Editorial note: This is the first in a Magna Carta series, and the nineteenth in the Persecution series.
As the days lengthen and things warm up in England, historically it has been the time for the people to get restive.
Eight Hundred years ago, the people meant a group of us who counted – we called ourselves the Barons. There were other human beings – our serfs – who worked for us. Today, in theory even the serfs count.
Next Sunday, June 15, Eight Hundred years ago, we refused to accept King John’s right to rule in England as he had been doing, and confronted the king at Runnymede.
Today’s Barons are the Doctors. Doctors make a living out of the work done by the rest of the population – swallowing pills. These doctors are highly unlikely to confront Andrew Witty or any of the big beasts of the pharmacockracy – unless some of them do so as shareholders.
Eight Hundred years ago a charter was hammered out between us and the king that has since become known as Magna Carta. Today something similar is needed. The forthcoming publication of Study 329 will make clear why.
Up till June 15, John and other kings were absolute rulers, whose right to govern came directly from God rather than from the people. When this right was questioned the Pope weighed in on the side of the king, excommunicating anyone who questioned the authority of the monarch.
Magna Carta was based on two principles – the principle of No Taxation without Representation and the principle of Due Process. These principles are fundamental to most political systems today.
The area of politics that counts most for most of us is healthcare. Big Healthcare is now the biggest business in the United States and in the Western World. We desperately need a new compact between we the people and those who govern our healthcare – or at least a new compact between the doctors who make money for pharma by putting pills in our mouths and the Witty’s of this world.
No taxation without representation
No one bats an eyelid at the idea that the United States is pretty market oriented compared to the more communal or socialist systems found in Europe with Great Britain usually seen as sitting somewhere in the middle.
So it is surprising if you put UK PLC and US PLC into google and see what happens. Google recognizes UK PLC and Great Britain PLC but not US or United States PLC.
There was no google in the twentieth century. Had it been there, it would have started throwing up hits from the late 1960s when British Labour politicians (who used to be very socialist back then) started mooting the idea of UK PLC. The ex-Empire was now a company that had to make its way in the wider marketplace. The Government, we were told, was like the Board. It wasn’t quite clear if the rest of us were the shareholders. We had some notional control over the Board – we could vote them out. Election debates today still mention UK PLC –Scotland PLC hasn’t come on the radar yet.
It’s an odd way to see your country. Neither the US nor any European country views itself in this way. But then the Brits invented PLCs as well as Magna Carta and cricket.
The same idea lies behind the Magna Carta and a meeting of the shareholders of a company – there should be some trade-off between the financial input of the stakeholders in the company (country) and their ability to influence policy. It is worth paying money in the form of investments or taxes if the ship of state is being steered in a reasonable direction but not otherwise.
In health we pay either relatively directly or indirectly through insurance systems or government taxation for the benefits we receive. At present, our barons make money for pharma by putting pills in our mouths but pills that keep companies healthy rather than us healthy.
This happens because of a Flash Boy situation. The healthcare market (stock exchange) should produce better healthcare outcomes (channel money to genuinely productive ends). But neither the stock market nor healthcare support productive outcomes. Both have become a means to siphon money from the middle and working classes to a bunch of Flash Boys. This is possible because as with the stock market, in healthcare no-one gets to see the data behind the transactions. Drugs that are bad for us can be palmed off as life-saving without anyone being any the wiser and we are sold a costly bag of goods.
But we are not just being taxed in terms of the money we pay to consume drugs we don’t need. There is a tribute taken from our bodies also in terms of our participation in clinical trials. Companies need clinical trials to get their drugs on the market in order to make billions from them. These trials involve us taking risks with drugs that often prove too dangerous to market. We do so for free. Not only that but when some of us are killed or injured we collude with hiding the data of our injuries and deaths. We have no more status than serfs.
Or at least this was the way until the clinical trial operation was largely outsourced to India and Africa leaving UK PLC scrambling to persuade GSK, Roche and Pfizer that it is open for clinical trial business and willing to divert its NHS patients into company trials.
It’s this taxation drawn from our bodies that should fuel a demand for representation – we should have a say in deciding what we need medications for and we should have access to the data from trials to check on how it is being represented.
When trials run on our children lead to representations that paroxetine is effective and safe even though the actual data shows exactly the opposite – it’s time to intervene.
Due process
The other key element to Magna Carta was the idea that we are all equal before the law, kings and commoners, and that all have a right to a fair trial.
This principle established the rule of law and laid the basis for democracy. This is a basic Right that provides a basis for all other Rights.
Rather than assassinate the King or seethe with murderous fantasies (Anonymous) we can take him to Court. Rather than be executed at his whim, we have the right to a fair hearing by a Jury of our Peers (Just for the record Peers means other Noblemen).
The capacity of plaintiffs in the United States to take legal actions when they or their families are injured by treatments probably stands between the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies and an attempt to exact physical retribution (See Data Wars and Pharmaceutical Rape).
But even in the United States, there is a real problem. When we participate in clinical trials today, companies get to sequester the data from these trials in flagrant breach of the ethics and norms of science and yet parade their representations of those results as science. The participation of some of us in those trials puts all of us in a state of legal jeopardy. In the US, we may get our day in Court, but we will have the data from clinical trials in which our friends and families participated used against us.
We have entered a bizarre Wonderland where Queen John or Andrew can say off with our head if she wishes to or can say what happens on a drug is what I say happens – regardless of what in fact does happen.
It’s a world where increasingly we will be told by Sense about Science in the UK and related bodies in the US, Canada, Australia or wherever that to question the judgments of the scientific literature is to engage in an irrational War on Science itself. We may have a right to Due Process in the US (nowhere else) but even in the US Courts are no longer a place where rationality prevails.
Not a Peep from the Pope about the right to Due Process or Representation.
Meanwhile David Cameron on behalf of UK PLC has launched into an anti-corruption crusade – but there won’t be a word about this lack of due process or the extraordinary corruption of the scientific literature – on which hinges vastly more money than was ever dreamt of by Sepp Blatter and FIFA.
Some grand issues being invoked here. If I understand correctly Magna Carta hinged round the rights of barons in dispute with the king and for centuries these rights have properly devolved to ordinary subjects, latterly citizens. In regard to due process as I understand a theoretical right remains in the UK but effective access to justice is denied by bureaucratic means and the levels of cost in a modern justice system, and this has unpleasant ramifications for human rights well beyond the issues of pharmaceutical injury, although I suspect people do not understand still how central the protection of the pharmaceutical industry is to our modern universe. I note also that in 2008 when I complained about the collapsing of the MMR litigation to the Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw, the Department of Justice thought nothing of taking advice from the Department of Health.
http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?id=2438#newspost
And as the House of Commons Health Committee remarked in its report on the industry in 2005 (p.3)
“The Department of Health has for too long optimistically assumed that the interests of health and of the industry are as one.”
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf
It should also be noted that since 1986 the industry has had effective immunity from prosecution from vaccine damage in the US as well, and that vaccine sector has thrived on the basis of not only immunity from prosecution, but also from mandated products (increasingly compulsory) which they do not even have to pay to advertise. This period has seen a huge swelling of childhood developmental disability and chronic disease, which also greatly favours the industry as a new potential market. I don’t think it should be doubted also that the protection of the vaccine market in the US has global implication for the products.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/05/an-open-letter-to-francis-collins-54-of-american-children-suffer-f.html
http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e3502/rr/588110
Another problem is that the industry is rather less vulnerable than King John who died trying to make an exit across the marshes with his ill-gotten treasure. Even where pharmaceutical companies receive billion dollar fines it has no serious implications for their executive – no one goes to prison, no one get reprimanded, and probably no one even loses their bonus.
Here in the U.S., the levying of huge fines on the pharmaceutical industry for “off-label marketing”(including crimminal charges) has resulted in absolutely no change in corporate behavior – despite solemn pledges to the contrary. Not only has no executive involved in the decision-making (side effect hiding) process been indicted, but several of them have gone on to greater glory – to become governors of the state in which the company is located, or presidents of the universities of said state (check Indiana, for an example).
Only once, in the Neurontin settlement, has any portion of the fine been shared to educate the public and health care professionals as to the “ways” of the pharmaceutical industry such as to let the buyer beware.
Starting with the $1.4 billion dollar record-breaking fine against Eli Lilly for Zyprexa, the huge fine “solution” for corporate pharmaceutical malfeasance has resulted in only one thing – sensational headlines that make the current Obama administration look like a good guy. Never mentioned are the grieving families, thousands upon thousands of them, who have lost their loved ones to the drugs, and then read about (through corporate internal documents spirited out to the press – or ordered out by judges) the internal plotting that kept hidden the very side effects that killed their family members.
Even though these “details” have been pointed out to both Congress and the Administration, greed of all sorts has kept any change, or real justice, off the table.
It is true that we can sue drugmakers and doctors here, but we cannot find lawyers to take our cases. Even with cash in hand we are turned away. I’ve been told they’re the cases are to win. It might be discrimination against people who mention a bout of mania.
An offender of all type ha a public defender at the disposal. People who are disabled by a drug and/or doctor have to wing it and are sometimes unable to act within the 1 year deadline.
It is true that we can sue drugmakers and doctors here, but we cannot find lawyers to take our cases. Even with cash in hand we are turned away. I’ve been told they’re very hard to win. It might be discrimination against people who mention a psychiatric drugs.
All kinds of offenders have public defenders at their disposal. People who are disabled by a drug and/or doctor have to wing it and, are sometimes unable to act within the 1 year deadline.
More or Less…BBC/R4/7 June 2015
Was the Independent right to run the story of HPV side effects?
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/thousands-of-teenage-girls-enduring-debilitating-illnesses-after-routine-school-cancer-vaccination-10286876.html
More or Less
Tim Harford explains – and sometimes debunks – the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
HPV and Data runs at 10.41
More or Less
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wz90d
Followed, by, interestingly, The Chocolate Experiment and a *hoax*……Neb Er cad log
I have a conundrum for More or Less
Do we need more or less of Dr Jennifer Gunter and Dr Ben Goldacre………?
A. Witty could even start thinking about suing his “doctors” for mis-use of his pills; it surely cannot get more ridiculous than he has made it…A. Witty chose his future, and, ours, which does not necessarily mean that it is set in stone
Here in the UK:
Legal aid has gone for all civil cases, except those involving children. Funding a claim for clinical damage can only be done through insurance on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis. Insurance companies are not noted for altruism, therefore will only take on cast iron cases of negligence (cutting off the wrong leg). Complex cases will never be taken on by any solicitor here now – too risky, and impossible to get insurance against the possibility of losing and having to pay the other side’s legal costs. (Millions). Drug damage plus mental illness is a no no – just too complicated. Legal costs can rise to dizzy heights, especially when medical experts get arguing.
We have absolutely no history here of suing companies directly (for arcane, obscure reasons which I have never really got to the bottom of). Our only hope is a ‘group action’, which is theoretically possible but has worked exceedingly rarely, if at all. I think it is dead in the water.
Companies simply build in pay-outs to claimants in the US as a marketing cost. Hence Boeringher Ingelheim paid out very promptly on claims for fatal bleeding caused by their new wonder anticoagulant Pradaxa, partly because they had already factored in the cost (peanuts in terms of the potential income from a new, no monitoring anticoagulant ). And they have learnt that it is much better to cough up immediately, before any risk of getting the courts involved, to prevent court ordered disclosure of internal documents which then fall into the public domain. With highly embarrassing insights into deliberate, fraudulent suppression of inconvenient data which might dent profits: the Lilly Zyprexa papers for instance. No company is ever going to make that mistake again. “Off label” marketing fines? Just another marketing cost, which for all I know can be off-set against tax…
And we have the Limitation Act. Any personal injury claim must be brought within three years of the damage- not all that easy, even in wrong leg cases.
Don’t look to the law for protection or redress.
I honestly think that a patients’ revolution is the only way forward – but how the hell one gets that going – I have no idea.
Great post. I did have to smile at the thought of King John.
Sir Andrew Witty is the Chancellor of Nottingham University a short distance from King Johns castle.
Robin Hood and his merry men needed for uprising.
Why David, doesn’t quite hit the ‘spot’ in ‘america’
When I lived and worked in America as a young, attractive, English gal trying to sell a highly sophisticated electronic product, all by myself, I was always struck by the chivalrous attitude of most of the CE Os I dealt with. I never met a woman CEO in those days past.
Far from wanting to talk about my product for which I may have travelled thousands of miles to do my presentation and lug my very, heavy product, they were much keener on an appraisal of myself. Where are you frarm….?
They hardly listened to what I was saying and noticeably watched my mouth moving obviously hypnotised by my accent. Then the usual invitation to lunch in the swankiest place in town and I had to listen to their stories about their families and their children and the wonderful place in which they lived. Sometimes, even, an invitation to meet the family if I was staying in town (ugh), no, please, excuses, thank you, too much paperwork….however, there was a seemingly sincere sort of sincerity although I found it somewhat childish in grown up men.
If I didn’t sell at least one machine per month then I had to rent-a-wreck a car hire and eat bagels as my boss although setting me up in an apartment nr. New York was not planning on adding further financial gifts to our entry in to the US and Canada….I knew that was the deal, but, sometimes things got scarily broke…I had no one to talk to apart from strangers, who, once, again, were really friendly, welcoming and generous.
My point is the great American divide as to how different we really are even when speaking the same language.
America does not have Kings and Queens and pageantry and America does not have Europe sitting on its doorstep or all the other countries which surround us.
So, whenever an essay penned by our author is put up on MIA, it is almost invariably criticised because it is not written in the terms they are used to reading and instead of reading the message they get hung up on the prose.
This happens so often, things dropping like a lead balloon that you can almost accept that practically no one on MIA has mentioned GlaxoSmithKline, except in COI matters, and that it doesn’t seem to matter much the clinical trials on children which led to results of dead children.
http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/06/towards-a-healthcare-magna-carta-part-one/
It was something else again when I returned to the UK, and, our office had moved out of Notting Hill, lovely, and, to, Cardiff Docks and my boss said that as the US and Canada was may be a bit much for one person, would I like to try the Welsh Valleys.
I walked into the premises and they only spoke Welsh (!)…I was an alien, too sophisticated, too smart, too English…I hot footed it out of there………..
And we concentrated on matters closer to home like me writing the manual for the product as if a child was reading it, my boss said.
Ie when you get your package the first thing to do is open it and carefully remove the instructions which it is required that you read prior to following all the instructions which follow.
By the time I had finished it the big black guys at the Transit Authority in The Bronx almost had some idea of what a really neat product it was………
My doctors didn’t ask me about my/our travels or career……………or how we had achieved our Nirvana, bought and paid for by sheer hard work and dedication……….
And, then there is the time I sold calf’s serum to laboratories to use for cell culture…but, that’s another story working for a mad, eccentric scientist who actually bought his doctorate in the US to give himself credibility….his father was one of the biggest crooks in the nightclub business dallying with the likes of Christine Keeler.
Years after I left he received The Businessman of the Year Award.
I watched it on the telly.
I sent him a telegram.
We had dinner for old times sake. He thought the whole thing hilarious.
In a shed he had a whole laboratory of sterile working centrifuges spinning away with minute filtering, all the bacteria….what a guy…..he also bred rabbits, thousands of rabbits, for delivery to research laboratories for experiments.
A shortage of drivers led to me, delivering the rabbits all over the country in a transit van and I took my mum, for the ride.
We opened the door at a pit stop and all the rabbits ran out……..minus points for losing rabbits, plus points for selling serum…….hilarious
My life has been a mad roller coaster of being open to offers of exciting mad jobs with exciting mad people and it has all been so much fun…
Until I met the doctor(s)…………..and this is, I think, why, I swallowed Seroxat and stopped swallowing Seroxat….I was too open to offers………
Life can be extraordinarily unforgiving……. Just shove your cv under their nose if they think they are getting one over on you………..
We love your stuff, David and look forward to more of it…..
Took Seroxat for 15 years. Total sexual dysfunction set in while still on it in 2009, along with a complete numbing of the emotions. Never experienced anything like it in my life, not even in the original depression. Came off the drug thinking I would go back to normal but never did. Seroxat disables the re-uptake pump and prevents the recycling effect of serotonin from taking place, meaning it can’t get used over and over as it should and eventually it runs on empty. I have no emotions or sexual functioning to this day whatsoever and am suffering from the same type of avolition and feelings of indifference seen in sociopaths and schizophrenics. I am not a shadow of the person I once was and have lost everything, including my boyfriend, job, right love, to marry, reproduce and even sleep. I’ve told doctors and as they are all making their living by pushing drugs, not one person i willing to believe it and my symptoms are put down to a “returned depression”. I don’t have a leg to stand on. Can’t prove anything because you can’t see feelings or orgasms and there is no way to gauge the damage. My own psychiatrist stares right through me and shrugs a “and what do you want me to do about it?” response. They don’t even report my symptoms to anyone. It’s all kept quiet. Asked for a replacement psychiatrist two weeks ago and as the officer is another psychiatrist, he probably had a holy laugh at my listed reasons. My life is destroyed and I can’t get the help I need nor the justice I deserve because it is not a visible cancer. Just sitting here watching the world go by and seeing how I can’t take part in anything.
I know my Words are futile, and I can’t really help you. But it’s better to say the Little things I can say.
I’m on my 16th year on Seroxat/Paxil, tried to wean off these last 2 years, but it was impossible to go beneath 10mg/day. That was a quarter of my original dose of 40mg/day.
Now I’m on them at 25mg/day to try to recover some function.
And I share many of your experiences, especially the unability to love or be emotionally involved. My psychiatrist won’t Believe me, but at least she sent a report. But she sent it to GSK themselves, who ofcourse replied via phone, so no correspondance was put on record.
I used to have an inner ‘drive’ that helped me through my Young Life, I never saw any obstacle. Now I can’t motivate myself to take a shower, eat or run a comb through my hair. Seroxat has made me accept Changes to myself that are hard to Believe, even for myself. And as you describe it, the Changes aren’t visible, they aren’t palpable.
What has now become my Life is a “worst-case-scenario” if a bystander would actually listen to what dr. Healy has to say.
But most people don’t, or if the do listen, they can’t actually Picture that things can go this bad even if Healy just told them so.
I can’t say I’m gonna be a survivor, and come ‘out’ the other end one day. But I will do as much as I can to share my story to dr. Healy so that one day the proof of the workings of Seroxat cannot be denied.
Sadly this means that I too has given up my hope to see justice, it’s still many years ahead.
We are abviously not alone, but help are not to be seen anywhere near.
As long as you tell the World around you what has happened to you, you will one day be on the righteous side. That’s what I tell myself.
(I’m male, mid-Life, Swedish)
Maeve, I believe you. Lots of people I encounter on the net would too. Fat lot of good it does, but it’s a start.
People who have not experienced the chemical destruction of their “self” believe that their self is intrinsic to the cells of their bodies. So since we still have our bodies, to them we are the same person.
Being “myself” must have depended on whatever swirl of chemicals and electrical signals was whizzing around my nervous system. Call it my “software.”
The drugs changed my hardware-they didn’t just wander around and leave. They alter the brain. New neurons grow.
My software doesn’t run on this brain. I don’t know if I even have my software anymore.
That’s what I think happens. These drugs are devastating, and it’s masked because lots of people hate them right away and quit right away, and huge numbers haven’t gone off them yet. As David has written, they can’t. Those who go off and go mad are said to have been mad all along.
My mood is fine now, so a psychiatric diagnosis wouldn’t apply. I just can’t make my body do things. Giving up has doing anything has been a relief. I’ve found a way to be worthwhile, volunteering online, but I might as well be in an iron lung. I feel like a brain in a jar.
If everyone on the drugs were to stop them tonight, the emergency rooms would be overflowing. And it would be blamed on space aliens, because for the public that’s more plausible than scientists, doctors, and government employees.
CC I think you’re way of explaining it is spot on.
My son was affected by severe withdrawal from venlafaxine. He said he felt as if his brain had been fried. He was still here physically but his self had gone.
I think we all have to make a change at every opportunity we get. Some people will be able to make waves, others like myself small ripples. My own contributions are small but no less important. I share info on social media, I make small donations to Rxisk when I’m able to. I sign petitions like this one.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is if like me you feel small against this huge corrupt corporate machine just know that what you do is important. All those little ripples can make a wave.
This link has been shared before on here but I just thought I would share again after seeing an update on it.
House of Commons: To disband the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) a corrupt government body charged with protecting patients from avoidable harm in the National Health Service and in Public Health..
https://www.change.org/p/house-of-commons-to-disband-the-medicines-and-healthcare-products-regulatory-agency-mhra-a-corrupt-government-body-charged-with-protecting-patients-from-avoidable-harm-in-the-national-health-service-and-in-public-health/u/11036456?tk=7sLJYkmDeHsCTqCK-hc7lxCP7laQALHw_gNqf7gML1Y&utm_source=petition_update&utm_medium=email
The Lords debates Psychoactive Substances Bill yesterday
http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2015/june/lords-psychoactive-substances-bill/
The Earl of Sandwich spoke up about prescription drugs which he has been doing for years
Let’s hope they pay attention this time round…….
Earl of Sandwich speaks on prescribed drug harms in the House of Lords
The Earl of Sandwich yesterday spoke in the House of Lords in a debate on the Psychoactive Substances Bill:
“I link this discussion directly to the related problem of prescribed drug addiction, which the noble Lord, Lord Patel, kindly mentioned in his contribution and which the Home Affairs Select Committee linked it with in its report 18 months ago. Here I declare an interest because, as some colleagues will remember from the Health Bill and before, a member of my family has for several years been severely affected by withdrawal from prescribed medicine. Incidentally, patients in this category must not be stigmatised because most are following doctors’ orders and doctors can get it very wrong. Some doctors deny that the prescribed drug has caused the problem at all. Patients are then left to cope with withdrawal on their own.
My points are very simple. First, addiction to medicines is every bit as serious an issue as legal highs and controlled drugs. The negative effects of legally prescribed medicines can be devastating and they potentially affect many more people than controlled drugs given the vast number of prescriptions issued every year. Of course, the same point was rightly made about alcohol.
Secondly, while huge resources are rightly devoted to criminality, virtually nothing is spent on prescribed drug addiction because it appears that no harm is caused to society; it is society that is causing the harm. Yet a mere handful of charities are coping with increasing numbers of desperate people who become dependent and cannot easily withdraw. Despite the—I am afraid—feeble efforts of the Department of Health and a few exceptions among primary care trusts, the devolved NHS and three successive health Ministers have virtually ignored the problem, having shown a lot of enthusiasm to begin with.
I refer to a fact-sheet produced by the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry for a meeting of APPGITA, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Involuntary Tranquilliser Addiction, founded by the late and respected Jim Dobbin, of both of which organisations I am a member. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, mentioned some of these points. In England alone last year, there were over 80 million prescriptions for psychiatric drugs. Almost 10 million people in the UK, or around 15% of the population, are taking tranquillisers, antidepressants or other psychiatric medications at any given time, all of which have the potential to create addiction or dependence. Some 57 million prescriptions were issued for antidepressants in 2014 in England, which is a rise of over 500% since 1992; 11% of women and 6% of men are taking them regularly.
The prevalence of depression has not risen since 2003, but prescription numbers are increasing because more patients are taking antidepressants for longer. Over 1 million people are long-term users of tranquillisers, including sleeping pills, despite clear guidance that they should be used for no more that four weeks. Tranquillisers, antidepressants, antipsychotics and other psychiatric drugs can all be helpful in the short term, but long-term use—as with cocaine, cannabis or alcohol—is associated with serious harm. Furthermore, a large number of patients suffer debilitating symptoms for years following withdrawal from prescribed drugs, while some are left with symptoms that may persist indefinitely.
The government response to the Select Committee report, published last May, draws attention to various half-hearted attempts by the Department of Health to deal with the problem of prescribed drugs. However, it welcomes, as I do, the initiative by the Board of Science of the British Medical Association, which is at last undertaking a long-awaited report on involuntary dependence on prescribed medicine. This report, when it comes in October or soon after, will undoubtedly have enormous influence on the Government’s attitude to this whole issue. But it will be too late for some of the withdrawal charities. One of them, CITA in Liverpool, had to close recently because of a lack of funding, following changes in the NHS. There are only a handful of these charities. Another closed last year in Cardiff for similar reasons, and the saintly counsellor who ran it now finds herself unable to find alternative employment because the negative effects of prescribed drugs are just not a priority for the local clinical commissioning group.
Patients depend on a frail voluntary service. There are fewer than 10 charities groups that provide support to individuals trying to withdraw from benzodiazepines. They are currently located in Belfast, Bradford, Bristol, Camden—only in Camden, in the whole of London—Cardiff, Liverpool—at least there was one in Liverpool—Manchester, north Wales and Oldham. Only three of these support individuals withdrawing from antidepressants and none specialises in withdrawal from other psychiatric drugs.
The Government have a particular duty to provide appropriate services for people who have been harmed by medicines supplied through the NHS, yet they are clearly failing to do so. Guidelines need to be updated to reduce overprescribing, and support services need to be introduced across the country to help affected patients withdraw slowly and safely. Doctors need to be properly trained to recognise these harms and to provide appropriate support. More research is needed to investigate the harms associated with long-term use.“
We love your stuff, David….cont’d
Mad in America/Part Two….:(
She gave up
She did not want to be challenged
That says it all really…….
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o SaraTonen on June 9, 2015 at 8:38 pm said:
LOL! This was a painful read, I gave up after the tenth paragraph.
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o amnesia on June 10, 2015 at 1:29 pm said:
I hope David Healy takes note of your comment and many of the comments which follow – his writing style is his own worst enemy – a magazine editor friend used to say that the first duty of a magazine is to be read – and so it is the duty of a blog/article. Healy makes it onerous. An ordeal. I read to be informed, not amused nor challenged.
I thought about writing: if you don’t want to trade in your dunce cap for a thinking cap, don’t blame Dr. Healy!
And other things.
I read to be informed. I find being amused and challenged by what I’m reading an added bonus.
Over the last year I have waded through mountains of academic, scientific and law papers. I have literally shed tears sometimes at the sheer frustration of being able to understand the complexity of it all.
DH has been the one person who has helped me make sense of it. By being able to compare to scenarios I do understand its made it easier for me to ‘get’ and certainly kept me more engaged than some of the other stuff I’ve had to force myself to read.
With the compliments of cepuk publicity.
We have another debate on our favourite subject – us – and why we either cannot get off these drugs or are here by a cat’s whisker with the likes of Seroxat and death and destruction………..
http://cepuk.org/moreharmthangood/
Finally, now we start to see some new faces openly joining forces to speak about or nightmare.
DH need to have ‘substitutes’ in the public debate, and we need to feel that there are many others that have seen the dark side of the medallion.
Breggin, Whitaker, Moncrieff and Göetsczhe aren’t “new”, but if they join forces they become much more of a help to us.
I really Think that looks very positive!
Positive news, indeed.
Thank you Annie for sharing this crucial link.
Despite LOADS of recent research I had not yet discovered the existence of CEP – at last, it seems some comprehensive action is being planned (I hope!).
I was becoming somewhat frustrated, I have to say – my investigation began several weeks ago in a quest to find out more about the side effects of Seroquel XR (aka Quetiapine, an anti-psychotic) – one web link after another (many American), led me to DH’s blogs and I discover all the horrors about SSRIs – can’t believe how naive and gullible I had been for so long, meekly doing what the GPs then the psychiatrists told me i.e. keep taking the (increasingly harmful!) tablets.
Anyway, I then discover a long list of published books, articles and blogs all saying much the same thing for what seems quite an age now – this anti pyshc drugs debate is not new.
Then I discover the recent Maudesley debate …. so, I think, what is being done as a follow up to that….. surely all this talking, discussion, writing etc etc has got to be leading somewhere?
But, why, oh why, I thought hasn’t something been done before to STOP the scandalous harm caused to me and millions more?
BIG Pharm are powerful I read, and corruption is rife – at the highest levels within the medical and political professions – BUT that should not excuse to hide behind – ‘DAVID must rise up against GOLIATH’ – it’s been done before and MUST be done again (and p.d.q. if you ask me).
I am more than happy, indeed, very willing, to add whatever I can to the preparation of a comprehensive strategy, including all means of awareness raising at all levels (e.g. from Joe Public to David Cameron) , to get this whole thing well ‘n truly OUTED.
I hope the CEP are up for pulling this together…….
A side note:(excuse if I hijack wrong thread)
News say Germanwingspilot met with 41 (!) doctors the last 5 years. 7 of them the 2 months leading up to the crash.
Can someone please tell Lubitz’s parents their son was most likely so filled with drugs his actions has nothing to do with him as a person.
How Lufthansa and the doctors are wriggling and squirming trying to disassociate themselves from any causation of blame and how 150 deaths are almost treated as a routine inquiry……
Note the word *closure*…………
Haven’t we all heard that before….
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/germanwings-alps-crash-pilot-feared-blindness-173449532.html#rhaJzqo
I know how airline pilots have strict medicals, having had one of my own, and, I, know, that Lufthansa and the doctors are pulling a fast one here and the relatives may never be given all the facts….compensation will be thrown at them…..and, then, it will all go quiet again…..
More stuff in the world of lawyers….from Cock er ill
Today at 6:39 AM
Dear AllTrials friend
As most of you know Richmond Pharmacology has brought a judicial review against the Health Research Authority because it insists on the registration (not even reporting, but registration) of clinical trials. Read more.
This is a quick note to let you know that we have obtained the court papers (hundreds of them!), we are looking urgently with lawyers at what can be done and we will be in touch next week to tell you. In the meantime, if you have been meaning to help with our campaign fund, now would be a great time… And if you can help with time over July, please tell us by replying to this email.
Best wishes
James
James Cockerill
Campaigns Manager
Sense About Science
Science and evidence in the hands of the public
Whose dirty hands are up the fundament of Richmond Pharmacology? Answers on a postcard to…
(A clue: it takes big bucks to initiate court action like this).
Walter K
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/07/yarls-wood-protest-online-petitions
This is a link to a great article about the value of getting out on the streets, protesting, versus online petitions and social media. I’m showing my age, but I think everyone remembers CND, even if it didn’t achieve nuclear disarmament. Twitter and blogs have a vital role but there’s nothing quite like the feeling of solidarity on a march or demo.
I think David imagined a group of angry patients storming Andrew Witty’s office in a previous post – it would most certainly get publicity.
I have always thought this to Sally, very god idea. How do we go about it? 🙂
David.
Enlightening and thought provoking- as usual.
Very much looking forward to this new information about Paxil study 329..
and of course more of your excellent posts in the future..
Thanks again
🙂
Two items of interest – one from the New York Times: “Stop Revering the Magna Carta” and one from the Harvard Gazette: “Magna Carta Overrated?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/opinion/stop-revering-magna-carta.html?emc=eta1
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/06/magna-carta-overrated/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=06.15.2015%20(1)
Dr. Healy,
— About: “Meanwhile David Cameron on behalf of UK PLC has launched into an anti-corruption crusade – but there won’t be a word about this lack of due process or the extraordinary corruption of the scientific literature – on which hinges vastly more money than was ever dreamt of by Sepp Blatter and FIFA.”
– Re: Agreed.
—
— About: “Today’s Barons are the Doctors. Doctors make a living out of the work done by the rest of the population – swallowing pills. These doctors are highly unlikely to confront Andrew Witty or any of the big beasts of the pharmacockracy – unless some of them do so as shareholders.”
– Re: Not all doctors are Barons. http://chaoticpharmacology.com/2014/12/17/response-to-gsk-it-is-easier-to-put-a-man-on-the-moon-than-develop-a-malaria-vaccine-for-starters-you-can-see-the-moon-%E2%80%95andrew-witty/ (published on Dec 17, 2014).
There are reasons for hope – I am wondering: is the tide changing their direction? (Maudsley debate, Médicos Sin Marca, RxISK, No Gracias, CEPUK… ) http://chaoticpharmacology.com/2015/06/08/thank-you-again/
I am reading your book Pharmageddon, really enjoying it, a very good book so far.
All the best, many thanks for your writings,
Bob, re storming Andrew Wittys office. First off a planning meeting in a smoke filled room. Oh no cant do that any more, maybe a pub near GSK’s phallic tower of power on the North Circular? Which requires all of us to be UK based. Anyway given that someone will be reading this and passing on the info maybe need to be a tad more subtle….carrier pigeons? Seriously though . People not blogs, somehow, somewhere. Any ideas?
GSK is a multinational pharmaceutical company and operates outside the UK.
http://www.boletinesp-univalle.info/index.php/investigacion-y-accion-3/25-sin-foto/165-i-d-clinico-industria-farmaceutica
There are real people behind blog posts…
http://chaoticpharmacology.com/2015/04/08/univalle_fsalud-comuniquese-con-el-decano-re-tu-comentario-esta-pendiente-de-moderacion/
Contact me through my e-mail Sally..
Thanks..
I would very much like to establish direct contact with Sally McGregor & ‘truthman30’
“people not blogs” is excactly where I want to get to.
I have made contact with 2 interested MPs & will be going to meet with them at House of Commons to discuss how to get this (SSRI Scandal) on to agenda of House of Commons Select Health Committee.
A visible old fashioned style protest & media coverage at Westminster & well as at Witty’s office would, I suggest, be an effective tactic.
Dr Healy, I recall a few blogs back you words “globalisation of the masses” is what’s needed …… can you help by putting me in direct email contact with other like minded folk – the ‘survivors’ voice can be a strong one if orchestrated & planned well.
Dr Healy
Many thanks for putting Sally in touch with me – after the exchange of a few emails we spoke on the phone today (for nearly two hours!) and have arranged to meet on Friday …. wonderful to talk to a likeminded fellow patient/victim/survivor.
Jane
A P.S. to my recent comment:
I realise, of course, that I may be being very niave, that such House of Commons contact has been attempted before & has all fallen by the wayside on the stony ground that surrounds the possible/likely(?) brick wall of Government/Big Pharm interdependence (corruption) – but nevertheless, I’m up for trying again – it seems the clouds of change are blowing & gathering some momentum eg. the CEPuk conference on Sept 18th – it might be good to time some form of people protest around mid September to co-incide with this?
I would like to be part of a small planning group to organise something & most willing to arrange an inaugural meeting to get this going…….. just need to make some contacts (away from a public blog) – hope you can help.
Hi there
How can we use the Magna Carta article 61, only 3 articles remain… To stop the FORCING of The Mandatory Vaccine??