This photo is of Terence MacSwiney, in 1920 Lord Mayor of Cork in Ireland. The featured photograph on the blog front page is also of MacSwiney in October 1920.
The plan was to end this series of posts starting with Being Black and Janet’s email to me I can’t Breathe with a final post Drawing Breath. The series with its promised completely unrealistic but only possible denouement will now run on to one more post – Agorithms are from Mars, Magic from Venus.
Sarah
One of the most telling comments on any post in this blog since it began in 2012 or so was from Sarah under I Can’t Breathe II . The full comment is worth reading, the punch line is here:
What is the point if the perpetrator of our distress is at home in a blister pack on the bedside table?
A perpetrator who is commonly white – definitely not black. A perpetrator who must be male as everyone is obsessed with his potency, which is viewed with awe and is allowed to sweep aside all other considerations
Annie
This was followed up with a comment by Annie after I Can’t Breathe III who noted Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline – a company that began making baby milk:
“Since February, the highest levels of our company have been working to understand and address what happened,” GSK CEO Emma Walmsley wrote in a note to employees. “Protecting the woman who came forward and her privacy has been a critical priority throughout this time. This will continue. I respect and admire her courage and strength. I’ve spent many nights lately putting myself in her shoes. More than anything, this simply should not have happened.”
“We are in an age of progress with a female CEO, growing ranks of female leaders, new commitments to diverse representation, and a culture that values speaking up,”
“On a personal level, I am shocked and angry about all of this, but I’m resolute,” Walmsley added. “I want to be clear that sexual harassment is strictly prohibited and will not be tolerated.”
Walmsley added that GSK will rename its Slaoui Center for Vaccines Research in Rockville, Md. See Silverman report in Stat on a senior GSK employee who had abused women.
It would have been wonderful if Witty, the former CEO, and then Walmsley spent the occasional night putting themselves in the shoes of all the people who have committed suicide on their drugs – bupropion, paroxetine and lamotrigine – or the shoes of those whose lives have been destroyed by voracious sexual promiscuity caused by ropinirole marketed for restless legs. Perhaps they figure they’ve evened the risk-benefit balance by wiping out sexual function completely for so many with paroxetine.
As Micky Nardo put it in Sex, Lies and Videotape:
The most obscene version was GSK settling a $3B suit and signing this agreement – then writing a response in a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education that denies admission of guilt [see the only enduring contract…]. The way this China-gate story is going, it doesn’t at this point look like that’s going to be an option. This is just plain old crime, and one that has the Chinese up in arms [as it should].
Crazy Shrink
Being Black asked is there a way to end this lunacy and imagined one of the scenarios facing a black man, arbitrarily picked on by the police as so many are.
The very best therapy for the homicidal thoughts that would result would be to go down to a police station, walk in, tell them you have been left feeling homicidal by what they have done but thanks for this chance to get it off your chest. Almost no-one who knows about these things, black, white, male, female figures that doing something like this is a recipe for anything other than disaster. The system just will not work for a black man.
The most sensible comment I got was there might be mileage to be made from someone going to the police-station and getting themselves videoed and explaining at the door its just too dangerous to go inside and outlining what would be likely to happen before trying to leave and walk home. This might bring some relief.
Would a video like this trigger a useful response – by which I mean help change anything more than marching up and down behind a Black Lives Matter banner?
The system doesn’t work for women either. I’m not in a position to tell if its worse for Black men or for White women.
The trick for both is knowing what to do that might make a difference.
This is the same problem faced by those who are Drug Wrecked – who may be the most unfortunate group.
People with Enduring Sexual Dysfunctions get openly sneered at by healthcare professionals.
Grieving parents seeking to bring some good out of the death of a child at the hands of a drug destroying the mind of their own child, or someone else’s child leading to a manic killing spree, find themselves up against what can only laughingly be called ‘due process’.
They find their obvious truth pitted against a ghostwritten and fraudulent literature that Courts psychotically designate as science. See There is no Sanity Claus.
If any family members ever participated in a clinical trial, they may now realise that in so doing they put their family, friends and communities in a state of legal jeopardy. They did so when they signed a consent form that lets some company claim it has a duty never to show their data to anyone.
A Reverse Boycott
When grappling with the English, the Irish invented a few things such as the boycott. A few posts from 2013 put the idea of a Reverse Boycott on the map – see Let’s do the Abbvie again.
A reverse boycott means as many people as possible writing to companies with names attached and indicating a willingness to come into court and testify that there was no other way to explain this death.
There is no point sending a report on a drug or vaccine to regulators (anyone sending any Covid vaccine reports to CDC or EMA or MHRA – forget it its pointless). The regulator will simply file all reports away in cabinets or on hard drives but will never make a judgement about cause and effect.
As Stephen O’Neill’s case and others documented extraordinarily on AntiDepAware show, there is no point having coroners assess a death that involves a drug at an inquest. They do not routinely note the drugs a person is on at the time of death and are too scared to make the obvious call themselves.
Much better to send any report to the company, who have a legal duty to assess and make a judgement of cause and effect. See American Woman 1 and American Woman II.
Over a decade ago, some corporate lawyers began telling some company personnel never to make a judgement of cause and effect. But the law hasn’t changed, so instead companies now try to get you to report to regulators like FDA or EMA rather than to them – and, stupidly, we have been falling for this in ever greater numbers. These seemingly enlightened companies know exactly what they are doing when they encourage us to report to regulators rather than to them – avoid the conflict of interest of sending it to us. This is getting us to pour water into sand rather than leading to a determinations of cause and effect that might end up in the drug label.
Illustration: Humira: Half-Truths, © 2013 created by Billiam James .
Hunger Strike
The Irish also invented the hunger strike. Whether reverse boycotts or hunger strikes, the drug wrecked among us and our families need some very public gestures like these now.
There are countless families like the O’Neill’s where a family member has clearly died a horrific death as a result of an SSRI, doxycycline or one of over 100 other drugs given to her or him a short while before that can cause suicide. See The Death of Stephen O’Neill and The Perfect Killing Machine.
In all cases, there is a doctor who fails to step up to the plate and support the family in forcing regulators and politicians to acknowledge that drugs are poisons out of which good can come if used with great care. Someone who has the guts to say unfortunately in this case there has been a poisoning and I feel obliged to tell my colleagues, other prescribers of poisons like me, they need to know about this. See High Noon and Do not Forsake me Oh my Doctor.
Instead, the efforts of regulators, and politicians, geared to letting companies hide the fact that the blister-pack contains a poison within, can continue unhampered by doctors and coroners. Not surprisingly, an ever increasing number of people are getting poisoned, including more and more young people.
It needs something like a hunger strike.
Terence MacSwiney pictured above, was the Lord Mayor of Cork in 1920, when Ireland were trying to pull away from England. He was sentenced to two years in prison in Brixton, London, for having Irish Republican articles in his possession. He went on hunger-strike. The British State became catatonic. Shamed by world opinion from Australia to South America, with a boycott of British goods by America, the Brits were petrified to let him go and unable to do anything. He died after 74 days on hunger strike, giving rise to a new mantra of Irish nationalism as he did:
It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most who will prevail
MacSwiney’s assumption here is that suffering in silence at home is worthless as the following quote brings out and as the people of Myanmar understand.
I am confident that my death will do more to smash the British Empire than my release
Ireland became a Free State seventeen months after his death.
George Floyd didn’t go out of his way to suffer but owing to his family’s efforts on his behalf and the quick wittedness of 17-year old Darnella who turned on her video camera, perhaps in death he too will prevail.
MacSwiney influenced many people. Among them was Ho Chi Minh, who went on against extraordinary odds to liberate Vietnam.
Another was Gandhi, who liberated India.
Another Hunger Strike made Michelle O’Neill deputy first minister of Northern Ireland – maybe the O’Neill’s need to think about this if Stephen O’Neill’s death is to smash the conspiracy of silence that surrounds the number of deaths from drug wrecks each year which is vastly greater than, multiples of, the numbers of women murdered each year by men.
Or do politicians end up like Lilly CEO Randall Tobias whose wife Marilyn committed suicide four weeks after going on Prozac didn’t stop him continuing to act as the sales front for Prozac. Kathryn Taurel, the wife of Lilly’s subsequent CEO also appears to have committed suicide. (Randall lost a later senior Washington job in the Bush administration for his involvement with an escort service).
It doesn’t have to be a Hunger Strike but we do have to have something that will reach the doctors who are currently failing us to at least as great an extent as the police are failing black people.
It should be win-win because if doctors don’t step up this plate, they are likely to go out of business pretty soon. Any doctor sitting comfortably, who doesn’t spot why they are all but certain to go out business if they keep going on the way they are, should read Shipwreck.
Marc Casañas Escarré says
Medicine can’t be cured:
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Seamus-OMahony-ebook/dp/B07DKKVBL4/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_US=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=can+medicine+be+cured&qid=1617177495&sr=8-1
And physicians are very skeptical to use “arms” (the end of his diaries, “Now you have arms too”):
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Franz-Kafka/dp/0805209069/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_US=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=kafka+diaries&qid=1617177537&sr=8-1
Against themselves (e.g. Quaternary Prevention by Marc Jamoulle). So, the victims (sooner or later. Is not a matter of “when”, time; but “how”, praxis) will use everything usable to cut their privileges.
Healthcare workers will go out of business for sure. But I am not sure that this is bad. Because, for recovering the “logic of care”:
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Annemarie-Mol/dp/0415453437/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_US=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=logic+of+care&qid=1617177707&sr=8-1
We need to get rid of of the “logic of choice” (the “businessization” of care that followed the mathematization of medicine, see Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities). So maybe for global benefit we need to cause specific harm (to ethics and shame-free physicians who are pure bureaucrats with Eichmann-like good consciousness).
What you show in your last book is a dystopia for medicine, but an arcadia for patients (future victims). I guess it’s a matter of perspective Healy.
susanne says
Maybe there could be a drive to call for a dedicated service specially set up with trained professionals who don’t necessarily have to be doctors but include a network of specialists such as pharmacists to deal with the problem of sexual problems caused by prescription drugs . Gps and others are just not changing their practice and probably never will even though that they cause serious harms as well as deaths and suicides is hardly a secret medical establishments can keep any longer Could Hamilton advertise to see whether there would be any interest from people willing to work on establishing an actual service run by likeminded people? There are networks of ‘professionals’ and experts through experience and self conducted research who already work on the issue but it isn’t well co-ordinated.- there could be others who might be interested if there was some kind of structure and support in a place where an incentive might be that they would be involved in pushing new ways forward without sacrificing their careers . The sneering GPs and other health workers would be weeded out , we needn’t be bothered by them any longer, we wouldn’t need to suffer their unnecesary ‘intimate examinations’ any longer and we wouldn’t need to be told they know better than us when we insist that their prescriptions are making life unbearable. Families and friends would know that there would be a place those they care about could get help they trust before someone else dies from suicide.
Marc Casañas Escarré says
“[…] Gps and others are just not changing their practice and probably never will even though that they cause serious harms as well as deaths and suicides is hardly a secret medical establishments can keep any longer”.
I disagree with you Susanne. With health:
-Every day a new client is born
Why? Because we have inserted in our cognitive system utopias. What is “health”? A grammar. Healy talks about in one of his books:
-Where politics, religion… separates us, health give us a common language
For the harm they cause, they will (always) say to you:
-Show me RCT where our suposed harm is significally correlated with our actions
People don’t know RCT helped to HIDE suicides with antidepressants. What is worst? A lot of physicians don’t know!!!! So you have co-ignorance and changing the systems bothers patients and healthcare workers. And after 1 generation, the energy that you built is gone. And we need to start again. The clock is ticking (now).
“Maybe there could be a drive to call for a dedicated service specially set up with trained professionals who don’t necessarily have to be doctors but include a network of specialists such as pharmacists to deal with the problem of sexual problems caused by prescription drugs” => it’s metaphysically attractive and concretively WRONG. Look at palliative care:
http://llibres.urv.cat/index.php/purv/catalog/view/296/331/747-1
“[…] Consequently, many patients and family members assert an autonomous “right” to continue pursuing curative, experimental, and/or investigative treatments. Even when curative therapies are no longer available, the embedded moral position is that patients and family members are justified in continuing any treatment to extend life. In these instances many palliative clinicians are challenged to do anything other than default to continuing aggressive interventions, even once the patient has been transferred to the palliative unit. In turn, the continuation of these treatments even as the patient nears end of life necessarily increases the probability they will have heighted symptom management needs requiring further medical interventions that once again prioritizes physical symptoms over affective concerns. In the most extreme of these cases, these practices create “zones of indistinction” (Kaufman, 2005) where patients are neither actively dying nor can they be discharged from the hospital”.
How you “end” the systemic problem of Medicine… adding more system?
susanne says
So Marc – thanks for your perspective but in the meantime how much longer before something CONCRETE is done to help the many not just the few people already damaged Unless there is a dedicated trusted place of contact .The metaphysics isn’t interesting to me .There are individual medics who are doing their best for individuals and will breach NICE guidelines and many who openly publish advice which some of the ‘lucky’ ones will come across – such as No Gracias and DH ,Rxisk ,Will Hall and many others including the experience those of us who have experience of harms, You will know the network of such deicated people probably more than I do, but too late for many – the knowledge comes After after lives have been ruined. But they are the ‘lucky’ ones who have access to these relatively few medics who acknowledge the harms caused by ADs and other drugs. Where do the majority go? I am not talking of systems but if that is what you would call my suggestion I don;t care what you call it – it hasn’t been tried – maybe it would lead to something better than what is producing so much harm now. How much longer will the ‘system’ we have to tolerate now will lead to more pointless ‘treatments’ more prolonged deaths of the sort ‘ordinary people’ as we are referred to – don;t even want . How much more ‘advice’ do we have to stomache from ‘experts’ who want to dominate every aspect of our lives – the system we we have now is ever stronger and ever more destructive to honouring out real lives as humans not products to be managed. So I would agree with you about over treatment but not your whole argument.
susanne says
When surviving the urge is more important than preventing it. By Marc Casañas.
by nmurcia | Jan 22, 2021 | COVID-19 , NoThanks in english , Critical Knowledge , Vaccines | 6 Comments
image_pdfClick here to download in PDF image_print
The attached quick response is authored by Marc Casañas and was reviewed by the NoGracias team.
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n149
(13 quick responses at 12:06 on January 20, 2021. The author’s does not appear. Either because it has yet to be edited or because it has not been accepted under the publication standards of the British Medical Journal: https: //www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n149/rapid-responses ).
Original in English. (Spanish translation below).
«We can read in the news report:
« […] The agency has investigated 13 of the deaths so far and concluded that common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients ».
The «no-correlation inclination» that is widely spread in the vaccine field here is co-opted by the «frailty’s highlighting» of home residents. Here we can read an ethics-free statement:
«[…] Doctors in Norway have been told to conduct more thorough evaluations of very frail elderly patients in line to receive the Pfizer BioNTec vaccine against covid-19, following the deaths of 23 patients shortly after receiving the vaccine.
Marc – Which of course has huge imlications on the number of elderly people who were allowed to die You may be interested to know that there is currently an investigation to take place by a Parliamentary Cttee into whether the PM seriously considered allowing herd immunity to take place at the start of the pandemic. If you have followed this up – and it is problematic how much isn’t either by academics or editors – you will realise that the problem was far greater than the cover up of 23 deaths. For millions the clock isn’t ticking – it stopped
Can I ask whether you are a member or director of nutrisapiens by the way?https://www.zoominfo.com/c/nutrisapiens/459696810
Marc Casañas Escarré says
Yes I am that Marc.
I know that for milions (I have a general practitioner friend with long-COVID) is a matter of “need it for YESTERDAY” à la Lynch. But this case report was overwhelmingly Moral (in my grammar of course). “You have to bring us evidence that we damaged you”. It was cruel and grotesque. Ethics-free.
About frailty (abstract in English, article in Portugués:
https://www.rbmfc.org.br/rbmfc/article/view/2462
“[…] In view of the potential risks offered by polypharmacy, it is essential to distinguish groups in conditions of greater vulnerability to the use of multiple medications and more careful monitoring, in order to ensure greater safety in the prescription of drugs in primary care and the improvement of attention”.
I am doing individual research (complex systems) to show that medicine needs to do “negentropic” actions (reduce the entropy of a system, i.e. human body) and get back to its anthropological “mission”: to help stand someone. In Spain there is fresh air from Marina Garcés, Josep Maria Esquirol, Joan-Carles Mèlich…
annie says
Dr. Nancy Olivieri @DrNancyOlivieri
The cost of AstraZeneca crime has never been outlined better than in this grim, must-read article:
https://motherjones.com/environment/2010/09/dan-markingson-drug-trial-astrazeneca/…
Thanks
@FearLoathingBTX#Pharma #NoAccountability
The Deadly Corruption of Clinical Trials
When you risk life and limb to help test a drug, are you helping science—or Big Pharma?
CARL ELLIOTT
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2010/09/dan-markingson-drug-trial-astrazeneca/
Update (4/3/2015): After nearly 11 years of obfuscation and denial surrounding the tragic death of Dan Markingson, the University of Minnesota has suspended enrollment in psychiatric drug trials. This comes in response to a blistering report issued by the Minnesota State Legislative Auditor that cites “serious ethical issues” and vindicates much of the reporting in the story below.
Read more from Carl Elliott about the fallout from the report here.
IT’S NOT EASY TO WORK UP a good feeling about the institution that destroyed your life, which may be why Mary Weiss initially seemed a little reluctant to meet me. “You can understand my hesitation to look other than with suspicion at anyone associated with the University of Minnesota,” Mary wrote to me in an email.
The bluntest assessment of the study came from Dr. David Healy, a senior psychiatrist at Cardiff University in Wales. Healy is a former consultant to AstraZeneca, among other pharmaceutical companies, and a prominent critic of the industry. “This is a non-study of the worst kind,” he said. “It is designed not to pick up a difference between the three drugs. It looks like an entirely marketing-driven exercise.”
Of all the ways in which Mary Weiss has been damaged by the University of Minnesota, there is one episode that still brings a sting of shame to my face. When the lawsuit over Dan’s death was dismissed, the university filed a legal action against Mary, demanding that she pay the university $57,000 to cover its legal expenses. Gale Pearson, one of Mary’s attorneys, says that while such suits are technically permissible, she had never seen one filed in her previous 14 years of legal practice. The university agreed to drop the lawsuit against Mary only when she agreed not to appeal the judge’s decision. “Maybe they want to chill anyone who might think of challenging the university, even if her child had died,” Pearson said. “It gave me a sick feeling.”
Mickey spent a lot of time writing about Dan and his lose-lose shipwreck and his last breath and its a famous story which everyone should be aware of as further evidence – of these heedful warnings…
susanne says
THIS WILL GO ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD!
Dec 8, 2020
SHARE THIS POST
Jon Ronson says in his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed that in social media “Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It’s all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people.”
…..There’s another place where other people get to write the story of your life for you, but you have much less control over what is written there. You have one of these pre-written stories about you if you’ve ever been to a doctor or a hospital. It’s your medical record.
Back in the day, a person’s medical record consisted of a set of notes scrawled on paper and inserted into some dusty, tattered file folder in a doctor’s office or hospital. The record reminded the (usually male) doctor of what had happened in his encounters with you.
If you went to a new doctor, it could take time for the old record to be sent for and received. This put the new doctor at a disadvantage in some ways, but it also provided an opportunity for him to see you with “fresh” eyes and evaluate you and your health issues from a new point of view without being influenced by what previous doctors had thought.
Today, what doctors think is put into electronic notes that can be preserved forever and accessed in the blink of an eye by other doctors. If what those notes say is wrong—and they are, surprisingly often—it can cause trouble. Sometimes it can cause trouble even if, at the moment they are written, they are correct. What Ronson says about social media is just as true about your electronic health record: It can turn into a giant echo chamber in which others get to write your story for you.
You see, I have been diagnosed with PTSD due to medical treatment springing from two back-to-back hospitalizations when I was 5 years old. Since my PTSD became glaringly obvious when I got my cancer diagnosis in middle age, I have been in counseling to try to learn how to manage it. I am not ashamed about this, and I don’t hide it.
She also noted that I had “demanded” copies of my recent lab work. (I had tried to be very, very polite in asking.)
I puzzled over these statements in her notes. What she said just wasn’t accurate. How did she get these ideas? How could she misread me so—to think I was overly anxious when we met? Then, suddenly, I realized what had happened. Her assessment of me and my medical problem was heavily dependent on notes she’d read in my chart from other doctors I had seen.
The notes from the doctor I’d consulted for the symptom she had perseverated upon were two to four years old. In referring to them, she failed to understand
I can’t help feeling that these (mis)readings of my electronic medical record—especially her reading of my mental health diagnosis—colored her view of me and the health issue I came to her to discuss. For her, what other doctors had written colored her perception of the patient she had in front of her.
Her perception of me as “just anxious” was reinforced when I asked for copies of my lab work results—something not a lot of patients ask for. What more proof could she have of my current mental status (she must have been thinking) than my “demand” that I have access to something most patients don’t want?!?
Here’s what troubled me most about our interaction that day: When my future doctors and nurses accessed her clinic notes from our visit, as well as all the rest of the notes that had been amassed before she added her own two cents, what story of my life would they read? What preconceived ideas about me and my health status would they in turn bring to our consults?
Then, without laying a hand on me to examine me, she patted my arm and told me she’d been reading my chart before she walked in. Everything I’d told her, she said, was due to the fact that I was “just anxious” because I’d been faced with my own mortality when I got cancer.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, the Bible says. I submit to you that it can be just as frightening to fall into the hands of modern medicine, with its much-touted electronic medical records. For they are an echo chamber telling a story of your life, written by others, that may or may not be entirely true or that may not be relevant to what is happening at the moment. Nevertheless, the echoes from these stories can reverberate forever.
Part of document Written by Brenda Denzler
Brenda Denzler is a retired writer and editor living in the Southeast U.S. She was diagnosed in 2009 with an aggressive, later-stage form of breast cancer known as inflammatory breast cancer.
Quarterly Newsletter!
Join the Engage Initiative
Finding Our Way Together: 2019 Massachusetts National Alliance on Mental Illness Convention
WE ARE A COALITION DEDICATED TO ENSURING THAT MENTAL ILLNESS IS NEVER A BARRIER TO CANCER CARE
susanne says
We could have a bit of fun with this ….from Sense about Science
Open Menu
HomeJohn Maddox Prize
JOHN MADDOX PRIZE
The John Maddox Prize recognises the work of individuals who promote science and evidence, advancing the public discussion around difficult topics despite challenges or hostility.
Nominations for the 2021 John Maddox Prize are open until 14 June. Find out more about how to make your nomination.
The John Maddox prize is a joint initiative of the charity Sense about Science and the leading international scientific journal Nature. The Prize has been awarded annually since 2012 to researchers who have shown great courage and integrity in standing up for science and scientific reasoning against fierce opposition and hostility. Each year there is one or two winners, and an additional prize for an early career researcher.
The prize brings into the spotlight the difficulty faced by many who fight to share the results of research evidence, and inspires and encourages people the world over to do the same. In 2019 there were over 200 nominations from 38 countries.
annie says
I nominate Bob Fiddaman
…or hostility in doing so.
https://senseaboutscience.org/john-maddox-prize/maddox-prize-nominations/
At times I’ve felt like John Coffey walking the green mile at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. I’ve lived and breathed this toxic business of selling sickness far longer than any would desire.
“I’m tired, boss.”
https://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2021/04/15-years-changing-gears.html#.YGx4hs-Sk2w
Bloggers like me, Truthman, Leonie Fennell, and Anti-Dep Aware had to make do with a keypad and a driving curiosity to independently uncover the facts. That we were unaligned with charities and special interest groups helped us candidly report what we knew and leave the PR whitewashing for others.
Take a Bow, Fid and your generosity in the ‘line of duty’…
“I’m tired, boss.”
https://www.nature.com/news/john-maddox-prize-1.11750#:~:text=The%20British%20psychiatrist%20Simon%20Wessely%20and%20the%20Chinese,commemorates%20a%20former%20Editor%20of%20Nature%2C%20John%20Maddox.
Changing Gears…
susanne says
I’m nominating Sami Timimi He has been a campaigner- psychiatrist for decades exposing the harmful paradigms of psychiatry, and has arrived at a position of hope that the groundswell of criticism and activism will lead to change:
//www.amazon.co.uk/ and other publishers
Insane-Medicine-Industry-Damaging-Treatment/dp/B08TZ2RYDN/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1617958458&refinements=p_27%3ASami+Timimi&s=books&sr=1-1
Andy H-M says
When the going gets Tough the Tough get going
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMUQMSXLlHM
‘When Theh know your history, They know where ur coming from’
annie says
AntiDepAware Retweeted
Alyne Duthie @DuthieAlyne 5h
We’ve seen how SSRI induced akathisia gets miscoded in company trials as agitation, restlessness, hyperactivity, anxiety, & depression. In inquests, coroners barely register the problem of iatrogenic suicide at all. https://thedetail.tv/articles/calls-for-northern-ireland-coroners-to-record-pharmaceutical-drug-use… The iatrogenic epidemic is well hidden.
Call for coroners to record prescription drug use
https://thedetail.tv/articles/calls-for-northern-ireland-coroners-to-record-pharmaceutical-drug-use
Ms Bell said: “In the last six weeks of his life, Stephen had been prescribed Sertraline; a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Quetiapine; an antipsychotic drug, Mirtazapine; a serotonergic drug, and other drugs such as Diazepam, Propranolol and Zopiclone.”
The last drug that he was prescribed before his death was Busiprone which is used to treat anxiety disorders.
Ms Bell said: “Stephen was poly-drugged. He had been on a real cocktail which just seemed to exacerbate his symptoms.
“His mental state deteriorated massively from the point that he was prescribed the Sertraline.”
Dr David Healy is an Irish psychiatrist, working in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who has examined Mr O’Neill’s medical history.
He was also the expert witness for the family at Mr O’Neill’s June 2019 inquest.
Dr Healy told The Detail: “It was very clear that after a few pills of Zoloft (Sertraline), the drug had an immediate, toxic effect on him. It was clear that it caused him to feel agitated and suicidal.
“In the hospital, Stephen then explained what had happened to him and they semi-listened, in that they recorded his view, but they didn’t take him seriously enough.”
Dr Healy added that if they had taken Mr O’Neill “more seriously”, the doctors would have suggested keeping him drug free for a while, but instead they “threw drugs at him”.
He said: “Stephen was handing it to them on a plate, he explained what the drug was doing to him, but they weren’t listening.
“Six weeks later, he ended up dead. It seemed to me a very clear-cut case and I was happy to get involved, and to argue the case.”
However, while Coroner Patrick McGurgan said the Sertraline “possibly contributed with other identified stressors” to Mr O’Neill’s death, none of the drugs which he was prescribed were recorded on his death certificate as causing or contributing to his death.
Full details in The Detail…
annie says
The VOICE of Patrick D Hahn – Listen UP for the DOWN
RMM-054: Antidepressants and Homicide in the USA
Rocky Mountain Mason
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rmm-054-antidepressants-and-homicide-in-the-usa/id1507408603?i=1000516257066&fbclid=IwAR3HxZqOXfi2POgECRHcg9PSE0hoeDMSoysav79S2SKuNWDU83q-OEE1w7s
In this episode, Ben explores the controversial but well documented correlation between certain antidepressant drugs and homicidal mania. Nearly every mass shooter seems to have a history with this class of drugs, including Eric Harris (Columbine), who…
Rocky, Hazardous, Horror, the Execution – all held in the hand…
Play…
tim says
As yet another U.S.A, “Mass Shooting” is reported this morning, surely, all who write and read this blog will be asking themselves the same anguished question:
‘What Prescription/Psychotropic Drug/s Was He Taking’?
Why can’t those investigating these tragedies, impartially, ask this same question?
susanne says
1 of 1
Open notes for all: our work has just begun
Inbox
OpenNotes EXTRA Edition myopennotes@bidmc.harvard.edu via auth.ccsend.com
2:40 PM (2 hours ago)
to me
SPECIAL DISPATCH, APRIL 2021
Dear colleagues, allies, and friends old and new,
We could not let last week go by without recognizing open notes are now “the law of the land” here in the U.S. Something we researched, reported, disseminated, and then advocated for at health systems across the country was included in a federally mandated rule. Below is a round-up of a few headlines and articles in recent weeks.
While open notes are now a federal rule, our collective work to weave transparency into the fabric of health care has just begun.
– Cait DesRoches, DrPH Executive Director, OpenNotes
OPEN NOTES IN THE NEWS
How Sharing Clinical Notes Affects the Patient-Physician Relationship, JAMA
“Two weeks before the original due date, we had 44,000 individual hits to our website, with at least 2,100 hospitals among them. So transparent communication is finally gaining attention.” – Tom Delbanco, MD, Co-Founder, OpenNotes
In a change, patients can now read the clinical notes written by their physicians, The Washington Post
“Just take a deep breath and try it out. Health care is always talking about how we’re going to put the patient in the center where the patient is a critical member of the team. We want the patients to have agency and take charge of their care.” — Catherine DesRoches, DrPH, Executive Director, OpenNotes
Don’t Fear Patients Reading Their Clinical Notes: Opinion, Medscape
“When notes do trigger questions, the time taken to respond is probably offset by silence from other patients finding answers to their own questions in notes they read.” – Tom Delbanco, MD, and Charlotte Blease, PhD, Keane OpenNotes Scholar
New rule gives patients access to all of their medical records and notes, Marketplace
… if it weren’t for the pandemic, “this concept of full transparency to everything in the record—the notes, the labs, pathology reports—would be the biggest story in health care.” – Liz Salmi, Senior Strategist (and patient advocate), OpenNotes
Yes, you can use the OpenNotes logo
What’s the point of sharing notes if patients are not reading them? You can use the OpenNotes logo to promote the availability of open notes to your patients on communications materials and on your health system website and patient portal. If you’d like to find out about the logo use requirements contact anorris@bidmc.harvard.edu.
Should You Read the Notes Your Doctor Writes About You? Open Notes are now the law of the land: A physician’s perspective, Psychology Today
“The truth is that many people are going to Google their illness regardless, and if they have the specifics from their doctor’s note, they will be better able to use technology to get more accurate information…. [patients] have the most at stake and are most able to pick up inaccuracies and provide context.” – Charlotte Blease, PhD, Keane OpenNotes Scholar
New Law Requires Health Care Organizations Give Patients Access to Their Records Digitally, WINK News
“If you want to help healthcare achieve its potential to save the life of yourself, or somebody in your family, by all means, get involved. The easiest way to start getting involved is to look at what’s in your record.” – “e-Patient” Dave DeBronkart, patient advocate and OpenNotes Advisory Board Member
New U.S. Federal Rule to Ensure Easy Access to Patient Health Information, Cambia Health Foundation
“For some clinicians, these new requirements may come as a shock. To patient groups, however, it is the culmination of 25 years of advocacy and relationship building with clinicians, researchers, and policy makers”. – Cait DesRoches, DrPH, Executive Director, OpenNotes
“U.S. healthcare organizations may choose to comply with the rule in a way that helps ensure patients know about their enhanced right to access and use their health information for empowerment and engagement, or they may simply keep quiet about it and hope patients don’t notice their new rights. Choosing to keep quiet would be a mistake.” – Liz Salmi, Charlotte Blease, PhD, Maria Hägglund, PhD, Jan Walker, RN, MBA, Cait DesRoches, DrPH
OpenNotes “Drop-In Clinics” attracted >350 attendees.
For two hours each day, over a five-day period, open notes experts hosted a live Q&A answering questions about open notes and the Cures “information blocking” Rule. The most commonly asked questions revolved around pediatrics and mental health, and technical/regulatory aspects of the Rule.
Watch a full 2-hour session on YouTube with guest expert Steven Lane, MD, who serves on the Health IT Advisory Committee for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
Next Webinar:
April 15th
Open Notes in the Safety Net
Studies of open visit notes show benefits for patients and care partners that are consistent across ethnic groups, gender, socioeconomic status, and education. In fact, vulnerable populations report having greater benefits from open notes. But how have open notes fared outside of studies and within the safety net? Learn more on April 15 (webinar) and/or April 22 (office hours).