,

" Drugging Kids. " It's ON THE RECORD tomorrow night.

But, first, is the cure worse than the disease? An explosive debate on our

exclusive series, fair and balanced, ON THE RECORD.

Then later, what these people do could stop or start a war? ON THE RECORD's

on the ground with the weapons inspectors in Baghdad for a live

late-breaking update. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VESTER: We're back to debate the report you just saw on drugging kids. It's

a Fox News exclusive.

Joining us in L.A. is Bruce Wiseman -- you just saw him in the report -- the

national U.S. president for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and

author of the book, " Psychiatry, the Ultimate Betrayal. "

In Washington, we have Dr. Joan Kinlin. She is a child and adolescent

psychiatrist, a clinical faculty member at town University, and a

member of the American Psychiatric Association.

Welcome to you both.

BRUCE WISEMAN, CITIZENS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS: Thank you.

DR. JOAN KINLIN, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: Thank you.

VESTER: Dr. Wiseman, let me start with you and just try to sort of feel you

out as to where you are. Do you think that all antidepressants in teenagers

are dangerous or just some?

WISEMAN: First of all, I'm -- just so you know I'm not a doctor, just to

make sure the record is straight there.

I think the problem on this -- I think psychiatrists have been misleading

the public, not only about the subjective or unscientific nature of

psychiatric diagnosis, but also about the potentially violence-inducing

nature, the violence-inducing side effects of the drugs used to treat them.

I -- this is a billion-dollar mental-health industry with a vested interest

of keeping the public uninformed here. I think the public needs to be aware

of this and that, clearly, there is documented evidence that these...

VESTER: But is that true of all antidepressants or just some?

WISEMAN: Well, it's certainly true of enough of them that it's a problem.

Seven out of the 12 last school shootings were on these kinds of drugs.

Studies at Harvard, studies at Yale, studies at Columbia, studies at the

State University of New York all tie these kinds of drugs to acts of suicide

and/or violence. It's enough to be a real concern.

Whether it's all of them or not, what I can tell you is that the medical

literature makes it clear that there's a connection.

VESTER: Dr. Kinlin, let me ask you. I mean, you know, can we say that it's

the medication that did it, or is it the preexisting condition in the young

person that did it...

KINLIN: Well, I...

VESTER: ... and that -- you know, that the medication just wasn't enough to

stop it?

KINLIN: As an expert in school violence, these are extremely rare events,

and I think that one cannot extrapolate from what happened to state that

this is what caused the violence. We know, in fact, that most violence is

caused by people who are untreated and have serious depression, and...

VESTER: Right, but we're talking for the moment about kids who were being

medicated. So let's sort of confine it to that.

KINLIN: Well my understanding is that most of these kids were not -- either

not on medication at the time of the shooting, or were on multiple

medications, and that possibly might have been the source of it.

VESTER: You think then that there are contraindication -- that they were --

the cocktail of medications and not one individual SSRI -- you know, Paxil,

Zoloft...

KINLIN: That is my understanding. And the cocktail of many medications.

VESTER: OK. Bruce, let me ask you. Is it -- do you think that parents are

overmedicating their kids, that, you know, that whatever it is that's going

wrong either in the child's life or in the family's general dysfunction that

parents are afraid to kind of deal with it and talk it out, and so they're

saying, " Yes, sure. OK. I'll take a prescription for my kid. "

WISEMAN: Well, I don't think there is any question about it, . You

know, we spend $50 million a year on the war on drugs in this country, $50

billion a year, and yet kids line up in the corridors of our school getting

their fix of kiddie cocaine when, in fact, there are probably educational

problems there that are the basis of these kind of things, and --

You know, a child looks out the window, he butts into line, he interrupts

the teacher, he is slapped with a psychiatric diagnosis, and then put on

these kinds of medications which -- and, with all due respect, clearly, are

documented to cause or that have side effects, such as mania, such as

psychoses, such as violence. This is documented in the peer review

literature.

VESTER: Dr. Kinlin, I understand that you believe in talk therapy. You do

believe that meds work, but you also feel like, you know, you've got to talk

to the family and find out what's going on first before you write that

prescription.

So I ask you the same question. Is it -- you know, it -- do we have a

problem with parents who are not willing to deal with the root issues either

in the child or in the family itself?

KINLIN: I find that, if a parent comes with the child and they come for a

very careful and full evaluation, you do an evaluation of the family, the

psychosocial history, you find out about the school, you do a complete

medical history, get all of the pediatric records, and find out and do

evaluations, send particular questionnaires to the teachers, to really try

and understand in what facets of this child's life do they have problems,

and then you decide how will I proceed? But always there's a combination of

talking and sometimes medication. It depends on whether or not it's

indicated and it's truly needed.

VESTER: Bruce, if you could sort of pick a best-case scenario, would you say

that what you'd rather see is no meds for any teenagers until there is

better research on all antidepressants?

WISEMAN: Well, I don't -- I don't think there's any question of it. These

kids in many cases have mental toxicities, lead toxicities. They should go

to a non-psychiatric medical doctor if there's some problem and be tested

for underlying physical problems.

These kinds of things can parade as psychiatric symptoms, as I say, medical

toxicity, lead toxicity. In some cases, , these children simply aren't

being taught to read, and yet the mental health industry is labeling them

with some subjective disorder and putting them on stimulant drugs that are

similar to cocaine.

VESTER: We've got to leave it there for the moment. Bruce Wiseman, Dr. Joan

Kinlin, thank you both very much.

When ON THE RECORD continue, they're in, and they're ready to go, but can a

bunch of scientists and researchers stop a war in Iraq? ON THE RECORD takes

you live to Baghdad for a late-breaking update coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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