Study 329 is the most famous clinical trial of all time – see Study329.org. The only trial with two diametrically competing versions of what happened in print at the same time.
329 (March 29) was the date Britain was supposed to leave the European Union – but didn’t – with close to GUBU consequences.
And its 329 years since the Battle of the Boyne, which effectively ended 50 years of upheaval that began with a clash between the then King (Executive), Charles I, and Parliament. This clash now seems to many pundits, commentators and experts to be echoed in the current clash between the British Executive (King Boris) and UK Parliament playing out this week. Will Boris get the chop, the way Charles did?
The Battle of the Boyne secured the reign of King Billy, the price of which was a triumph of Parliament. This Battle is celebrated every 12th of July in Northern Ireland – the marching season – when towns are bedecked in Orange regalia and pavements painted red, white and blue. It has become a symbol of Protestant triumph, even though the year before King Billy had made an alliance with Catholic Austria.
This Battle set the scene for the later partition of Ireland, in 1922, into Cis-Ireland and Trans-Ireland – with Trans-Ireland designed to be tribal. There would be a Protestant majority, which was initially around 55% to 45%, but is now closer to 52% to 48%.
The 2016 Brexit referendum has since produced the exact same split in England. And a descent into the same tribalism. Two groups marching past each other, unable to find common ground. We’re all Nor’n Irish now.
This is not just a story local to the Western European Archipelago; the United States has been intensely and increasingly tribal for the last 30 years at least. It may not be entirely unconnected to the WEA story, in that broadly speaking the WASPs are on one side facing off against the others.
The original WASPs were a bunch of Puritans, some of whom figured on leaving England and setting up a less sullied polity in America, while others stayed put but figured on purifying England (of European influence).
The Forgotten Man
On all sides now, everyone seems to feel forgotten or overlooked and is busy asserting an identity, increasingly an individual one with a bodily focus – such as neurodiverse or transgender.
When campaigning Trump pitched it in terms of the forgotten man – that too many of us now feel enmeshed in the tentacles of a Deep State, which he promised to roll back.
The Deep State is largely a set of rules, regulations, a bureaucracy. One that cuts numbers into people’s arms and processes them without ever paying heed to who they are. It is growing. It encroaches on our lives more and more, facilitated by the internet which requires us to tick innumerable boxes before we can access anything.
Europe is a domain of regulations par excellence. It’s where rule by rules began. But exiting Europe won’t mean exiting regulations. It will mean a double-dose of regulations – those Britain requires and those Europe requires. And the grip of regulations will be no less in Britain than in Europe.
In both Britain and Europe anyone who gets injured by a drug or a vaccine will be forgotten. There is no greater chance of access to clinical trial data in Britain than in Europe. The people who have done most to push for access to trial data have been recent European Ombudspersons – a Greek man and then an Irish woman.
Because there is no access to trial data, if you are injured by a drug in Britain or Europe, your identity is not that of a citizen or a consumer, or even as a patient as it once was. Your identity now is as a loser. And not even other losers like the company of losers. Neither Trump nor Johnson have ever shown a scrap of interest in losers.
I Daniel Blake
It took 50 years for England to find a middle ground after the stand-off between Charles and Parliament. It was a shaky middle-ground – unlike America and Canada, which were as WASP dominated as Britain through to the 1960s, the British prime minister for instance still cannot be a Catholic.
In Norn’ Ireland, there are hints of voters beginning to endorse a middle ground, over a century after the difficulties became formally entrenched. The priest-ridden, Rome dominated South meanwhile has become one of the most liberal states in Europe.
America shows just the opposite – the loss of common ground – and a sense that the descent into division may have a long way to run before it bottoms out and people begin to find a way back.
Ken Loach’s movie I Daniel Blake speaks to these issues. It shows a decent man trapped in and ground down by an impersonal bureaucratic apparatus. No one in the apparatus is able to engage with any of the people they see. The horror grows steadily and leads to a blow-out. Blake doesn’t pick up a gun and spray bullets around the place. He has a stroke.
This would have struck a chord ten or twenty years ago but no-one now gives a fuck about the English working class. They are beyond forgotten. The problem our rulers now have is that the same impersonality is encroaching on middle class or upper middle class folk in their dealings with their banks, the government, the education and health systems and increasingly everything else.
Everything works, sort of, provided nothing goes wrong. But once you hit a snag that requires discretion to sort out, the system can’t cope. It calls on you to do the administration to sort your own problem, while often making the problem impossible to solve because there is no tick box that corresponds to just what has happened to you. We are left screaming in impotent rage “I David Healy would like to speak to a human being”.
What we have here is government by algorithm and process. Every process is made up of bunches of algorithms – If X, then Y.
Around 1990 – 300 years after the Boyne , giving drugs became algorithmic – as a consequence of EBM and pharmaceutical companies persuading doctors and governments to treat risk factors as though they were medical disorders – If your cholesterol is high, given X, if a rating scale score is high, give Y etc.
Except drugs are not algorithms. They are chemicals whose safe use depends on information and discretion and giving the same information to Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims. And even with the information, drugs defeat algorithms – you should not be consuming 5 or more algorithms or you will die earlier, end up in hospital more often and have a worse quality of life.
Drugs and the injuries they cause may point a way forward. Everyone should have access to all the data behind any drug they take and very very few of us should be on 5 or more drugs.
But drugs don’t come without doctors. So very very few of us should be seeing 3 or more partialists (specialists) because each partialist will want to chuck drugs at us and many will get staggeringly nasty if we demur.
Until recently the ideal was to have a family doctor, a generalist, with occasional recourse to a specialist. The problem now is that its increasingly difficult for any of us to have a family doctor – we may go to one clinic but will see a different doctor each time and this is just as bad as being fed to partialists.
The logic extends one step further. We probably need to limit the number of processes in our lives. I’ve no idea what the optimal number is but it would seem self-evidently true that the greater the number of processes we are exposed to, no matter how intelligible the elements of these process are, unless meaningful discretion (oversight) is built into the system, the riskier for all of us.
Macrocosmically this is obvious. The environmental problems we now have is at least in part because too many things are happening automatically without anyone in a position to take stock.
Its not just the injuries drugs and processes can cause, its the passivity they induce. A thermostat means that we don’t have to get up and adjust the heating. This can be convenient and useful from time to time. When it becomes automatic it contributes to a passivity, just as all remote controls do. And to an impersonality even impersonal killing as in death by drone.
We need Citizen’s Assemblies and Co-operatives rather than, or at least to supplement, government by regulation.
PS This evening in Parliament the British Executive got defeated by a group termed the Rebel Alliance (largely not from Eton) – the tally being 300 votes for the Executive and 329 for the Alliance.
annie says
‘Writer-director Ken Loach has been making movies about the British working class since the mid-60s, and this masterful dramatic feature proves that even after all these years he can still work himself up into righteous, white-hot rage.’
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, the latest from legendary director Ken Loach is a gripping, human tale about the impact one man can make. Gruff but goodhearted, Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) is a man out of time: a widowed woodworker who’s never owned a computer, he lives according to his own common sense moral code. But after a heart attack leaves him unable to work and the state welfare system fails him, the stubbornly self-reliant Daniel must stand up and fight for his dignity, leading a one-man crusade for compassion that will transform the lives of a struggling single mother (Hayley Squires) and her two children. Graced with humor and heart, I, Daniel Blake is a moving, much-needed reminder of the power of empathy from one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/i_daniel_blake/
…Rotten Tomatoes
PM swears in Commons as he demands October election
Slouching Rees-Mogg under fire
PM’s advisor Cummings ‘stank of booze’
…and that’s before you got yourself to the ‘Doctors’, who are equally unedifying but in a rather more subtle and ubiquitous manner – drugs, data, evidence, empathy, heart – the missing links – you are totally alone, you cannot speak to a human being.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists said it had been concerned for many years about the prescribing of anti-depressants for under 18s and had raised the matter with the Department of Health.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1432640/Seroxat-can-be-a-danger-to-under-18s-doctors-told.html
The Royal College of Psychiatrists welcomed the new advice from the MHRA and said it would ensure it was passed on to its members promptly.
It said it had been concerned for many years about prescribing of anti-depressants for under 18s and had raised the matter with the Department of Health.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2976498.stm
Press Release
Royal College of Psychiatrists reacts
http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/2003-06-11-rcpsych.htm
The College has been concerned for many years about ‘off-licence’* prescribing of anti-depressant medication for under 18s and we have raised these concerns with the Department of Health.
Charity chief slams drug watchdog
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3507378.stm
“What they failed to mention – and what I am now making public – is the fact that the regulator had the data on which the basis of this decision was made for well over a decade as part of the original licence application.
“Either they didn’t understand the full implications of the available medical data at the time or, worse, that data was fully understood and they failed to act.
“Either way it amounts to extreme negligence and a clear dereliction of the MHRA’s duty to safeguard the well-being of the British public.”
.
If Study 329 were in a Court of Law, there is no question that all the above would drive a stake in to the heart of our international health and our international politics and the wedge of I, Daniel Blake’s ‘situation’ would become easier to manage and he might even feel that he didn’t have to do what he did all by himself …
‘arresting times’ …
annie says
There is not even the smallest element of suspicion about this case, and this drug.
The endless publicity about this drug, for around twenty years, with Panorama, Sarah Boseley’s writings, Social Audit, US court cases, Study 329, and more and more..
The has all been passed by, the entrenchment camp. Seriously?
Will the ‘Secrets of Seroxat’, remain under the rock, of profound secrecy?
Jackson’s father Tony raised their concerns about Seroxat, pointing out that it was banned for use by adolescents in the US. He said: “I just don’t want anybody else to go through what we’ve been through. This Seroxat must be stopped.”
http://antidepaware.co.uk/news-and-comment/
September 8 2019
Psychiatrist Dr Haroon Rashid, who saw Jackson the day before his death, told the inquest that there was “no evidence” that the antidepressant triggered suicidal ideation in adults.
North Staffordshire coroner Andrew Barkley (left) chose not to challenge this erroneous statement. Recording a conclusion of suicide, he said that it was a “concern” that Jackson was “making his own adjustments” to his medication. He added: “That is a significant risk in that it can give rise to a relapse.”
Truthman, on the case.
https://truthman30.wordpress.com/2019/09/08/family-of-dj-jackson-cummings-who-jumped-to-his-death-say-seroxat-caused-his-suicide/
The deceased knew, this time round, his parents knew.
annie says
One in four British adults being prescribed potentially addictive drugs, ‘disturbing’ review finds
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/09/one-four-british-adults-prescribed-potentially-addictive-drugs/
Public Health Report
2019
Dependence and withdrawal associated with some prescribed medicines
An evidence review
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/829777/PHE_PMR_report.pdf
Antidepressants are not addictive but some people have problems coming off them.
The goal is to make sure that our healthcare system builds awareness and enhanced decision making for better patient treatment and support.
These recommendations are just the beginning. All parts of the healthcare system and the general population will need to engage with this complex problem and work together to find solutions. The local strategic leadership of CCGs, sustainability and transformation partnerships and integrated care systems will be vital.
Among the SSRIs/SNRIs, paroxetine and venlafaxine may have a greater likelihood to cause withdrawal effects due to their short half-life.55
The authors concluded that withdrawal symptoms can follow any type of SSRI but appear to be much more frequent with paroxetine.
John Stone says
“Antidepressants are not addictive but some people have problems coming off them”
Isn’t it Syme in 1984 who becomes lyrical about “the beauty of the destruction of words”!
Non addictive addictive drugs, not to mention patient blame anyone?
annie says
BOB FIDDAMAN @Fiddaman
Now online
https://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2019/09/phe-review-dilutes-ssri-problem.html
‘Everyone offered a prescription needs to be properly warned of the risks. Ultimately I was re-started on the Seroxat. Twenty years later, I am too frightened to try withdrawing again.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7445657/One-four-people-hooked-prescription-drugs-official-review-calls-national-helpline.html
John Read @ReadReadj 2h
John Read Retweeted Dr Warren Larkin
Thanks @warren_larkin but those stuck on these drugs have been campaigning far longer than I and have persisted despite being ignored or denigrated. But I am proud to have played a part, with James Davies and many others, in supporting their hugely important cause.
annie says
James Moore @jf_moore 1h
Thank you too, the support provided by the #prescribedharm community has made such a difference in my life, I’d be lost without it. #strongertogether
Petition Shared With Matt Hancock, UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
James Moore
Caldicot, WLS, United Kingdom
11 Sep 2019
On September 10 2019, Public Health England released a landmark report into dependence on and withdrawal from prescribed drugs
https://www.change.org/p/provide-tapering-strips-to-help-people-withdraw-from-antidepressant-and-antipsychotic-drugs/u/25057190
Give the focus that the PHE review has given to dependence and withdrawal, I decided that today was the day to share our petition with Matt Hancock, the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
The letter can be read here:
annie says
“Gotzsche is known not to be mistaken”
Prof. Peter Gøtzsche @PGtzsche1 23h
Book review: Death of a whistleblower and Cochrane’s moral collapse. “One gets associations to a mixture of medieval witch-hunts and show trials against people who were undesirable by the regime in the Stalin era in the Soviet Union.”
http://www.deadlymedicines.dk/
“The pharmaceutical industry has strongly disliked this troublesome researcher who through independent analyses put their products in a worse light than the industry’s PR campaigns and “hand-picked” research indicates.”
http://www.deadlymedicines.dk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Bokomtale-Death-of-a-whistleblower-engelsk-skjerm-oppslag.pdf
Scientific freedom is under constant pressure. We therefore opened Institute for Scientific Freedom on 9 March 2019 in Copenhagen in connection with an international symposium. Videos of the presentations at the symposium can be found here.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoJ5D4KQ1G0Z_ZQo5AIIiuuspAKCnc49T
annie says
recovery&renewal @recover2renew 2h
Full published record to date: PE01651 @SP_Petitions
SEE: Astonishingly frank patient accounts. ++ Important contributions from medical professionals & others: @ReadReadj @DrTerryLynch Des Spence @DrDavidHealy @PeterLucassen @CEP + others
http://www.parliament.scot/GettingInvolved/Petitions/PE01651
Johanna says
A Tweet has been circulating that compares Brexit to that novel we all had to read in high school … you remember the one?
“An island ruled by British schoolboys who turn on each other, run short of food, kill the vulnerable and have to be rescued”
John Stone says
Oddly enough this coincides with my own first perception of the House of Commons as a schoolboy visitor in 1972 – by coincidence it was the day Ted Heath brought back the agreement from Brussels to admit the U.K. into the Common Market, and what impressed itself on the memory watching the gallery was the tribal bellowing from below (largely Labour against, Conservatives for). This was, of course, years before any radio or TV transmissions and in it was an extraordinary experience.
John Stone says
Lawyer Leigh Dundas on behalf of Physicians for Informed Consent explaining how California bureaucrats stole children’s data to use against and intimidate doctors, as new laws placing vaccine exemptions entirely in the hands of bureaucrats go before the California legislature.
https://mobile.twitter.com/debnantz/status/1169740509302202368?s=21
John Stone says
Sorry ‘Advocates for Physicians’ Rights’ not ‘Physicians for Informed Consent’. This is a better version:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fj7CYtDZjTU&feature=youtu.be
John Stone says
There are three kinds of lie: damned lies, statistics and algorithms.
Last December the Office of National Statistics put it about that there were 50,100 excess deaths in England and Wales the previous winter which were largely due to influenza. This was known to be completely untrue and I protested in the columns of BMJ Rapid Responses – even Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, had got round to inviting Hiam and Dorling who first drew attention to the problem of the 2017-18 excess deaths to write about them in her annual review, and they had early on formed the opinion it had nothing to do with flu.
https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-6
The actual number of deaths from Public Health England’s own data was 320 for England and the 372 for the United Kingdom as a whole. Some months later I was berated by one Nicola J Oliver (Longevity and Mortality Consultant):
“Stone states: ‘On this basis, the number of deaths in England and Wales in an admittedly exceptionally bad year would have been only in the region of 335-340 deaths, and the ONS seem to have exaggerated the risk to the public by in the region of 150 times.’
“It is regrettable that Stone only identified the deaths of patients admitted to ICU/HDU, and did not take into account that the PHE document also publishes total deaths, which were 15,969 (confidence interval 15,125-16,828) for the 2017-2018 season.. This total represents approximately 32% of the excess winter mortality for that season, and certainly not the much smaller sum that Stone claims.”
https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-7
What Oliver failed to note was that 15,969 deaths from flu in England were not documented deaths but a projection of the number of deaths health officials felt there ought to have been based on the Flumomo algorithm: they knew exact how many deaths from flu there were because it is recorded and there is no need to engage in complex modelling. Obviously, I was a very bad person for pointing out these anomalies but Oliver did not return to the fray:
https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-8
Of course, we are arriving at the point where we have a technocratic class which may occasionally engage with reality while the rest of us – the proles – who are simply controlled by lies: it gets to be as simple as Winston Smith discussing razor blade and coffee rations with Syme in “1984”. Even the MSM earlier had earlier in the year had reported the Hiam and Dorling problem but it did not stop them reporting the pack of lies put out by ONS in order to manipulate people.
Nor, increasingly, does it matter which group of political front-men and women are used to legitimise the lies of the bureaucratic class: in fact we actually had a Supreme Court judgement that politicians are allowed to lie (thanks to the opponents of Boris Johnson) but is nothing compared to what is going on underneath.
To return to Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Office has actually had the temerity to conduct a census of ASD cases in it schools – now running at 3.3%, with 1.9% of all children having an education Stage 5 ASD type disability (at Stage 5 it cannot all be fashion). Many weeks ago I wrote to the Office for Budget Responsibility pointing out the costs were many times worse than the figures they had reported for the cost of Brexit and have yet to receive a reply (even a courteous acknowledgement).
.
https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4564/rr-1
By now we live in a bureaucratic fantasy land supported by various media controlling agencies like Sense About Science and Science Media Centre who spoon feed obsequious mainstream journalists, and probably the biggest onslaught on our liberty and well-being comes through health. Perhaps we also ought to pay attention the the outgoing Chief Medical Officer’s dystopian novel “The Drugs Don’t Work” with antimicrobial resistance the pretext for ever increasing encroachment.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drugs-Dont-Work-Penguin-Specials/dp/0241969190/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Sally+Davies&qid=1567858451&s=gateway&sr=8-1
There is no doubt about the seriousness of of antimicrobial resistance but an out of control bureaucracy is not an answer. We, of course, only have a chance of getting the answers right if we have standards of truth in democratic public discourse, and we don’t.
susanne says
Menu
General Privacy Policy
Version 3.2, updated 7th December 2018
Introduction
This privacy notice is designed to help you understand how we use and protect the information obtained from any individual who:
– contacts UCL by any means
– provides services to UCL
– visits or and uses UCL’s website, e.g. http://www.ucl.ac.uk and its subdomains (the “website”)
– requests information under the information compliance legislation, e.g. data protection or freedom of information
– provides UCL with unsolicited personal information.
It applies to personal data provided to us, both by individuals themselves or by third parties and supplements any other UCL privacy notices which may apply, for example the student privacy notice if you apply for a programme of study here.
This is a General Privacy Notice, and may be superseded by a ‘Local Privacy Notice’ depending on what basis you are contacting UCL and whether you are completing additional web forms, payments or applications.
About us
What information you provide to us
How we will use the information
Using your information in accordance with data protection laws
Principles
Sharing your personal information
How we will protect information about you
Data retention
Your rights
Under certain circumstances, you may have the following rights in relation to your personal data:
Right 1: A right to access personal data held by us about you.
Right 2: A right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal data held by us about you.
Right 3: A right to require us to erase personal data held by us about you. This right will only apply where, for example, we no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for; or where you withdraw your consent if we are using your personal data based on your consent; or where you object to the way we process your data (in line with Right 6 below).
Right 4: A right to restrict our processing of personal data held by us about you. This right will only apply where, for example, you dispute the accuracy of the personal data held by us; or where you would have the right to require us to erase the personal data but would prefer that our processing is restricted instead; or where we no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for, but we require the data for the purposes of dealing with legal claims.
Right 5: A right to receive personal data, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format. You also have the right to require us to transfer this personal data to another organisation.
Right 6: A right to object to our processing of personal data held by us about you.
Right 7: A right to withdraw your consent, where we are relying on it to use your personal data.
Right 8: A right to ask us not to use information about you in a way that allows computers to make decisions about you and ask us to stop.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact the Data Protection Officer using data-protection@ucl.ac.uk or +44 (0)20 3108 8726.
John – You were interested in the response re use of personal information from R F – nothing at all yet. They are as you know linked in with UCL ,my FOI was specifically asking re points 5 6 7 – HOW people are informed that data may be being used including especially by being shared with Google (Previously google deep mind) and how consent is obtained – are individuals given copies of any consent form they may have signed (or agreed to). Is there one? So far they are fudging – information for people is described as being on public notice boards in public areas – There are more ways to obscure the truth than three. PS some while there was an FOI made re google by someone called ‘John’ (?) Anything useful come of it do you know?
John Stone says
Susanne
All fascinating – I didn’t know you were allowed to do FOI requests without disclosing your full name and definitely not me.
annie says
Vaccines and immunisation
Facebook to direct vaccine searches to public health pages
Facebook moves to stem spread of misinformation online about side-effects of immunisations
Sarah Boseley Health editor
4 Sep 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/04/facebook-to-redirect-anti-vaccine-searches-to-public-health-pages
Facebook is to take a stand against vaccine denial by directing people searching for information or using vaccine hashtags to web pages set up by public health bodies.
People who access Facebook and Instagram pages and groups that discuss vaccines, as well as those searching or using relevant hashtags, will see an educational module about vaccine safety. Links will take them to a page provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States and to the World Health Organization elsewhere in the world.
John Stone says
Every Good Girl Deserves Favour
https://www.ageofautism.com/2018/07/best-of-aoa-the-sarah-boseley-problem-again.html
susanne says
GP’s have flagged up proposal (again but gaining support in some quarters) to prevent children going to school if haven’t been immunised. At the sale time unprecedented numbers of hildren are being removed from their parents ‘caregivers’ (not specifically tied to vaccination but watch this space).
susanne says
PubMed
US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health
Adv Mind Body Med. 2019 Winter;33(1):4-21.
Treatment Emergent Violence To Self And Others; A Literature Review of Neuropsychiatric Adverse Reactions For Antidepressant And Neuroleptic Psychiatric Drugs And General Medications.
Clarke C, Evans J, Brogan K.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
This paper reviews the literature linking physical violence, directed towards self or others, to serotonergic and dopaminergic psychiatric drugs and general medications.
susanne says
John- arrived today from Royal Free. Another fudge I asked to see what documentation is used to record consent and whether a copy is given to the person who consents
Not sure I can be bothered to take it further – this shows enough how duplicitious they are when seemingly complying with umpteen obligations – lots of us would just get lost in the maze of links No info on how info is provided to those who don’t use the net ..
FOI, Rf (ROYAL FREE LONDON NHS FOUNDATION TRUST), Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust 12 September 2019
Dear Ms Stevens
Thank you for submitting a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please find the response below. This response covers the hospitals and services managed by the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, namely the Royal Free Hospital, Barnet Hospital and Chase Farm Hospital and associated group services.
Your question
What is the process, document used to gain ‘permissions’ from individuals for use of their information which is passed to google (previously Google Deep Mind). Are patients given a copy of the ‘permission’ record.
The response
The trust does not obtain indidual patients’ consent to process information with thrid parties for patient care. There is information on the trust website via the privacy statement – see https://www.royalfree.nhs.uk/patients-vi…
There is also comprehensive information about the trust’s work with DeepMind and the Streams mobile app on the trust’s website at
https://www.royalfree.nhs.uk/patients-vi…
This includes the legal framework within which this occurs and in particular:
“The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust is data controller in relation to the personal data contained in the Streams app. This means we retain control over that personal data at all times and are responsible for deciding how that personal data is used …
The Streams app itself is provided by DeepMind but they are only a data processor in respect of the personal data on Streams. This means that they can only use that personal data on our instructions for the purpose of providing Streams. DeepMind is not permitted to use that personal data for any other purpose.”
Your appeal rights
I hope that this response deals with your enquiry to your satisfaction, however if not you have two options:
If you do not feel that we have provided you with the information you requested, you may contact us again and state what information you still require. However if you ask for additional and/or different information this will be dealt with as a new request.
John Stone says
Obviously a huge conflation with what is being shared for the patient’s benefit, and what for the institution’s benefit.
annie says
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The drugmaker that produces Prozac, the antidepressant that Joseph Wesbecker’s victims blamed for his deadly shooting rampage 30 years ago at Standard Gravure, secretly paid the victims $20 million to help ensure a verdict exonerating the drug company.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/12/prozac-makers-secret-payment-mass-shooting-lawsuit-revealed/2302888001/
USA Today …
“In this case, there was a serious lack of candor with the trial court, and there may have been deception, bad-faith conduct, abuse of the judicial process or perhaps even fraud,” the court said. “We cannot tolerate even the possibility of such conduct.”
suanne says
come to USA TODAY NETWORK’S EUROPEAN UNION EXPERIENCE
Learn More
Prozac maker paid millions to secure favorable verdict in mass shooting lawsuit, victims say
Andrew Wolfson Louisville Courier Journal
Published 4:13 PM EDT Sep 12, 2019
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The drugmaker that produces Prozac, the antidepressant that Joseph Wesbecker’s victims blamed for his deadly shooting rampage 30 years ago at Standard Gravure, secretly paid the victims $20 million to help ensure a verdict exonerating the drug company.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly vigorously shielded the payment for more than two decades, defying a Louisville judge who fought to reveal it because he said it swayed the jury’s verdict.
Wesbecker began taking Prozac about a month before his murderous spree that killed eight and wounded 12 in the print shop attached to the Courier Journal. All but one of the victims sued Eli Lilly, the company that manufactured the popular but controversial drug.
‘We need change’: El Paso mass shooting survivors file lawsuit against Walmart
On Sept. 14, 1989, Wesbecker, a pressman who had been placed on long-term disability leave for severe mental illness, entered Standard Gravure around 8:30 a.m., carrying a bag full of weapons, including a semiautomatic rifle.
Over the next 30 minutes, Wesbecker walked through the building, firing more than 40 rounds at those he encountered before shooting himself in the head with a handgun. It is the worst mass shooting in Kentucky’s history.
In 1994, a fiercely litigated, 11-week trial took place in Louisville in which Wesbecker’s victims and their families said the Prozac he took helped incite his murderous rampage.
On the eve of the jury’s verdict, which absolved Lilly of liability, the company made the secret payment without telling the judge overseeing the case.
In exchange for the payment, the plaintiffs – eight estates and 11 survivors – agreed to withhold damaging evidence about the arthritis drug Oraflex that Lilly withdrew from the market. Lilly pleaded guilty to 25 criminal misdemeanor counts for failing to report adverse reactions that patients suffered from the drug, and the drug company feared that the Prozac jury would be more inclined to rule against the drugmaker if it learned of it.
The plaintiffs agreed that if the jury found Lilly liable, they would not seek damages, nor would they appeal the verdict if they lost.
America’s first mass shooting: 70 years ago, a WWII veteran killed 13 of his neighbors
Jefferson Circuit Judge John Potter forced the disclosure of a secret deal between Prozac maker Eli Lilly and company and the plaintiffs
The Courier Journal
Jefferson Circuit Judge John Potter exposed the outlines of the deal decades ago, suspecting that money may have changed hands before the verdict. He fought the company for years to disclose the deal’s terms.
Lilly closely guarded the amount of the payment, and it remained a secret in Louisville.
Two of the victims recently told the Courier Journal that the payment totaled $20 million, worth about $41 million in today’s dollars, which the plaintiffs divided among themselves after paying their attorneys. The two victims told the Courier Journal they felt compelled to accept the money because they suffered egregious injuries that kept them from working again and they needed it to survive.
They asked not to be identified because the settlement required them to keep the amount secret, and they said they feared repercussions for revealing it.
The co-lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Illinois lawyer Nancy Zettler, told the Courier Journal she was not involved in the agreement but heard the same figure cited by the two plaintiffs.
‘Clearly a game.’: Opioid lawsuit settlements arranged to give drug companies a tax break, experts say
The Indianapolis Star reported the $20 million amount in 2000 and said the company paid an additional $5 million to cover workers’ compensation claims.
Under the deal, the plaintiffs could have received $15 million more if Prozac had been found 51%-100% liable for Wesbecker’s conduct.
Attorney Ed Stopher, who defended Lilly at trial, declined to comment and referred questions to the company, whose communication director, Mark Taylor, said it would not comment.
Lilly used the verdict to tout that Prozac had been proved a safe and effective antidepressant. In 1995, the company reaped a quarter of its $6.5 billion in revenue from Prozac – and faced 160 other suits nationwide over the drug.
Prozac is still prescribed across the USA and is considered safe if used as directed, although it does have some side effects, according to the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists.
The company and its lawyers acknowledged the agreement with plaintiffs (but not the amount of the payment), insisting it was legal and ethical.
They said it was not unusual for adversaries in civil trials to strike so-called high-low agreements, in which the plaintiffs and defense agree to minimum and maximum recoveries – regardless of the verdict – to reduce their respective risks.
Somerset lawyer Richard Hay said, “If parties use secret agreements to keep out evidence, it’s like taking a dive in a boxing match.”
‘Misleading marketing’ leads to landmark judgment: Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million for role in opioid crisis; company says ruling ‘flawed’
Lilly publicly trashed Potter and his investigation and won an order from the Kentucky Court of Appeals blocking it.
Potter appealed, and the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled in his favor in 1996, allowing him to press Lilly for details of the deal.
“In this case, there was a serious lack of candor with the trial court, and there may have been deception, bad-faith conduct, abuse of the judicial process or perhaps even fraud,” the court said. “We cannot tolerate even the possibility of such conduct.”
Potter set a hearing at which he intended to require attorneys for both sides to testify under oath. Lilly accused him of conducting a vendetta, and he recused himself.
The judge who inherited the case let the matter drop, and Potter’s questions were never answered.
Potter, 76, who retired in 2002 after 20 years on the bench, declined to comment for this story.
Read: The 25 most dangerous drugs
Andrew Pointer and other shooting victims of Joseph Wesbecker hold hands as the verdict is read on Dec. 12, 1994, in their suit against Prozac maker Eli Lilly and Co. Pointer died in April.
The Courier Journal
Published 4:13 PM EDT Sep 12, 2019
annie says
Eli Lilly Paid Mass Shooting Victims Hush Money in Prozac Lawsuit
The “norm and practice” of Pharmaceutical companies is to vehemently deny the most serious adverse side effects of their products. This industry’s success in concealing the truth about the serious harm caused by their drugs and vaccines has been aided and abetted by government officials in the FDA and the CDC.
In the case of Prozac, and the other drugs in the SSRI antidepressant family of drugs, the worst adverse effects include uncharacteristic violent outbursts in the form of suicide and homicide — including mass shooting sprees.
Manufacturers of these drugs have committed multiple serious crimes to cover-up the deadly side-effects of these drugs.
https://ahrp.org/eli-lilly-paid-mass-shooting-victims-hush-money-in-prozac-lawsuit/
Prozac side effects emerge
By 1990, three years after Prozac hit the U.S market, the antidepressant was linked to serious side effects. One of the biggest risks was of suicide ideation—or suicidal thoughts—and violent behavior. Violent events included self-harm, as well as aggressive behavior toward others. By 2010, Eli Lilly had reportedly paid more than $50 million in over 30 Prozac lawsuit settlements and jury verdicts to settle cases of suicide and murder.
http://injurylawyer-news.com/prozac/lawsuit/
Successful attorneys will review all of the previous Paxil cases and winning verdicts to identify trends that lead to favorable trial outcomes.
annie says
Happy drug Prozac can bring on impulse to suicide, study says
As best-selling pill is prescribed by GPs for ever more sufferers from mild depression, research brings disturbing evidence to light
Sarah Boseley, health correspondent
Mon 22 May 2000
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/may/22/drugs.uknews
In one of a series of memos, dated August 27, 1990, a UK-based clinician tells Eli Lilly management in Indianapolis that critics will be suspicious of the fact that not all the trials were included and concludes that it gives “the impression that the question of whether fluoxetine provokes suicidal thoughts or not has not been properly considered.”
What Did Eli Lilly Know About Prozac Induced Violence & Suicidality?
Below the law firm Baum Hedlund reproduces the time-line presented to the jury in the Forsyth v. Eli Lilly Trial during closing arguments by the plaintiffs. The time-linei emerges from Lilly’s internal documents. The plaintiffs alleged that the documents show that Lilly knew about Prozac-induced suicidality and violence (even before Prozac was approved for marketing in the United States) and that this vital information was withheld from clinicians and the public.
https://ahrp.org/what-did-eli-lilly-know-about-prozac-induced-violence-suicidality/
1 Aug. 1978 – Team Meeting Minutes – “There have been a fairly large number of reports of adverse reactions . . . Another depressed patient developed psychosis . . . Akathisia and restlessness were reported in some patients.” Exhibit 30 (2nd page, end of 2nd paragraph)
annie says
Society
Seroxat and Prozac ‘can make people homicidal’
Doctor who found suicide risk says experts ignoring danger
Sarah Boseley, health editor
Tue 21 Sep 2004
Evidence that antidepressant drugs like Seroxat and Prozac could make people homicidal is being ignored by the body responsible for regulating medicines in the UK, a leading expert said yesterday.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/sep/21/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth
A number of cases where people have argued their aggressive acts were due to one of the SSRI antidepressants have come to court. In the most dramatic, a US jury in 2001 found that GlaxoSmithKline’s drug was partly responsible for the murders committed by Donald Schell. After two days on Paxil (as Seroxat is named in the USA), Schell killed his wife, his daughter and his baby granddaughter before shooting himself dead. GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to pay $8m (£4.5m) to the remaining family members.
GlaxoSmithKline last night denied that its drug caused adults to become hostile,
“The review of adult data is ongoing,” it said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Y9dMtz7BwLc
The Man in the White Hat…WATCH
eileen says
Eileen
first-ever World Patient Safety Day September 17, 2019
https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-patient-safety-day/2019
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/patient-safety
What is Patient Safety?
Patient Safety is a health care discipline that emerged with the evolving complexity in health care systems and the resulting rise of patient harm in health care facilities. It aims to prevent and reduce risks, errors and harm that occur to patients during provision of health care. A cornerstone of the discipline is continuous improvement based on learning from errors and adverse events.
Key facts
Adverse events due to unsafe care is likely one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability in the world (1).
In high-income countries, it is estimated that one in every 10 patients is harmed while receiving hospital care (2). The harm can be caused by a range of adverse events, with nearly 50% of them being preventable (3).
134 million adverse events occur each year in hospitals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), resulting in 2.6 million deaths annually due to unsafe care (4).
Another study has estimated that around two-thirds of all adverse events resulting from unsafe care, and the years lost to disability and death (known as disability adjusted life years, or DALYs) occur in LMICs (5).
Globally, as many as 4 in 10 patients are harmed in primary and outpatient health care. Up to 80% of harm is preventable. The most detrimental errors are related to diagnosis, prescription and the use of medicines (6).
15% of total hospital activity and expenditure in OECD countries is a direct result of adverse events (2).
Investments in reducing patient harm can lead to significant financial savings, and more importantly better patient outcomes (2). An example of prevention is engaging patients, if done well, it can reduce the burden of harm by up to 15% (6).
John Stone says
Hi Eileen,
Yes I have two comments about this in BMJ Rapid Responses:-
https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5576/rapid-responses
SPEAKING UP FOR PATIENT SAFETY: World Health Organization Patient Safety Day and Vaccines
Re: Vaccination uptake: access is still biggest barrier, experts warn Elisabeth Mahase. 366:doi 10.1136/bmj.l5576
By an ironic coincidence this article [1] is published on 17 September 2019 which is World Health Organization Patient Safety Day in which we are told that ” No one should be harmed in healthcare” and citizens of the world are enjoined to “Speak up for patient safety!” [2]. This is something I have been doing for two decades, yet those who speak up over vaccine safety are relentlessly met with hostility and even persecution by the WHO, the mainstream media and the governments of the world – notably the British government, its politicians and its officials. While the evidence base for vaccine safety is highly problematic [3,4] there can also be no presumption that the people who speak up daily and in large numbers on social media are not telling the truth.
In all probability tens of millions of vaccine products are presently administered in the UK every year, yet to the best of my knowledge not a single instance of harm has ever been spontaneously acknowledged by the National Health Service or the British government. This is neither credible or conscionable.
It is World Health Organization Patient Safety Day and I am speaking up for patient safety. When people speak up for patient safety over vaccines as with anything else they surely deserve respect. There is no difference: why should there be?
[1] Elisabeth Mahase, ‘Vaccination uptake: access is still biggest barrier, experts warn’, BMJ 2019; 366 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l5576 (Published 17 September 2019)
[2] WHO, ‘World Patient Safety Day 2017’, https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-patient-safety-day/2019
[3] John Stone, ‘Re: Response to John Stone (2019 Jul 24)’, 29 July 2019, https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l4291/rr-37
[4] John Stone, ‘Refusing public dialogue is not (a) sign of strength’, 2 September 2019, https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5219/rr-2
Re: SPEAKING UP FOR PATIENT SAFETY: World Health Organization Patient Safety Day and Vaccines
Re: Vaccination uptake: access is still biggest barrier, experts warn Elisabeth Mahase. 366:doi 10.1136/bmj.l5576
One thing health officials urgently need to attend to is Christopher Exley’s new paper ‘An aluminium adjuvant in a vaccine is an acute exposure to aluminium’ which uses as an example the aluminium exposure from Infanrix Hexa vaccine [1].
[1] Christopher Exley, ‘An aluminium adjuvant in a vaccine is an acute exposure to aluminium’, Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology, Available on-line 18 September 2019,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0946672X19304201?via%3Dihub
Fiona Smith says
https://www.change.org/p/the-royal-melbourne-hospital-john-cade-adult-acute-inpatient-unit-level-1-fiona-smith-demands-the-right2refuse-psychiatrists-products-procedures-programs-beds/c/766087592?recruiter=60741362&utm_source=comment_share&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=facebook
https://www.change.org/p/the-royal-melbourne-hospital-john-cade-adult-acute-inpatient-unit-level-1-fiona-smith-demands-the-right2refuse-psychiatrists-products-procedures-programs-beds?fbclid=IwAR0klBGzmb311I26iVRCAjbfplklioLpx2Cx5udzTZFc6hgMXZdaa35dHXc
Doctor Bronwyn Cook says that Fiona Lacks competence and capacity while she is capable of reading and understanding Australian Healthcare Law and make arguments to ‘the treating team” about assault, battery, false imprisonment. Doctor Bronwyn Cook makes statements about Fiona’s “perceived harm”, “strong advocacy skills” but will not desist while making statements about Fiona’s “distress”. The team stress that “compliance” is required.