Editorial Note: This post will be an easy and obvious read if you’re Irish. If you’re not, with Google or whatever it should be accessible and indeed the little bit of extra effort may make it a more rewarding read. There is a warning below in respect of one item you might choose to Google. There is also one made up word that won’t appear in Google – until after this post is published. A closely related word does appear – which is just fine.
Study 329
Study 329 was the most famous Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) in history. This study of paroxetine given to children and adolescents, who were supposedly depressed, led to a publication in 2001 in the Journal with the highest impact factor in Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology. The paper had an authorship line to die for including Marty Keller, Neal Ryan, Stan Kutcher and others. Its claim that paroxetine worked well and was safe led to mass sales of the drug.
Turns out the study was ghostwritten, there was no evidence the drug worked and there were triple the number of suicidal events on paroxetine compared to placebo – along with other problems. It also became clear that several years before, in 1998, GSK had internally conceded their drug didn’t work for children but figured they would pick out the good bits of the study and publish them.
FDA were happy to overlook the fact the drug didn’t work, it would seem, but New York State weren’t and took a fraud action against GSK, the marketers of paroxetine.
One consequence of this fraud action, resolved in 2004, was that in 2014 a team got access to the data behind the trial and published a reanalysis of the data. Study 329 became the only trial in history for which there are two contradictory published articles. The restoration of 329, to something like what the original publication might more appropriately have said, was finally published in the BMJ in 2015.
The BMJ ordinarily publishes articles within weeks but in this case there was a year long extension to the 329 date. The British medical establishment essentially had a nervous breakdown over 329. The details of what happened can be found on Study 329.org and even more detail will be available in a racy pacy juicy book later this year – telling you who was sleeping with who behind the scenes.
329 a Study
After a referendum in 2016, Britain was supposed to leave the European Union on 329. 329 has come and gone. A process that was supposed to be efficient and smooth has led to a nervous breakdown. There are claims of fraud and lies, scaremongering and ghostwriting on all sides. What’s up?
A large poll of voters’ statements about why they voted the way they did, taken as they exited from referendum polling booths in 2016, found that sovereignty was the most commonly cited issue by leave voters.
If you’re Irish, you might wonder about this. Britain was still able to bomb Iraq, Libya and Syria without anyone in the EU stopping them. Sovereign to do what exactly?
Choclatistas
Britain joined the EU on January 1 1973. This was the day the Chocolate Wars began. Other European countries argued British “chocolate” contained vegetable fats rather than just cocoa and couldn’t be called chocolate. A Thirty Years War followed that contributed to British perceptions that Europe meant rule by Brussels’s bureaucrats. European choclatistas on their side saw nation based artisanal enterprises threatened by multinationals bent on replacing wholefoods with processed foods.
Retrospectively, even if these moral high-ground arguments were being put forward by people who brought us the Mafia and other locally sourced movements, many people would probably concede European chocolate was just better.
But whatever you think of the chocolate, behind this War lay the role of regulation in modern life. When regulators license a drug, they apply criteria in just the same way as they apply criteria to butter or chocolate. Meet the criteria and you can claim your product is butter, chocolate, an analgesic or an anti-hypertensive.
Your product might kill people, be an inferior butter or bone-thickening drug but it’s not the role of the regulator to keep people alive (other than through any contribution banning egregiously false advertising claims might make), nor to mediate between artisanal and multinational sectors of the market, nor to do politics. The role of regulators is to apply criteria.
When trading blocs such as China, America or Europe rub up against each other now, the issues to be negotiated are rarely about politics, and all about achieving regulatory alignment. The criteria applied to feta cheese, diesel emissions and drugs determine the room to move an American, Chinese or European president has.
Where both liberals and communists in the 19th century envisaged the State withering away, by the time we hit the 1960s we had nuclear bomb proof regulatory systems that seem unlikely ever to wither away. America’s FDA is a good example of this. Having no regulations for food or drugs is no more an option than removing all signage from roads and junking driving codes.
While companies have preferential access to the regulatory apparatus through appeals and other processes, and regulators are encouraged to partner industry, and consider the impact of regulations on jobs, this is not a global capitalist conspiracy in the sense of deals that no-one else could support done behind closed doors and imposed on us. The initial drive to regulation came from us, the people, and our effort to control the power of the sovereign.
There is input from experts, including some representing consumer interests, to the regulatory process and the resulting regulations are publicly available, even if industry discussions with regulators are not. In the case of drugs, FDA advisory panels are composed mostly of notionally independent doctors and the meeting transcript is publicly available.
Somehow though in the case of recent antidepressants, everyone on FDA panels appraising Spravato and Brexitanalone, bar Kim Witczak, who is not a doctor, and Julie Zito, who is not a prescriber, voted in favour. Even though Brexitanalone is an ancient drug being hyped up 20 years ago as something that would transform Snow White into a bronzed, skinny, Libidy-chasing third millennium woman. Me too and three and four might have been her motto – at least that’s the way the pre-marketing hype was tending 20 years ago. (For Spravato see here and here).
Its not as though we don’t notionally have our guys on these panels. The panel was stuffed full of what you might imagine were our guys. Yet somehow….
Our guys never get to see the data. They depend on FDA to look over it, which at best FDA do literally – they look over it. If we got to see the data afterwards, or at least some scientists did – this after all is supposed to be science and science hinges on data – and our guys knew we could see it, they might man up, other than at those exceptional times that call for political maturity – when faced with a dwarf-eating Snow White.
Its the lack of access to the data that’s key and the myth that RCTs are a good way to evaluate drugs – they aren’t but they provide good boxes to tick. Clinically RCTs are useless.
With drugs and foods, industry score in another way. Once a drug is approved they can deploy armies of lawyers to work on possible meanings of “organic”, “artisanal”, “locally sourced”, “chemical imbalance” or “mood-stabilizer”.
Sovereign
In the 1980s, Pharma was among the first industries to push for a global harmonization of regulations. This underpinned a globalization of the industry. The general view was, and may still be, that any problems with this necessary feature of modernity are balanced in health, that most sensitive of areas, by the presence of physicians to act as a counter-weight to industry and as advocates for consumers.
The bottom line though is that even Europe is not sovereign. It does what America decides. FDA approved fluoxetine (Prozac) for kids despite recognising the trials showed it didn’t work and that it caused suicidality. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and Britains MHRA followed suit and approved fluoxetine for kids. WHO included fluoxetine in its list of essential drugs for children. NICE and other guidelines recommended and recommend fluoxetine and other SSRIs for children despite there never having been a single positive trial.
Sovereignty would mean being able to say – look none of these (mostly chlorinated) drugs have been shown to work for children. That doesn’t mean they can’t be used but if we’re going to keep people safe, in this case children, we have to at least be able to call it as it is. Put like this, the idea that Britain is somehow going to regain some lost sovereignty by leaving Europe is clearly nuts.
It is probably unfair to say MHRA is about as craven as a regulator can be. Its not the job of a regulator to be brave. It is more accurate to say British physicians as about as craven as physicians can be – well at least as craven as European and American physicians. If physicians stood up to be counted they could make a difference – regulators would have to listen. But if British physicians did this, there’d be a lot less Sir’s around the place.
The British have a wonderful system to keep people in place – offer to give them letters after or before their name. Works a treat and costs nothing.
The Backstop
Back when Absolute Monarchs were still the in-thing, England invaded Ireland. A doctor, William Petty, was given the job of surveying Ireland and its people. Petty created the first GDP for any country anywhere, created the first public health and hints of Evidence Based Medicine and proposed the first Free Trade agreement between any two countries – Ireland and England. Given the Brexit mess now, and all the claims about Free Trade, this is an irony like no other.
Petty’s ideas gave rise to liberalism and public health. His influence came to head, as it were, with the decapitation of Louis XVI in the French Revolution and the replacement of absolute power by regulated power.
It once seemed that this regulated power could always be undone. There are no better illustrations of this than the 19th century interplay between Ireland, then Europe’s most destitute country, and England, the world’s most powerful. After Ireland was forcibly absorbed by Britain in 1800, Daniel O’Connell, realizing that power in this new world was constrained by laws, and boasting he could drive a Horse and Carriage through any English law, campaigned to get the Irish to hang together peaceably.
His campaign demonstrated a weakness inherent in England’s apparent strength and led to Catholic emancipation in Ireland (not yet in England) and on to a series of Irish inventions including the boycott, and the hunger strike that (give or take a little bit of violence) against the odds delivered freedom to the Irish to oppress themselves – even to the extent of handing over sovereignty to others. (Its probably not for nothing that the abbreviation for Ireland – IRL – also stands for In Real Life)
But since somewhere in the 1980s, in medicine anyway, the regulatory apparatus has become as it were a learned intermediary between us and industry. Just as companies invoke doctors as learned intermediaries when things go wrong, they now claim to have adhered to all the rules and regulations and that those who work in industry are more rule-abiding and ethical than the average doctor or regulator – just as German soldiers were at least as ethical and professional as American troops in 1944.
The more we drift toward Google cars and away from Horses and Carriages, the worry has to be that piercing this System will be harder and harder.
In terms of drug wrecks, the key factor has been losing access to the data from the RCTs in which we have participated. This data should be as inalienable as our vote. Industry power stems from its seizure of our data. If we take our data back so that our consent must be sought for its use, and we decide when and under what arrangements it is in our interests to co-operate, we take back not just data but power.
We need a medical version of that recent Irish invention – the backstop. Bottom line is doctors shouldn’t prescribe drugs for which they don’t have access to the data. There should be a hard border between us and chemicals like this. We have nothing to lose by getting our doctors to insist on this. Since the 1980s, there have been vanishingly few drugs that industry has produced that we need – Triple Therapy for AIDS, Gleevec for certain leukemias and maybe Solvadi for Hep C. As things stand there won’t be many more as industry have figured that making drugs that cure disease is bad business.
We could learn something from Study 329 and 329 a Study. Lets put a backstop in place and see who blinks first. We wouldn’t need to take the drastic cutting off their eyelids measures that DUP politicians contemplated in the build up to Brexit 329. Industry would blink first.
(Google “DUP cutting off eyelids” if this is not familiar to you. Make sure you put DUP in the search term – I take no responsibility for the consequences if you don’t. The DUP are a Northern Irish unionist party whom most English people think want a union with the South of Ireland. They are seen by most English people as causing them endless Troubles).
“If you think I did something wrong, you’re wrong because I’ve never done any wrong things, and I don’t specifically remember anything I’ve ever done.”
Weasel Words, indeed.
This particular statement sums up most of what we hear from the Professional Medical Establishment and Politicians currently claiming rights on our behalf
The Troubles go deep..
Hide and go seek is another riddle of the sands, cutting off their nose to spite their face, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a Pharmaceutical Sir against a Medical Sir – not in our lifetime..
If we insist on physicians telling us the truth, treating us as equals, respectfully and intelligently, listening with interest instead of dogmatic dissonance, there might just be a little progress, but, as it stands, I think that fellah Keller sets the tone for things of all that is going wrong in our Soviet Style of State, and, but, how long can they keep it up – eyes to the right, and nose to the left …
http://1boringoldman.com/index.php/2012/12/21/hide-and-go-seek/
In this particular case, there are no facts in question. It was a negative trial, declared negative by the people who did it. The paper was ghost-written and reviewed by the sponsor before any of the twenty two authors ever saw a manuscript. The science was jury-rigged to imply a positive outcome where none was supported using well-documented sleight of hand. None of that is speculative. And the article has been a centerpiece for court settlements worth billions of dollars. Yet the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says “the Journal editors found no basis for retraction or other editorial action.”
One can only conclude that they found this article to be an inconvenient truth,
Sooner or later, this whole tawdy saga is going to find its way out of the blogs and courtrooms and into the full light of day. And the question that’s going to be asked is why didn’t Medicine itself deal with the problem? Why didn’t the Journal itself retract the misinformation once they knew about it? Why didn’t the industry sponsor itself call for the retraction as part of their settlement with the DOJ? What possible reasonable reason could there be for leaving a paper that is a lie in their journal without even an expression of concern, much less a retraction? And there aren’t going to be any believable answers.
Wonder who coined the term ‘The Troubles’ in Ireland – it’s one of the grossest misnomers in history which sanitises what went/is going on in Ireland. I haven’t a clue what devious tricks are going on behind the scenes re ‘brexit and we ‘ordinary mortals’ are being treated like idiots while they try to force feed us crap to confuse us. Just like the crap ‘guidelines used to force feed ever more of their pills. Those who are not fit to impose laws on any of us . think their machinations will never be exposed – just as the medical establishment cronies rewarded with Lords and Ladies Haw Haw after (Lord Haw Haw propagandist in WW2) thought their links with pharma and politics would never be exposed – and even when they are they are so smug because they know they will be protected by the crony network .Medics are encouraged to think of themselves as a guild – speak out and you’re out and lose all the ‘priveledges’ of the girls and boys network. But Medics don’t need them – they are becoming rare enough to be able to speak out andc challenge their corrupt profession
How ironic that we could now be using in a positive way the slogan coined by the idiotic but powerful president trump – ‘Build the Wall’
There must be I imagine, students reading this blog – they could be part of a generation which could put some bricks in the wall. they could contribute to the blog anonymously so a gauge of what is being being taught about informed consent could be obtained .
As well as saying ‘no’ to taking medicines without data we could be refusing to take part in research without a guarantee of being given all the information all the way along and of course the final data. I have already made a successful complaint when Royal Free-UCH/local GPs were using my medical information for use in research without my knowledge or consent some years ago. I also decided to make some useful money in another city by volunteering for a cold study. It relied on recruiting people by leafleting on bus stops etc – well off people tend not to use buses, those of us needing cash would apply and would be trusted to fill in a questionnaire to confirm we had taken a dose to bring on a cold. How naive. I have also contributed to studies for free as it fitted with my beliefs as a citizen – no more.
We can probably predict what mealy mouthed weasel worded guideline on depression will be issued by nice and munched up by medics so what about sending their dangerous prescriptions back in black envelopes stating this prescription lacks data , it is not possible to give informed consent. They could be real ones. they could hundreds of copies of prescriptions or information leaflets th,e ones openly classed as creating harms, they could be put in red envelopes if the potential risk is suicide.
David, having had more than a bellyful of Brexit and politicians’ antics over the past months ( which feel like ages!), I didn’t think it was possible to coax even a smile out of me on the subject – this post certainly has managed an ‘out loud’ laugh never mind a chuckle. I had been wondering how long it would be before you managed to make comparisons between our drastic situation and the goings on in the world of pharma! The issue regarding googling “cutting off eyelids” was particularly chuckle-inducing – especially on reading the Google offers when searching without the DUP.
‘Searching without the DUP’ is exactly where we’re at, come to think of it. If a plan has ever backfired then this is it. DUP, given a hefty handout to vote with the Tories only to find that the Tories’ leader ( as she then was!) totally ignored Irish matters once the handout was completed. What was the thinking behind the acceptance of an Irish Backstop? Was the ‘handout’ really meant to ensure closed eyes and mouths of the DUP for ever more? I would imagine that all Irish people are extremely proud of the way that Arlene Foster and the others have stuck to their guns and refused to have any thing to do with the offered Brexit Deal.
I am immensely impressed by their stand; I am immensely impressed by the way their stand is causing such consternation here. However, I am NOT impressed by the way that we, the Welsh, are ignored in all of it. The Scottish voice, in its own way, has been heard almost as loud as the Irish – but where are we? Treated as a ‘minor part of England’ once more I guess. So much so that the voice of ‘an Independent Wales’ is becoming ever louder with meetings planned in mid and south Wales in the coming weeks.
The comparisons with our struggles regarding ‘the medical question’ are obvious – a ‘minority’ disregarded, ignored and disrespected; the ‘mighty’ believing that a token gesture (eg PIL inclusion of certain side effects etc.) will suffice to shut us up for good; the ‘majority’ seen as the only ones whose lives matter – the ‘rest’ to be downtrodden and kept out of sight and out of mind whilst the ‘mighty’ form their own rules of superiority…….EXCEPT that, THIS TIME, it has backfired – the ‘mighty’ squabble with the ‘mightier’ to see which group is the ‘mightiest’ ; the ‘leavers’ and ‘remainers’ blame each other for the mess created; ‘democracy’ is questioned if anyone dares to suggest returning to the people for their opinion which, surely, is the democratic step to take since we’re in deadlock?
IF the DUP had gone quietly along with the wishes of the Tory party we would now be non-European ( whether we wished it or not). By standing ground firmly for their own patch, their own beliefs and their own story, the DUP have managed to ROCK THE SYSTEM. They are merely 10 in number in parliament here – 10 which have made as much of a difference to current affairs as a whole army could have done.
Let’s put our heads together – for we are more than 10 in number – and become watchful of our chance to stick to our guns over matters which affect the health and wellbeing of so many in our midst. Let’s see if we, too, can “cut off our eyelids” to ensure that we are not the first to blink!
Oh dear me, now I’m really confused (g). I thought the DUP were the most hell-for-leather Brexiteers of all, and the “Union” they were dead set on preserving was the union with England — not any union with the Irish Republic! Haven’t they always considered that a fate worse than death?
I thought they were opposed to any type of flexible border between the “European” Republic of Ireland and the “non-European” UK including Northern Ireland. And that they were sort of the Devil that May had had to make a deal with, to have a majority behind her Brexit plan.
But who knows? Most Irish-Americans, even the most arch-conservative, have long tended to regard the DUP as a problem, and I’ll admit I was raised to see them as such. One of the few topics in all creation where I could agree with my father’s folks. But maybe I’ve got it all wrong — are Irish people in general proud of them these days? And is there something we should learn from them for our own struggle? If so, I’m all ears … we’re living in strange days, I know that much.
The key phrase here was many English people view the DUP as…
DH
Well, Johanna, I think your thoughts regarding the DUP are, generally, spot on. The main reason that the Conservatives decided to lure the DUP was, I guess, because of their ‘closeness’ in thoughts and ideals. The irony here is that the ties, which were thought to be so strong, were so easily broken once ideas began to hit home. “If no hard border within the island of Ireland then it would be a hard border in the Irish sea”, they said, leaving the DUP between the devil and the deep blue sea! They couldn’t win, couldn’t see that there was a way out – so they stuck their feet firmly and refused to move. For THAT reason, if I were Irish, I would thank them continually however much our political ideas differed!
Where it all ends? – we’ve yet to find out. One thing seems certain – the Conservative party will never again be quite what it previously was! It has been split in such a way that the rift will be very hard to heal. A split, that had previously threatened to appear causing the Referendum to be called in the first place, became absolutely obvious when talks were arranged to ‘talk with the enemy’ in the hope of breaking the deadlock. And that’s where we’re at today. The European Union see us as bonkers I’m pretty sure – probably settling themselves down for the ‘grand finale’ however that turns out to be!
IF we could become the DUP equivalent ( I refer to the ten DUP MPs here) in our struggle, where could it lead? Could we – by following Susanne’s suggestion for example – cause a glimmer of a rift to show somewhere in parliament? Could we start an online petition, hoping for many signatures which would ensure that our cause was discussed by parliament? Could we, maybe, for a start, GET ALL WHO HAVE BEEN LUCKY ENOUGH TO ESCAPE THE RAVAGES OF THESE DRUGS, DESPITE THEIR USE OF THEM, PLUS THOSE WHO SUFFERED BUT HEALED,TO SUPPORT US IN OUR AIM – that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth will do in order for us to have the opportunity to make our own choices as regards our health matters. Maybe then we would cease to be seen as ‘obsessed’, ‘fanatics’ or any other descriptions that are at present applied. Breaking down barriers is hard work I guess but one thing is for sure – if we want them broken then we need to persevere. The EXPECTATION is for us to give up, to comply with the majority view – to keep calm and carry on for, after all, we’re only a few in number aren’t we? Few we may be but shirkers we are not – and giving up, I think, is not in our nature!
A story I had to share …
Outgoing FDA head Scott Gottlieb got a fitting goodbye on his last day in office: 100 protesters staged a die-in at Health & Human Services HQ, and presented him with an 800-pound heroin spoon stamped with the FDA logo.
https://www.statnews.com/2019/04/05/opioid-protest-fda-hhs/
They included grieving relatives of opioid overdose victims and survivors struggling to recover from addiction. The FDA, they said, had pushed for approval of one high-dose opioid drug after another, while dawdling on medications to help treat addiction …
Reference:
The Lancet. Editorial. Volume 363. Issue 9418, P1335. April 24th, 2004.
“DEPRESSING RESEARCH”
“It is hard to imagine the anguish experienced by the parents, relatives and friends of a child who has taken his or her own life”.
“That such an event could be precipitated by a supposedly beneficial drug is a catastrophe”.
“The idea of that drug’s use being based on the selective reporting of favourable research should be unimaginable”. —-
“The story of research into selective serotonin reuptake (SSRI) use in childhood depression is one of confusion, manipulation and institutional failure”. ——-
“In a global medical culture where evidence-based practice is seen as the gold standard for care, these failings are a disaster”.
“Meta-analysis of published data supports an increasing number of clinical decisions and guidelines, which in turn dictate the use of vast levels of health care resources.
This process is made entirely redundant if its results are so easily manipulated by those with potentially massive financial gains”.
(Please read the entire Editorial – (available on-line) – in order to ensure that the above extracts have not been taken out of context).
Can’t wait for this new mentioned book to come out.
I’m gonna buy it.
Also waiting for the pre-ordered book to come out and hoping to God the minors cases make it to the High Court with rising prescription rates and misinformation to parents on the rise.
Might get a copy for the doctors who disbelieved me regarding all the adverse effects and protracted Seroxat withdrawal and who I discovered instead later had written ‘depression’ instead in my GP notes.
Instead, a doctor prescribed the next worst drug to me, Effexor, for relief from the ‘depression’ (not an SSRI he said; ‘safe’ he said….worst 2 years of prolonged Seroxat withdrawal akathisia and then Effexor aggravated akathisia on top for months: all culminating in an unplanned suicide attempt.
Too much of a mess myself, though they weren’t, to figure it was the drugs and to wean me carefully off them.
Maybe hard copy will be easier for them to read than all the information by then available to them on their screens.
Better still, a few copies left near parents in the waiting room.
“The 100,000 people who work for GSK are just like you, right? I’m sure everybody who reads the BMJ has friends who work for drug companies. They’re normal people… Many of them are doctors”. Sir Andrew Witty
The Agenda talks to David Healy about ‘root level data’, followed by a discussion between eminent authorities on antidepressants, with one lady on TRD
I can guarantee, you will get a lot out of this –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7rbUdp_XIE
Pharmageddon
2012
“you don’t need a clinical trial for parachutes”
Nice title for a book – reminds me of a Short History of Tractors in UKrainian – mad and hilarious, says review …
Is there anything published on the Meet Me In Copenhagen march? held 9th March 2019 with Peter Gotzche and others. Aon google can only find that he pulled out of an event in USA in March because he disagreed with the anti vaccine focus
Found a write up on ‘Alliance for Natural Health International’ News
‘The Danish Rebirth of Scientific Freedom and Integrity’ 13 March 2019
‘March 9th saw the inauguration of a new institute – The Institute of Scientific Freedom’
So many catastrophic fault lines – the failed, corporately bought, institutions of Europe which nevertheless ensure peace in Ireland: everything headed towards fracture and chaos. Everyone poisoned. I think I will take up religion.
Russian Orthodox Church issues edict against forced vaccination
https://www.ageofautism.com/2019/04/russian-orthodox-church-officially-opposes-compulsory-vaccinations-of-children.html#more
‘…it is truly exciting…’
Carmine M. Pariante Retweeted
SPI Lab @SPILabKCL Apr 12
NHS funded randomized clinical trial to help those not responding to antidepressant medication. MINDEP Study investigates whether a normal prescription medication will help reduce the symptoms of depression. Click on the link for more information: https://www.callforparticipants.com/study/A7SV0/minocycline-and-depression-mindep-study?fbclid=IwAR3n0s6uSqacNzvb1s6k87GB0UudAYs69Oc8kqXOpI4aZ8M05LdJAqrCJYE …
By Roger Dobson for the Daily Mail
Published: 00:29, 16 April 2019 | Updated: 07:27, 16 April 2019
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6925881/Nose-spray-treat-depression-little-TWO-hours.html
Carmine Pariante, a professor of biological psychiatry at King’s College London, said: ‘It is important to stress that only selected patients will use this drug — those with severe depression and who do not respond to currently available antidepressants.
‘Longer studies are needed to fully understand the risks of using this medication. Nevertheless, it is truly exciting that, after many years, we finally have an antidepressant that acts on a completely novel mechanism in the brain.’
Apparently C.P. has a dream – ;my dream is that new treatments will soon be available to alleviate suffering…’if only he would keep his dreams out of the media.
I had a dream that the institute of psychiatry and the whole psychiatric establishment was burned down – not even the dreaming spire was saved to ‘Inspire’ us all. (Inspyre is the Inst’s newsletter – get it.) Echoes of Notre Dame probably .
He is a canny man alright – at the same time as he has grabbed a spot in the Mail C.P. has tweeted ‘most of us will not doubt what we read in the headlines so it becomes a danger ………he can say that again – although doubt whether he really has no doubts about headlines)am not sure whether the report will be swallowed without doubts by ‘most readers’ either – they could be fixed more on the references to massive doses of the drug given to horses – hopefully he has slipped up there
There are myriad ways to target the enteric signaling system, from aiming at immune cells in the gut to trigger an anti-inflammatory effect elsewhere in the body to interfering with gut neurons to prompt an effect in the brain without needing a drug to cross the blood-brain barrier, Tak told FierceBiotech.
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/ex-gsk-immunology-chief-to-lead-flagship-pioneering-startup-kintai-therapeutics?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=rss
The Enteric Nervous System: The Brain in the Gut
http://psyking.net/id36.htm
The question has been raised: Why does the human gut contain receptors for benzodiazepine, a drug that relieves anxiety?
Juan says:
August 18, 2017 at 10:16 am
Why is it that (most) psychopharmacologists are the ones most critical with SSRIs and (big pharma sponsored) clinical trials?
http://psychotropical.info/why-most-new-antidepressants-are-ineffective
Probably because, unlike psychiatrists, they know better the drugs they use.
Thanks Dr. Healy.
So Long and Thanks for all the Serotonin
‘It is refreshing to see the BMJ publish an article highlighting the corruption, collusion and dangerously unethical behaviors among the pharmaceutical and psychiatric industries, university medical departments and government “regulators.” ‘
https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4629/rapid-responses
No correction, no retraction, no apology, no comment: paroxetine trial reanalysis raises questions about institutional responsibility
https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4629
Peter Doshi, associate editor, The BMJ
As a new data analysis adds weight to calls for retraction of a paper on paroxetine in adolescents, Peter Doshi examines the resistance to action of a professional society, its journal, and an Ivy League university
‘None of us – journals, regulators, academics, or doctors – come out of this with much credit.’ …
‘We need to find some balance between raising alarms about a drug and ensuring we do not compromise an innocent person’s right to a fair trial.’
https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3697/rapid-responses
Antidepressants increase the risk of suicide, violence and homicide at all ages
https://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3697/rr-4
Antidepressants and murder: case not closed
SCOTUS weighs competing briefs in widow’s appeal in case vs GSK over suicide of lawyer taking generic Paxil
https://cookcountyrecord.com/stories/512440183-scotus-weighs-competing-briefs-in-widow-s-appeal-in-case-vs-gsk-over-suicide-of-lawyer-taking-generic-paxil
GSK asked the Supreme Court to reject the appeal, and not hear arguments in the case, allowing the Seventh Circuit decision to stand.
Supreme Court justices are scheduled to consider whether to hear arguments in the Dolin case at a conference April 26, according to the court’s docket.
https://truthman30.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/scotus-weighs-competing-briefs-in-widows-appeal-in-case-vs-gsk-over-suicide-of-lawyer-taking-generic-paxil/
Simon Wessely Retweeted
Jacqui Phillips Owen @JPhillipsOwen 23h
@WesselyS Getting better and better -upcoming RSM conference on May 14th: Transforming Mental Health in Schools – targeted interventions, Please spread the word and RT
‘Targeted’ Interventions…
Thank you Annie.
Your links are a valuable opportunity for us to maintain awareness, and gain further knowledge of the global psychotropic drug deception.
Yes thanks Annie
The amount of work you do and the constant stream of insight you provide is unbelievable
The SFO dropped the case against GlaxoSmithKline. It was long, it was expensive and was dropped by a new person heading the Agency. Her Statement, at the time, said it was not in the Public Interest
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dropped-glaxosmithkline-inquiry-cost-serious-fraud-office-7-5m-2t5bmtpv5
The Serious Fraud Office spent £7.5 million on its corruption investigation into Glaxosmithkline before dropping the high-profile case.
It abandoned the five-year inquiry into alleged bribery at the FTSE 100 pharmaceuticals group in February after Lisa Osofsky, its new boss, reviewed the agency’s caseload.
The criminal investigation had been among the SFO’s longest-running and involved one of Britain’s biggest companies. Glaxo is valued at £76 billion and was formed through the merger in 2000 of Glaxo Wellcome and Smithkline Beecham.
The costs of the inquiry have been disclosed after a freedom of information request.
Out of the £7.5 million spent by the fraud office, £2 million went on external costs. This was made up of £1.5 million for “non-permanent” staff, £376,343 on fees to counsel and £135,381 for “other investigation costs”, which included accommodation, translations, “data recovery” and “professional services”.
The SFO investigates and prosecutes businesses and individuals for serious or complex fraud, bribery and corruption. It was established in 1988, but its status has often been fragile, with Theresa May understood to have been keen to disband it while she was home secretary. Ms Osofsky, 57, joined as its director last August, replacing Sir David Green.
The agency’s investigation into Glaxo was launched in 2014 when Sir David, 65, was director. It was focused on Glaxo’s commercial operations in several countries, including China, where the drugs company was engulfed in a bribery scandal. Glaxo was fined about £300 million by China that year after being found guilty of paying bribes to boost sales of medical products.
The SFO’s decision to drop the case came after it had requested additional information regarding third-party advisers “engaged by the company in the course of the China investigations”. That prompted regulators in the United States, where Glaxo agreed a $20 million civil penalty with the US government in 2016, to investigate. Despite the SFO dropping its case, the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice have continued to investigate.
The SFO announced the decision to drop the Glaxo case at the same time that it dropped a six-year inquiry into alleged bribery and corruption by individuals associated with Rolls-Royce.
Ms Osofsky said she had concluded that there was “either insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction or it is not in the public interest to bring a prosecution”.
In a statement, Glaxo said it was “pleased that the SFO have closed their investigation and concluded that no further action is required”.
BOB FIDDAMAN @Fiddaman
BOB FIDDAMAN Retweeted Lambertus de Boer #FBPE
The SFO laid out 7.5M to investigate GSK… then let them off the hook. They should have approached me and @Truthman30 ~ We would have done it for a free lunch 🙂
Returning to what is in the ‘Public Interest’, are the details of the forthcoming litigation in the UK.
BOB FIDDAMAN @Fiddaman Apr 19
UK Seroxat (Paxil) Litigation against GSK starts April 29, 2019 #KeepTheDate #0429
18 April 2019 11:24 AM
Reposted, in the light of new information. *Another* mass shooter turns out to have been taking mind-altering drugs.
When will the authorities inquire into this startling, ignored correlation? ***
I have modified this post (originally published on 18th April 2019) in the light of subsequent important information about the killer’s use of psychotropic drugs, , which I refer to at the foot of the article:
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/antidepressants/
****PH notes. And here it is :
Bissonnette was, as I suspected at the time, under the influence of mind-altering drugs. He had a long history of ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’ and of suicide attempts, and – though this is not detailed as it is regarded as normal – I suspect this means that he was prescribed SSRI ‘antidepressants’ . It is also entirely possible, given the relaxed attitude towards marijuana in Canada for many years that he was a marijuana user, an action which no longer attracts the attention of police and so would not be objectively recorded unless a friend recalled him doing so. This is speculation., But we know that shortly before his crime he was prescribed the ‘antidepressant’ Paxil. See
https://globalnews.ca/news/4191327/inside-the-mind-of-a-killer-what-we-now-know-about-alexandre-bissonnettes-quebec-mosque-shooting-plot/
The report notes that ‘Bissonnette, who battled anxiety and depression throughout his life, says his anxiety only increased while living on his own and he thought about suicide a lot.’
Then there was
https://montrealgazette.com/news/i-had-to-do-something-quebec-mosque-shooter-said-he-acted-to-prevent-terrorism
…which records…
‘In the video, Bissonnette, 27 at the time of the shooting, said he had suffered from depression and anxiety since he was 14, and had contemplated suicide at 16, though he never told his parents or friends he wanted to kill himself.
The anti-depressant medication Luvox wasn’t working so a doctor had prescribed a new one – Paxil – about three weeks earlier.
“I haven’t felt well for months and months and months and I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I thought the pills would fix the problem. But that did not solve the problem. They made it worse.”
Another report confirms the reference:
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/gunman-says-he-went-to-quebec-mosque-in-2017-to-protect-family-from-terrorists
The writers, as usual, are serenely unaware of any correlation between psychotropic drugs and mass shootings, see for example…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/07/25/antidepressants-linked-murders-murderous-thoughts/
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/07/the-link-between-drugs-and-rampage-killings-the-new-york-times-stops-half-way.html
…is not interested in this and does not pursue it. She just mentions it. Likewise she does not elaborate on this glancing mention of events on January 29th ‘He also Googled “Paxil surreal feeling” — he’d been prescribed the anti-depressant only a month earlier.’
“Doctors have been getting the mantra from the drug companies for 12 years that it is the disease [causing the suicide] and not the drug. It does provide a nice way out for GPs who just don’t want to contemplate the possibility that a drug they prescribe could cause death.”
This is a good article,
James Moore Retweeted
CEP @CEP_UK 7h
Excellent article on antidepressant withdrawal in today’s The Guardian (quoting recent studies by @markhoro, David Taylor @ReadReadj, James Davies), with many crucial quotes from people who have been harmed. While some still bury their heads, we fight on.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/apr/22/antidepressants-is-there-a-better-way-to-quit-them
Murder, suicide. A bitter aftertaste for the ‘wonder’ depression drug
Mon 11 Jun 2001
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jun/11/highereducation.medicalscience
GPs accused of not reporting Seroxat suicides
Sarah Boseley, health editor
Friday May 9, 2003
http://antidepressantsfacts.com/2003-05-09-guardian.htm
Related articles
03.05.2003: Seroxat maker abandons ‘no addiction’ claim
13.03.2003: Coroner calls for inquiry into Seroxat
27.07.2002: Antidepressant Seroxat tops table of drug withdrawal symptoms
28.04.2002: Seroxat: The real story
28.04.2002: Seroxat: The real story (part two)
10.07.2001: Suicide fear over anti-depressant
One can only contemplate; future journalism, related articles and useful sites …
Paul Flynn (Newport, West) (Lab)
The Seroxat scandal is one of gigantic proportions, which affects millions of people. There has been over-prescribing and misprescribing of this antidepressant on a scale equalled only by the over-prescription of tranquillisers 40 years ago. It is likely that the legacy—[Interruption.]
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/2004/feb/23/seroxat
Truthman30 Retweeted
recovery&renewal @recover2renew 21h
Replying to @purpletrumpet @benzosarebad and 2 others
and Stevie Lewis (Welsh petition) was told that she had developed FND (Functional Neurological Disorder) – when she began suffering horrible movement disorder which was due to Seroxat withdrawal …
#KeepTheDate
#0429
“….Whilst these originate in a different era for the company, they cannot and will not be ignored,” Sir Andrew said. “On behalf of GSK, I want to express our regret and reiterate that we have learnt from the mistakes that were made….”
GlaxoSmithKline pays $3bn for illegally marketing depression drug
Doctors persuaded to prescribe drug later linked to suicide in children
Stephen Foley
Tuesday 3 July 2012
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/glaxosmithkline-pays-3bn-for-illegally-marketing-depression-drug-7904555.html
The company will pay $3bn (£1.9bn) to settle a slew of charges in the US after admitting a multi-year criminal scheme to hide unhelpful scientific evidence, manipulate articles in medical journals and lavish gifts on sympathetic doctors.
GSK admitted illegally marketing several of its drugs for uses that had not been approved by safety regulators, and documents released by the Justice Department detailed the luxurious conferences in exotic climes where paid-for scientific speakers hyped up the conclusions of dubious academic papers.
https://truthman30.wordpress.com/2019/04/23/gsk-and-future-wrongdoing/
BOB FIDDAMAN @Fiddaman 53m
BOB FIDDAMAN Retweeted Truthman30
“When GSK were fined 3 Billion for their various unethical shenanigans in 2012, one of the stipulations seems to imply that up to 100 of the top executives and managers would be liable to pay for any ‘future wrong-doing’”
BOB FIDDAMAN @Fiddaman 3h
I can’t stop laughing. This is like an episode of the Outer Limits! BBC presenter duped by voodoo science. **knock knock**
https://soundcloud.com/user-581729117/bbc-health-truth-or-scare-april-24-2019/s-O3QWr
Wendy Burn Retweeted
SPI Lab @SPILabKCL 8h
Don’t forget to tune into @BBCOne this morning at 9:15am for a new episode of ‘Health: Truth or Scare.’ @ParianteSPILab talks antidepressants and whether to trust the headlines with Angela Rippon!
Isn’t that incredible?
John Read @ReadReadj 12m
A senior psychiatrist (Dr Pariante) just said (BBC1 9.45am 24/4/19) “no evidence we are overprescribing antidepressants” “most people who need ADs have not received them”. So instead of the current one in 6 of us getting ADs annually they think it should be more than one in 3!
John Read @ReadReadj 2h
John Read Retweeted recovery&renewal
This is the survey @RCPsych removed from their website within hours of our complaint about the Burn & Baldwin Times letter claiming the *vast majority” of antidepressant withdrawal effects last only two weeks. They then lied, in writing, that it was because it was out of date.
https://twitter.com/ReadReadj/status/1121315269291462659
A senior psychiatrist (Dr Pariante) just said
Carmine M. Pariante Retweeted
Carmine M. Pariante @ParianteSPILab 19h
Murderous, unstable, and practising medicine; how do the ways that films present psychiatry and neuroscience affect both patient and doctor? Episode 3 of Mental Health Through the Lens of Cinema is now out The ‘Mad Scientist’ Trope by @melisaakose
recovery&renewal Retweeted
Truth & Justice @ForTruth54 17h
The Horrific Effects of NOT Being Believed…. https://davidhealy.org/the-horrific-effects-of-not-being-believed/
The Horrific Effects of Not Being Believed
April, 18, 2018 | 36 Comments
https://davidhealy.org/the-horrific-effects-of-not-being-believed/
Read Up – Man Up …
… makes a useful contribution to scientific understanding”.
Melissa Raven @psychepi 5h
Replying to @CEP_UK
Anyone got a transcript? I can’t access the audio from here in Australia
https://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2019/04/pariantes-dish-of-day.html?m=1#.XMKh6ndFywx
Following on from the BBC’s recent Panorama documentary on SSRI’s causing violence in some people, a series of articles defending the use of SSRI’s appeared in the media. One of the commentators (who also appears frequently on twitter defending the use of SSRI’s) is Dr Carmine Pariante.
https://truthman30.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/what-does-professor-carmine-pariante-think-of-seroxat-making-people-suicidal/
Suicide Prevention: a Conflict of Interest
Posted on December 19, 2016
http://antidepaware.co.uk/suicide-prevention-conflict-interest/
Antidepressants and the Politics of Health
http://antidepaware.co.uk/antidepressants-and-the-politics-of-health/
Posted on October 10, 2013
“We are not in favour of placing anonymised individual patient-level data (IPD) in the public domain in an unrestricted manner… specific individuals should be provided with controlled access to IPD through carefully managed and secure “safe havens”. Access should be facilitated by an independent gatekeeper responsible for ensuring that the data … makes a useful contribution to scientific understanding”.
Great post to an Irish person who lived both North and South and as a victim of GSK.
Very late asking this, perhaps in the wrong place, and where no-one may be able to answer, but it’s keeping me up at night (along with the longer term health and life legacy of ever being prescribed Seroxat as a young adult).
Especially regarding the welfare of my partner’s young daughter and the thousands like her. And where the BBC failed them and the public generally.
My concern, at a time of rising prescriptions for SSRIs generally and off label to children and teens like my partner’s daughter, and in light of the fact that Study 329 is something the public may be better able to ‘get’ and as a ‘Gateway’ Study (into the problems rife across the system generally), is that the Seroxat Minor’s cases (if they go ahead and they are successful) may (perhaps also) not go to trial against the public interest.
I’m looking forward like everyone else to David Healy’s book on Study 329 and hope to God young people’s stories or experiences, or that of their grieving families, have already been recorded somewhere.
Regarding helping the public or the disaffected (and doctors) to better be able to ‘get it’, I also feel more and more, that while the MISSD video is great, until the horrors of severe akathisia in the mind (and which cannot be depicted in words or via interviews possibly), are unforgivingly re-enacted from a survivor’s experience in some way onscreen, people simply cannot get it.
And understandably. Much less the dramatic difference between this drug induced state and ‘worsening depression’; how this state, or a ‘medication’, could lead to drug induced suicide or homicide.
And in rendering honestly and brutally, how it could not be overcome, in its worst form and without intervention, even if otherwise ‘healthy’ people, doctors, psychiatrists etc. fell victim to it and until it may dissipate; even in the mind of the militarily trained or a Navy Seal. Much less in the mind of a child.
What was also great about Steindór Erlingsson’s, brave and great post, ‘The Man Who Thought He was a Monster’’, was that he could afford us, and the disaffected, a comparison of his experience of this state he endured with previous traumas (the average person can at least understand as being hugely traumatic).
Was going to mention generally as an idea to the Legal Death project but know little about the due docu-series, its format, or its expertise.
Also most re-enactments on docu series etc are hard to pull off and mainly look like extracts from Z list horror movies. (Little does the Hollywood Horror Industry know or the psychological horror movie Industry know compared to akathisia, they’re doing Disney).
Until severe akathisia and what is happening in the brain is rendered in some Hollywood movie, along with the MISSD video, maybe it would be possible to produce an unforgiving and viscerally animated rendering of sudden severe akathisia in the mind specifically from the point of view of an ordinary (‘healthy’) person who had simply visited a doctor recently (a very minor detail of many: figure it out) and going about the average day (and whom the viewer, in point of view can relate to and assume as themselves). Sudden agitation, pacing etc.
And in what viewers may previously have assumed to be light animated short like ‘Paperman’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwGI_s2zTM4
As unexpected to viewer, and in assuming the story protagonist’s point of view, as it is to victims.
Then perhaps adapting David Foster’s Wallace’s words and imagery (perhaps including a few sudden and horrific ‘alien inserts’, the sudden glint of knives, etc). Denoument. Also, subtly, a child, of many, on the street below, displaying similar symptoms. Russian Roulette….
More food for thought when feasible to afford or if anyone knows anyone in the industry or has any ideas.
Hopefully ‘Justice is Coming’ for some of the Seroxat victims in the UK on Monday along Winter Coming on Monday night.
a firm line in the sand …
Posted on Friday 14 September 2012
We all know what will stop health care fraud and academic fraud. Punish the people responsible, not just their corporations or institutions. It’s time to act on what we know is the right thing to do. It won’t take much, but without drawing this firm line in the sand, the misadventure will continue…
http://1boringoldman.com/index.php/2012/09/14/a-firm-line-in-the-sand/
Setting the record straight: Why we publish data both positive and negative
Sharing our trial results, regardless of whether they reflect positively or negatively on our medicines is the right thing to do.
https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/behind-the-science/how-we-do-business/setting-the-record-straight-why-we-publish-data-both-positive-and-negative/
Patrick Vallance, President, R&D commented: “The results of this analysis allow us to challenge perceptions that pharmaceutical companies cherry-pick what is submitted for publication according to favourability towards their medicines. It’s clear that GSK does not do that and the medical journals did not apply any bias either. These results reinforce our strong belief that the scientific community can derive as much, if not more, insights from negative data as positive data, and we must continue to ensure access to all of our clinical study data involving patients, with the aim of ultimately benefitting patients”.
Measuring Up …
#KeepTheDate
#0429
Not to forget that – without even a token break – six months after this pronouncement Patrick Vallance took the revolving door to become Chief Scientist to the British Government.
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/fake-news/written/76219.html
Cisparency and Transparency
November, 6, 2017 | 18 Comments
Stunned Amigos
When BBC threw their hand-grenade into the healthcare pond stunned fish floated to the surface. Baum-Hedlund picked the fish up and started dumping them on Congressional and Senatorial desks. Most of the fish were ugly and had thwarted data access stamped all over them. A few others were colorful eye-catching dudes.
Spearing Nemo?
Transparency, efficacy and Nemo were irrelevant in Chicago. Its the Great White Lies about Harms that count, not a few little tiddlers.
https://davidhealy.org/cisparency-and-transparency/
SEROXAT GROUP ACTION | Fortitude Law
http://www.fortitudelaw.uk › Product Liability
Several Group Actions have been settled in the US following Court proceedings related to harm caused to individuals who had become dependent upon Paxil (Seroxat in the UK) – an FDA approved and prescribed antidepressant.
290419
‘Insider’ Information …
‘You haven’t launched your Exocet’
‘David Healy will be giving evidence next week. Unless GSK have the case thrown out – which seems unlikely (see my piece of today).’
‘You haven’t launched your Exocet’: could the ‘Seroxat is defective’ trial be going Freudian? Day 2
https://drnmblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/30/you-havent-launched-your-exocet-is-the-seroxat-is-defective-trial-going-freudian-day-2/
https://drnmblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/seroxat-is-defective-trial-day-1/
In Court 38 of the High Court there were three rows of lawyers on each side, but GSK had so many that they overflowed onto the public seats. Sadly, public attendance was thin, and got thinner after lunch when RCPsych spin doctor Nick Hodgson @nickchodgson, and the Guardian’s Felicity Lawrence @lawrencefelic both left.
News is scant, so take it where we find it –
Seroxat is certainly an ‘exploding fridge’, amusing write up, here …
What’s next, …
Looking forward to Felicity’s write up after a nice lunch with Nick
Japanese Sterilisation Law Victims get Compensation (BBC NEWS 24 April)
This has taken until 2019 when the retiring emperor (or whatever he is ) is probably using it as a legacy to his compassion.
Some records have gone missing (Never!) but between 1948 and 1996
approx 25,000 people were sterilised using eugenics laws- ‘16,500 without consent’ – depends what they called ‘consent when all were in extremely vulnerable ‘groups’ including mentally ill. eg One lady was sterilised aged 15 labelled – hereditary feeble mindedness. Respect to them for not saying all they want is an apology – hopefully they will get as much compensation as can be squeezed out of the Japanese government .
Obviously medics and others colluded with this just as they are with what is happening now in UK and many other countries . People are losing their sex lives and ability to have the children they had hoped for as a result of prescibed medications.(a form of drug induced sterilisation). untold numbers have died committed suicide and suffer severe effects of prescription drugs It may not be drug induced eugenics exactly but when the serious harms are known and yet more lives are allowed to be be lost – what should it be named? How should the guilty be labelled?
…then David Healy will appear for four days next week.
https://drnmblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/01/want-to-abolish-psychiatry-then-follow-the-seroxat-is-defective-trial-plus-report-on-day-3/
UK Seroxat Litigation – Adjourned – The Blame Game
https://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2019/05/uk-seroxat-litigation-adjourned-blame.html#.XMqtt-hKhdg
Dr Neil MacFarlane MRCPsych @NMacFa 4m
Replying to @Truthman30 @recover2renew and 2 others
Just for information: the claimants do not dispute that Seroxat has ‘efficacy’ as an antidepressant (does not mean that they agree it does though). On Tuesday morning we will learn what the judge has ruled can be the ‘scope’ of GSK defending the drug on the basis of ‘benefit’.
Duncan Double @DBDouble 2m
Do you understand the full case against Seroxat?
Dr Neil MacFarlane MRCPsych(back21.00) @NMacFa 4m
Probably more than any other commentator!
Key point – discontinuation the only issue on trial. No other adverse effects, although it remains unclear to what extent that & other evidence will be ‘in scope’ as bearing on the #1 issue.
Duncan Double @DBDouble 1m
Summarise what they’re trying to prove
Nova Scotia
GlaxoSmithKline agrees to pay out millions in diabetes drug class action
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/drugs-diabetes-glaxosmithkline-lawsuit-1.5119814?cmp=rss
‘We’re happy to bring this to a conclusion, bring some justice to the class members’
CBC News · Posted: May 02, 2019 12:15 PM AT | Last Updated: an hour ago
GSK’s lead barrister on ‘RIVAL pharmaceutical companies’: will the ‘Seroxat is defective’ trial erode the reputation of all SSRIs? Preview of week 2
https://drnmblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/gsks-lead-barrister-on-rival-pharmaceutical-companies-will-the-seroxat-is-defective-trial-erode-the-reputation-of-all-ssris-preview-of-week-2/
BOB FIDDAMAN @Fiddaman 3h
https://canadafreepress.com/article/i-tried-killing-myself-thirty-times
This is a 5-part series, and what we have here is a summary of all that espouses to GlaxoSmithKline and Paxil (known as Seroxat) in the UK.
It doesn’t take a major in the history of antidepressants to get the complete picture behind this antidepressant.
Of course, Seroxat, will be compared to all other antidepressants in class – this is how cases are won – the extra ordinary history behind Seroxat, is not applicable to other antidepressants, and the ‘scope’ of the case will hopefully concede, Seroxat stands alone as the antidepressant with the most ‘chequered’ history, the antidepressant with four Panorama programmes behind it and ‘endless’ publicity and the voices of those ‘experienced’ in bringing the litigation.
Along with US won cases, in its ‘scope’ …
Thanks for the links to follow Annie.
The Court should be packed; if I could have and as I had expected, I’d have been there every day in an Akathisia T-shirt/ warm jumper. Some symbolic representation also for the dead. Not enough awareness also I think.
And Seroxat is most certainly like an ‘exploding fridge’.
In my case, 1999 and as young adult, a Transformer: first a high speed racing car with a wheel and gears of its own and no brakes. Then, with equally no warning, alone on the other side of the world (owing to the over stimulated high speed racing car), an exploding fridge.
Pity I didn’t just explode from the also hidden side effects of drug induced ‘frigid’ numbing when rendered with no warning into PGAD and severe akathisia and in light of the fact that some unwitting victims of severe akathisia are most definitely at risk of blowing a family kitchen into disarray, rattling and cracking ceilings, walls and blowing out windows.
At least a Fridge ‘expert’ with the actual data on the likelihood of any fridge exploding may be able to recognise the dramatic differences between a fridge exploding, or which may be liable to explode, when they’ve changed or tweaked the wiring over a tendency for a fridge to explode built-in to the design of the appliance itself by its original, more organic, more seamless and mysterious manufacturer.
And without helpfully adding to the chemical pressure building up in the compressor when a bewildered tiny screaming carbon based life-form is still trapped inside.
You can at least reassemble and rewire the more typical remotely controlled crashed car or standard fridge.
And the more typical fridge explosions have only caused dozens of deaths in the UK…
Volvo or Samsung, committed to the highest standards of Safety and committed to providing the highest standards of Customer Care, would also immediately recall and/or announce ‘A Home Visit Repair Programme’ – and perhaps before more damage is done.
Dear Deirdre. I’ve followed David some years now, and I’m unsure if I recognize your name, but:
My history with Seroxat goes back to approximately the turn of the century, about the same as yours. And now, many years later, as I also look back, I can’t help to feel as if I would’ve been better off if “my fridge had exploded too”.
I wasn’t any racing car, perhaps more like an upper tier luxury saloon, well functioning in most scenarios I found myself in. And with oversized brakes and safety gadgetary, I was so well behaved and thought-through, I always ended up being the ‘go-to-guy’ for others, in school, in sports, in the military and my first jobs. Let’s use the word ‘dependable’, no one ever doubted it.
No need to tell you it all went missing about the time, “coincidentally”, I started the pill. And now the years have passed, so many that I’m unable to convince anyone that I also have a hidden ‘carbon based lifeform’. Behind the chemical interference, I’m the same guy.
But I cannot become him ever again.
I really enjoyed your “analogy-story”
Thank you, and good luck, Ove, Sweden
Thanks Ove.
I’ve been on and off the site since Rxisk’s articles on akathisia and Rxisk itself saved my life a few years ago.
This was when I was (again) rendered into a completely debilitating severe withdrawal, akathisia, severe ‘IBS’ etc. along with drug induced hyperthyroidism from one many follow up SSRIs. And along with what can only be some form of PTSD when ‘back there’ again and processing the horrors of the previous 20 years (not least day consuming vivid and repetitive nightmares every night in the years since). Withdrawal beginning long before when still on the follow up drug.
I’ve been on and off the site since as my last severe withdrawal then culminated, owing to an abusive alcoholic sibling’s disbelief (along with doctor’s disbelief of course despite advising them of what happened to me on Seroxat years ago) that I genuinely was rendered too incapacitated to maintain the level of care I had been for my very ill father, in my becoming both almost completely disabled and homeless for many months.
(Post domestic abuse incidents and threats to kill me when I was alone in the home for ‘faking’ illness and post my trying to resolve the family crisis by trying to move somewhere else to recover/escape and seeking family help to help secure alternative assistance for my brother who had wished to be our father’s sole paid carer).
Generally happy and very outgoing and confident person, socially advantaged, well educated, highly ambitious and hard working, pre Seroxat and its legacy and legacy effects, I would never have believed that by my thirties, I would remain unemployed and as a qualified Marketer and Teacher.
Much less finally applying for Illness. Now Disability.
Or that as a forty one year old woman that I would end up sleeping one night in severe withdrawal etc. in a car on a beach.
When I consider everything that had happen to me, to someone with the advantages I had, and also owing to the horrors of doctors and other’s disbelief even now in how incapacitating severe withdrawal can be, I dread to think where others ended up, or later ended up: especially the already more vulnerable or disadvantaged in society…..
Still unwell and not fully re-settled, mainly I read when I can (or vent when triggered in the one place I can obviously! Sorry!).
I have seen your name a few times but my memory etc. was already in trouble after Seroxat, now totally shot.
I would love a link to anywhere you have written your story and I
absolutely believe and understand your feelings on (years of) ambush chemical entrapment and your mourning, and on the part of others who knew you previously, for your once mainly carbon based pre-Seroxat self.
Deirdre, it is truly eerie, how similar, with just small personal ‘curiosities’ to differ or stories apart.
I once tried to taper off Seroxat, over the course of about 1,5 years, slowly to avoid what could be avoided. But to no avail, at ~10mg/day, from my original 40mg/day, I could go no further. I was overwhelmed by physical and emotional trauma.
I could deal with muscle tremors and stiffness, even the zaps, but not the emotions that arose after 20 years of being dormant. And I too had to face the trauma that the pill had subjected me to during those 20 years, which I had just not reacted too in my numbed up state.
And, guess what, I’m now on disability.
My mind is broken, or my brain, depending how you look at it. My body is a wreck from abuse and self-neglect. But I am alive.
Unfortunately I am now back on a ‘medium’ dose of seroxat, using its numbness to be able to carry on, this time knowingly and self-preservatory.
Despite my horrors, and yours on your behalf, it feels better, ever so slightly, to read and share similarities. That is why I wrote in the first place, and that is why I write again. I’m not the most suited to share my story, I just wish there was a way to convince those 20 (!) or so people that once were closest to me.
Ove.
Ove,
That our stories are similar (though I simply had to stay off Seroxat over ten years ago post the Panaroma Programmes no matter what as I later discovered that it had also been inducing equally life wrecking ‘mania’ or what I since believe was overstimulation and disinhibition in me, I have rather been on an array of follow ups to function since) is beyond errie: it’s disturbing.
The extent of the grief and anger also internally disfiguring; no beauty born from years of barbarically induced breakdowns (and without warning) as the song goes.
Especially having seen my partner’s lovely sensitive teenage daughter suffer from akathisia over 20 years later after missing one pill of Sertraline and prescribed the drug before I came on the scene (pacing, visibly agitated, so distressed as to be unintelligible, demanding that we help her kill herself or that we all drive over a cliff) and at what is happening also to kids in Australia.
This is just to say please do not berate yourself or compare yourself negatively to others as you have for still being on Seroxat.
In my case I had no choice to stay off with the Seroxat induced ‘mania’ also (and only as induced by Seroxat, never before Seroxat nor since, no history of Bipolar Disorder in my family: I wish this debate could be settled either way for the sake of now so many ‘Bipolar’ kids).
Not fully aware at the time of just how powerful Seroxat and these ‘medicines’ are (I had naively thought, back in 1999, no internet, that what I was being given was just a short term beta blocker or something!) and in terms of dependency, I also tried to go off them
and to stay off them a few years ago.
This was as I was already in withdrawal from a follow up and for the sake of a relationship and for the sake of my long impaired memory and cognitive function (ironically) ie. my ability to earn. I then tried to stay off them, so much already gone through, bodily systems already blown, well past the point of insanity. Also morally determined and utterly deluded in hindsight that I was special or may be ‘stronger’ – or that I should be ‘strong enough’.
These were less educated if not just plain stupid and self-deluded mistakes in hindsight which would cost me and others who needed me functional greatly. And which may do others not as well educated as many are and making attempts, particularly after long term exposure, without medical or home support. Or at the wrong time.
When I hear of anyone who manages to get off them and to stay off them I’m delighted for them, but I feel a duty to declare my stupidity (in my case) and to warn.
I hope you won’t be but I can also see now, the hard way, and which I had refused to accept, that some may have to take these drugs which stole their health and their lives for the rest of their lives.
Dr Peter Gordon (a doctor: a special person!) was also ambushed by Seroxat and is still entrapped.
Everyone is different, with different lives, and there is no shame or pressure whatsoever on anyone. The shame is on those who did this to so many: not so much even as an apology, no retraction.
I think you’re doing very well all considered; no support especially.
If you like, you can reach me in future
at https://www.facebook.com/deedoherty or at deeglackin@gmail.com.
Ed and Matthew at Stat, ‘hang ’em high’
Kapoor certainly deserves to go to jail, but so do some other pharma execs
By Ed Silverman @Pharmalot
May 2, 2019
But chief executives rarely stand trial. The difference here is that opioids were involved — not anti-psychotics or antidepressants — and, importantly, deaths occurred.
https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/02/kapoor-jail-other-pharma-execs/?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&utm_campaign=b53de99284-Pharmalot&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-b53de99284-149674737
the feds need to make examples of more executives — not just those who peddle opioids.
https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/02/john-kapoor-conviction-holding-corporations-accountable/?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&utm_campaign=3fedbf9a50-Daily_Recap&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-3fedbf9a50-149674737
By Matthew Herper @matthewherper
May 2, 2019
Kapoor’s defense – that he ran the company but did not know what was going on – didn’t hold water with a jury. That’s good news for anyone hoping that we can discourage future pharmaceutical entrepreneurs from lining their pockets while hurting patients.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2896294/Who-failed-the-Seroxat-suicide-watch.html
Who failed the Seroxat suicide watch?
Something’s missing from the few reports I read – who were the doctors who were bribed – why are they not named along with the execs of the pharma company
‘All I know for sure is that the Chair of RCPsych Scotland expressed concerns about my mental health to my employers. I do not know Dr John Crichton and have only spoken to him once on the phone. I asked if he supported Sunshine legislation and also if he thought 1 in 5 Scots taking antidepressants was Realistic Medicine. He avoided answering these questions.
I am aware that he has described me to RCPsych HQ as “difficult” in relation to antidepressants. However this is not fair. I have consistently argued that lived experience is vital when we lack evidence to support long-term treatment.
Seroxat nearly killed me. I lost a year of my life and my wee children and wife suffered terribly.
Whilst I am not on social media, I have been shocked and upset to witness events of the last 48 hours involving the Royal College of Psychiatrists (as summarised here: https://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2019/05/hashtag-backfires-on-twitter.html#.XM6-hOhKhdg)
https://holeousia.com/2019/05/05/scottish-mental-health/
How easily doctors were/are led.
How many of us have been recklessly bullied by our doctors, and how they all group together.
Once you throw a hand-grenade in to their lives, all you can expect in return is group-think.
This is very dangerous territory for doctors.
What has happened to Doctors, that they think they can get away with mis-trust.
There is a whole culture in GP/Psychiatry that unless it has an ‘Extreme Rebellion’, the bribes will continue to work for them and they will carry on with nothing short of Bombastic attitudes which makes something like ‘Seroxat Withdrawal’ the loneliest and most dreadful place that anyone can end up living in.
It is a life-sentence. Week 2 …
GP OnLine: – ‘Babylon at Hand is bidding to form a standalone primary care network.- (in England) sparking warnings from GP leaders that the move risks disrupting the wider NHS’
There’s a kind of rebellion going on in GP land by Babylon GP at Hand and all those 50,000 people already registered with them – people who are probably not involved in medico-politics but are rejecting traditionally based practices . There is the usual outrage by medics who resist change which will affect their control over the public – and finances and their wish to have a caring ‘relationship’ with individuals is a thing they see as being lost – (seriously! – although ok some do but they over do the importance of that for publicity sake -many of us would put an informed clinician with reasonable communication and people skills first . There have been ongoing attempts to undermine GP at Hand but they are savvy enough to counteract them so far. GP leaders have failed so far to improve services , they undermine relationships and trust in different ways by blaming those who consult them in insulting ways, by refusing to listen, by old boy/girl networks,. by cover ups blaming the public for causing overwork and stress (how is it that so many gp’s quietly get on with the job they enjoy without getting stressed is something the ‘leaders’ might investigate, etc etc. So a perhaps surprising collaboration has developed between doctors who have moved on in line with what many people want of a modern day service, and people who have joined in their thousands. A quiet revolution by GPs who join such as Babylon will hopefully lead to a new breed of ‘leaders” Many members of the public have been exceptionally loyal to the NHS and will continue to be but many have had enough – the NHS needs to adapt to the new age of providing ‘care’ before it does more damage to peoples’ lives.
And to the community: funny how pharmacological regulatory services in Sweden announced via media today that a “review” of the guidelines for SSRI-discontinuation and/or treatment duration!
Haha, my guess is that certain court cases now forces things to happen.
This far I hold my hopes low, the swedish scientist interviewed on the subject was one that isn’t really known for anything but praise and “underprescribing” of AD’s.
Soon the lid falls back and smother what smoke might have escaped to the sky.
But still, it’ too much of a coinsidence, huh?
Ove2019
When you have experienced the ultimate Seroxat betrayal, I don’t think the ‘craving’ for Seroxat will ever entirely go away…
I refused to be ‘disabled’ as it would have knocked me off course to provide for my child and I had to prove that I was OK to the world, as it was …
Not only that, but, ‘disability from seroxat’, I think that would have gone down like a lead balloon from where I sat …
I could easily have taken Seroxat for the rest of my life, but, even just looking at the innocuous looking packet filled me with disgust and memories of the doctors’ betrayal and how I got off it through all the odds…I could never let that go, that fact, that Seroxat and Doctors brought me to my knees and
Seroxat has so much to answer for, our lives were drug wrecked as the doctors made it quite plain that being unfit to be part of society, part of a family, a loving parent; crushed and inexorably destroyed – there was only one way to go – and that was up …
2005-06 Session
That this House condemns GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for concealing for 15 years evidence that their anti-depressant drug Seroxat increases the risk of suicide and leads to `persistently worse’ depression; congratulates the US Food and Drug Administration for forcing GSK to confess that users of Seroxat `experience emergent suicidality or symptoms that might be precursors to worsening depression or suicidality’ and that `these symptoms may be severe and abrupt in onset’; and regrets the likely loss of life that has resulted from repeated denials of the lethal side effects of Seroxat by GSK, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and the Medicine and Healthcare Product Regulatory Agency in spite of the vigorous campaigns to reveal the truth by Professor David Healy, hon. Members, the Seroxat Users Group and Panorama.
https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/30692
Up Periscope …
And I admire your courage to get off the drug. I admire how you made a stand, wether it was for yourself, your children or just a stand towards the chemical itself.
I’m not pleased or ‘OK’ with how things turned out for me, just ‘exhausted’ and ‘drained’. I really dislike to have to take the pill each day. (I could use a stronger word for ‘dislike’)
….”But if I can only survive another 6 months”…… Is stronger than my belief that I could ever make myself resonably functioning again, alone.
I can’t even tell my closest this, because there is literally no one backing me. It’s like telling someone that I have a unicorn inside me, if no doctor or science backs you up, it doesn’t really matter what is actually inside you, it could even be a unicorn, you still get written off as the loon.
A nice compendium of ‘humour’ for when things get tough
Kicking-off, with James
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/06/bad-things-happen/
Wit, Satire and Humor
https://www.madinamerica.com/artwork/humor/
Doubt is our product …
Dr Neil MacFarlane MRCPsych (back 12.00) @NMacFa 34m
#SeroxatDefect trial hearing today – just 20 minutes. Adjourned for a month but if the claimants appeal the ‘scope’ ruling that could take up to a year. Not a new piece – 250 words added under report on day 3. Sorry.
https://drnmblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/gsks-lead-barrister-on-rival-pharmaceutical-companies-will-the-seroxat-is-defective-trial-erode-the-reputation-of-all-ssris-preview-of-week-2/
WHEREVER YOU LOOK, WHEREVER YOU GO, THE SAME STORY REAPPEARS, THE SAME OLD STORY … lOOK AT JAPAN
Withdrawal from paroxetine can be severe, warns FDA
(Published 02 February 2002)
https://www.bmj.com/content/324/7332/260.1.full
GlaxoSmithKline, a leading drugs manufacturer, was last week forced to admit that paroxetine, a widely prescribed antidepressant and the company’s best selling drug, can cause severe withdrawal symptoms when stopped.
The Food and Drug Administration in the United States published a new product warning about the drug, and in the same week the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations declared the company guilty of misleading the public about paroxetine on US television a year ago.
“This drug has been promoted for years as safe and easy to discontinue,” said Charles Medawar, head of Social Audit, a consumer …
Overall, however, the problems and risks associated with paroxetine appear to possibly make it the least safe of all SSRIs and SNRIs and, if not for the low therapeutic indices of TCAs and MAOIs, possible cardiotoxicity and increased risk of serotonin syndrome, possibly the least safe of all antidepressants. These conclusions should lead practitioners to be much more cautious than with other antidepressants in recommending, initiating and continuing treatment with paroxetine, especially in females.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044489/
PLSE READ THIS ARTICLE AND THE COMMENTS
Study 329 in Japan
October, 13, 2015 | 19 Comments
https://davidhealy.org/study-329-in-japan/
‘Where is seal team 6 when we really need them ?
Judge might reopen GSK paroxetine case
(Published 08 February 2016)
A High Court compensation claim against the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) over its antidepressant paroxetine may be revived, five years after the withdrawal of legal aid funding put it on hold shortly before the trial was due to start on 1 February 2011.
At the High Court in London, Mr Justice Foskett refused GSK an order to bring the case to a permanent halt.
The 103 claimants, whose new solicitors, Fortitude Law, had arranged commercial litigation funding, said …
https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i800.full
‘0’ responses …
Thebmj cencors responses …therefore it isn’t altogether reliable way of gauging medics’ views, plus some will be too worried about bullying to respond in a way which might rock their boat.
Judge Robert Bromwich said in a written decision that it was part of a “deliberate and considered marketing strategy”.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-australia-court-gsk-novartis/gsk-and-novartis-liniment-marketing-misled-australian-consumers-court-idUKKCN1SN0IW?rpc=401&
“We take consumer law seriously,” GSK’s unit said in a statement.
UK-based Vectura has secured a major victory and $90 million in damages from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) after a US district court found the pharma giant guilty of willfully infringing its US patent.
http://www.ippromagazine.com/ippromagazinenews/article.php?article_id=6702
BOB FIDDAMAN @Fiddaman 1h
SCOTUS decision could mean new hearing for widow’s suit vs GSK over suicide of lawyer taking generic Paxil
https://cookcountyrecord.com/stories/512520704-scotus-decision-could-mean-new-hearing-for-widow-s-suit-vs-gsk-over-suicide-of-lawyer-taking-generic-paxil
He said plaintiffs have long maintained “GSK never fully informed the FDA” of Paxil’s potential to increase suicide risk.
He said they maintain the “FDA never rejected or prohibited GSK from issuing a warning.”
The Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the Dolin appeal at a conference on May 23. From there, the high court would decide whether to hear arguments in the case, or to deny Dolin’s appeal, allowing the Seventh Circuit decision to stand, or to send the matter back to the Seventh Circuit court for a new hearing.
For the second time in less than a year, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is reworking promotional practices in order to boost prescriptions, and its latest move will provide greater incentives for its sales reps.
https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2019/05/23/glaxo-sales-reps-compensation-cancer/?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&utm_campaign=bb58fc37f9-Pharmalot&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-bb58fc37f9-149674737
The change comes as Glaxo attempts to compete in the burgeoning oncology market, a step underscored with its recent $5 billion acquisition of Tesaro, which sells a treatment for ovarian cancer. The deal helped return the drug maker to the commercial cancer business, which demands that promotional efforts match what rivals are doing.
(Reuters) – British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline said on Thursday it will change incentives for sales representatives in some countries as it looks to retain talent.
The changes mark a cautious return by GSK to performance based bonuses for sales reps after stopping them for years in response to a bribery scandal.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gsk-salary/gsk-to-change-incentives-for-sales-representatives-idUSKCN1ST1TM
SCOTUS gives win to GSK in appeal of $3M verdict over Chicago lawyer’s suicide, Paxil drug labeling
Appeals
By Jonathan Bilyk | May 28, 2019
https://cookcountyrecord.com/stories/512573275-scotus-gives-win-to-gsk-in-appeal-of-3m-verdict-over-chicago-lawyer-s-suicide-paxil-drug-labeling
GlaxoSmithKline prevails in Paxil preemption case as Supreme Court refuses review
by Eric Sagonowsky | May 29, 2019 10:42am
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/gsk-prevails-paxil-preemption-case-as-supreme-court-denies-taking-up-review
Reed Smith Partner’s Widow Loses Supreme Court Appeal in Suicide Case
By Tony Mauro | May 28, 2019
https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2019/05/28/reed-smith-partners-widow-loses-supreme-court-appeal-in-suicide-case/?slreturn=20190502083226
PETITIONER’S RESPONSE TO RESPONDENT’S SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-803/100714/20190522172604359_38132%20pdf%20Esfandiari.pdf
The Supreme Court, without comment, declined to review the appeals court decision.
Dr Neil MacFarlane MRCPsych @NMacFa 23h
New piece on the #SeroxatDefect trial – it’s off (probably) to the Court of Appeal, barely after it started.
https://drnmblog.wordpress.com/2019/06/04/the-scope-of-the-seroxat-is-defective-trial-goes-probably-to-the-court-of-appeal/
Dr Neil MacFarlane MRCPsych Retweeted
Dr Neil MacFarlane MRCPsych @NMacFa 6h
Replying to @Sc0ttJenkins
I will check in with Fortitude Law from time to time, and otherwise checking this. If they are fitted in at short notice I may miss it. But it will only be the lawyers & we will get the Appeal Court ruling well before any restart in the High Court. https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/court-lists/list-appeal-civil …