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# Dr. David Healy

Psychiatrist. Psychopharmacologist. Scientist. Author.

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://davidhealy.org/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Blog](https://davidhealy.org/blog/) - [loopbuddy query_id='5' layout_id='9']
- [Can Stealing be Regulated](https://davidhealy.org/can-stealing-be-regulated/) - This letter was email to Dr Dal Pan today July 29, 2026 - See Stolen Lives and Prescribed Harm Awareness Dr Gerald Dal Pan druginfo@fda.hhs.gov Dear Dr Dal Pan I listened with interest to your recent interview with Dr Celia Williams in a Q & A with FDA series, where you were asked which types
- [Stolen Lives Goes Global](https://davidhealy.org/stolen-lives-goes-global/) - This post is written by Katinka Newman. It links to Prescribed Harm Awareness Day on RxISK. Three years ago, on 29 July, a small group of us gathered together in Hyde Park, London. It was something we set up through Antidepressant Risks, the not-for-profit I founded to improve informed consent around antidepressants and other psychiatric
- [You Say Retractable, We Say Intractable](https://davidhealy.org/you-say-retractable-we-say-intractable/) - δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν When the Peloponnesian War broke out in Greece 2,500 years ago between Athens and Sparta, the Athenians told the islanders living on Melos 'you are either with us or against us'. Athens had created democracy, had all the famous philosophers, dramatists, politicians and control of the
- [The Black Hole of Modernity](https://davidhealy.org/the-black-hole-of-modernity/) - To be read in conjunction with A Human Touch. Thanks to Peter Selley, who found this Industry News, we who sail in RxISK now know we feature in an historical milestone. We had filed a Petition with FDA just under 8 years ago asking for Isotretinoin Labels to include mention of the enduring sexual dysfunction it
- [Health a Privilege of Wealth](https://davidhealy.org/health-a-privilege-of-wealth/) - This post was written 5 years ago. It is a sequel to a lecture posted last week on RxISK with its comments - Are Healthcare and Science Compatible? The comments brought out how we now have a system that gaslights both patients and doctors leading to tensions on all sides as this post illustrates. It
- [Watch Out. Innocent Abroad](https://davidhealy.org/watch-out-innocent-abroad/) - Very nearly 3 decades ago, I got involved in an American lawsuit. Forsyth v Eli Lilly Bill Forsyth was a wealthy man even before he sold the land his car rental business was on to Los Angeles airport. He and his wife, June, left Los Angeles for Maui in 1990, which as anyone who’s been
- [Regulators Bearing Gifts](https://davidhealy.org/regulators-bearing-gifts/) - Last Wednesday, I had a letter from Michael Davis, the Acting Director of FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. It wasn’t a complete surprise to get a letter. I’d written to Dr Davis 3 weeks beforehand about MedDRA codes for PSSD and about PSSD more generally. But his letter was not a response to
- [Grasping the Gene Genie](https://davidhealy.org/grasping-the-gene-genie/) - This image and one below is taken from the Sequencing.com website. Will Powers got his PFS patients to get Whole Genome Sequencing done through sequencing.com. He read the resulting information using gene.iobio. The 'system' - 'powers-that-be' is/are unhappy with developments like this for several reasons. One concern is that our genetic data may reveal risks
- [Ending Enduring Sexual Dysfunctions](https://davidhealy.org/ending-enduring-sexual-dysfunctions/) - See below for an explanation of this image. Will Powers work on Post-Finasteride Syndromes (PFS) has generated a lot of interest. It would be easy to misread the responses. This post asks people with PSSD and PAS to get what are often called Dutch tests done. The U in Dutch stands for Urine. Can send
- [Calling Isotretinoin and SSRI Problem Solvers](https://davidhealy.org/calling-isotretinoin-and-ssri-problem-solvers/) - This picture comes from a meeting last week in Detroit aimed at tackling and solving the enduring sexual problems linked to Isotretinoin, SSRIs and Finasteride - See Enduring Sexual Problems World Congress. This was a small but intense and exciting meeting. A great deal of the excitement was linked to some findings Will Powers, a
- [AI versus the Deep State](https://davidhealy.org/ai-versus-the-deep-state/) - A distinguished colleague (C1) introduced last year's word of the year - AI Slop - into last week's The Prozac Liberation Front post. As an unaccountable editor, I took the liberty to suggest that many of us seemed to figure - or would pretty soon get round to figuring - that AI was all too
- [The Prozac Liberation Front](https://davidhealy.org/the-prozac-liberation-front/) - Chatting, recently, to two different friends of his separately, mentioning the possible role of SSRIs or other meds in the Tumbler Ridge shooting, a colleague (C1 - the first of 3 colleagues in this post) got blown away by both of them. Conspiracy theories, they told him. Misinformation - you're being ridiculous. One of them
- [Can We Avoid Being Eaten](https://davidhealy.org/can-we-avoid-being-eaten/) - Carney at Davos Like or loathe his politics, unless I am missing something, Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister and Liberal party leader, seems a decent man. As the Canadian standing up to Donald Trump, whether you are pro- or anti-Trump, you are likely interested to see how this contact sport plays out. (Even Curling is
- [Gaslighting, Milgram and Madness](https://davidhealy.org/gaslighting-milgram-and-madness/) - This image is from Wikipedia Gaslighting which gives the credit details. The word Gaslighting comes from the 1944 movie Gaslight about a husband's attempts to get his wife to doubt her sanity. It caught on slowly but as this graph shows in the last decade its use has taken off. The greatest relative rise in
- [Gaslighting in Healthcare](https://davidhealy.org/gaslighting-in-healthcare/) - This post features Letters from Peter Scott-Gordon to Lade Smith - the originals are in the link. Readers outside Britain should assume that the gaslighting here applies to regulators and medical bodies in their country also and should not be fooled by this apparently polite correspondence. 4 February 2026 Dear Dr Lade Smith, PATIENT SAFETY I
- [The Once and Future Pharmacopsychology](https://davidhealy.org/the-once-and-future-pharmacopsychology/) - Emil Kraepelin’s famous Textbook created modern psychiatry a hundred and thirty years ago. After the World Wars, Freud’s influence grew and his thinking dominated the US mental health scene after World War II. Nearly 90 years after Kraepelin established his framework, US psychiatry dramatically swept Freud away under the influence of a group of psychiatrists
- [I Come to Praise SSRIs not to Bury Them](https://davidhealy.org/i-come-to-praise-ssris-not-to-bury-them/) - This talk was given in Maastricht at the invitation of David Linden, Scientific Director of the Mental Health and Neuroscience Research Institute on November 27 and again to a group of Primary Care Doctors in Sweden at the invitation of André Marx on Nov 28. There were some great questions afterwards. This post gives the
- [Authenticity Inc meets Grok](https://davidhealy.org/authenticity-inc-meets-grok/) - Two weeks ago, RxISK ran Authenticity Inc., a post by Johanna Ryan, which tackled a growing story – the exponentially escalating use of SSRIs among Tik-Toxing and Instagramming Gen Zs, more women than men. A generation for whom these drugs were never approved and for whom SSRIs come with Black Box warnings for suicide.
- [Artificial Intelligence Triggers a Tsunami](https://davidhealy.org/artificial-intelligence-triggers-a-tsunami/) - This post follows on from Miracles of Artificial Intelligence and Artificial I. The trigger was an intervention by Chris Dubey, who earlier this year wrote an article on ECT (electroconvulsive therapy - Shock Treatment) for the International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine, which was sent to me for review. Most people, whether familiar
- [Artificially Intelligent or Artificial I ?](https://davidhealy.org/artificially-intelligent-or-artificial-i/) - The image here is the front of the Great Seal of the United States - but it has been doctored. The word Unum is replaced by Mediocris which is not Latin for Mediocrity although it might as well be - it's Latin for Average. Earlier posts have dealt with Artificial Intelligence (AI) issues - The
- [Skills and Pills for Depression](https://davidhealy.org/skills-and-pills-for-depression/) - David Antonuccio, a close friend for 20 years since we met around the issue of antidepressants and suicide, and now an emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, organized a Skills and Pills for Depression meeting in Reno on October 4 2025. The recordings of the talks are available now. The quality is
- [Health, Care and Science in Real Life](https://davidhealy.org/health-care-and-science-in-real-life/) - This post was delivered as a Medicine in Crisis lecture at a Pills and Skills for Depression meeting that David Antonuccio organized in Reno Nevada on October 4. Kim Witczak who features throughout the post was a panellist at the meeting. There was an audience of over 200 primarily University of Nevada students - so
- [Request for American Psychiatric Association Assistance](https://davidhealy.org/request-for-american-psychiatric-association-assistance/) - Dear Dr Wills You wrote to Dr. Makary on July 25th following a July 21st FDA Panel on Antidepressants and Pregnancy. I was a panel member and hope you won’t object to me taking advantage of your closing invitation to Dr. Makary to avail of APA assistance. The panelists expressed very different views, so it
- [Partnerships in Healthcare](https://davidhealy.org/partnerships-in-healthcare/) - Following a media feeding frenzy in the wake of an FDA Panel on SSRIs in Pregnancy - see Unsafe Safety Systems - another feeding frenzy erupted with an HHS (Health and Human Services ) statement that it was reviewing the use of Tylenol in Pregnancy and possible links to Autism. This post engages with both
- [From Just Say No to Getting to Yes](https://davidhealy.org/from-just-say-no-to-getting-to-yes/) - Could It Be Intelligent to Say No? The meat in this post comes from Peter Selley and centers on a new hazard of monoclonal antibodies given to infants - seizures and other neurological problems, along with deaths. The background to this post lies in Ground Control to RSV - RSVP.. It also links to Back
- [Ground Control to RSV - RSVP](https://davidhealy.org/ground-control-to-rsv-rsvp/) - An illustration of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in cross-section landing on a respiratory endothelial cell in humans. A nuclear protein core capped by large L proteins is depicted with single-stranded RNA (colored purple). The virion exterior is populated by F and G proteins, while its interior is lined by M2-1 and M proteins. G
- [The Miracle of Artificial Intelligence](https://davidhealy.org/the-miracle-of-artificial-intelligence/) - The recent FDA Panel on SSRIs and Pregnancy attracted a scathing Media Response. See Unsafe Safety Systems for 25 responses including the American Psychiatric Association and Britain’s College of Psychiatrists. For the most part the responses were remarkably similar, displayed complete amnesia for previously accepted facts, and downplayed any risks with phrases like earlier smaller
- [There's Something About Pregnant Mary](https://davidhealy.org/theres-something-about-pregnant-mary/) - A recording of the full FDA Panel on SSRIs and Pregnancy is linked to the last post here. There has been extensive media coverage of this event - and 18 takes on what reporters heard can be found linked to Unsafe Safety Systems on RxISK. Roger McFillin was on thin ice, at the recent FDA
- [FDA Panel: SSRIs and Pregnancy](https://davidhealy.org/fda-panel-ssris-and-pregnancy/) - On behalf of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., the FDA is holding a series of roundtable discussions with independent panels of scientific experts that will review the latest scientific evidence, evaluate potential health risks, explore safer alternatives, and may offer recommendations for regulatory action. This initiative is part of the FDA’s broader efforts to
- [File under Phile: Anecdotes are not Science](https://davidhealy.org/file-under-phile/) - Editorial Note: The Post-Truth Rumorology post attracted a comment by Annie that deserves featuring. She cites a really good Daily Mail article in which Melinda Messenger talks about intervening when her daughter is scheduled to have the HPV vaccine. The DM article drew this response from Dr. David Robert Grimes - a physicist at the University of
- [Bauer Power and Informed Consent](https://davidhealy.org/bauer-power-and-informed-consent/) - In Epidemiology of Autism Spectrum Disorder on RxISK, I mention that for me a key paper in a reference list of 27 references was one by Ann Bauer and colleagues, who recognized limitations to the epidemiological data but nailed their colours to the mast in saying that there was sufficient evidence here that pregnant women
- [Safety or System?](https://davidhealy.org/safety-or-system/) - Samizdat has just been graced with Gene Larkin's Seeking Soteria accompanied by Bill James fabulous artwork (graced is the best word). For reasons that will become clear, the title of this post picks up on the last post Unsafe Safety. Gene can be heard talking about Soteria with colleagues on a Mad in America Soteria
- [Secret Moderna Trial Documents](https://davidhealy.org/secret-moderna-trial-documents/) - This post by Peter Selley details yet another Selley triumph. It's extraordinary what focus and persistence can achieve. I am dedicating this post to Nikki Rutman, twenty years an analyst with the FBI, who currently heads up Moderna’s Global Intelligence Division. Moderna’s shares have plummeted since its 2021 Covid heyday. This appears unrelated to my
- [Unsafe Safety](https://davidhealy.org/unsafe-safety/) - On March 20th, Senators Tina Smith and Ben Lujan, and Representatives Andrea Salinas and Becca Balint, sent a letter to the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy, expressing concern about his promotion of disproven and outright false theories about mental health medications. In separate comments, Senator Smith indicated
- [Six Weeks to Recover a Grin](https://davidhealy.org/six-weeks-to-recover-a-grin/) - I am among those who can be blamed for the disastrous MHRA supported drug label and messaging for antidepressants, along with Guideline recommendations that tell doctors and patients that it can take 6 weeks for antidepressant induced recovery to take place. This idea has been interpreted by MHRA and lots of psychiatrists and family doctors,
- [An Appleby a Day Keeps the Doctor Away](https://davidhealy.org/an-appleby-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away/) - Tangled up in Bureaucracy flagged a Signal for the Goose Signal for the Gander as a sequel. That was before the Gary Bullivant comments on Tangled up in Bureaucracy. If you don't normally read comments on post, the Bullivant-Kingston comments are in this link; they are worth reading. GB's comments fit nicely in with a
- [Tangled up in Bureaucracy](https://davidhealy.org/tangled-up-in-bureaucracy/) - In response to Thomas Kingston’s death, Katy Skerrett, the coroner at his inquest, wrote to the MHRA (Britain’s medicines regulator) and to NICE (Britain’s guideline body) suggesting that their communications around antidepressant hazards appeared to downplay the risks of suicidal reactions to SSRI antidepressants, perhaps contributing to his death. See Aunts, Ants and Regulators, and
- [The Respiratory Syncytial Virus Challenge](https://davidhealy.org/the-respiratory-syncytial-virus-challenge/) - This post by Peter Selley centres on a Moderna RSV vaccine trial, the Rhyme trial, in young babies that was stopped last year when 7 out of 40 babies between 5 and 8 months of age developed severe lung disease, compared to 1 in 20 controls. Moderna had good reason to think its vaccine could
- [Antidepressants Alcohol and Anne-Marie](https://davidhealy.org/antidepressants-alcohol-and-anne-marie/) - Among the greatest triumphs linked to RxISK was Anne-Marie Kelly's discovery that SSRI antidepressants can cause alcohol misuse. A Hero Anne-Marie's story was first told in Out of My Mind Driven to Drink, which featured here in March 2012. This led to a post on RxISK Driven to Drink. Between them the posts have over
- [Kingston's Rule](https://davidhealy.org/kingstons-rule/) - This post is written by Dr Pedro who is watching events unfold from 10,000 miles away - with some extras added at the end. The UK Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has been asked by Katy Skerrett, Senior Coroner for Gloucestershire, to respond to her Regulation 28 report to Prevent Future Deaths, after the
- [A Turning Point in History](https://davidhealy.org/a-turning-point-in-history/) - That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. Shakespeare Sonnet 73 These lines came to mind recently when walking by a school playground crowded with young children on
- [The Darkness and the Light](https://davidhealy.org/the-darkness-and-the-light/) - A Darkness the Light cannot Master A priming note for Secular and all non-Xtian readers - what Xtians call the New Testament has 4 Gospels. Three open with variations on what most folk from Hollywood to the Vatican would view as the conventional Xmas Nativity story – cold time of year, manger, donkeys, star. The
- [Listen doctor and you shall hear](https://davidhealy.org/listen-doctor-and-you-shall-hear/) - Listen my doctor and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.... You know the rest. In the books you have read How the British regulars fired and fled, — How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farmyard-wall, Chasing the red-coats down the lane, Then crossing the
- [Venus Rising: Women and Antidepressants](https://davidhealy.org/venus-rising-women-and-antidepressants/) - Serotonin may be our most primitive neurotransmitter and so on theoretical grounds alone there was reason to think that the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibiting drugs (SSRIs) - sold as absolutely and completely safe, the only danger lying in not having them when you needed them - might have significant effects, not all of which would
- [Shipwreck and Salvage](https://davidhealy.org/shipwreck-and-salvage/) - Shipwreck of the Singular was written before before Covid landed and published just as the vaccines began to roll out. It's central messages are that Life expectancy is now falling and this is linked to polypharmacy People injured by treatment are the crack through which the science gets in The use of antidepressants for children
- [Probity Blockers and Trans Medicine](https://davidhealy.org/probity-blockers-and-trans-medicine/) - Never before in human history have so many had to entrust their lives and wellbeing to so few and been so betrayed. Inspired by Winston Churchill The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it Inspired by Winston Smith Probity Blockers, a term originally coined by Dee
- [Aunts, Ants and Regulators](https://davidhealy.org/aunts-ants-and-regulators/) - Thanks for this post goes to Annie Bevan who for over a decade has made some amazing contributions to DH and RxISK. None more so than finding a document sitting in front of all of us for two decades that should make regulators blush, squirm and wish the ground would open and swallow them. Thomas
- [Medical Assistance in Dying](https://davidhealy.org/medical-assistance-in-dying/) - After 6 deaths, 6 years ago, on November 17, two days ago, the New Zealand Herald featured an article reporting on an inquest into these deaths. The original with photos of the 6 children is linked. The text is below the link. The action in this post happens right at the bottom of the NZH
- [Quil's Mangent Des Médicaments](https://davidhealy.org/quils-mangent-des-medicaments/) - This is the first of two lectures organized by Fanny Dargent who has a longstanding interest in adolescence and its problems and the dangers of psychotropic medication, along with Ariane Denoyel, who has authored the French version of this lecture below, and is the author of Génération Zombie, the leading book in French on these
- [Clearing the Deck Post-Prozac](https://davidhealy.org/clearing-the-deck-post-prozac/) - Prozac (fluoxetine) went off patent in August 2021. In July 2000, FDA approved Sarafem (fluoxetine) for use in Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). In June 2010, Lilly stopped marketing Sarafem. In August 2023, Lilly informed FDA they wished to Withdraw Sarafem and its PMDD indication. It is not exactly clear what withdrawing its PMDD indication means. Presumably
- [The Prozac Era. What Next?](https://davidhealy.org/the-prozac-era-what-next/) - In 1963, Hoffman la Roche launched Valium, the brand name for diazepam, a benzodiazepine. It followed hot on the heels of Librium - chlordiazepoxide - another benzodiazepine. This was like one company producing 2 SSRIs and able to get them to numbers 1 and 2 in the charts. Arthur Sackler of Purdue and Oxycontin fame
- [American Veterans Can Save Healthcare](https://davidhealy.org/american-veterans-can-save-healthcare/) - FRIENDLY FIRE Michigan Veterans Harm Reduction Summit David Healy Thanks to Derek Blumke for asking me here today. It's a great pity not to be there in person. There is a fabulous group of speakers. Most of us sense that US Vets, more than any other group in society, may be able to move things
- [Truth is Stranger than Fiction](https://davidhealy.org/truth-is-stranger-than-fiction/) - GK Chesterton and then later Mark Twain said that Truth is Stranger than Fiction - it has to be because Fiction has to make Sense. But Fairy Tales are also Stranger than Fiction. Most of what we call Fairy Tales began life as Moral Tales - where the story might be incredible but the Truth
- [Drug Dysregulation or Iatrogenic Insanity?](https://davidhealy.org/drug-dysregulation-or-iatrogenic-insanity/) - This recent Mad in America Webinar on Stopping Antidepressants introduced the idea of SSRI Dysregulation. Terms like Dependence etc band people with problems on SSRIs in with 'substance abusers'. Substance Abusers do not get a good deal from services that do not recognize the mainstream services and the drugs they hand out have often caused
- [Has Healthcare Gone Mad?](https://davidhealy.org/has-healthcare-gone-mad/) - This talk was given at the Annual Meeting of the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry on October 28. The Video version of HealthCare Gone Mad is linked here. The slides and text are below. There will soon be an official ISEPP link to the talk and a Q and A, which will be
- [Thalidomide: The Ultimate Conspiracy?](https://davidhealy.org/thalidomide-the-ultimate-conspiracy/) - There were relatively few comments on The Thalidomide Catastrophe. There were however more people getting in touch directly. Some said they were going to buy the book. Here are some more reasons to think about buying. The Once and Future Nightmare Many seem to think thalidomide is an old story they more or less know
- [The Thalidomide Catastrophe](https://davidhealy.org/the-thalidomide-catastrophe/) - Editorial Note: This is adapted from a piece by Martin Johnson who with colleagues has just published The Thalidomide Catastrophe. This is available as of today on Amazon and at Onwards and Upwards. This is one of the great books about what the twentieth century was all about. A must buy, costing almost nothing. Child
- [Where Does the Misinformation Come From?](https://davidhealy.org/where-does-the-misinformation-come-from/) - This key post in the Politics of Care series stems from an invite from Norman Fenton to give a lecture on December 6 to a group interested in the evidence swirling around vaccines. It is accompanied by The Handmaid's Vaccine on RxISK, which gives a video of the talk, whose text and slides are below.
- [The Death of Stephen O'Neill and You](https://davidhealy.org/the-death-of-stephen-oneill-and-you/) - There will be a sequence of 7 weekly posts here about Stephen O'Neill and You that will also feature on Stephen's Voice Facebook page. This and next week's post feature videos about why everyone should help bring some good from Stephen O'Neill's death - not just because the same could easily happen you but also
- [The Perfect Killing Machine](https://davidhealy.org/the-perfect-killing-machine/) - Somewhat like a lobster being slowly boiled as opposed to one dropped straight into boiling water, we have learned to co-exist with and ignore a Perfect Killing Machine in our midst which takes far more lives than the Covid pandemic - without it featuring anywhere in the news. This is a second post about Stephen
- [Swans, Psychopharmacology and Religion](https://davidhealy.org/swans-psychopharmacology-and-religion/) - After qualifying in Medicine in Dublin in 1980, I went to Galway on the West Coast of Ireland. Galway was very small compared to Dublin, but I’d heard the university had a new pharmacology professor, Brian Leonard, and interesting things might happen there. The world in 1980, and Ireland in particular, looked very different to
- [Interoception or Neuroplasticity](https://davidhealy.org/interoception-or-neuroplasticity/) - Mad in America recently ran a Webinar on Neuroplasticity as a way to manage one of our greatest challenges - Protracted Withdrawal Syndrome. The presenters, as described by Mad in America, included: Ben Ahrens, a chronic illness recovery expert, TEDx Speaker, and CEO of a brain retraining program Re-Origin. This program stemmed from his use of
- [Ghost, Cyborg or Mystery - Fidere Aude](https://davidhealy.org/ghost-cyborg-or-mystery-fidere-aude/) - Nearly 400 years ago Rene Descartes dramatically changed our view of ourselves in ways that have caused problems ever since. The change is caught in this famous image which illustrates what Descartes viewed as an obvious fact we could depend on. If our foot strays too near a flame, an image of the flame runs
- [Challenging My Media to Disclose](https://davidhealy.org/challenging-my-media-to-disclose/) - At the end of most articles in the Guardian newspaper you find this: This is what we’re up against. Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see. Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and
- [Truth, Trust and Health](https://davidhealy.org/truth-trust-and-health/) - Geoff Wilson invited me to give this lecture in Lexington Kentucky at a Medicating Normal meeting in May to a group of healthcare professionals. Don Marks gave me the chance to repeat it a few days later at Kean University's Psychology Department. Both groups were also asked to comment on Challenging My Doctor to Disclose. Bill
- [Antidepressants and The Tell-Tale Heart](https://davidhealy.org/antidepressants-and-the-tell-tale-heart/) - We have slightly detoured from the Persecution theme. The detour came after a lawyer, a woman, representing a company that markets escitalopram said it wasn't appropriate to compare the lack of consent in pharmacotherapy to rape. This gave rise to a Consent-Rape mini series of posts which this two-part post continues. Persecution will resume very
- [Antidepressants and The Tell-Tale Heart 2](https://davidhealy.org/antidepressants-and-the-tell-tale-heart-ii/) - Editorial Note: This is Part 2 of Antidepressants and The Tell-Tale Heart. It fits into a sub-series about Pharmaceuticals: Rape and Consent. It also maps straight on to Antidepressant Withdrawal: A Prozac Story and Saving Grace both of which are on RxISK. Saving Grace picks up the Bipolar theme running through Tell Tale Heart. For the
- [Damsels Dying from Distress or Dysphoria?](https://davidhealy.org/damsels-dying-from-distress-or-dysphoria/) - This post, which opens with a photo of Noelia Voigt navigates between last week's Cass and Cassandra, which features Distressed Damsels and Dudes, and RxISK's post this week - Is Your Treatment Making you Suicidal, which features Dysphoric Damsels and Dudes - dying from drug induced dysphoria. Noelia was until this week Miss USA 2023.
- [Cass or Cassandra: Doctors Bearing Gifts](https://davidhealy.org/cass-or-cassandra-doctors-bearing-gifts/) - CisMedicine – TransMedicine While The Once and Future Immunity about vaccines for RSV was being drafted last week, the Cass Review on Gender Medicine hit the news headlines. Cass trenchantly critiques gender medicine as it has been practiced in the Western world in the last decade. These 2 items intersect as hopefully this post will
- [The Once and Future Immunity](https://davidhealy.org/the-once-and-future-immunity/) - This post is mostly Peter Selley's. Covid flooded us with talk of immunity and vaccines. The word vaccine was redefined so mRNA agents could be called vaccines, even though they do not confer immunity or stop transmission as traditional vaccines do. The RSV vaccines are the latest. Given to older folk, they meet traditional
- [The Creation Narrative and God Complex](https://davidhealy.org/the-creation-narrative-and-god-complex/) - This post continues Zen and Psychopharmacology and An Archipelago of Realities. I am going to rewrite a rewrite of Genesis. Here is the rewrite to be rewritten: The six days of Creation were divine and bright. But on the seventh day God broke down. On the seventh day he felt the unknown texture under his
- [An Archipelago of Realities](https://davidhealy.org/an-archipelago-of-realities/) - The post follows on from last weeks Zen and Art of Psychopharmacology and links with Potentially Inappropriate Deprescribing PID on RxISK. Tullio Giraldi and I first e-met in 2009. Introducing himself, he painted an unusual background. He had been a pharmacologist but now his interests lay in Buddhism and psychotherapy. I learnt later that he
- [Zen and the Art of Psychopharmacology](https://davidhealy.org/zen-and-and-art-of-psychopharmacology/) - This post outlines an article that will appear in the next issue of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry - Zen and the Art of MoodCycle Maintenance - borrowing from the title of a semi-philosophical book with Zen and MotorCyles in its title that was well-known when some of us were young. The full article with
- [The Great Silence and Moral Injury](https://davidhealy.org/the-great-silence-and-moral-injury/) - Assuming things around 1998 in the graph below were what most of us would have figured until recently was what normal should look like – by that I mean as we might have expected things to be – there has been a dramatic change since 1998. See Conspiracy of Silence. No one, until recently, would
- [Pharmacosis: So Long and Thanks for all the Fish](https://davidhealy.org/pharmacosis-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish/) - In 1860 at a meeting of the Massachusetts’ Medical Society Oliver Wendell Holmes made one of the most celebrated comments in medicine.
- [The Welfare State Conspiracy of Silence](https://davidhealy.org/the-welfare-state-conspiracy-of-silence/) - This graph recreates history. In Britain by 1935, Fertility Rates had fallen below 2.1 – the number of children women have on average - 1.8 and stayed there. The national replacement rate is 2.1. Given the steep slope down from 5.0 to 1.8 over less than 50 years, there is little reason to think in
- [Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up](https://davidhealy.org/why-the-kids-arent-growing-up/) - I was asked by Mandy Payne at Health Sense to review Bad Therapy due to be published today and agreed because an earlier book by Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage, had worked for me. Reviews of Bad Therapy are tumbling out at the moment - the Daily Mail has two - one by the Mail -
- [It's Health's Illusions I Recall](https://davidhealy.org/its-healths-illusions-i-recall/) - There is a core concept shaping the ‘market’ in health, the concept of an assay. Few doctors or patients understand it. This article explains what assays are, how they entered healthcare and the consequences of failing to grasp the role they play. This post by Harriet Vogt and David Healy is an illustrated version of
- [Efficiency is not the Supreme Virtue](https://davidhealy.org/efficiency-is-not-the-supreme-virtue/) - I was staying in Aubervilliers last November for a “Whistleblowers” Lanceurs d’Alerte conference. Aubervilliers is in the North-East of Paris – not one of the tourist areas. Some French friends suggested the reason Paris was hosting the Olympics was because it offered the authorities an opportunity to flatten that part of the city and regenerate
- [Generalists and Partialists](https://davidhealy.org/generalists-and-partialists/) - An issue that crops up in comments on both this and the RxISK blog is the question of whether treatment would be safer if given by specialists (partialists) rather than general practitioners (generalists). We wouldn't have the problems with antidepressants and antipsychotics for instance many people seem to think if prescribing was done by psychiatrists
- [TAIL Wags God - Technology and Morality](https://davidhealy.org/tail-wags-god-technology-and-morality/) - AiDA - Assistance in Dying Altruistically - featured in Liberty Equality and Fertility. Here's AIDA's picture. It likely depends on your mood as you look at the picture. She might make an AiDA option look attractive or add to its horror. Some people, particularly mothers, can be extraordinarily altruistic, and might think they could sacrifice
- [Liberty, Equality and Fertility](https://davidhealy.org/liberty-equality-and-fertility/) - This post is partnered with a Timeline on Sex, Fertility, France and Serotonin on RxISK MAiD I am on a listserve that includes Trudo Lemmens a vocal opponent of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada. Canada seems to be going about MAiD particularly enthusiastically. Quite apart from Trudo being a long standing friend, I
- [Pharmageddon and Our HealthCare Climate](https://davidhealy.org/pharmageddon-and-our-healthcare-climate/) - This post centers on one member of our twin greatest problems - the changing climate of healthcare - as do HealthCare Gone Mad and Pharmageddon and Fertility., and older posts - Healthcare and the Global Climate and all posts in the Politics of Care Forum. There are linked posts on RxISK.org, starting with The Cradle
- [God Does Not Roll Dice. Should Doctors?](https://davidhealy.org/god-does-not-roll-dice-should-doctors/) - This lecture If God Doesn't Play Dice, Should Doctors was given at the invitation of Leeza Osipenko and Consilium Scientific on May 18th 2023. Consilium are playing a big part in encouraging us all to think more about the quality of proofs we turn to in medicine in particular about Randomized Controlled Trials. There are
- [The tricks that drug companies do live after them, their patients are oft interred with their trials](https://davidhealy.org/the-tricks-that-companies-do-live-after-them-their-patients-are-often-interred-with-their-trials/) - One of the hopes of this blog is to create a repository of maneuvers through which clinical trials can be gamed to get results. The series of posts laying out some of the less well known tricks are filed under the Hiding the Bodies blog category. To be more generally useful, this repository needs others to contribute further
- [Freeing Teresa - Uplifting 2024](https://davidhealy.org/freeing-teresa-uplifting-2024/) - I was asked by Shepherd Books to list my 3 favorite books for 2023. My list is Here - Freeing Teresa came top, followed by Wonder Drug and Escape from Model Land. The overall Shepherd Best Books for 2023 List Is Here. Freeing Teresa is different to anything else. It's uplifting as well as dramatic.
- [Zoloft Study: Mystery in Leeds](https://davidhealy.org/zoloft-study-mystery-in-leeds/) - In my blog post The best bias that money can buy I outlined how doing trials of their drugs in conditions like depression is the ultimate way companies hide bodies. That what is needed instead are studies of drugs in healthy volunteers. Here’s a good example of what a healthy volunteer (phase 1) study can
- [Karunya Come Home](https://davidhealy.org/karunya-come-home/) - Case 3 Karunya Venugopalan This is the third case in the Cause and Effect Forum that looks at how we establish if a vaccine or a drug has caused a harm. On January 7, 2022, there was an extraordinary article in the BMJ by Priyanka Pulla - How Covid-19 vaccines exposed India's adverse event reporting
- [In Secula Seculorum](https://davidhealy.org/in-secula-seculorum/) - This post is twinned with No Room at the Inn. In Secula Seculorum are Latin words that resonate for anyone of a certain age with a Catholic background. Intoned in a sonorous and rhythmic way at ceremonies, they conjured up the sacred and holy. Looked at rather than listened to, they conjure up the opposite
- [Coming Clean on Neonatal Deaths](https://davidhealy.org/coming-clean-on-neonatal-deaths/) - This post by Peter Selley needs reading in conjunction with Uterine Roulette, Lonesome Heroines and Silent Health. It is about our rights to information rather than about vaccines per se. There is an industry playbook here put in place with SSRI drugs over 30 years ago that needs recognizing and tackling. GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) are dragging
- [Healy Podcasts](https://davidhealy.org/youtube-podcasts-blogs-and-related/) - In comments after a recent post on RxISK, POGO mentioned that Josef Witt-Doerring has done two interviews with me so far and posted them on his site. The Risks of Antidepressants and Antidepressants and Mass Shootings/Murder Suicide: Update April 19 - Josef has posted a new cast Guidelines and Clinical Practice IAI TV On the
- [Silent Health](https://davidhealy.org/silent-health/) - This post links to last week's Silencing Safety and Women and Children First and this week's Lonesome Heroines on RxISK. For decades, Jack Noble has been an inspiration for anyone in my and I'm sure other circles, who is concerned about the way medicine is going and the influence of pharma. He's a straight-talking Bostonian,
- [Women and Children First: The RSV Iceberg](https://davidhealy.org/women-and-children-first-the-rsv-iceberg/) - This post written by Peter Selley and goes hand in hand with Silencing Doctors by David Healy on RxISK.org, which takes you in between the lines of what is written here and in two articles published today - a BMJ Consent Article and Vaccine contre la bronchiolite: Pfizer Essais en zone d'ombre by Ariane Denoyel
- [The Boy With The Ponytail Who Played With Fire](https://davidhealy.org/the-boy-with-the-ponytail-who-played-with-fire/) - He is 6’4” at least - 192 cm. He has blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. When he first suggested making a program about SSRIs I was not very helpful – very little of the media coverage by 60 Minutes or anything else has ever seemed to make much of a difference. They may
- [The Hidden Gorilla](https://davidhealy.org/the-hidden-gorilla/) - Three weeks ago What would Batman do Now covered the issue of suicide in the military – an issue that had Batman missing in action, and the Joker suffering the adverse effects of psychotropic drugs. Then along came James Holmes to the premiere of Dark Knight Rises in Aurora. Most drugs that can cause suicide, including
- [Scaremongerers of the World Unite](https://davidhealy.org/scaremongerers-of-the-world-unite/) - At a meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Brighton in June 2011, Dave Nutt, a professor of psychiatry at Imperial College London issued a call to arms to his audience at a plenary lecture to defend psychiatry which in Dave's view meant defending psychopharmacology. On a slide entitled ‘No Psychiatry Without Psychopharmacology’ he outlined
- [Professional Suicide – The Clancy Case](https://davidhealy.org/professional-suicide-the-clancy-case/) - Shane Clancy, a 22-year-old going to University in Dublin, broke up with his girlfriend, Jennifer Hannigan, in April 2009. Despite his having broken the relationship off, he found it difficult without her. She, meanwhile, had found someone new: Sebastian Creane. Shane took a trip to Thailand and Australia, but aborted his travel and came home
- [The Story of SSRI Stories](https://davidhealy.org/the-story-of-ssri-stories/) - Rosie Meysenburg's story For anyone interested in the effects of drugs, the website SSRI stories has been an inspiration. Rosie Meysenburg, its creator, was recently diagnosed with cancer and is terminally ill. The story of how she came to create SSRI stories shows what people can do to hold the powers that be to account. —David
- [Notes on a Scandal](https://davidhealy.org/notes-on-a-scandal/) - In 1996 Zoe Heller, the author of Notes on a Scandal, took part in a widely reported debate with Roy Porter about Prozac. She defended the drug. It had restored her to life. He said today’s miracle invariably ended up in tomorrow’s tragedy and asked, Why is it that we never learn? The story of a
- [007 and the Spy who came in from the Cold](https://davidhealy.org/007-and-the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold/) - This post has Cases 4, Nina, and Case 5 BB. It links to a Brain Fog post on RxISK. Case 4 Nina Otulakowski Nina was referred by her doctor for review of vaccine related problems. He had previously referred her for a possible myocarditis. The reference came with her medical history, prior treatments and some
- [Pharmageddon and Fertility](https://davidhealy.org/pharmageddon-and-fertility/) - This post needs reading in conjunction with Has Healthcare Gone Mad and A Medical Triumph. This image of declining British fertility from 1880 was repeated across the Western world and more recently the whole world. The usual explanations are in terms of social and economic factors and are typically seen as a good thing. Progressives
- [Disappeared in Argentina](https://davidhealy.org/disappeared-in-argentina/) - Cause and Effect Case 2: Augusto Roux This post will have breaking news featured below. See entry for March 2, Augusto is a fit 36-year-old man from Buenos Aires. He doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol. He runs frequently and does Cross-Fit. He wanted to get vaccinated because his mother has emphysema, a lung disease, and
- [I can't breathe](https://davidhealy.org/i-cant-breathe/) - On Wednesday February 10, I gave a lecture at the Therapeutics Initiative (the T.I.) in Vancouver about the Permanent Sexual Dysfunctions SSRIs and other drugs can cause. See Sex and Evidence Based Medicine. The damage done by these drugs often extends beyond a total and complete inability to feel sexual desire and pleasure to a
- [Shane's Jaundiced view of Modern(a) Vaccines](https://davidhealy.org/shanes-jaundiced-view-of-moderna-vaccines/) - Josef Witt-Doerring (JWD) (See Cause and Effect Credentials) interviewed Shane Cooke on January 15 2022. Josef had Shane’s ER discharge summary describing Shane’s presentation and imaging findings. He also had access to Shane’s prior medical history. Medical History Shane got sucked into the medical system in his late teenage years. Until then he had been
- [William and Kate: Thinking Fast and Slow](https://davidhealy.org/william-and-kate-thinking-fast-and-slow/) - As part of the Cause and Effect forum, I interviewed William by video in February 2022. Prior to the interview, he and Kate, his wife, had prepared an intake form laying out William’s prior history and his reactions to the vaccines he had. They gave me a letter from his family doctor outlining his prior
- [Suzanna takes you down to her place near ...](https://davidhealy.org/suzanna-takes-you-down-to-her-place-near/) - Suzanna was assessed by both David Healy (DH) and Josef Witt-Doerring (JWD) in October and November 2021. She had previously filled an intake form with the details of her history and clinical course following the vaccine. She had provided us separately with Primary Care Physician (PCP) records covering the last 10 years and over time
- [Frances, PEG and Vaccine Exemptions](https://davidhealy.org/frances-peg-and-vaccine-exemptions/) - Frances is now in her early 70s. She had a decades long career working as a clinical research associate primarily in oncology trials, linked to cancer or medical institutes, where she often had responsibility for adverse event reporting and went through FDA audits at trial sites - the kind that haven't happened at Ventavia sites.
- [From the French Revolution to A.I.](https://davidhealy.org/from-the-french-revolution-to-a-i/) - This is the second of two lectures organized by Fanny Dargent who has a longstanding interest in adolescence and its problems and the dangers of psychotropic medication, along with Ariane Denoyel, who has authored the French version of this lecture below, and the author of Génération Zombie, the leading book in French on these issues.
- [Women, Pregnancy, and Clinical Trials](https://davidhealy.org/women-pregnancy-and-clinical-trials/) - A year ago, Peter Selley, featured below got interested in the trials for an RSV vaccine. I paid no heed but Peter had smelt a story. Soon after I smelt a related story about efforts to enrol pregnant women in clinical trials. Sixty years after we introduced Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) into the regulations governing
- [Si Dieu ne joue pas aux dés, Quid des médecins](https://davidhealy.org/si-dieu-ne-joue-pas-aux-des-quid-des-medecins/) - Voici une conférence donnée à l’invitation de Consilium Scientific le 18 mai 2023, organisée par Leeza Osipenko. Consilium joue un rôle essentiel dans la remise en question de la qualité des preuves dont nous disposons en médecine, en particulier pour ce qui concerne les essais cliniques randomisés contrôlés (ECR). Ces derniers mois, ils ont été
- [Peeking behind the Curtain for a Wizard](https://davidhealy.org/peeking-behind-the-curtain-for-a-wizard/) - This post by Patrick Hahn about The Day the Science Died reminds us that we have lived through some extraordinary times but seem inclined as perhaps people were after World War II to not dwell on things and just get on with life - for a decade or two until the memories came back. -
- [Not The BMJ News](https://davidhealy.org/not-the-bmj-news/) - Peter Selley and I have many friends in and a soft spot for The BMJ - the journal for members of the British Medical Association. One of us has read every issue since 1970. We thought there might be some response to our post Are Journalists the Answer to Clinical Medicine's Cause and Effect Problem,
- [Another Brick in the Wall](https://davidhealy.org/another-brick-in-the-wall/) - Pfizer’s maternal RSV vaccine (RSVpreF aka Abrysvo) has now been approved by both FDA and EMA. In the USA recommendations are awaited from CDC, ACIP and ACOG. Previous posts have examined Abrysvo’s risks if given to pregnant women. See: Yellow Peril A Shot in the Dark Women and Clinical Trials American drug Labels (called Package
- [The Marketing of Anticholinergic Maleficence](https://davidhealy.org/the-marketing-of-anticholinergic-maleficence/) - More than any other group of drugs in medicine, the anticholinergics have become Maleficent - blamed for the hedge of thorns that keeps our inner beauty asleep until some medical prince can fight his way through and put a Magic Wafer on our lips.- See Experts by Experience. In 1920 Otto Loewi had a
- [Psychotropic Drug Follies](https://davidhealy.org/psychotropic-drug-follies/) - This post links to Experts by Experience and Withdrawal, PSSD and Cholinergic Drugs on RxISK and The Marketing of Anticholinergic Maleficence here last week along a just published article The Past Present and Future which describes a medical 'episode' that gives you an insight on how the system 'works' and should leave you skeptical amost
- [Random or Mad](https://davidhealy.org/random-or-mad/) - No longer young, debatably more mature, but definitely older looking than the photograph below, David Healy figures he might now be able to deliver a decent lecture. He's been invited to speak at an International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry in 2 weeks time - on October 28. The talk will cover some of
- [Freeing Teresa: Human Rights Should be for Everyone](https://davidhealy.org/freeing-teresa-human-rights-should-not-be-disabled/) - RxISK is also running a Freeing Teresa post today.. Samizdat is co-publishing Freeing Teresa with Franke and Bill James. It’s a true story about Franke’s battle to protect her younger sister, Teresa, who has Down syndrome. Ten years ago, based on incorrect health information, Teresa lost her right to decide where to live. Then, she
- [GSK's Transparency and Access Journey](https://davidhealy.org/gsks-transparency-and-access-journey/) - Editorial Note: This post has been put together by Peter Goetzsche and David Healy Dear Dr Goetzsche ... "At GSK we firmly believe that making more information available, including clinical study reports and anonymised patient-level data, will enable researchers to study the science behind today’s medicines more closely, to learn more about them and how
- [Go Figure: The Silver Lining Clouds the View](https://davidhealy.org/go-figure-the-silver-lining-clouds-the-view/) - Editorial Note: Sally's first Go Figure post with its 100 comments outlines the basic dilemma facing RxISK - how can anyone who has been injured by treatment get people who have not yet been injured to wake up. The next 5 - 10 posts will pick up various ways this dilemma has been answered over
- [Go Figure: Digging for the Truth of Injuries](https://davidhealy.org/go-figure-digging-for-the-truth-of-injuries/) - Editorial Note: In her comment, reproduced below, Sally was the person who best got to grips with what I was struggling with in last week's post and this week's and for the next few weeks. Drug induced injury is one sphere in which we get injured. Turning to other spheres may give us some ideas
- [Go Figure on Perversity](https://davidhealy.org/go-figure-on-perversity/) - In 1936, three workers at the Halowax Corporation in New York State, who had been working with chlorinated naphthalenes, developed chloracne - a skin condition that Viktor Yushenko's face brought dramatically to world attention in 2004, when he was standing as the pro-Western candidate for the presidency of Ukraine. Chloracne can be caused by many
- [Go Figure: A Geek Tragedy](https://davidhealy.org/go-figure-a-geek-tragedy/) - In 1939, in the laboratories of Geigy pharmaceuticals, Paul Mueller discovered that DichloroDiphenylTrichlorethane DDT killed insects more effectively that anything else then available. Robert Domenjoz, the later creator of imipramine, had the job of evaluating it. He did the testing on lice that was to make DDT one of the best-selling pharmaceuticals in the world. He
- [Go Figure: Murder or Accident?](https://davidhealy.org/go-figure-murder-or-accident/) - Harold Shipman was a doctor in Britain, who was arrested for murder in 1998. He turned out to be a true Angel of Death, the most prolific known serial killer, who killed it is thought between two and three hundred of his patients by prescribing opioids in large doses. After his trial and conviction and
- [Go Figure: Where Does All the Pain Come From?](https://davidhealy.org/go-figure-where-does-all-the-pain-come-from/) - Editorial Note: This anonymous comment featured toward the end of the Murder or Accident post. It seemed worth transforming into a post in its own right. In the week of the US vote, a key question facing voters is where does all the pain come from. A colleague and I gave a talk to family
- [42 or Thereabouts](https://davidhealy.org/42-or-thereabouts/) - See previous posts - Switch on Anti-Depression Today and So Long and Thanks for all the Serotonin. In response to the recent BMJ editorial on Serotonin and Depression, there were seventeen letters of which three were published, along with my response. These are copied below along with the best letter - by Barney Carroll -
- [So Long and Thanks for all the Serotonin](https://davidhealy.org/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-serotonin/) - The BMJ article on Serotonin and Depression has stirred some interest. There are some highly technical comments on the BMJ site but of course the key point behind the piece is the rather obvious fact that twenty-five years ago many people were saying it was all a myth. The extraordinary Michael Leunig nailed it twenty years
- [Does God Play Dice?](https://davidhealy.org/does-god-play-dice/) - I am due to give a lecture on Thursday. This LINK and the Link below will let people sign in for this. If God Doesn't Play Dice, Should Doctors? This talk presents a new history and analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) making the case that while these can be very helpful, at present they
- [Who's Afraid of Science?](https://davidhealy.org/whos-afraid-of-science/) - I was invited by Yulia Mikhailova to deliver a Guest Lecture to the New Mexico Technical Institute on Wednesday February 2. The talk began and appeared to be going smoothly, when halfway through the Zoom room was hacked with the hackers saying and writing a lot divisive and hateful things. A later post will say
- [The Pill That Steals Lives](https://davidhealy.org/the-pill-that-steals-lives/) - Katinka Blackford Newman talks about her new book Its now nearly three years ago since I woke up and found myself in a mental hospital in North West London. I looked down and saw wealds on my arms where I had torn my skin apart. There was a mirror in the tiny room where I’d
- [If You Wake at Midnight](https://davidhealy.org/if-you-wake-at-midnight/) - Andrew Marriott's recently published If You Wake at Midnight is a compelling read. It would have been a great candidate for inclusion on the recent list of Books on Medical Treatments Gone Wrong. It tells the story of Lariam – mefloquine – a treatment to ward off malaria. A drug that for over 40 years
- [The Spectre of Dissent](https://davidhealy.org/the-spectre-of-dissent/) - The last post The Greatest Failure of What Used to be called Medicine provoked a lot of comment - or at least the photographic images in it did. There was little discussion about the content of the post and what to do about the spectre of bureaucrats in the guideline and the regulatory apparatus hanging
- [In the Name of the BMJ](https://davidhealy.org/in-the-name-of-the-bmj/) - Editorial Note: This post follows last weeks In the Name of the BBC. There will probably be two more posts on Hostile Environments and The Anti-Facts Brigade. The titles and this photograph come from the movie In the Name of the Father - a compelling 1993 move about the Guildford Four which comes complete with
- [Hanami & HPV Statement](https://davidhealy.org/hanami-hpv-statement/) - Medwatcher Japan recently convened a symposium on the injuries caused by Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) Vaccines. Medwatcher are one of the most impressive pharmacovigilance groups in the world today. The statement from the meeting, issued just as Hanami (cherry-blossom) season ends, again notes the injuries gratuitously inflicted by bureaucrats and others - in this
- [When the going gets tough, get a woman](https://davidhealy.org/when-the-going-gets-tough-get-a-woman/) - 64 women to sue in 3 Japanese courts over health woes from cervical cancer vaccines A group of lawyers for 64 women who are suffering health problems from cervical cancer vaccines said Tuesday the victims will file damages lawsuits against the government and two drug makers that produced the vaccines through four district courts on
- [Pandemrix and Narcolepsy](https://davidhealy.org/pandemrix-and-narcolepsy/) - Editorial Note: In Pandemonium and Pandemrix the question was when and what basis is it possible to agree with an obviously smart women, as AM is, that there must be a link between the Pandemrix she was given and the narcolepsy she ended up with. No one really tackled this head on. The answer has
- [Pandemonium and Pandemrix](https://davidhealy.org/pandemonium-and-pandemrix/) - Editorial Note: At the heart of RxISK is the idea that if something goes wrong for you on some medication you are the person best placed to know if there is an issue. But again and again when people raise a problem they find they are invalidated - nonsense, rubbish, its your illness or whatever.
- [Compulsory Vaccination and the Media – The Australian Experience](https://davidhealy.org/compulsory-vaccination-and-the-media-the-australian-experience/) - Editorial Note: This is another post on the vaccination and censorship theme. Elizabeth Hart's comments, over the past few weeks in response to some of the posts here, on efforts to stifle debate have been balanced and eloquent. Given the growing number of new journalism outlets, such as The Conversation, that portray themselves as tackling
- [August is the Cruellest Month](https://davidhealy.org/august-is-the-cruellest-month/) - April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. T.S. Eliot: The Waste-Land In August 1914, the First World War took shape. In August 1939, the Second World War was in preparation with Germany launching the first attacks on September 1. At
- [Will Medical Insurers Stop Killing People](https://davidhealy.org/will-medical-insurers-stop-killing-people/) - The Daily Telegraph in the UK as well as The Daily Mail carried articles this week on a paper in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry by John Read and colleagues that was based on the work of AntidepAware. For over a decade, AntidepAware has been cataloguing inquests in Britain where it appears likely
- [Royal College of Psychiatrists' Suicide Note](https://davidhealy.org/royal-college-of-psychiatrists-suicide-note/) - RCPsych President responds to newspaper coverage on antidepressants 24 April 2023 Dr Adrian James, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has written to national newspapers responding to recent articles erroneously linking antidepressants to suicide. Here is the full text of the letter. “I was disappointed to read your article, which has potential to unjustifiably
- [Femmes Enceintes et Essais Cliniques](https://davidhealy.org/femmes-enceintes-et-essais-cliniques/) - Peter Selley, un collègue médecin, avec qui je suis en contact depuis près de deux ans, il y a un an a commencé à parler d'essais cliniques sur le VRS. Je n'y ai prêté aucune attention, mais il apparaît maintenant qu’il a eu beaucoup plus de flair pour “lever un lièvre”. Par “un lièvre”, j'entends
- [De La Revolucion Francesca A La A. I.](https://davidhealy.org/de-la-revolucion-francesa-a-la-intelligencia-artificial/) - MEDICINA: DE LA REVOLUCIÓN FRANCESA A LA INTELLIGENCIA ARTIFICIAL Diapositiva 1: En pleno siglo XVIII en Francia médicos como François Quesnay y otros fisiócratas crearon la palabra economía, que dio lugar a expresiones como Laissez-Faire y Emprendedor. Proponían la idea de que los organismos humanos se pueden autorregular, lo que podríamos llamar homeostasia. Adam Smith
- [Data Based Medicine and Cochrane Inc](https://davidhealy.org/data-based-medicine-and-cochrane-inc/) - Editorial Note: This post continues a sequence that began with Cochrane Cock-up. It centers on treatment efficacy. A third post will center on safety where Cochrane has failed even more comprehensively than on efficacy. A fourth will feature some of the protagonists. The Cochrane Collaboration took shape around two foundational ideas. One was that randomized
- [Cochrexit?](https://davidhealy.org/cochrexit/) - Editorial: There were no plans to write a part 5 to a 4-part series but this account by David Hammerstein, a Cochrane board member, clamors to be spread. One more point to mention is if what Cochrane is doing now is junk, then the NICE and all other guidelines are also junk. So there is
- [The Valley of Death](https://davidhealy.org/the-valley-of-death/) - Editorial: Part 3 of this Cochrane sequence follows on from last week's Data Based Medicine. While the histories of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) celebrate a first use of randomization in 1947, and there was some use of RCTs, primarily in mental health, in the mid-1950s, RCTs were a minority interest until 1962 and might have
- [Cochrane: Collaboration or Cult?](https://davidhealy.org/cochrane-collaboration-or-cult/) - Editorial Note: This is the fourth in a sequence of posts on the possible disintegration of the Cochrane enterprise. The most recent being the Valley of Death. Archie Cochrane was one of a group of British doctors who came back from World War II committed to social medicine, some of whom like Richard Doll, who
- [Cochrane Cock-up](https://davidhealy.org/cochrane-cock-up/) - Editorial Note: The Akathisia theme of recent weeks will move over to RxISK for the moment to leave room for some posts about an astonishing meltdown in Cochrane centered on the HPV vaccine. The Cochrane Collaboration began a quarter of a century ago aimed at trying to pull together the best available evidence on treatments.
- [Let's Do The AbbVie Again](https://davidhealy.org/abbvie/) - The idea of a Boycott is an Irish invention. During the Land Wars in 1880, when Colonel Boycott on behalf of Lord Erne unscrupulously evicted tenants who didn't pay rent following a bad harvest, no one moved in to rent the vacant farms. Everyone refused to talk to Boycott. He was ostracised completely. The tactic worked so
- [AbbVie: Humira Timeline](https://davidhealy.org/abbvie-humira-timeline/) - Editorial Note: An article in Forbes this week suggested Humira is set to become the biggest selling drug of all time. The timeline below, found by Harriet Rosenberg on the JusticeSeekers' website, covers the timeline of its elevation to the blockbuster Hall of Fame. This post and several to come are part of a sequence outlining
- [David Healy to speak at HowTheLightGetsIn Festival](https://davidhealy.org/david-healy-to-speak-at-howthelightgetsin-festival/) - RxISK CEO Dr. David Healy will be speaking at HowTheLightGetsIn, the world’s largest philosophy and music festival, on May 25, 2014. Bringing together world-leading scientists, musicians, philosophers and politicians - including Roger Penrose, Cory Doctorow, Laurie Penny, Lawrence Krauss, Saskia Sassen, David Nutt, Lyse Doucet, Molotov Jukebox, Owen Jones, and Mr. Scruff - for debates,
- [Lulu to the Rescue?](https://davidhealy.org/lulu-to-the-rescue/) - When Samizdat published Children of the Cure on Amazon, there was discomfort in some quarters. The discomfort was practical for some. Mark Carter from Auckland told us it would take 154 NZ dollars to buy two copies and have them posted to him – he had to go through Amazon.com as Amazon.com.au for some strange
- [The Spooking of Ichabod Crane](https://davidhealy.org/the-spooking-of-ichabod-crane/) - There are 3 more Riffs on the 329 theme, with 3 more to come. Julie Wood the prime moved behind the Study329.org site, which provided much of the underpinning of Children of the Cure has written a Riff on the book which can be found in full on Samizdat under Sympathy and Pills or here
- [Swallowed Whole or Murdered: Malcharist](https://davidhealy.org/swallowed-whole-or-murdered-malcharist/) - Patrick Hahn has written the first Riff on Malcharist which is now posted on Samizdat reproduced below. What Paddy Chayefsky’s Network was to the Twentieth Century, Paul John Scott’s Malcharist is to the Twenty-First. This is a novel that takes the reader deep inside the Pharmaceutical Empire which invents diseases, creates “patient advocacy organizations” to
- [Neo-culturalism](https://davidhealy.org/neo-culturalism/) - This post first appeared on Samizdat Health. Anyone who wants early notifications of things appearing there should follow @SamizdatHealth on Twitter and the Samizdat Health Facebook page. Members of Samizdat will initially include anyone contributing material in book or other art form but we will look to develop a Friends of Samizdat group also. Last
- [Clinical Trials Are Unsafe](https://davidhealy.org/clinical-trials-are-unsafe/) - This is the first of 3 linked lectures given to family doctors in Stockholm on September 9 2021. The meeting was organized by André Marx, a family doctor in Stockholm who also runs Sweden's first and only public health care-funded withdrawal clinic for psychiatric drugs. The alternate title of this talk is Girl with a
- [People are the Data in Clinical Trials](https://davidhealy.org/people-are-the-data-in-clinical-trials/) - This is the second of a 3 lecture series given to family doctors in Stockholm on September 9 this year. The meeting was organized by André Marx. The alternate title of this talk is Girl who Tackles Ghosts. It follows Girl with a Clinical Trial Tattoo. It will be followed by Girl who Eats Salt.
- [They Used to Call It Medicine](https://davidhealy.org/they-used-to-call-it-medicine/) - This is part 3 of a set of lectures organized by André Marx, a family doctor from Stockholm. Its alternate title is Girl who Eats Salt. This follows Girl with a Clinical Trial Tattoo, and Girl who Tackles Ghosts. A video recording done by Thomas Hultgren of Girl who Eats Salt is Here. Our lady
- [Relationship Based Medicine](https://davidhealy.org/relationship-based-medicine/) - Some months ago I was asked by Paul Rosenfeld, who directs psychiatric training at Mount Sinai Hospital Morningside West, to give a lecture. This took place on January 18. There was a Q and A afterwards. The talk was recorded and the video is here - Relationship Based Medicine. There will be two related talks,
- [In Memory of Dexter Johnson](https://davidhealy.org/in-memory-of-dexter-johnson/) - Several months ago, I was invited to give a public lecture at the University of Lethbridge. The lecture happened last week. As outlined in the recordings, the initial trigger that brought me to Lethbridge came from Dan Johnson, a Professor there, whose son, Dexter, one of twin boys that Dan had been looking after as
- [Beware Doctors Bearing Gifts](https://davidhealy.org/beware-doctors-bearing-gifts/) - This post gives the content of a public lecture organized by Dan Johnson and Jennifer Williams - see In Memory of Dexter Johnson. The slides and text are below. There are two video recordings - the official version is by Thomas Paul which is White Coat Storm. A just to be safe second version -
- [The History of a Medical Psychosis](https://davidhealy.org/the-history-of-a-medical-psychosis/) - This is a third talk in a series that began with Relationship Based Medicine , continued with Beware of Doctors Bearing Gifts and concludes with this talk, which could called History of a Medical Psychosis, Medical Neoliberalism, Evident versus Evidence Based Medicine, A Lutheran Moment, or Does Objectivity Come from using Chance to Control Bias
- [Samizdat Health](https://davidhealy.org/samizdat-health/) - Editorial Note: This post first featured on Samizdat Health, which later this month will publish The Decapitation of Care. Samizdat Health - a writer’s co-operative that has taken shape in responses to changes in health and in publishing - will be borne this month. This post copies the feature on SamizdatHealth.org The original Samizdat was
- [Righteous Anger](https://davidhealy.org/righteous-anger/) - There are 2 more Riffs on Children of the Cure, with more on the way and 1 on The Decapitation of Care. The image above isn't quite right - might be better to have Lilly, Pfizer, Merck and GSK represented on the name plates. The illustrations in the Riffs however are the usual compelling imagery
- [Malcharist](https://davidhealy.org/malcharist/) - Samizdat announces the release of Malcharist by Paul John Scott. This is a grippingly realistic page-turner about the corruption of clinical trials told through the crisis of conscience of a medical ghostwriter. Set in Manhattan in 2010 and laced with dark humor throughout its fast 352 pages, it finds Shivani Patel in its opening chapters
- [The Decapitation of Care: The Healthcare Manifesto](https://davidhealy.org/the-decapitation-of-care-the-healthcare-manifesto/) - Samizdat has just launched The Decapitation of Care on Amazon -- in English (print and kindle) and La santé décapitée in French (kindle) with French print in a few days time and El Fin Del Cuidado; Una breve historia del auge y caída de la atención médica in Spanish both print and kindle very soon after.
- [RxISK Newsletter re Samizdat Launch](https://davidhealy.org/rxisk-newsletter-re-samizdat-launch/) - RxISK has just launched a writer's co-operative - Samizdat-Health and Samizdat House - for non-fiction and fiction publications falling outside the boundaries of the sanctioned conversation on issues thrown up by health. Launching a new set of imprints like this has become necessary, because publishing about treatment-related difficulties has become increasingly problematic in a risk-averse
- [Children of the Cure: Hand of History?](https://davidhealy.org/children-of-the-cure-hand-of-history/) - Children of the Cure has just been published - the Preface is on Samizdat. The first Chapter is on RxISK - Fear of Lying. Children is one of several closely related books due out in the next few weeks including Paul John Scott's The Malcharist and Jon Jureidini and Leemon McHenry's Illusions of Evidence Based
- [Riffs on Children of the Cure - Ode to Beethoven](https://davidhealy.org/riffs-on-children-of-the-cure-ode-to-beethoven/) - Samizdat now features 3 Riffs on Children of the Cure, with more on the way. The first was by Max Fink - above - a second has come from Heather Roberts, below, who has posted further reflections on Olly's Friendship Foundation Facebook page and a third from Bob Fiddaman, further down again. Bob also features
- [Prescription for Sorrow - Patrick Hahn](https://davidhealy.org/prescription-for-sorrow/) - This week Samizdat publishes its Fourth book - Prescription for Sorrow by Patrick Hahn, following on the heels of its Third book, the best-selling Malcharist. Jim Gottsteins's The Zyprexa Papers is an honorary Fifth. The book is immediately available on Amazon and we will look to get it installed on Kobo and Lulu also. For
- [Shipwreck of the Singular: Healthcare's Castaways](https://davidhealy.org/shipwreck-of-the-singular-healthcares-castaways/) - Shipwreck of the Singular, which Samizdat has just published, took more time to write than all my other books combined. The others tumbled out - often in just a few weeks. Unpublishable Pharmageddon took 3 weeks. But it then took 4 years to find a publisher. I took on an agent to help get a
- [Announcing a Birth](https://davidhealy.org/announcing-a-birth/) - Samizdat is proud to announce the imminent birth of El Naufragio de lo Singular – a transformation into Spanish of Shipwreck of the Singular. The birth is expected before the end of September. The expectant parents welcome you to this post - the equivalent of a baby shower party. Baby showers may be primarily or
- [The Fog of a Special Medical Operation](https://davidhealy.org/the-fog-of-a-special-medical-operation/) - War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth. Carl von Clausewitz Almost a year to the day after this
- [Raiders of the Lost Drug Wreck](https://davidhealy.org/raiders-of-the-lost-drug-wreck/) - Editorial Note: This post follows from Vampire Medicines and Cisparency and Transparency and links to Relationship Based Medicine on Rxisk. The painting is of Joshua crossing the Jordan with the Arc of the Covenant - an image that catches the essential features of climactic scene of Raiders of the Lost Arc with Joshua in the
- [The Antidepressant Era: The Movie](https://davidhealy.org/the-antidepressant-era-the-movie/) - The Antidepressant Era was written in 1995, and first published in 1997. A paperback came out in 1999. It was close to universally welcomed – see reviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. It was favorably received by reviewers from the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps because it made clear that this branch of
- [Fake Science, Fake Religion or Fake What?](https://davidhealy.org/fake-science-fake-religion-or-fake-what/) - There has been increasing brouhaha about Fake News of late. In the general media, Facebook are apparently going to introduce panels of reviewers to take down posts that contain fake material. In the academic media, doctors are told not to believe what they hear in the media about the adverse effects of drugs - See
- [Please Don't Empower Me Anymore](https://davidhealy.org/please-dont-empower-me-anymore/) - Editorial Note: This is the second part of a Motivational Interviewing series crafted by Johanna Ryan and Ken Spriggs. Do you know the locations of all the best bathrooms? Do you often take a seat near the exit, just in case? Do you excuse yourself often to use the bathroom? Do you ever skip meals,
- [Are Journalists the Answer to Clinical Medicines Cause and Effect Problem?](https://davidhealy.org/are-journalists-the-answer-to-clinical-medicines-cause-and-effect-problem/) - This post by David Healy and Peter Selley does not question the good intentions of anyone mentioned. But sometimes good intentions can land us in a mess. In 2001, Study 329, a clinical trial comparing paroxetine to imipramine and placebo was published; it claimed paroxetine was effective and safe (1). Jon Jureidini and other clinicians
- [A Shot in the Dark for Pregnant People](https://davidhealy.org/a-shot-in-the-dark-for-pregnant-people/) - As of today, the BMJ have come on board with the contents of this post. There is an article by Hristio Boytchev - see Maternal RSV Vaccines And an editorial by Elizabeth Robinson and Rosalind Smith - Preventing RSV. Britain's Daily Mail, possible the best newspaper for coverage of health issues, is also now covering
- [Twenty Six Words and the Internet](https://davidhealy.org/twenty-six-words-and-the-internet/) - Artificial Intelligence, which the Internet of course facilitates, has been one of the main news items lately. We are beginning to panic about the future. A RxISK post We Will Get Fooled Again picks up some of the mounting concern. The last sentence in the text above introducing Imagining the Internet Centre perhaps unintentionally catches
- [Jen and the Genestalk](https://davidhealy.org/jen-and-the-genestalk/) - Mystery in the Moonlight © Nina Otulakowski March 2023 As she was about to leave the house, Jen’s mother asked her if she was on her way to get vaccinated. Mother, she said, that’s like asking me to take the cow to the market. It’s a bit twentieth century, maybe even nineteenth. You get vaccinia
- [Dos Centavos - Veinte Euros](https://davidhealy.org/dos-centavos-veinte-euros/) - Five years ago, in a riff on the theme of rape, Dos Centavos tackled drug induced harms and the inability of doctors to see, hear or believe the people they put on a poison who end up poisoned. Dos Centavos was not the only post on this unfolding disaster. Many other posts, like A
- [Here We Stand, We Can Do No Other](https://davidhealy.org/here-we-stand-we-can-do-no-other/) - In 1517, Martin Luther nailed a defiant proclamation to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. (See RxISK Reformation Day). The issuing of indulgences, offering easier entries to Heaven, in return for money is popularly represented as being at the heart of the storm that followed. A significant part of the storm came from Luther’s stubbornness –
- [Are Women Better at Everything?](https://davidhealy.org/are-women-better-at-everything/) - I was born in a generation where it was thought women couldn’t drive cars, write fiction, compose music, compete at sports, or should be let work after marriage. Women were emotional, intuitive, erratic but not really capable of full rationality. Ireland in the 1950s may have been a few years behind other parts of Europe
- [Military Medicine, Wealth and Health](https://davidhealy.org/military-medicine-wealth-and-health/) - Here is a first stab at a series of 'short' video clips which apparently better for marketing ideas that full length lectures - see below. They are drawn from Beware Doctors Bearing Gifts. Military Medicine - Drugs and Guns The Life Pfizer Want you to Live Wealth Makes Health Medical Neo-Liberalism What Do Women Most
- [We Won't Get Fooled Again](https://davidhealy.org/we-wont-get-fooled-again/) - We Won't Get Fooled Again sounds much tamer now than it once did. It was an anthem for the left in 1972 but in this context its not clear who's anthem it might be. The message of the WHO song is we will get fooled again - see the RxISK We Will Get Fooled
- [Conspiracies, Cock-Ups and History](https://davidhealy.org/conspiracies-cock-ups-and-history/) - Since their introduction around 1800, Vaccines have produced many antibodies - to their very existence. From the start, some people, with good cause, were wary of them – they led to injuries. Governments in contrast have tended to see more benefits than harms and have made vaccination mandatory. Mandatory vaccination has not gone down well.
- [Can You Hear the Suzerain Call?](https://davidhealy.org/can-you-hear-the-suzerain-call/) - A Suzerain is a Superior Feudal Lord to whom fealty is due - an Overlord. A Suzerain is a dominant power controlling the foreign relations of a vassal state but allowing it sovereign authority in its internal affairs. This post needs to be read in conjunction with Twas the NICE Before Christmas. The leaders of
- [Shots to Save the World and Cock-Ups](https://davidhealy.org/shots-to-save-the-world-and-cock-ups/) - I am not enthusiastic about advertising books that sing the praises of Operation Warp Speed but it is difficult not to read them if you want to find out what the last three years has been all about. I've even donated money to Albert Bourla or Pfizer or his ghostwriter for a copy of Moonshot
- [The Sovereign Individual](https://davidhealy.org/the-sovereign-individual/) - To the Sounds of a Drum © Nina Otulakowski November 2022 Back in the last Millenium, 1997, a book appeared called The Sovereign Individual, written by James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg (yes - the father of Jacob) about the transition to an information age. No longer would we be Numbers, we would be Free Men
- [I Am Not a Number, I Am a Free Man](https://davidhealy.org/i-am-not-a-number-i-am-a-free-man/) - This post from our Economics Correspondent is closely linked to Remind Your Sister to Get Vaccinated and also Treatment Great, Patient Died. Portmeirion Village in North Wales provided the backdrop for a 1960s Cult Classic series, The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan. McGoohan was ‘Number Six’. At its core was the Prisoner's unwillingness to be a
- [COVID and Vaccine: It takes two to Tango](https://davidhealy.org/covid-and-vaccine-it-takes-two-to-tango/) - This post follows on from last weeks Vaccine Rag or Vaccine Tango. In the photo above, appropriately in the centre, we have Nicolás Vaquer, the plenipotentiary to Argentina of a Big American Power (Pfizer). On the left of the photo, to the right of the Boss of Bosses, is Dr. Fernando Polack, the head
- [Vaccine Rag or Vaccine Tango](https://davidhealy.org/vaccine-rag-or-vaccine-tango/) - Starting in August 2020, i-Trials, a company owned by Fernando Polack, his family, and colleagues, set up to run clinical trials on a commercial basis, recruited 5,768 of the 43,548 volunteers randomized to either BNT162b2 or placebo in what is usually called Pfizer’s trial, although the trial was actually set up, run by and supervised
- [mRNA Boosters and mRNA Boosterism](https://davidhealy.org/mrna-boosters-and-mrna-boosterism/) - Following on Augusto's efforts to get the Argentine state to look at what happened to him and others in the Pfizer Comirnaty Trial - See News Flash - over the next few weeks, this blog will show some trial results from the Buenos Aires site, which do point to issues that need to be clarified.
- [News Flash - Noticia de última Hora ](https://davidhealy.org/news-flash-noticia-de-ultima-hora/) - From our South American correspondent For David and Goliath read Augusto Roux and Albert Bourla - Pfizer (who might just be in Trouble) Readers who read earlier posts - Disappeared in Argentina - Fishy Business in the Rio de la Plata - So Long and Thanks for all the Fish - will remember the unsavoury
- [Special Medical Operation Hits Fog](https://davidhealy.org/special-medical-operation-hits-fog/) - This post follows on from The Fog of a Special Medical Operation. Joe Biden says we have to resist Putin’s Special Military Operation. If we don't resist this SMO, we are told, Putin will use it as a precedent to extend his reach beyond Ukraine. I don't know enough about all this, but, perhaps just
- [Total Eclipse of the Heart](https://davidhealy.org/total-eclipse-of-the-heart/) - https://twitter.com/i/status/1571186794644873217 Paul Pickerell Imagine you were a healthy public-spirited 49 year-old in Texas. You volunteered to take part in Pfizer’s Covid Vaccine trial. Your medical history was just a touch of hay-fever. You went through all the check-ups to make sure you were eligible. You rolled up your sleeve on 29 August 2020. And had
- [Shit Happens with the A Team](https://davidhealy.org/shit-happens-with-the-a-team/) - For youngsters, the A-Team was a television program about a group of ex-US Army dudes who used to go around tackling problems - often by blasting them out of existence. They were a little more diverse than Pfizer's A-Team. Down in the Deep South in Huntsville Alabama, you will find the Medical Affiliated Research Center.
- [Mike Dever and Vaccines](https://davidhealy.org/mike-dever-and-vaccines/) - When Clinical Trials began in the 1950s, investigators knew the patients and because of this could spot changes in them for the better or the worse. The expectation was that they would make a judgement call about things happening in a trial and, in many cases, would link the drug to an event – good
- [Miracles in Buenos Aires: Water and Wine](https://davidhealy.org/miracles-in-buenos-aires-water-and-wine/) - This post is by our South American correspondent. A Water into Wine miracle occurred in Buenos Aires in October 2020. A 66 year old volunteer, number 12315632 in Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine trial, had received his second vaccination of BNT162b2 (30 μg) on the nineteenth of September in the city’s Hospital Militar. Twenty-nine days later he
- [Yellow and Other Virus and Vaccine Perils](https://davidhealy.org/yellow-and-other-virus-and-vaccine-perils/) - Big Friendly Gates On 28 April the NEJM published the interim results of a trial of Prefusion F Protein–Based Respiratory Syncytial Virus Immunization in Pregnancy. This paper contains evidence of a neonatal jaundice hazard in the babies whose mothers had been immunised - but you'd never guess it from the way the paper is written.
- [Military Maneuvers in the Dark](https://davidhealy.org/military-maneuvers-in-the-dark/) - This post follows on from If You Wake at Midnight. Military Medicine When the history of modern medicine is laid out - See Shipwreck of the Singular - it is clear that, from Napoleon onwards, the military have been the greatest influence on its development. In Wars before 1900, more soldiers died from disease than
- [Forked Tongues. Adverse Event or Adverse Reaction?](https://davidhealy.org/forked-tongues-adverse-event-or-adverse-reaction/) - Linguas Bifidas © Nina Otulakowski July 2022 An Adverse Event is anything that happens while a trial is happening - even a nuclear war. There were lots of traffic accidents and broken bones in Buenos Aires during the Pfizer trial - mostly on placebo. Maybe Covid vaccines prevent fractures or accidents. Not impossible if you
- [The Best Books on What Medicine Should Be](https://davidhealy.org/the-best-books-on-what-medicine-should-be/) - Two months ago I had an email from Ben Fox of forauthors@shepherd.com – a new venture looking to promote books in a new way. See Shepherd.com. The idea is to feature a book by an author and then get her or him to list five books that have particularly influenced them – centered on a
- [Harmatology: a New Science](https://davidhealy.org/harmatology-a-new-science/) - In 2008-2009, 7 young women died in a HPV vaccine trial in India. There was a backlash against the clinical trial industry. Quite apart from Pharma trials, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had 70 ongoing trials that were abandoned. It was clear, Indian investigators had to be taught how to assess awkward events properly.
- [So Long and Thanks for all the Fish](https://davidhealy.org/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish/) - This image of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Augusto Roux with Augusto as Obelix (of Asterix and Obelix fame), in the Roman Colliseum, will have to wait for a full explanation. It will make sense in Argentina and Europe but not in North America. A detailed explanation for North Americans will come next week. The posts
- [Mark and Barb and Eric and Carole](https://davidhealy.org/mark-and-barb-and-eric-and-carole/) - If North Americans don't know much about Asterix cartoons - see The Harmed, Europeans don't know about MAD. This image was adapted by Nina Otulakowski from a front cover image in Mad, see below, featuring the 1969 Bob, and Carol, and Ted and Alice movie. Born in the USA Multi-Regional Clinical Trials (MRCT) was born
- [The Harmed Throw Down a Gauntlet](https://davidhealy.org/the-harmed-throw-down-a-gauntlet/) - The Gauls in Pharmaland © Nina Otulakowski May 2022 This set piece featuring the heroes from Cause and Effect copies a scene from an Asterix and Obelix cartoon - the original is below. Few North Americans know about Asterix and Obelix, the irreverent Gauls, who almost single-handedly held out against the might of the Roman
- [Post Covid Vaccine Neuropathic Arm](https://davidhealy.org/post-covid-vaccine-neuropathic-arm/) - This post is by Mary Lynch - see Credentials in Cause and Effect. A neuropathic arm sounds like something terrible from an Edgar Allan Poe horror story. Anette Diamond (name changed) is a 66 year-old woman. She has approved this post. She had been living with chronic low back pain and fibromyalgia for several years
- [Cody's Comirnaty Crash Landing](https://davidhealy.org/codys-comirnaty-crash-landing/) - Cody's case is the eighth in the Cause and Effect series. Cody Flint was interviewed by DH and JWD in October and November 2021, who both concur on the details below. Cody had previously filled out an intake form with the details of his history and clinical course following the vaccine and provided Primary Care
- [The Lights all went out in Massachusetts](https://davidhealy.org/the-lights-all-went-out-in-massachusetts/) - The Pied Piper © Nina Otulakowski March 2022 Four weeks before Eric Rubin Boston Strangler and Fishy Business in the Rio de la Plata were posted, I wrote to Dr Carole Allen, the President of the Massachusetts Medical Society, who are notionally responsible for the New England Journal of Misinformation. My hope was to put her
- [Fishy Business in the Rio de la Plata](https://davidhealy.org/fishy-business-in-the-rio-de-la-plata/) - From our South American Correspondent... The Argentine national flag is from a design by General Belgrano who died on June 20 1820 - 200 years almost to the day before Fernando Polack's strange plasma trial began. Fernando Pedro Polack MD in the spotlight Strange things have been going on in the murky world of clinical
- [Eric Rubin Boston Strangler](https://davidhealy.org/eric-rubin-boston-strangler/) - This post is in part two of the Cause and Effect Forum and it, with other posts centred on the New England Journal of Misinformation, will feature under NEJM-GATE. The third part will focus on RCTs. Once all Ten Cases are in place, it should be possible to print the forum off to support medical
- [Reds Under the Bed: the New McCarthyism](https://davidhealy.org/reds-under-the-bed-the-new-mccarthyism/) - Editorial Note: Its an Irish custom to offer one for the road. Having finished the trilogy on Outsourcing Fascism, here's one for the road. A little over two years ago I wrote two posts - Little Red Riding Hood and Little Red Stethoscope that give me pleasure today - but also make me worry about
- [Injuries in Vaccine Trials](https://davidhealy.org/injuries-in-vaccine-trials/) - A Fine Balance © Nina Otulakowski February 2022 Brianne Dressen's case below is the first of 10 clinical scenarios which will be laid out on Cause and Effect over the next few weeks. The credentials of those interviewing Bri and others can also be found there, along this week with Maddie De Garay's case. The
- [Pharmaceutical Rape](https://davidhealy.org/pharmaceutical-rape/) - Editorial Note: A riff by Laurie Oakley on the issue of Rape and Consent. See Laurie's recent post on RxISK - Over the Top: Tackling Medical Power and for pharmaceutical lawyers on the issue or Rape and Consent - see Dangerous Liaisons II. It should be read in conjunction with Doctors Writing Scary Scripts: Saving
- [The Crack through which the Science Gets In](https://davidhealy.org/the-crack-through-which-the-science-gets-in/) - Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering... © Billiam James 2022 This post inaugurates a new Cause and Effect Forum which can now be found as a Tab on dhblog.wpengine.com. Some of the Forum pieces will appear here also but the Cases at its heart will primarily appear there. When a
- [The Evidence that Counts for Us](https://davidhealy.org/the-evidence-that-counts-for-us/) - This post follows last weeks The Evidence that Counts for FDA. The image of dog or bear in a burning house with an untested fire extinguisher is one that many medical managers have used when referring to the Covid crisis and vaccines - the vaccines may not be perfect but we are in a burning
- [The Evidence that Counts for FDA](https://davidhealy.org/the-evidence-that-counts-for-fda/) - This is part one of a two part post. The image is from the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Arc and shows Indiana Jones being chased by angry natives with the shakiest of means of escape - like trying to escape in a Ford Pinto which risked bursting into flames. A Fireser 747
- [I Am the Alpha and the Omicron](https://davidhealy.org/i-am-the-alpha-and-the-omicron/) - The one good thing about the Pandemic is that its given rise to some good cartoons - more on the side of the Resistance I think but am open to being persuaded if anyone wants to send me Clever Cartoons from the Empire's side. I hope this post doesn't offend anyone's sensibilities - it should
- [Invalidating Indigenous Immunity](https://davidhealy.org/invalidating-indigenous-immunity/) - Rock, Stone, Crack - Disappear was supposed to be the last post of 2021. But this post forced itself forward, partly triggered by Marc Casañas, who with Alex Oncina translated El Naufragio - see Chronicle of a Tyranny Foretold. May We Never Forget One of the stories of 2021 in the English speaking world was
- [Rock, Stone, Crack - Disappear](https://davidhealy.org/rock-stone-crack-disappear/) - The end of the year is a time to turn to more 'spiritual' or reflective themes. This year two contrasting spiritualities, featured in previous end of year posts, have been headline news. Rock-etman One set of posts has looked at Salvation through Technology. Religion, Technology and Management. 'Tis the Season to Rebel. In 2021, we
- [Health Warning](https://davidhealy.org/health-warning/) - This is a warning about two linked posts - with two more next week. The Eclipse of Health Care features on dhblog.wpengine.com. It has a partner There was a Young Woman who Swallowed a Lie on RxISK.org These were combined in one document - Mandating Unproven Technologies, which along with a set of appendices was
- [The Eclipse of Health Care](https://davidhealy.org/the-eclipse-of-health-care/) - This post has a partner - There was a Young Woman who Swallowed a Lie. It also needs to be read with its Health Warning. A Full Eclipse of Care In the early 1980s, the pharmaceutical industry outsourced the running of its randomized clinical trials (RCTs) to Contract Research Organizations (CROs) and the writing up
- [New England Journal of Misinformation](https://davidhealy.org/new-england-journal-of-misinformation/) - (See update at end of article). Bri Dressen was a key figure behind the Washington DC November 2 event reported in Mandated Harms, Her testimony at this meeting features Here and Here. She followed up this testimony by writing to the New England Journal of Medicine which until recently was viewed as one of the most prestigious medical journals
- [Je Suis Charlie: You are Michael](https://davidhealy.org/je-suis-charlie-you-are-michael/) - Nearly seven years ago now, two brothers burst into the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, where they killed twelve people and injured eleven others. Charlie's crime was to support the idea that it was reasonable to portray the Prophet in Cartoon form. This touched a raw nerve for some French people. Nearly four
- [Chronicle of a Tyranny Foretold](https://davidhealy.org/chronicle-of-a-tyranny-foretold/) - This post links intimately with the Dia de los Muertos post on RxISK. El Naufragio de lo Singular was published two weeks ago. Translated by Alex Oncina Canovas and Marc Casañas, who have thought long and hard about related issues, it is likely this is almost its own book rather than just a translation. There
- [The Standardization of Psychiatry](https://davidhealy.org/the-standardization-of-psychiatry/) - The Back Story Britain's Royal College of Psychiatrists recently produced a book, Mind State and Society, edited by George Ikkos and Nick Bouras. MSS celebrates 50 years of psychiatry during the period 1960 - 2010. George approached me for a chapter on pharmaceutical industry input to the period. I wrote The Pharmaceutical Industry and the
- [From Virtual Care to Virtual Research](https://davidhealy.org/from-virtual-care-to-virtual-research/) - This post by Johanna Ryan continues a set of posts looking at the changing world of clinical trials - See Clinical Trial Fraud. These feed straight into and add to the points made in a series of lectures on how trials have developed over the last 3 decades - Clinical Trials Are Not Safe, People
- [Company Woman or Mother?](https://davidhealy.org/company-woman-or-mother/) - On June 3, 2009, Sean Tracey cross-examined Jane Nieman, who at the time was Director, U.S. Post-Marketing Group, Worldwide Clinical Safety for GlaxoSmithKline in a deposition. Ms. Nieman testified about a spontaneous event report for an aborted male child that was assigned Manufacturer Control Number 2001014040-2109 case number 3667484. This report, received by GSK/SB on
- [In a Galaxy too close to Home for Comfort](https://davidhealy.org/in-a-galaxy-too-close-to-home-for-comfort/) - Long ago, in friendlier times, this blog ran a series of Modern Myths featuring Crusoe. The plan was for a lot more but life got serious. Rummaging through files I came across some drafts. This one was dated 2010 but the original might have been written a year or more before. It was clearly the
- [Morgan vs Morgan: The Future of the NHS?](https://davidhealy.org/morgan-vs-morgan-the-future-of-the-nhs/) - This post features in a series of posts on the Politics of Care Forum. It sits alongside Can Politicians Save Us, Can Politicians Save the World as well as What's a Life Worth, Once We Were Warriors and Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Doctor. There will be a follow-up post next week. The letter
- [Escape from a Prescription Drug Maze](https://davidhealy.org/escape-from-a-prescription-drug-maze/) - This post copies a letter sent to Michelle O'Neill and Jeffrey Donaldson, the leaders of the two largest parties in Northern Ireland. It was sent with the letters to Eluned Morgan in Wales and Johnny Mercer in England featured here and on RxISK last week. The image is of Newgrange on the shortest day of
- [Revolution from Below: politics of care](https://davidhealy.org/revolution-from-below-politics-of-care/) - There is an important post on RxISK - What's a Life Worth? Its author, Tracey G, like Violetta in La Traviata would not describe herself as having led a perfect life. La Traviata is one of the all-time great operas and in Zeffirelli's movie, with Teresa Statas, is beyond compelling - especially when Alfredo's
- [Can Doctors Save their Jobs and the World](https://davidhealy.org/can-doctors-save-their-jobs-and-the-world/) - This post ideally should be titled - Savoury or Saviour? - as will become clear. Its part of the Politics of Care forum. It follows What You Can do to Save the World in a sequence of posts about what a range of people from us to Politicians and Us can do to turn around
- [Can Politicians Save Us?](https://davidhealy.org/can-politicians-save-us/) - This is a post in the Politics of Care Forum. It lies in the sequence of posts about What You Can Do to Save the World, and What Doctors can Do to Save the World. It will be followed by Can Politicians Save the World - it turned out there were just too many things
- [Can Politicians Save the World?](https://davidhealy.org/can-politicians-save-the-world/) - This is part two of Can Politicians Save US. Both are part of the Politics of Care forum. It would be great if you could print off these two posts and send to your local politician, asking what they figure on doing about some of these points. Nine Point Six in Can Politicians Save Us, mentions
- [How You Can Save HealthCare and the Global Climate](https://davidhealy.org/how-you-can-save-healthcare-and-the-global-climate/) - f This is the first of a series of posts on the Politics of Care forum that will outline what you, what your doctor, what your politician, what the media can do to make a difference to the ongoing destruction of the climate of health and the wider global climate. The to-dos below are to-do.
- ['Care' Homes:  What is Care?](https://davidhealy.org/care-homes-what-is-care/) - This is the first of about 6 posts on Social Care that are part of the Politics of Care forum. For more on Teresa Pocock who plays a central role in the efforts of a few of us to define what care is about - see Teresa Pocock. The Technological Revolution The technological revolution that
- [The Deep NeoLiberal State](https://davidhealy.org/the-deep-neoliberal-state/) - Care Homes placed a spotlight on private enterprise, greed, and short-termism in 'Care' Homes. The data cited on deaths in Canadian Long-Term Care (LTC) facilities look better for public or voluntary provision than for private provision. The apparent differences between the figures, however, might really mean that public and voluntary are grim with private provision
- [The Controlled Healthcare Opposition](https://davidhealy.org/the-controlled-healthcare-opposition/) - An instalment in the Politics of Care In the Beginning For nearly 200 years, concerns about individual and public Health have been a badge for progressive politics. The revolutionaries in Paris in 1790 saw healthcare as close to the most important element of the ancien regime that needed dismantling and replacing with something that would
- [From Gaia Hypothesis to Pandora](https://davidhealy.org/from-gaia-hypothesis-to-pandora/) - Pandora's Eyes, ©2021 Billiam James From Gaia to Pandora is an instalment in the Politics of Care, which is now the main focus of this site. Pandora: Dos Centavos is a sister piece previously called the Pandora hypothesis. After writing this, I mentioned to my agent that a Pandora Hypothesis would be a closing point
- [The MedicoChemical and PetroChemical Twins](https://davidhealy.org/the-medicochemical-and-petrochemical-twins/) - This Medico-Chemical or Petrochemical post is one in a sequence of Politics of Care posts that explores the interface between our ability or inability to Care for our environment and ability or inability to Care for our health and the health of the most vulnerable amongst us. One of the problems getting in the way
- [Sex, Drugs and Bureaucrats](https://davidhealy.org/sex-drugs-and-bureaucrats/) - This post accompanies a Health Canada Warns post on RxISK. The Health Canada statement is classic bureaucratise. They "could not confirm, nor rule out, a causal link between stopping SSRI or SNRI treatment and persistent sexual dysfunction" because "the available studies were not designed to assess this effect" Exactly - deliberately designed not to detect.
- [Pandora: Dos Centavos](https://davidhealy.org/the-pandora-hypothesis/) - The recent US Supreme Court approval process for Brett Kavanaugh opened the lid of an earthenware vase marked Trust, when Christine Blasey-Ford stepped forward and said she had been abused by him. The hearings were dramatic. Other dramas never came into the frame. Dr Blasey-Ford had previously been engaged in medical research linked to figures
- [Ordinarily Well: Storm in a D Cup](https://davidhealy.org/ordinarily-well/) - Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants Peter Kramer 2016 This book was very difficult to review. In Ordinarily Well, Dr. Peter Kramer makes two arguments that I agree with. One is that clinical observation—the interaction by which a medical professional learns about a patient—counts for something. The other is that clinical trials, or evidence-based medicine
- [From Stephen O'Neill to the Crack of Doom](https://davidhealy.org/from-stephen-oneill-to-the-crack-of-doom/) - This is the first link to the Politics of Care forum. Comments on this post ideally need to centre on reports of actions - outlines of actions that will make a difference or details of what has resulted from efforts to follow up on the leads here. We need to keep track of what has
- [The Transit of Venus: Autonomy or Nurture?](https://davidhealy.org/the-transit-of-venus-autonomy-or-nurture/) - Venus is the black dot in the upper right quadrant of the sun. The plan was to finish the I Can't Breathe series with Magic is from Venus but then the word Nurture popped onto my radar. There is a Venus Rising to come. The word autonomy starts appearing in medicine and in bioethics sometime
- [Magic is from Venus](https://davidhealy.org/magic-is-from-venus/) - This the final instalment of a series that began with Being Black, and went through I Can't Breathe, I Can't Breathe II, I Can't Breathe III, To the Last Breath, and Algorithms are from Mars. There was a delay as the series has spun off a lot of other ideas that will hopefully bear fruit
- [Algorithms are from Mars](https://davidhealy.org/algorithms-are-from-mars/) - When God was in Heaven, our images of the Divine split between Justice and Mercy – the Shock and Awe figure of the Last Judgement or someone more like Portia letting us know the quality of mercy is not strained, that it droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven upon the place beneath. A person
- [To The Last Breath](https://davidhealy.org/to-the-last-breath/) - 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
- [I can't breathe III](https://davidhealy.org/i-cant-breathe-iii/) - This post follows on Being Black, I can’t breathe and I can’t breathe II and will be followed by Drawing Breath (I and maybe II). Patsy Stephenson has managed to wriggle her way in again, see comments on I can't breathe II. Whether she managed to stage this photo or not, as a red-head Patsy
- [I can't breathe II](https://davidhealy.org/i-cant-breathe-ii/) - This post continues a sequence that began with Being Black and I can't breathe. and will be continued with I can't breathe III and Drawing Breath. The picture features Patsy Stephenson, one of a well-heeled group of women, including Kate Middleton - likely there for the photo-op - protesting the death of Sarah Everard in
- [Being Black](https://davidhealy.org/being-black/) - You're a black man walking down a street with a friend. A cop car pulls up and two cops get out and spread-eagle you and your friend up against the car or a wall. They rough you up while they search you. You ask why have they stopped you and they say they don't need
- [Medically Assisted Death in Canada](https://davidhealy.org/medically-assisted-death-in-canada/) - Policy Options, a Canadian forum, published the piece below by Jocelyn Downie, David Wright and Mona Gupta, all of whom I know, as a contribution to a wider debate on the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) legislation currently under review in Canada, and especially the question of where does mental illness fit into this mix.
- [MAiD in Canada: Enduring Sexual Dysfunctions](https://davidhealy.org/maid-in-canada-enduring-sexual-dysfunctions/) - See accompanying MAiD in Canada and TRD. Illustration: Lost in Medication © created by Billiam James Canada put Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) legislation in place in June 2016. This allowed for medical assistance in dying in cases where death was reasonably foreseeable. In 2019, in Truchon v Attorney General of Canada, the Superior Court
- [Sex and Evidence Based Medicine](https://davidhealy.org/sex-and-evidence-based-medicine/) - The University of British Columbia in Vancouver hosts The Therapeutics Initiative an independent group who evaluate all medicines for effectiveness, harms and value in a regular series of Drugs Bulletins dealing with new drugs or emerging problems with older drugs. They were set up in 1994 just when evaluations of this type and Drugs Bulletins
- [High Noon: Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My....?](https://davidhealy.org/high-noon-do-not-forsake-me-oh-my/) - In early December 2020, Ian and Tania Morgan had to attend the inquest of their son Samuel in Swansea, South Wales. Sam died in January 2020, a week after he had been put on citalopram by his family doctor, Dr Adams. Sam was pretty close to a healthy volunteer. A 25 year old, sporty, successful
- [Sex, Drugs and a Leap Year Proposal](https://davidhealy.org/sex-drugs-and-a-leap-year-proposal/) - See Sex, Drugs and Bureaucrats for the start of this correspondence. You will need both posts to understand next weeks Suicide, Drugs and Bureaucrats. February 26 Rasi to Healy Thank you for your letter of 31st January 2020 regarding SSRIs and PRACs latest recommendation on the risk of persistent sexual dysfunction after treatment with serotonin
- [Shifting Vaccine Confidence](https://davidhealy.org/shifting-vaccine-confidence/) - Before 1980 Roughly through to 1980, vaccines were public goods. They were mostly made by national bodies who were publicly funded, although pharmaceutical companies were dipping their toes in the water. They were used for diseases that a national community thought were serious and worth getting vaccinated against – like polio. Few national communities would
- [Religion, Technology and Management](https://davidhealy.org/religion-technology-and-management/) - Religion Mention religion and the links between individuals and their creator, if they think they have one, come to mind. We imagine an individual fasting, meditating, or kneeling in prayer. It was more common in the past however to think of a people, like the People of Israel and their God. Our rulers, whether Kings
- [Fawlty Stars](https://davidhealy.org/fawlty-stars/) - The argument in The Fault Lies in our Stars features in Chapter 6 of the forthcoming Shipwreck of the Singular. It was sent out for comment to the following, who were chosen mostly by Mark Wilson. The responses received are below: Corrado Barbui, Lisa Bero, Alan Cassels, Angus Deaton, Jean-Francois Dreyfus, Andrew Leigh (author of
- [The Fault Lies in Our Stars](https://davidhealy.org/the-fault-lies-in-our-stars/) - The Fault lies in our Stars not in Ourselves: Randomized Controlled Trials & Clinical Knowledge In the Beginning In 1947, a trial of streptomycin introduced RCTs to medicine. From then, through to their incorporation into the 1962 amendments to the Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act, occasioned by the thalidomide tragedy, there were questions about the
- [The Raine in June Falls Mainly in ...](https://davidhealy.org/the-raine-in-june-falls-mainly-in/) - June Raine featured in the international media last week as the public face of Britain's MHRA (drugs regulatory agency) when they became the first agency to license a Covid vaccine. A journalist, who had unearthed a letter of mine from 20 years ago, got in touch with me asking to talk by phone about whether
- [Frontiers in Psychiatry: Elena Vicario](https://davidhealy.org/frontiers-in-psychiatry-elena-vicario/) - Some weeks ago, following the publication of an article by Andrea Cipriani in their journal, Jim Gottstein and I wrote to the Frontiers in Psychiatry Bigwigs asking for the Cipriani article to be removed - Meta-Analytic SuperSpreader. They have since replied Vicariously through Elena Vicario. From: Editorial Office Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2020 at
- [Michael Hengartner, Andrea Cipriani and Frontiers in Psychiatry](https://davidhealy.org/michael-hengartner-andrea-cipriani-and-frontiers-in-psychiatry/) - Meta-Analytic SuperSpreader outlined a disturbing sequence of events leading up to the publication of an article by Andrea Cipriani and colleagues effectively promoting the benefits of antidepressants. Andrea and colleagues are part of an Oxford University Precision Psychiatry 'lab'. The idea that this article in some way helps move us toward a precision psychiatry is
- [PIMsPlus: Medication Reference Site](https://davidhealy.org/pimsplus-medication-reference-site/) - Taper MD today launched PIMsPlus.org, a new free searchable resource for safer medication use which is focused on Potentially Inappropriate Medications (PIMs): medications that should be used with caution in older adults because research and clinical experience with these medications have shown that the risk of adverse effects can outweigh the benefits. The aim of
- [Meta-Analytic Super-Spreader](https://davidhealy.org/meta-analytic-super-spreader/) - In a recent post Infection Super-Spreaders, I outlined the disturbing publication of an article by Andrea Cipriani and colleagues that gives a green light to prescribing antidepressants to children. Prescribing antidepressants to children could even be part of Precision Psychiatry - a new Oxford University brand to complement Evidence Based Medicine. Concerned about developments, Jim
- [O'Neill, O'Neill and Frontiers Psychiatry](https://davidhealy.org/oneill-oneill-and-frontiers-psychiatry/) - O'Neill is just about the most famous Northern Irish surname - on both sides of the 'divide'. I wrote to Onora O'Neill, 3 weeks ago, following the last post. There has not been a response. My email may have gone into spam but if it has further emails likely will also. Faced with issues like
- [TRUST ME I’M NOT A DOCTOR](https://davidhealy.org/trust-me-im-not-a-doctor/) - Infection Super-Spreaders, with Michael Hengartner’s comment... I cannot recommend rejection, as this would mean to reject about 90% of clinical research and call into question everything EBM has achieved, including the Cochrane collaboration. .. opens up an unsettling vista. Calling into question EBM, and the Cochrane Collaboration, has echoes that are little short of well
- [Infection Super-Spreaders: Whose Department?](https://davidhealy.org/infection-super-spreaders-whose-department/) - This is a murky story that like Study 329, to which it links, doesn’t leave anyone looking good. First the journal – Frontiers in Psychiatry – which is one of the Frontiers group of journals. As outlined in Neo-Culturalism - a must read to get what is going on here and being done to all
- [Stormy Weather II](https://davidhealy.org/stormy-weather-ii/) - SWI There was a fuss after Stormy Weather. A colleague got in touch to ask if my twitter feed had been hacked - he'd been copied in on some weird stuff. I went on twitter to check - I rarely check things out. And noticed 250 notifications - the first few of which were all
- [Stormy Weather I](https://davidhealy.org/stormy-weather-i/) - If it appears in the New York Times it must be true but in truth we have no evidence that Stormy Daniels or Donald Trump or Joe Biden have PSSD or PFS or any related conditions - although there was considerable gossip at one point claiming Donald was taking Finasteride. Probably just Fake News. There
- [Doxycycline and Stephen O'Neill](https://davidhealy.org/doxycycline-and-stephen-oneill/) - Stephen O'Neill became anxious in 2016 and was given Sertraline. This caused an immediate toxic reaction that killed him, The doctors treating him invented a fictitious mental illness and both they and the coroner found it convenient to blame this fiction for Stephen's death. See The Death of Stephen O'Neill and related posts. The coroner
- [There is no Sanity Claus](https://davidhealy.org/there-is-no-sanity-claus/) - Mid-morning, on Tuesday September 24 2019, Britain was gripped. Lots of people stopped what they were doing and turned their TVs or computers to live feed from the Supreme Court. Spider Woman (Brenda Hale) was taking on the Joker (Boris Johnson). She punched him in the nose. The Joker had suspended Parliament at a critical
- [The NICE before Christmas](https://davidhealy.org/the-nice-before-christmas/) - In Orders from Nowhere, Vaughan Gething suggested writing to Andrew Dillon of NICE. The correspondence had an Xmas Eve denouement - hence the title. It seems everybody figures NICE hold all the answers. The doctors who treated Stephen O'Neill claimed to be keeping to NICE Guidelines and only using drugs licensed by MHRA. They also
- [Orders from Nowhere that Kill](https://davidhealy.org/orders-from-nowhere-that-kill/) - In The Death of Stephen O'Neill I suggested his doctors, like soldiers in an army, simply by dint of following orders were capable of doing horrific things. At his inquest, the doctors from the Bluestone unit in Craigavon, where Stephen had gone for help, issued this astonishing statement. Southern Trust Health and Social Care Trust
- [I Recognise these Constraints](https://davidhealy.org/i-recognise-these-constraints/) - The Perfect Killing Machine claims people in medicine's highest echelons recognise what killed Stephen O'Neill but figure there's little they can do about it. This letter from Frank Atherton is the most extraordinary I've received from Government. To see why you need to page down to the letter to which he is responding, a letter
- [Repetition Compulsion to the Death or Beyond?](https://davidhealy.org/repetition-compulsion-to-the-death-or-beyond/) - This post is all about a marvellous article by Arthur Schafer on Conflict of Interest - or something like that. See below. But first some background. In the Last Millennium Over three decades ago, Toronto and Thalassemia came together in what became one of the most celebrated bioethical cases of any millennium that initially pitched
- [Does My Bias Look Big in This?](https://davidhealy.org/does-my-bias-look-big-in-this/) - Big Bias (video here) may be the most important lecture I have ever given. Its not easy. The bottom line is that Clinical Trials don't work. For everyone working in health (medical Catholics), this is a bit like saying the Pope is not infallible. We have a great problem with this, partly because our response
- [Journalists and Doctors](https://davidhealy.org/journalists-and-doctors/) - The image is of legendary journalist Bill Haddad who did more to grapple with pharmaceutical corruption than anyone else. The opening lines of A Pill for Neoliberalism, as delivered, about the job of doctors and journalists being very similar, were not part of the transcript in last week’s post. The remarks came to me as
- [Sex Antidepressants and Neo-Liberalism](https://davidhealy.org/sex-antidepressants-and-neo-liberalism/) - This is the French translation of what was said at a lecture in Grenoble on October 14th and in the Lyon the following day. The numbers below should correspond closely with the slides. The english is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFgTFXXChi0&pbjreload=10 1/ Sur cette radiographie, vous voyez une épaule cassée. Je suis tombé dans la douche un vendredi
- [Spotlight on the Suicides in Northern Ireland](https://davidhealy.org/spotlight-on-the-suicides-in-northern-ireland/) - Northern Ireland has been at the centre of European, even world politics, over the last three years, as a result of a referendum in Britain that was held with little, if any, thought of the possible consequences for Ireland. If an alien zooming towards Earth burst through the atmosphere and was faced with the Western
- [Spotlight on the Suicides: Overture](https://davidhealy.org/spotlight-on-the-suicides-overture/) - This is part 2 of Spotlight on the Suicides. In February 2017, I received the email below. The email address gave no hint of where it came from - it could have been any English speaking country but the word Trust in the second and fourth paragraphs suggested England. The details seemed clear enough for
- [Spotlight on the Suicides: The Coroner](https://davidhealy.org/spotlight-on-the-suicides-the-coroner/) - This continues the Spotlight on Suicides Series - The photograph is of Patrick McGurgan - the coroner. Mr McGurgan appeared to be a decent man. He treated everyone with courtesy and appeared to be listening. His conclusions at the end of the inquest provoked a correspondence from me that will be posted later in this
- [Spotlight on the Suicides: The Family Doctor](https://davidhealy.org/spotlight-on-the-suicides-the-family-doctor/) - Continuing the Spotlight on the Suicides Series I have largely avoided naming names and will continue to avoid putting names in the frame but Stephen's family doctor's name, Dr Brannigan, is already in the public domain, and I've made it clear that the coroner thought highly of him and the whole point behind these posts
- [Spotlight on the Suicides: The Hospital Doctors](https://davidhealy.org/spotlight-on-the-suicides-the-hospital-doctors/) - This post continues the Spotlight on the Suicides series. There were 8 named people in Stephen O'Neill's medical record, or who made entries in the record between the time of first admission and his death. He appears to have told most of them that in his view the sertraline he had been put on and
- [Spotlight on the Suicides: The Politicians](https://davidhealy.org/spotlight-on-the-suicides-the-politicians/) - This Continues the Spotlight on the Suicides series. Astonished by the conclusion of Stephen O'Neill's inquest, I wrote to Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister, copied to the Ministers of Health in Ireland, Simon Harris, in Wales Vaughan Gething, and in England Matt Hancock, along with the Danish MEP, Margrete Auken, the European Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly
- [Spotlight on the Suicides: Women and Knights (?)](https://davidhealy.org/spotlight-on-the-suicides-women-and-knights/) - I had no reply to the letter sent in September featured in last week’s post - Spotlight on the Politicians. Michelle O’Neill had a nothing response to a letter she sent the Northern Ireland Office. Vaughn Gething’s office (Wales Health Minister), when asked, acknowledged receipt of the letter but figured they had only been sent
- [Spotlight on the Suicides: Behind the Scenes](https://davidhealy.org/spotlight-on-the-suicides-behind-the-scenes/) - Following their Spotlight on the Troubles series, BBC ran an astonishing Behind the Scenes program that must have left even those who thought they knew what happened in the Northern Irish Troubles doubt that they really knew what was going on. The revelations turned the Troubles into a real life version of John Le Carre's
- ['Tis the Season to Rebel](https://davidhealy.org/tis-the-season-to-rebel/) - In the Beginning The conventional story is that Good created the world but that at some point after the Creation a group of Rebel Angels figured they could do a better job of running the show. They took on the Almighty and lost – we are told. You can view Lucifer, Beelzebub or the Satan,
- [In the Name of the BBC](https://davidhealy.org/in-the-name-of-the-bbc/) - A recent BBC File on Four program on Antidepressants in Children, presented by Paul Connolly, has drawn disparaging comments on posts here. Here is some background detail. I was interviewed for the program. My messages were as follows: That the trials of Prozac in children were identical to the trials of other SSRIs and other
- [Women, Men and Drugs](https://davidhealy.org/women-men-and-drugs/) - I’ve been a fan of Placido Domingo for 40 years or more. His role alongside Teresa Stratas in Zeffirelli’s La Traviata (if its emotion you want – one of the greatest movies ever made) can still bring tears to my eyes. I always liked his voice more than Pavarotti’s, Carreras, or others – and he
- [Saint Candida's Day](https://davidhealy.org/saint-candidas-day/) - This is the final post in the Bruce Willis series - see Osama, Obama and Reckless. It's the point behind the series. And it comes on the 28th anniversary of the original event. Train Tracks Its 1991. Two trains are heading toward each other on the same piece of track. One has a shiny badge
- [329 Deja Vu; We're all Northern Irish now](https://davidhealy.org/329-deja-vu-were-all-northern-irish-now/) - 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
- [Reckless MP causes Brexit](https://davidhealy.org/reckless-mp-causes-brexit/) - Editorial Note: The image featuring Samantha Cameron and her husband, David, comes from the front cover of Private Eye, a British satirical magazine, who might have thought twice about adding to the pressure on Cameron if they had known what was going to happen next. This is the third in a Bruce Willis series -
- [Obama kills millions of patients](https://davidhealy.org/obama-kills-millions-of-patients/) - This post continues a series of Bruce Willis unintended consequences posts, of which there will be two more. There is a degree of truth in all of them. As outlined in last week's Osama Saves Millions, Yusuf Hamied stepped in at a critical point in the unfolding global AIDS story and in offering Triple Therapy
- [Osama bin Laden saves millions of lives](https://davidhealy.org/osama-bin-laden-saves-millions-of-lives/) - Editorial Note: Think of this as a Bruce Willis set of posts. I'm no BW fan. Nor a fan of the nuclear bomb. Chances are neither were the makers of the movie Armageddon. But someone probably got a thrill out of forcing a bunch of people who hate BW and were members of CND cheering
- [Decernimus Ergo Summus: Citizen's Assemblies](https://davidhealy.org/decernimus-ergo-summus-citizens-assemblies/) - Recap When it comes to assessing the benefits of drugs randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are over-rated, rarely if ever objective, and easily gamed. If you don’t know what you are doing to begin with, RCTs won’t find an answer and in practice will make the situation worse. The operationalism of RCTs helped tee up a
- [Something Happened: Neo-Medicalism](https://davidhealy.org/something-happened-neo-medicalism/) - This continues a Something Happened Series, A Western moral order fractured between Luther’s nailing of his Credo Ergo Sum, I believe therefore I am, to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, and Descartes’ Cogito Ergo Sum, I reason therefore I am, in 1649 the year of Charles I’s decapitation. Justice Justice and benevolence were
- [Something happened to Science](https://davidhealy.org/something-happened-to-science/) - Editorial: One of my regular readers dropped me an email after the last post saying that the Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome post on RxISK was wonderful but Something Happened on the same day was incomprehensible. The title was a give-away. Something Happened but it doesn't seem to me that anyone knows quite what. Here's another take
- [Something Happened - to Science and to Us](https://davidhealy.org/something-happened-to-science-and-to-us/) - In March 2015, the cover of National Geographic featured a picture of the moon-landing with a title The War on Science and a strapline: climate change does not exist; evolution never happened; the moon landing was fake; vaccination can lead to autism; genetically modified food is evil. See Here. Even before elections in Europe and
- [Kramer v Kramer](https://davidhealy.org/kramer-v-kramer/) - Editorial Note: Kramer v Kramer had been a hit movie a decade earlier. Listening to Prozac offered a chance to have a review called Kramer v Kramer but the journal - Psychological Medicine - was not amused and ditched the title. Here'e the review written at the same time as the Porter and others. In
- [What Happened?](https://davidhealy.org/what-happened/) - In the early to mid 1990s something happened. The view that many social commentators and academics offer is that neo-liberalism swept into town, dissolved society and turned us all into individuals. This is a non-explanation in that no-one can spell out what neo-liberalism is - so the explanation boils down to something happened. The something
- [329: A Study in What?](https://davidhealy.org/329-a-study-in-what/) - Editorial Note: This post will be an easy and obvious read if you're Irish. If you're not, with Google or whatever it should be accessible and indeed the little bit of extra effort may make it a more rewarding read. There is a warning below in respect of one item you might choose to Google.
- [All the Better for the Fishes](https://davidhealy.org/all-the-better-for-the-fishes/) - Jose Mario Bergoglio in Chile 2018: To believe in us you have to have Faith, but for me to believe in you you have to bring me proof Over 150 years ago, describing most of the medicines then available as junk, Oliver Wendell Holmes came up with one of the most famous phrases about medical
- [Something Stupid This Way Comes](https://davidhealy.org/something-stupid-this-way-comes/) - The picture shows Franz Mesmer magnetising a patient. In between his hands and her head and heart there is a set of little slivers of metal, capable of being magnetised - shown by the fact they are all lined up the same way. The therapist was able to influence magnetic fields and could realign bits
- [DH 2 DH](https://davidhealy.org/dh-2-dh/) - January 28 2019. Open letter to David Haslam, NICE Dear David, Our paths nearly crossed at an IAPT meeting in London in 2016 but you opted not to speak in a session that had me covering “Some Questions for NICE” – a lecture covering issues that have given rise to this letter. We brushed by
- [Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Surveillor](https://davidhealy.org/tinker-tailor-soldier-surveillor/) - The recent moral panic around the Death of MR and the involvement of Instagram and Facebook in her death and maybe that of others is intriguing. Worthy of John Le Carre - at his Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy best. This may be a cynical attempt by the old media – the BBC or NBC, the
- [The Bridgend Suicide Mystery](https://davidhealy.org/the-bridgend-suicide-mystery/) - Dead Contact Following last week's post Are Old or New Media to Blame for Suicide, I had the following email from papyrus: Ged.Flynn@papyrus.co.uk David I’d be happy to have a discussion with you. Perhaps you could contact me. Many thanks Ged Ged is apparently a little more senior within the organisation than Chris. Ged you can
- [Suicide: Are Old Media or New Media to Blame?](https://davidhealy.org/suicide-are-old-media-or-new-media-to-blame/) - Your Worst Horror The week of January 22 to 27 a series of stories of the death of a 14 year old young woman (MR) horrified many people in Britain. This was first item on the BBC news for several days and on the front page of newspapers like the Guardian pushing Brexit, the US
- [Making Medicines Safer for All of US](https://davidhealy.org/making-medicines-safer-for-all-of-us/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTqei5hZ3g Editorial Note: Aberystwyth on the West Coast of Wales is one of the best places in the world to see starlings murmurate. Clive King from the Computer Science Department there also organises TedX talks and on November 24 convened a panel of speakers to talk about murmurating swallows, ambivalent motherhood and making
- [Rest in Dissent](https://davidhealy.org/rest-in-dissent/) - Fifty years ago today, January 19, Jan Palach died. He had set fire to himself 3 days earlier in Wenceslas Square in Prague in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. The spot was close to Charles University where Jan Hus had begun a resistance to religious oppression 5 centuries before that helped ignite the
- [Simony](https://davidhealy.org/simony/) - Before Google the Bible could be pretty confusing. Peter seemed to be a bedrock, a fixed point in the New Testament narrative. Your name will be Peter which means Rock. This of course means that he had another name before being renamed. Looks like it was Simon. So at various points we have references to
- [A strong and independent research community to the benefit of... patients.](https://davidhealy.org/a-strong-and-independent-research-community-to-the-benefit-of-patients/) - Seven weeks ago in the wake of Peter Gøtzsche’s dismissal by the Rigshospitalitet, I wrote to Ellen Trane Nørby the Danish Minister for Health. The letter is HERE. She replied on December 11 - See HERE. The response below was sent yesterday, along with the hard copies noted and link to the Welsh Senate proceedings. December 17th
- [Uninvited Guests](https://davidhealy.org/uninvited-guests/) - This post is a break in the usual coverage but the contents are just so good they demand to be shared. Uninvited Guests is a brief video produced by Superflux. Superflux have worked and work closely with many of the people that readers of this post are likely to be wary of if not downright
- [She's Caught My Virus & I've Caught Hers](https://davidhealy.org/shes-caught-my-virus-ive-caught-hers/) - This post clearly links to last weeks I've Caught Her Virus. Following the Panorama program Chris Exley wrote to the BBC. The correspondence is here and elsewhere on the net - notably Age of Autism. Annie has commented about a Lancet article by Heidi Larsson on the virus of misinformation about vaccines. This makes media
- [I've Caught Her Virus & She's Caught Mine](https://davidhealy.org/ive-caught-her-virus-shes-caught-mine/) - My Virus Writing Pharmageddon in 2008 - 4 years before it was published, I described the effects of a virus which is destroying medicine - a clinical immuno-deficiency virus. In this domain there is another factor not found with tobacco or industrial chemicals that isolates doctors who attempt to bring the hazards of a drug
- [The Goetzsche Affair](https://davidhealy.org/the-goetzsche-affair/) - In recent years under Amar Jesani the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics has emerged as one of the few venues willing to engage with pressing bioethical issues without fear of whether pharmaceutical companies or governments might be offended. Amar approached me a week ago to comment on the Goetzsche Affair. I borrowed a phrase invented
- [Khashoggi and Pandemrix](https://davidhealy.org/khashoggi-and-pandemrix/) - Editorial Note: The image that was here will be repeated and explained next week Who will Rid me of ... Events from Washington to London and elsewhere surrounding the gruesome death of Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi hierarchy link well with the difficulties everyone of us has when things go wrong on
- [Left Hanging: Suicide in Bridgend](https://davidhealy.org/left-hanging-suicide-in-bridgend/) - Many people are unaware of just how many prescription drugs can trigger and cause suicide, suicidal acts and homicide.
- [Even Docs get killed by Akathisia](https://davidhealy.org/even-docs-get-killed-by-akathisia/) - This post by Johanna Ryan is part of a series on DH and RxISK centered on Billiam James's .Akathisia Anthem Pamela Wible, M.D. has been one of the leading voices speaking out about physician suicide. She has done a lot of good, too, by being open about the abuse of doctors by the system
- [Little Red SSRIding Hood](https://davidhealy.org/little-red-ssriding-hood/) - Billiam James' Akathisia Anthem available HERE with lyrics Here raises the profile of one of the most neglected problems in medical care. There may be up to 500 commonly available drugs that trigger depression, agitation and suicadality - see RxISK 500+. The song has a gritty, hard-hitting message -- rated with "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" on iTunes
- [A.K.A.thisia: Drug Induced Emotional Turmoil - D.I.E.T.](https://davidhealy.org/a-k-a-thisia-drug-induced-emotional-turmoil-d-i-e-t/) - A link to the Akathisia Anthem is now live on the RxISK Akathisia page which includes more details on D.I.E.T. Pills. There is a parallel post on RxISK and will be follow up posts here and on RxISK over the next two weeks. AKATHISIA ANTHEM LYRICS: Akathisia, Akathisia You make me wanna Make me wanna
- [The Hot Zone: Quarantining Girls](https://davidhealy.org/the-hot-zone-quarantining-girls/) - The idea of managing lethal epidemics by imposing a quarantine flourished in Italy in the fourteenth century. In their efforts to control the plague, Italian towns regularly put blocks on trade particularly maritime traffic from affected areas. This seemed sensible and may have worked to some extent. But if you don't know what is in
- [Everyone is Equal?](https://davidhealy.org/everyone-is-equal/) - Editorial: This post comes from a Belgian colleague. Belgium's best-selling pop singer Stromae has been talking about his drug-induced illness all over the media since last year. He claims the anti-malaria drug Lariam (mefloquine) made him instantly psychotic and caused long-term anxiety problems which have already persisted for 3 years after stopping the drug, and
- [What to do about Suicide](https://davidhealy.org/what-to-do-about-suicide/) - These words are from David Foster Wallace. I don't know if he was speaking about the depression he had or the akathisia that antidepressants can cause. Maybe he didn't know and this contributed to his suicide. This post needs to be read in conjunction with What to do about Sex on RxISK. This post is
- [Villains and Heroes: Academic Thuggery](https://davidhealy.org/villains-and-heroes-academic-thuggery/) - Editorial Note: This post from Leemon McHenry celebrates Marion Lilley and the International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine. It has a direct link to the issues in the last two posts on suicide in children and how and why we hide problems - The Spectre of Dissent. Most people trust that medical and
- [The Greatest Failure in What used to be Called Medicine](https://davidhealy.org/the-greatest-failure-in-what-used-to-be-called-medicine/) - A little over a year ago, the British Minister for Health, Jeremy Hunt, said children's mental health was the greatest failing of the NHS. Teenagers, primarily girls, are being seen by family doctors and referred to the secondary mental health services. The waits are so long, they attempt suicide by the time they get seen.
- [The Horrific Effects of Not Being Believed](https://davidhealy.org/the-horrific-effects-of-not-being-believed/) - By most accounts Jose Mario Bergolio is a remarkable person. It came as a shock to his fans then a few months ago when he visiting Chile he came out against victims of child abuse. The issue centered on one bishop whom survivors of abuse fingered as complicit with what had happened. JMB obviously liked
- [Recovery from Psychosis](https://davidhealy.org/recovery-from-psychosis/) - Last week's post - 18 percent - raised questions about company sponsorship and seeming patient empowerment websites. A comment by Johanna Ryan afterwards kicked off this follow-up post. Johnson & Johnson gave NAMI $340,000 last year, and $540,000 in 2016. https://www.nami.org/getattachment/About-NAMI/Our-Finances/Major-Foundation-Corporate-Sponsorships/WebRegistryQ42017.pdf Part of that was a dedicated $100,000 grant for “First Episode Psychosis.” This is
- [18 percent](https://davidhealy.org/18-percent/) - From: Zach Schleien Date: 19 March 2018 at 04:00 Subject: I Started a Slack Group for Mental Illness To: David Healy Hi David, Here’s a story I think would be perfect for David Healy: When one of my closest friends took his own life after his battle with schizophrenia, I resolved to do something constructive for
- [If I find you ten just doctors...](https://davidhealy.org/if-i-find-you-ten-just-doctors/) - It's doubtful there was much that was unusual going on in Sodom and Gomorrah. Natural disasters and plagues were taken as signs that communities had sinned. But there is drama to the idea of Abraham asking God to spare the cities if he can find 50 just men, and then 40, and then 20
- [Being the Right Peer](https://davidhealy.org/being-the-right-peer/) - Having previously completed a Masters in Psychology degree, a Diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and worked in the addiction fields for 8 years in the UK and Ireland, Martin worked as a ‘Peer Support Specialist’ for a year while in New Zealand. Due to his criticism of approaches in mental health and the damage he
- [Quinism Foundation](https://davidhealy.org/quinism/) - Editorial Note: We have run previous posts on mefloquine (Lariam) - the The Strange History of Lariam and Lariam Hell and quinoline anti-microbial, as well as on a different group of anti-microbials - the fluoroquinolones - but a lot of their problems overlap. More to the point, those with Mefloquine problems have faced difficulties from Roche that
- [Celebrity Science](https://davidhealy.org/celebrity-science/) - Editorial Note: This is part three in a sequence of posts that began with Outsourcing Fascism and continued last week with Not Our Nomination. Our Nomination The RxISK nomination for the SAS JM Prize is Lisa Rosenbaum from the Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston. Dr Rosenbaum has courageously stood up for the mainstream of
- [Not the 2018 Sense about Science JM Prize Nominee](https://davidhealy.org/not-the-2018-sense-about-science-jm-prize-nominee/) - Editorial Note: This post continues from Outsourcing Fascism. For more on James Coyne, see Rolf Harris to James Coyne. Coyne was the perfect candidate for a Sense about Science JM Prize until a few years ago. He was the first to wade in and rubbish anyone who might have thought there was something wrong with
- [Outsourcing Fascism](https://davidhealy.org/outsourcing-fascism/) - In 2017 the Sense about Science (SAS) John Maddox (JM) Prize was awarded to to Riko Muranaka for her efforts to counter apparent misinformation about the HPV vaccine. MedWatcher Japan are the group who have helped raise the profile of concerns about the HPV vaccine in Japan. When it comes to tackling the adverse
- [The Night Before Christmas and The Nights After](https://davidhealy.org/the-night-before-christmas-and-the-nights-after/) - Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And
- [A Call to H*ARMS](https://davidhealy.org/a-call-to-harms/) - Editorial Note: This is the fourth and final post in the Trick or Treat series that started with Vampire Medicines. These posts need to be read linked to the RxISK MAP posts. These are the theoretical background. The MAP posts are the practical - what needs to be done posts. Access to Medicines In the
- [Cisparency and Transparency](https://davidhealy.org/cisparency-and-transparency/) - Editorial Note: This post continues Vampire Medicine and links to Reformation Day on RxISK and forthcoming posts - Here We Stand. Between 2002 and 2004, giving antidepressants to teenagers and the risks of triggering suicidality became one of the most high profile issues in medicine. Raising a profile should be the way to put things
- [Vampire Medicines](https://davidhealy.org/vampire-medicines/) - Editorial Note: This is the first of four Trick or Treat posts. They make most sense when read in conjunction with the RxISK Prize posts especially the series of 3 posts starting tomorrow. In 1962 RCTs were added to the regulatory requirement for marketing medicines. This looked like a definitive stake through the heart of
- [If on a Winter's Night a Traveler... Trick or Treat?](https://davidhealy.org/if-on-a-winters-night-a-traveler-trick-or-treat/) - Its the end of October when every Irish person going back millennia gets taken over by Halloween - not just the Celts, those who come and stay get bitten too, as Bram Stoker could tell you. So there will be a series of 4 posts to mark the occasion, starting next week, previewed here. These
- [It Couldn't Happen Here: Consent to "Treatment"](https://davidhealy.org/it-couldnt-happen-here-consent-to-treatment/) - The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a pretty harrowing movie. In brief a new SS Kommandant and his family come to a camp. The Kommandant seems like a reasonable man. His family seem very normal. His son makes friends with a boy behind the wire. They ultimately create a hole in the fence between
- [Drug Bites Man](https://davidhealy.org/drug-bites-man/) - Editorial note: This post follows up on Leonie Fennell's post earlier this week - Dogs and Serotonin. The follow up comes from a celebrated event that happened over a decade ago, reported as follows in the WSJ with follow-up comments. What to Say in the TV Ads ---- By Chris Adams, The Wall Street Journal You might
- [Dogs and Serotonin](https://davidhealy.org/dogs-and-serotonin/) - Editorial Note: This post by Leonie Fennell is the first of two on related themes. We would love to hear any observations you or your veterinarian have on drugs in animals in general. Depression, once a disease deemed too rare to merit study, has become so common that it is now a booming business. More
- [RxISK Prize](https://davidhealy.org/rxisk-prize/) - Over on RxISK, we have launched a RxISK Prize. The hope is to find an answer to the debilitating disorders of Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction, PSSD, Post-Finasteride Syndrome, PFS, and Post Retinoid Sexual Dysfunction (PRSD). Please check this out and pass the word on to any pharmacologist, physiologist, endocrinologist, biologist, electrical engineer, doctor, herbalist, and
- [Alt Medicine](https://davidhealy.org/alt-medicine/) - Editorial Note: When I raised the specter of the Science Media Center and Sense about Science recently, some of the Americans I knew fell about laughing, figuring we are still a long way off being as censored as the US of A is. After calming down,
- [Grassy Knoll or Slippery Slope?](https://davidhealy.org/grassy-knoll-or-slippery-slope/) - Health Warning: Let me put down some markers before riffing on the Grassy Knoll theme. I am a committed believer in what may now be a last millenium concept - the medical model. I think antidepressants - the older tricyclics and ECT, not the more recent SSRI and other antidepressants - can save lives. I
- [The Junkies Take over the Asylum](https://davidhealy.org/the-junkies-take-over-the-asylum/) - Some markers first. I am a committed believer in what may now be a last millennium concept - the medical model. I think antidepressants - the older tricyclics and ECT, not the more recent SSRI and other antidepressants - can save lives. I figure conflict of interest, crucially important in other areas of life, is of
- [From the Grassy Knoll](https://davidhealy.org/from-the-grassy-knoll/) - Editorial Note: The image is of Science Media Centre funding from their website. This post links to Whats Going on Here, Honey I Shrunk the Shrinks, and to the two Prescription for Murder Posts on RxISK. When AF's email came in first, it seemed far from private as he now claims. The choice of
- [What's going on Here?](https://davidhealy.org/whats-going-on-here/) - Editorial Note: This arrived out of the blue. The list of those copied in makes it look like its anything but spontaneous. Simon Wessely is recently vacated president of Royal College of Psychiatrists, and one of the Trustees of the Science Media Centre. Paul Summergrad and Jeff Lieberman are former presidents of APA. JL offered
- [Honey I Shrunk the Shrinks](https://davidhealy.org/honey-i-shrunk-the-shrinks/) - Editorial Note: Prior to the Panorama program Prescription for Murder tonight, a flurry of experts denounced the scaremongering. This didn't just happen by accident. The denunciation effort was also more intense than the pressure brought to bear on the original Panorama programs in 2002-2004. The change is in part down to the fact that
- [Baby Boomerang](https://davidhealy.org/baby-boomerang/) - Editorial Note: This post continues a sequence of posts about well-intentioned efforts to produce change that may have produced the wrong change - see Boomerang and Boomerang 2. The contraceptive pill, the Pill, came into our lives in 1960. Almost immediately there were reports of young women with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolus
- [Change in Chicago: Boomerang 2](https://davidhealy.org/change-in-chicago-boomerang-2/) - In 1983, the year before Henry Waxman got the Waxman-Hatch Act on the Statute Books he got the Orphan Drugs Act passed. Here's how it happened. In a wonderful 2016 self-publication, Abbey Meyer, a self-styled Connecticut housewife, outlines a story that began when her eldest son David was born in 1968. The book is downloadable
- [Change in Chicago: Boomerang](https://davidhealy.org/change-in-chicago-boomerang/) - When it comes to branded and generic drugs, the listing of key issues in this image misses a trick. The labels are identical. This lack of difference is a consequence of the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act which after two decades of dispute staked out a boundary between generic and branded pharmaceutical companies, part of which in
- [Change in Chicago: Whose Problem?](https://davidhealy.org/change-in-chicago-whose-problem/) - Courts are not a place you can make jokes. I started off with a confident pitch: If you owe a bank a million pounds, you have a problem but if you owe the bank a billion ... I didn't get much further. It felt like several GSK lawyers popped up, addressing the judge with words
- [Change in Chicago:  Dr. Welby on the Witness Stand](https://davidhealy.org/change-in-chicago-dr-welby-on-the-witness-stand/) - Editorial Note: This is part three in the Change in Chicago series covering the Dolin trial and its implications. Like part 1 it is written by Johanna Ryan - The Dolin Verdict and Playing Go. By twenty-first century American standards, Stu Dolin’s medical care was close to ideal. That’s a hard idea to swallow, given
- [Change in Chicago: The Dolin Verdict](https://davidhealy.org/change-in-chicago-the-dolin-verdict/) - Editorial: This series of posts on Stewart Dolin's death interrupts a series on how to bring about change . This is not inappropriate as law suits are one of the few ways to bring about change. This post in the series is by a Chicagoan - Johanna Ryan who has been tracking the case since
- [Change in Chicago: Playing Go](https://davidhealy.org/change-in-chicago-playing-go/) - Editorial Note: This is a second post in the Change in Chicago Series looking at the Dolin trial and its verdict. There will be two more in the series. Being cross-examined in a legal case involving Pharma is rarely fun. The lawyers will have done their homework in spades. As one of them put it
- [Where Does Change Come From?](https://davidhealy.org/where-does-change-come-from/) - By the Rivers of Babylon Societies keep order. They have to. For millennia, religion has been key to achieving this. Religions may aspire to make men free and able to live a full life but they also embody a set of rules designed to keep chaos at bay. A Superego whose mission is to keep
- [Burn Baby Burn](https://davidhealy.org/burn-baby-burn/) - Editorial Note: This is the third part of a talk giving to the BNPA on February 22. It follows on from Tweeting While Psychiatry Burns and Tweeting While Medicine Burns. The final group of slides are HERE. The talk you have just heard was first given in Toronto on Thursday November 30 2000 to mark
- [Tweeting while Medicine Burns](https://davidhealy.org/tweeting-while-medicine-burns/) - Editorial Note: This is part 2 of a 3 part lecture given on February 22 that began with Tweeting while Psychiatry Burns. The text and slides continue from last week. The slides for this part are Here. The numbering continues from last week. When his office was ransacked, Delay's world was turned upside down but
- [Tweeting While Psychiatry Burns](https://davidhealy.org/tweeting-while-psychiatry-burns/) - Editorial Note: This is part 1 of a lecture given at a British Neuropsychiatric Association meeting in London on February 22 under the heading of Psychopharmacology: 1952 - 2017. The lecture will feature here in 3 posts of which this is the first. Slides 1 -11 can be found HERE. The Birth This picture
- [Study 329 Trick, Treat or Treximet](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-trick-treat-or-treximet/) - The plan this morning was to continue coverage of the Opioid Epidemic but perhaps because it is Halloween a link to a Wall Street Journal story on how Drug Makers Turn Cheap Generics into Expensive Pills arrived by email. It was difficult to resist. Here's why. The article features Treximet, a combination of sumatriptan and naproxen,
- [Study 329 Continuation Phase](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-continuation-phase/) - Editorial: We interrupt the Go Figure series of posts to return for two posts to Study 329. We will then return to Go Figure. All the fuss about Study 329 centers on its 8 week acute phase. But this study had a 24 week Continuation Phase that has never been published. Until Now. We might
- [Club 329: Part 4](https://davidhealy.org/club-329-part-4/) - Editorial Note: This post perhaps should be called: There's Something about Leonie. The image above is of a Rapid Response she submitted to a BMJ editorial by Richard Smith and Fiona Godlee that BMJ published and unpublished and republished and re-unpublished. The full story is here. It again hinges around Study 329. The full transcript
- [Club 329: Part 2](https://davidhealy.org/club-329-part-2/) - Following last week's post, Club 329: Part 1, Ben Goldacre went into orbit claiming his views on medicalization and Study 329 had been misrepresented. He offered a SoundCloud as evidence. The link can be found in the comments after the last post. Seems to me Leonie got the content of the Q & A right.
- [Restoring Study 329: Letter to BMJ](https://davidhealy.org/restoring-study-329-letter-to-bmj/) - Editorial Note: The posts have gotten slightly out of sequence. This post should have preceded the responses from BMJ. It is the letter to which they were responding. This and other letters are on Study329.org. 8 July 2015 Dr Fiona Godlee Editor BMJ Dear Dr Godlee Re: "Restoring Study 329: A randomised, controlled trial of
- [The Archers: Rob and Helen](https://davidhealy.org/the-archers-rob-and-helen/) - Editorial Note: There is no-one I know who admits to listening to The Archers. But everyone in Britain knows of it - the longest running British radio soap. It begins with a horrible theme tune that has me hitting off instantly. But all changed in the last week or two. The Archers is now featuring
- [Study 329: Nobody Pinned Anything on Us](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-response-from-the-authors/) - Editorial Note: Following the publication of Study 329 Restored, Martin Keller and his co-authors gave an initial response in which they said Nobody Pinned Anything on Us and also that they would respond in more detail later. It took four months for this response to appear. Our Response will follow in the next post and
- [Study 329: Republic to Empire](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-republic-to-empire/) - Editorial Note: This post is from Sally MacGregor. In depositions and lectures I commonly state that I have had more support and information from colleagues working for industry than from clinical colleagues. I loved the analysis of the derailment of medicine and research through the comparison between a Republican and Empire structure, and the take-over
- [Pharmaceutical Rape: Ending our Tolerance](https://davidhealy.org/pharmaceutical-rape-ending-our-tolerance/) - Editorial Note: This is the final part of Laurie Oakley's series on Pharmaceutical Rape. All six parts with better imagery (no-one is enthusiastic about the Martin Shkreli images) and extra text are available here as a PDF Download. Pharmaceutical violence Pharmaceutical violence is a social issue as well as medical problem that demands a social response and
- [Pharmaceutical Rape: Discrimination](https://davidhealy.org/pharmaceutical-rape-discrimination/) - Ed Note: This is the fifth and penultimate post in Laurie Oakley's Pharmaceutical Rape series. Pharmaceutical violence is a social injustice that can intersect with every other type of oppression and form of discrimination. Dehumanizing in its own right, pharmaceutical rape (and the cultural/medical denial of it) compounds the distress already experienced by persons in socially
- [Pharmaceutical Rape: Doctors still know best](https://davidhealy.org/pharmaceutical-rape-doctors-still-know-best/) - Editorial Note: This is part 4 of Laurie Oakley's series on Pharmaceutical Rape. Many who experience life-altering, adverse outcomes after taking their medicines as prescribed do not receive acknowledgment of what they have experienced, let alone the medical care they need. Medical systems do not recognize many treatment related outcomes and patients are therefore denied
- [Venomagnosia](https://davidhealy.org/venomagnosia/) - Editorial Note: I was asked to review Peter Kramer's Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants for ISIS. The in print review is HERE. There is a sister post on RxISK - with a better cartoon and where the word Venomagnosia s explained - Come Back When you Have a Medical Degree. This book was very
- [Post-Truth Rumorology?](https://davidhealy.org/post-truth-rumorology/) - Stopping the spread of Japan’s antivaccine panic Following the post last week on MedWatcher Japan's efforts to bring the issue of HPV vaccines to light, my attention was drawn to a recent Wall Street Journal article which stated: “Japanese women’s health is increasingly at risk as public-health policy is driven by conspiracy theories, misguided political interference and
- [We are the Ninety Nine Percent](https://davidhealy.org/we-are-the-ninety-nine-percent/) - Editorial Note: This is a Coda to the four posts about Sense about Science and AllTrials - Follow the Rhetoric, First Admit no Harm, Follow the Lawsuit & Follow the Patient. The last post ended on this note: Over 18 months ago, RxISK attempted to open up a debate on the ambiguities and conflicts at
- [Go Figure: Sally's Problem with Whinging about Medicines](https://davidhealy.org/go-figure-sallys-problem-with-whinging-about-medicines/) - Two weeks ago in response to the last post in the Study 329 series, Sally MacGregor added the comment - that features as a post below. It's spot on. The problem is how to avoid being marginalized, becoming part of a 1%. How to capture the attention of the 99% for whom the meds work
- [Restoring Study 329: Correspondence with BMJ Jul 15 to Jan 16](https://davidhealy.org/restoring-study-329-correspondence-with-bmj-jul-15-to-jan-16/) - Editorial Note: The letter from the Study 329 team to BMJ re Dr Loder featured in 50 Shades of Gray and in Conflicts of Interest. The actual letter and related correspondence is all on Study329.org. The emails below and in the next post tell you what happened next. From: Jureidini, Jon (Health) Sent: Wednesday, 8 July 2015
- [Little Red Stethoscope](https://davidhealy.org/little-red-stethoscope/) - To be read in conjunction with Little Red Riding Hood. Once a newly qualified doctor, wearing her red stethoscope, set out to treat an older woman, bringing medicines and the milk of human kindness. As the doctor was walking through the hospital, the medical director came up to her and asked where she was going.
- [Little Red Riding Hood](https://davidhealy.org/little-red-riding-hood/) - This is the first of a two part piece. Little Red Stethoscope follows. More on the current post can be found in Images of Trauma. A grimm tale The development of psychoanalysis depended heavily on Freud's approach to the interpretation of dreams and myths. Key to these interpretations were his claims about the symbolic nature
- [Antidepressants & The Undead](https://davidhealy.org/antidepressants-the-undead/) - A review of Iodine's recently launched Start app, designed to tell if your antidepressant is working.
- [Motivation Is Worth More Than Expertise?](https://davidhealy.org/motivation-is-worth-more-than-expertise/) - Editorial: I was asked to MHRA (Britain's FDA) to give a 20 minute presentation on Spontaneous Reporting Systems to a group looking at a birth defect related issue. This is close to what was said - minor items like the HRT trials got lost in delivery. The Slides numbered in the text are attached Here.
- [The Ghost of Research Future](https://davidhealy.org/the-ghost-of-research-future/) - Editorial Note: This post is by Johanna Ryan. As with all posts by Jo, it unearths angles on current stories that everyone else seems to have missed. A column here last month followed the legacy of Study 329 into the present. By taking apart one 2015 study of Vraylar, a new antipsychotic, I tried to
- [Study 329: Conflicts of Interest](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-conflicts-of-interest/) - Email from Fiona Godlee (Editor of The BMJ) to RIAT July 6th 2015 Re: Study 329 Dear Dr Jureidini, Many thanks for your letter. I quite understand you concerns. You are right to say that there are few or no precedents against which to compare this article. We ourselves are feeling our way, both with
- [Study 329: By the Standards of the Time](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-by-the-standards-of-the-time/) - Editorial Note: This post by Johanna Ryan looks at an element of the defense offered by Neal Ryan and others, namely that by the standards of the time the authors of 329 weren't doing much wrong. Getting real about clinical research The controversy over “Study 329” on the effects of Paxil in teen depression has
- [Study 329: Minions No Longer](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-minions-no-longer/) - A few weeks ago I was asked to review Good Pharma by Don Light and Antonio Maturo. The published review appears in TES - here. It makes a great foil to the Data Wars post earlier this week. The problem was deciding if the title for this post should read Minions no Longer or Underlings
- [Study 329: MK, HK, SK, GSK & History](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-mk-hk-sk-gsk-history/) - What happened to those suicidal in study 329? In May 2014, the RIAT team asked GSK what the children who became suicidal in the course of Study 329 have since been told. (Marty Keller's "take" on this is at the bottom). The consent form says that anyone entering the study would be treated just the
- [Study 329](https://davidhealy.org/study-329/) - Study 329 has just gone live. The Restoring Study 329 article with its appendices, data, history, accompanying feature by Peter Doshi and editorial by David Henry can be found on the Restoring Study 329 site Study329.org. Here are the key findings at present. Efficacy Harms Background At present The note above says "Here are the key
- [Study 329: The Data](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-the-data/) - The text below reproduces the latest page from the Study329.org site. The links mentioned here will become live on the site once Restoring Study 329 is published late Wednesday - early Thursday next week. In 2004 as part of the resolution of a fraud action taken by New York State, GlaxoSmithKline agreed to post the
- [The Troubled Life of Study 329: Consequences of Failure to Retract](https://davidhealy.org/the-troubled-life-of-study-329-the-consequences-of-failure-to-retract/) - If someone were to ask the surviving authors of Study 329 the question: "Knowing what you know now, if you had to do it over, would you agree to participate in that study again?", many would probably say no. The real title of Study 329 was “Efficacy of Paroxetine in the Treatment of Adolescent Major
- [Study329.org: Science with a Conscience](https://davidhealy.org/study329-org-science-with-a-conscience/) - Faced in 2012 with questions about the $3 Billion fine imposed on GSK - triggered by a sequence of events starting with Study 329, – is it just the cost of doing business? Andrew Witty snapped back: “Although corporate malfeasance cases end up looking very big, they often have their origin in just… one or
- [Study 329: The Timelines](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-the-timelines/) - In addition to hosting the Panorama programs and The Famous Grouse history of Study 329, Study329.org has a comprehensive timeline on the origins of concerns about the SSRIs and the risk of suicide - initially with Prozac and subsequently with Paxil - Seroxat. The chronology is laid out year on year with key documents linked
- [Study329.org: The Panorama Files](https://davidhealy.org/study329-org-the-panorama-files/) - Study 329 is probably the most famous clinical trial ever. It is one of the few to attract a Fraud action and is certainly the only one with a $3 Billion fine linked to it. See A Milestone in Drug Safety. The study began recruiting adolescents to Paxil, imipramine or placebo in 1994 and finished
- [A Milestone in the Battle for Truth in Drug Safety](https://davidhealy.org/a-milestone-in-the-battle-for-truth-in-drug-safety/) - Study 329: The final chapter coming soon Arguably the most controversial drug study ever, Study 329, published in July 2001: Concluded that paroxetine was a safe and effective medication for treating major depression in adolescents; Is still widely cited in the medical literature, providing physicians with assurance about the usefulness of paroxetine; Was criticized by
- [Shock, Mutilate and Poison: The Medical Mission](https://davidhealy.org/shock-mutilate-and-poison-the-medical-mission/) - Editorial Note: This post interrupts the Crusoe series. The comments from Deirdre Oliver and “Truth” posted below assume Crusoe and I are one and in attacking me they risk derailing a position being laid out by Dr Crusoe. Dr Crusoe and I share some views or her posts would not feature here but while the
- [What's Poisoning Health: The Crusoe Report 2](https://davidhealy.org/whats-poisoning-health-the-crusoe-report-11/) - How did we get to the point where healthcare itself is sick – where we have as Annemarie Mol brings out become consumers of healthcare products rather than people whom doctors and nurses care for when we are at our most vulnerable? The breach of trust in modern healthcare comes close to a mother poisoning
- [Restoring Health: The Crusoe Report 1](https://davidhealy.org/restoring-health-the-crusoe-report-1/) - The diplomatic thing would be to say there is some agreement between the Witty Report and this one. There is certainly some overlap in suggested solutions. We could perhaps even agree that the real problem is the failure of medicine rather than pharma malfeasance. But the fault-line runs deeper. There are two or maybe three
- [Magna What? The Embarassing Side Effects of Drugs](https://davidhealy.org/magna-what-the-embarassing-side-effects-of-drugs/) - This post is designed to be read with the Drugs and Smell post on RxISK. Into the Matrixx The second drug in the Anosmia Table in the Drugs and Smell post is Zinc Gluconate which was traded under the name Zicam. For anyone concerned about adverse events this is one of the most important drugs
- [Magna Pharma](https://davidhealy.org/magna-pharma/) - This post on the eight hundredth anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta is the second in a Magna Carta series, and the twentieth in the Persecution series. Faced in 2012 with questions about the $3 Billion fine imposed on GSK - triggered by a sequence of events starting with Study 329, – is it
- [A Magna Carta for Healthcare](https://davidhealy.org/magna-carta-1/) - 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
- [Switch on Anti-Depression Today](https://davidhealy.org/switch-on-anti-depression-today/) - Science Media Centre roundup Expert reaction to editorial on serotonin and depression as published in The BMJ (British Medical Journal)* Dr Clare Stanford, Reader in Experimental Psychopharmacology, UCL, said: “Prof David Healy's article treads a path that is well-worn but out of date. He argues that selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRI) antidepressants are used because
- [A Broken Utopia? The Internet and Health Activism](https://davidhealy.org/a-broken-utopia-the-internet-and-health-activism/) - Editorial Note: This post by James Bennett, a research coordinator on RxISK, follows on from last week's Everyone has the right to challenge "Scientific Experts". The article accompanying the image of War on Science from the National Geographic featured in that post made the case that we increasingly live in a world of tribes -
- [Everyone Has The Right To Challenge Scientific Experts](https://davidhealy.org/everyone-has-the-right-to-challenge-scientific-experts/) - Editorial Note: This post is from John Horgan who writes for Scientific American. The original is here. There is one change - the image used. JH's posts are always worth reading. In this he takes on a worrying trend to regard science as sacrosanct. A recent front cover for National Geographic brought this home to
- [Winging It: Antidepressants and Plane Crashes](https://davidhealy.org/winging-it-antidepressants-and-plane-crashes/) - The crash last week of the Germanwings plane has shocked many. In view of the apparent mental health record of the co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, questions have been asked about the screening policies of airlines. The focus has generally been on the conditions pilots may have or the arguments they might be having with partners or
- [The Girl Who Was Not Heard When She Cried Wolf](https://davidhealy.org/the-girl-who-was-not-heard-when-she-cried-wolf/) - Crusoe was called to see Lisbeth. The girl - young woman was mute and catatonic by day but after she fell asleep she had nightmares when she wailed piteously, rent her nightdress, walked in her sleep muttering ‘the children, the children’ or other such phrases. It was a similar pattern each night, the parents said.
- [Persecution: Dangerous Liaisons](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-dangerous-liaisons/) - This is the seventeenth in the Persecution Series. See Brand Fascism for a listing of prior posts in the sequence. In the novel Les Liaisons Dangereux, later the movie Dangerous Liaisons, the Marquise de Merteuil engages the Vicomte de Valmont to corrupt the incorruptible Madame de Tourvel... From 1951, a system designed for heroin and
- [War on Civilization: What Would Happen if Patients Radicalize?](https://davidhealy.org/war-on-civilization-what-would-happen-if-patients-radicalize/) - The Events in Paris have led to a brief interruption to the Persecution Series although this post could have been termed Brand Fascism II. Illustration: Data Wars, © 2012 Billiam James The day after the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, Nicholas Sarkozy stood on the steps of the Elysee Palace and said "This [the shootings] is
- [Doctor Munchausen and Sense About Science](https://davidhealy.org/doctor-munchausen-and-sense-about-science/) - Editorial Note: This is the fifth in a series of Doctor Munchausen posts that include: Dr Munchausen, I presume Dying for a Cure Dear Luise Father Munchausen They followed a Sense about Science series of posts that included: Sense about Science: Follow the Rhetoric Sense about Science: First Admit no Harm Sense about Science: Follow
- [Krystallized](https://davidhealy.org/krystallized/) - BBC Radio Four's Today program ran a piece on August 2 in response to an NHS report showing a startling 500% rise in prescriptions for antidepressants since the advent of SSRIs and a 9% rise last year. Close to 47m prescriptions were dispensed in the NHS in 2011 for anti-depressants and sleeping pills. There has been
- [Study 329: 50 Shades of Gray](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-50-shades-of-gray/) - Editorial Note: None of these posts about Study 329 should be taken as representative of a RIAT view, especially this one. See Study 329: Conflicting Interests for a prequel to this post and to make sense of the last comment. Fiona Godlee to RIAT July 6 2015 Re: Study 329 Dear Dr Jureidini, “Many thanks for
- [Study 329 in Japan](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-in-japan/) - Editorial Note: By 2002 GlaxoSmithKline had done 3 studies in children who were depressed and described all three to FDA as negative. As an old post on Bob Fiddaman's blog reproduced here outlines, several years later they undertook another study in children in Japan. Regular readers of this blog will know how I broke the
- [Study 329: Data Wars](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-data-wars/) - Sensing the end of the Roman Republic and unhappy at the approach of Empire, Cassius approached Brutus to save the Republic. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." The Republic was a Democracy, with a Government answerable to its Electors. Caesar’s conquests meant that the Roman
- [Original Study 329 Team](https://davidhealy.org/original-study-329-team/) - MARTIN B. KELLER, M.D. Brown University Martin B. Keller Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Human Behavior Martin_Keller@brown.edu Martin Keller has made major research contributions to the understanding and treatment of mood disorders. He has performed research on the longitudinal course and neuropsychopharmacology of affective disorders and anxiety disorders and on the causes,
- [The Couric Incident: HPV Vaccine & Mass Bullying](https://davidhealy.org/the-couric-incident-hpv-vaccine-mass-bullying/) - In 2013, Katie Couric covered the subject of HPV vaccines. The resulting furore suggests a co-ordinated campaign by pro industry forces.
- [Crusoe, We Say, Was Rescued](https://davidhealy.org/crusoe-we-say-was-rescued/) - This is the Sixteenth Modern Myth featuring Crusoe. The Persecution series resumes next week with Brand Fascism. The clinics were different now to what they had been. Hands on fire The woman walked in, glancing at her hands as she came. Crusoe already knew what she would say. In days gone by peripheral neuropathies were
- [Castel Gandolfo](https://davidhealy.org/castel-gandolfo/) - This is the Fifteenth Modern Myth, featuring Crusoe. The rest can be accessed under the modern myth tag. There will be another next week. The Pharma Sub-Series of the Persecution Murder Mystery will resume in the first week of the New Year. A strange man It was a time when Crusoe managed to be in Europe
- [Doctor Munchausen: Hear No, See No - What?](https://davidhealy.org/doctor-munchausen-hear-no-see-no-what/) - Editorial Note: This is the last in the Doctor Munchausen series. A new strand on the Persecution of Heretics will start soon. The image is Paul Klee's drawing for the Dance of the Grieving Child. Being Irish makes it possible to tackle certain things - or now possible. The question of the Catholic Church for
- [Dr Munchausen: Pharmacophile](https://davidhealy.org/dr-munchausen-pharmacophile/) - Editorial Note: This piece was first submitted to the Journal of Mental Health in 1997 and two other journals later that year - with Marie Savage and Phil Thomas as co-authors. The reviewers were affronted - one figured mental health was likely no worse than the rest of medicine. Unable to find a home, it migrated to
- [Doctor Munchausen: Judge & Jury](https://davidhealy.org/doctor-munchausen-judge-jury/) - Editorial Note: This is the sixth in a Dr Munchausen series of posts. It was originally going to be entitled 'Dr Munchausen joins your local Hospital Board'. Crash & Holocaust denialism In JG Ballard's novel Crash, covered in the last post, we slip from the solid world in which we think we move to a
- [Sense about Science: Follow the Patient](https://davidhealy.org/sense-about-science-follow-the-patient/) - Editorial Note: This is the fourth of four posts about the links between Sense about Science and AllTrials. The first was Follow the Rhetoric. The Second was First Admit no Harm. The third was Follow the Lawsuit. The simple act of defining doctors or patients concerned about adverse events as “critics” is a rhetorical stroke
- [Sense about Science: Follow the Lawsuit](https://davidhealy.org/sense-about-science-follow-the-lawsuit/) - Editorial Note: This is a third in a series of posts about Sense about Science and Access to Clinical Trial Data that began with Follow the Rhetoric and followed up with First Admit no Harm. There are some facts in the last few posts. There are also some extrapolations that may not be right. Tracey Brown
- [Sense about Science: First Admit No Harm](https://davidhealy.org/sense-about-science-first-admit-no-harm/) - Editorial Note: This is a second post exploring Sense about Science. The first post Follow the Rhetoric is here. Anyone interested in Pharma will know about its ability to Astroturf – to create patient organizations whose role is to promote an illness or subvert an existing one. Creating awareness of conditions sells drugs. On a
- [Sense about Science: Follow the Rhetoric](https://davidhealy.org/sense-about-science-follow-the-rhetoric/) - Editorial Note: This is the first of four posts about the link between Sense about Science and AllTrials triggered by the post Fucked and comments afterward by Ben Goldacre, Tracey Brown and others which raised these links. My first contact with Sense about Science was linked to the Simon Singh affair. Singh had made some
- [Motivational Interviewing](https://davidhealy.org/motivational-interviewing/) - Editorial Note: Motivational interviewing began as a technique to help opiate or nicotine addicts or alcoholics. The idea was to move them through contemplation of the possibility of change, to having an action plan and then acting. It recognized that there was no point just arguing that addiction was wrong - you had to understand
- [AbbVie & GSK Can Buy Your Data for Almost Nothing](https://davidhealy.org/abbvie-gsk-can-buy-your-data-for-almost-nothing/) - Editorial Note: This prescient post written by Phil Booth was posted on OpenDemocracy.net under the title Your medical data - on sale for a pound on August 9th 2013. The original intention was to link it into the AbbVie debate about access to clinical trial data - as an ironic contrast. That opportunity passed - but a stopped
- [The Devil's Disclaimer](https://davidhealy.org/the-devils-disclaimer/) - Editorial Note: The marketing of pharmaceuticals avails of something given to no other area of marketing - the product is made available on prescription-only. In this post Johanna Ryan, from RxISK's Community Advisory Board, spells out the risks this gives rise to. This is a theme that has come up often and one we will
- [Guilty](https://davidhealy.org/guilty-2/) - Days of reckoning? A little over a year ago, there was consternation in psychiatric circles as a French psychiatrist, Daniele Canarelli was found guilty after her patient hacked a man to death. She had not recogized the hazard he posed. Doctors didn't like the implications they saw. In a series of lectures I have raised
- [Drug Traffic Accidents: ADHD](https://davidhealy.org/drug-traffic-accidents-adhd/) - Editorial Note: In an End of Year post on RxISK, the concept of a Drug Traffic Accident was introduced. This can refer to being run over by a drug, sometimes called side effects, or adverse events, or adverse drug reactions or it can refer to the trafficking of drugs. This post covers both types. The
- [The Persecution of Heretics](https://davidhealy.org/the-persecution-of-heretics/) - Editorial Note: This is the start of a series that will likely run through to the End of the Year. For those of you who like Murder Mysteries, this is one. Please comment, speculate and help put a new source of harassment and intimidation properly on the map. This post accompanies a talk I gave
- [Doctor Munchausen: Dear Luise](https://davidhealy.org/doctor-munchausen-dear-luise/) - This post compares the abuse of children by Catholic clergy to the abuse of vulnerable patients by doctors.
- [Trudo Lemmens of the University of Toronto critiques the recently distributed draft EMA Clinical Trials Data Release Policy](https://davidhealy.org/trudo-lemmens-of-the-university-of-toronto-critiques-the-recently-distributed-draft-ema-clinical-trials-data-release-policy/) - (First published in the PLOS Blog. Click here for the original post.) Things were looking good recently in Europe for data transparency, a necessary, albeit not sufficient, tool to promote integrity of pharmaceutical data. The European Court’s Vice-President overturned in November 2013 two lower court interim suspensions of EMA’s data access decision in relation to
- [Fucked](https://davidhealy.org/fucked/) - Editorial Note: Apologies for the Language A year and a half ago this blog ran a series of posts about access to clinical trial data – reporting on how industry were going to engineer the appearances of transparency. See Won't get Fooled Again, Access to Clinical Trial Data, and The Data Access Wars. Do academics
- [Get Real: Peter Gøtzsche Responds](https://davidhealy.org/get-real-peter-gotzsche-responds/) - Editorial Note: Two weeks ago we ran Peter Gøtzsche's Psychiatry Gone Astray. There was a context - a Danish doctor had been found responsible for the suicide of a young man put on antidepressants. This and Peter's article stirred up debate in Denmark drawing a hard to credit defensive response from senior Danish Psychiatrists. Peter's blog was critiqued by
- [What Do Women Want?](https://davidhealy.org/what-do-women-want/) - Editorial Note: This is cross-posted from 1boringoldman - Reassure Us. It tackles the most important issue in healthcare and one of the most important in politics. GSK have clearly persuaded Ben Goldacre, Iain Chalmers and David Cameron, and J&J have persuaded Harlan Krumholz and Barack Obama that their model of Data Access - the AbbVie model
- [The Snow Queen](https://davidhealy.org/the-snow-queen/) - Crusoe and Hans grew up together. Crusoe’s father encouraged her to believe she could do anything she put her mind to. Han’s father, Peter, was a story-teller who delighted both children with his stories, especially during the long evenings at the onset of Winter. He told them about the Microbe Hunters who discovered the causes of diseases
- [The Medicine Maker](https://davidhealy.org/the-medicine-maker/) - Editorial Note: This is based on the Finnish National Epic, the Kalevala. The image comes from the series painted by Axel Gallen to illustrate the Kalevala. Crusoe spent years trying to make a Medicine Maker. She was finally successful at the end of a long Winter just as the first signs of growth appeared on the
- [Medystopia](https://davidhealy.org/medystopia/) - Editorial Note: Crusoe has not been lying low since The Shipwreck of the Singular and The Girl who Wasn't Heard When She Cried Wolf. Check these out for previous Crusoe posts. The AbbVie story calls for a decent myth. Here is a start. Sink all vaccines to the bottom of the sea? Crusoe was listening to Oliver
- [SHIT Happens - 2](https://davidhealy.org/shit-happens-2/) - How companies hide the most important details about their medicines - the details that really concern patients.
- [SHIT Happens](https://davidhealy.org/shit-happens/) - A century ago, a distinction was drawn between the ethical pharmaceutical industry and the patent medicines industry. Ethical companies specified what was in their medicines, whereas the patent industry kept the details hidden. The birth of pharma The patent medicines industry flourished on the back of a promise that some Secret Health Ingredient in their
- [AbbVie Petition: Drug Hazards are not Trade Secrets](https://davidhealy.org/abbvie-petition-drug-hazards-are-not-trade-secrets/) - RxISK has started a petition on Change.org which will go to Richard Gonzalez CEO of AbbVie, and Daniel Welch CEO of InterMune, who are at present taking a legal action to block the European Medicines Agency's policy of open access to clinical trial data. The reason to petition is in this post Let's do the AbbVie
- [The Humira Trials: Judith's Story](https://davidhealy.org/the-humira-trials-judiths-story/) - Editorial Note: AbbVie's current legal action against the European Medicines Agency's policy on access to clinical trial data led to the idea of an AbbVie - getting people on any drugs at all, especially new drugs and in particular biologicals, to do two things: 1. Report any of the effects they are having on RxISK.org 2. Sign
- [Brands Don't Have Side Effects: crohnsforum.com](https://davidhealy.org/brands-dont-have-side-effects-mentions-of-side-effects-on-crohnsforum-com/) - Editorial Note: This post is by Ken Spriggs, who wrote the second ever RxISK story - on Azathiopine. This should be revisited in the light of the AbbVie Campaign. The current post is taken from his ongoing blog on Crohn's Disease - a condition that is high on the target list for the makers of biologicals including AbbVie
- [Reading the RIAT Act](https://davidhealy.org/reading-the-riat-act/) - Editorial Note: This is a press release for a potentially important development in medicine. You can access your copy of the RIAT Act here and an assessment of its likely significance here. Restoring invisible and abandoned trials (RIAT) “to correct the scientific record” Sponsors and researchers will be given one year to act before independent scientists begin publishing
- [Brand Fascism](https://davidhealy.org/brand-fascism/) - Editorial Note: This is the sixth in the Lasagna series of posts that began with Not So Bad Pharma, April Fool in Harlow, Tragedy of Lou Lasagna, Empire of Humbug: Bad Pharma and will continue through to Witty A: Report to the President. Faced with questions about the $3 Billion fine imposed on GSK – Is it
- [Not So Bad Pharma](https://davidhealy.org/not-so-bad-pharma/) - The invitation from the London Review of Books to review Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma™ reads: “We were unsure, at first, what a review could add that isn't already in the book - scrappy summaries and bits of praise are not for us. The book is of sufficient importance that the main thing is to get
- [Prescription-only Homicide and Violence](https://davidhealy.org/prescription-only-homicide-and-violence/) - These are the speaking notes for two talks given in Chicago on Monday February 18th and Tuesday February 19th. The S2, S3 in the text refers to slides which are available here: Slides 1 and Slides 2. The video is available here: Part 1 and Part 2. The first slides features RxISK.org where we have created a Violence Zone
- [Prozac and SSRIs: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary](https://davidhealy.org/prozac-and-ssris-twenty-fifth-anniversary/) - One prescription for every man, woman and child Prozac was approved in 1987 in the US, and launched in early 1988, followed by a clutch of other SSRIs. Twenty-five years later, we now have one prescription for an antidepressant for every single person in the West per year. Twenty-five years before Prozac, 1 in 10,000
- [EMA v AbbVie](https://davidhealy.org/ema-v-abbvie/) - Editorial Note: Three months ago we launched an AbbVie campaign and followed it up with a petition calling on AbbVie and InterMune to drop their action against EMA (European Medicines Agency). The hope was to raise awareness of this critically important issue that had been sailing beneath the radar. Over 6000 of you from more
- [The Church of GSKology](https://davidhealy.org/the-church-of-gskology/) - Editorial Note: This post is about midway through a series of posts that are broadly part of the AbbVie series. The series began with GSK's Transparency and Access Journey, moved on to The House of GSK and will have at least two more posts after this. Reading the Minneapolis StarTribune, it was the reference to
- [Trade Wars we have known and loved: Brand EFPIA v Korea](https://davidhealy.org/trade-wars-we-have-known-and-loved-brand-efpia-v-korea/) - Editorial note: a slight variation of this appeared last week on The Conversation. In 2010, the European Ombudsman ruled that the European Medicines Agency should open access to clinical trials data when companies applied to get their drugs on the market. The ombudsman decided public health was more important than considerations of commercial confidentiality. In February this
- [Neal Parker Avoiding Adverse Events](https://davidhealy.org/neal-parker-avoiding-adverse-events/) - Editorial Note: Neal Parker, Section Head Legal, Biologics Strategic Development at AbbVie, was an industry representative on a panel organized by EFPIA - The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associates on August 27th in Bruxelles. In two posts AbbVie's Mission to Discover New Diseases and AbbVie's Mission to Discover New Patients, we gave a transcript of his talk with some commentary -
- [Neal Parker on AbbVie's Mission to Discover New Patients](https://davidhealy.org/neal-parker-on-abbvies-mission-to-discover-new-patients/) - Editorial Note: Neal Parker, Section Head Legal, Biologics Strategic Development at AbbVie, was an industry representative on a panel organized by EFPIA - The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associates on August 27th in Bruxelles. Parker started off with a wonderful Freudian slip saying that AbbVie's mission is to discover new diseases and ends with another - that AbbVie's
- [Neal Parker on AbbVie's Mission to Discover New Diseases](https://davidhealy.org/neal-parker-on-abbvies-mission-to-discover-new-diseases/) - Editorial Note: Neal Parker, Section Head Legal, Biologics Strategic Development at AbbVie, was an industry representative on a panel organized by EFPIA - The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associates on August 27th in Bruxelles. Parker started off with a wonderful Freudian slip saying that AbbVie's mission is to discover new diseases. A video of the meeting is
- [Trade Wars we have known and loved: Indianapolis v The World](https://davidhealy.org/trade-wars-we-have-known-and-loved-indianapolis-v-the-world/) - Eli Lilly has taken legal action against the Canadian Government claiming violation of patents on its drugs Zyprexa and Strattera.
- [Trade Wars we have known and loved: AbbVie v China](https://davidhealy.org/trade-wars-abbvie-v-china/) - Editorial Note: This post is taken from a more complete article published in BMJ today authored by Nigel Hawkes. It tells of a recent European meeting on access to clinical trial data. The meeting had input from AbbVie who it seems shocked everyone in the room shocked with their disregard for patient safety. The details
- [Humira & Hope - and Despair: Annette's Story](https://davidhealy.org/humira-hope-and-despair-annettes-story/) - Editorial Note: Many people have wonderful responses to Humira and other biologic drugs like Enbrel (Phil Mickelson in the case of Enbrel). Rheumatoid Arthritis, Crohn's Disease and the other conditions these drugs were first used for are debilitating disorders that need a potent treatment. But if a drug is potent it will have the capacity
- [Stacy London: What Not To Take](https://davidhealy.org/stacy-london-what-not-to-take/) - Three weeks ago Johanna Ryan and Kim Witczak wrote a letter to Stacy London about Humira and AbbVie. They were hoping for a response but there has been none so far. There’s something about Stacy Stacy London of What Not to Wear fame has a lot going for her. She is a successful business woman, style
- [Welcome to the Humiraverse](https://davidhealy.org/welcome-to-the-humiraverse/) - Editorial Note: This post in the AbbVie series is by Johanna Ryan from the RxISK Community Advisory Board I recently read a legal complaint filed against AbbVie by a New York woman named Cynthia Di Bartolo. She’s a successful corporate lawyer who had undergone various treatments for psoriasis over the years, including medications and ultraviolet light therapy.
- [Democracy in Adversity](https://davidhealy.org/democracy-in-adversity/) - This post stands in stark contrast to EU-nuch in the Humira-m. There could not be a greater contrast between the way companies now sell drugs globally and the way they attempt to restrict the reporting of adverse events. The infographic below from Kayla brings out the point. Sales are now global. AbbVie's plans for Humira and
- [The Boy With The Ponytail Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest](https://davidhealy.org/the-boy-with-the-ponytail-who-kicked-the-hornets-nest/) - In The boy with the ponytail who played with fire, we saw Jan Akerblom struggle up the side of a mountain in his attempt to drop the Ring of Power into Mount Doom. Where others, especially doctors, are seduced by the Precious he isn't. Why do it - because he saw lives destroyed and wonders if
- [Access To Clinical Trial Data: Privacy rights, property rights and phoney rights](https://davidhealy.org/access-to-clinical-trial-data-privacy-rights-property-rights-and-phoney-rights/) - We threaten the rights of people we know by our participation in clinical trials where data is hidden. It makes it impossible for people to show that their treatment may have produced an adverse effect.
- [The Madness of Psychiatry](https://davidhealy.org/the-madness-of-psychiatry/) - One hundred years ago patients with psychosis were 4 times more likely than the rest of their contemporaries to be dead at the end of their first 5 years of treatment. The main cause of death was tuberculosis. The asylum was a place where if you had the wrong genetic makeup you were at great
- [Dance With Python: Healthcare In Peril](https://davidhealy.org/dance-with-python-healthcare-in-peril/) - This is the last in what was once the BarMittzva Romba series aimed at Bar(ack) & Mitt. These have now been renamed as a series of Dances - Dancing as fast as we can, Dance to the Music of Time, Dancing In The Dark, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, & Shadow Dance. Between them they reprise
- [Shadow Dance: Is alcohol safer and more effective than SSRIs?](https://davidhealy.org/is-alcohol-safer-and-more-effective-than-ssris/) - This is the fifth in the Dance series tackling the crisis in healthcare. Previous parts were Dancing as fast as we can, Dance to the Music of Time, Dancing In The Dark and Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies. We have dug a deep hole. The regulatory hoops through which a company has to jump are now so
- [Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies: How prescription-only keeps doctors healthy and wealthy but not wise](https://davidhealy.org/how-prescription-only-keeps-doctors-healthy-and-wealthy-but-not-wise/) - This is the fourth in the Dance series tackling the crisis in healthcare. Previous parts were Dancing as fast as we can, Dance to the Music of Time and Dancing In The Dark. In 1962, politicians attempting to put things right in the pharmaceutical sector accidentally created the perfect raw material for drug development, and
- [Dancing In The Dark: How patents make drugs the perfect objects of desire](https://davidhealy.org/how-patents-make-drugs-the-perfect-objects-of-desire/) - This is the third in the Dance series tackling the crisis in healthcare. Previous parts were Dancing as fast as we can and Dance to the Music of Time. A further step taken in 1962 made it possible to shape the raw material from clinical trials into the perfect product. This development hinged on the
- [Dance to the Music of Time: How clinical trials help pharma invent data](https://davidhealy.org/how-clinical-trials-help-pharma-invent-data/) - This is the second in the Dance series tackling the crisis in healthcare. Part one was Dancing as fast as we can. Every product is built from a raw material. The raw material puts constraints on a product developer. There may be difficulties fashioning the product from the material, or the material may be costly or
- [Dancing as fast as we can: The crisis in healthcare](https://davidhealy.org/dancing-as-fast-as-we-can-the-crisis-in-healthcare/) - This is the first of 6 Dance posts that cover the role of pharmaceuticals in the current healthcare crisis. It is based on Pharmageddon. In succeeding posts the role of clinical trials, patents, and prescription only status will be covered. The first five posts have been renamed from BarMittzva Romba; this combination of Bar(ack) and Mitt seems to have
- [The Tree Must Go](https://davidhealy.org/the-tree-must-go/) - Crusoe had a chance to view the new facility - the brainchild of one of the world’s wealthiest men, who had made his name in a race to sequence the genetic code. He had famously used his own DNA in the process. He later went on to create synthetic life and it was from synthetic biology He
- [Suffer The Little Children](https://davidhealy.org/suffer-the-little-children/) - This post was written by Dr Irene Campbell-Taylor, a former Clinical Neuroscientist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. This phrase means, of course, to allow the little children but today I want to write about children who are suffering in the other sense. The word “patient” comes from the Latin patire,
- [Herding Women](https://davidhealy.org/herding-women/) - Since 2005, Paroxetine, first marketed by GlaxoSmithKline as Seroxat/Paxil, has carried warnings of birth defect risks. These risks led to litigation in the US – but not elsewhere. In the first case that went to court in the US in 2009, the Kilker case, the lawyers for Lyam Kilker argued that, even before Paxil was launched, there was good
- [A New Epidemic: Antidepressants During Pregnancy](https://davidhealy.org/a-new-epidemic/) - This post is by Dr Adam Urato, a Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Tuft's University. Imagine for a moment that a virus started affecting about 5% of all pregnant women—200,000 US pregnancies per year. Imagine that it caused significant pregnancy complications--more than 10% of those infected with the virus would have miscarriage, up to 20%
- [Dependence Day](https://davidhealy.org/dependence-day/) - Author: Johanna Ryan, Labor Activist with Illinois Workers Compensation Lawyers (Chicago) Last month I watched as forty Iraq and Afghanistan vets led an antiwar march to the gates of the NATO summit in Chicago, and handed back their medals. At the rally, they described the toll the wars had taken on the troops as well
- [Pharmacosis: The day the music died](https://davidhealy.org/pharmacosis-the-day-the-music-died/) - Syphilis appeared in Italy in 1498 just after Columbus had returned from the New World. This later led to suggestions that it had been brought back from the New World, in exchange for the many European illnesses that decimated the populations of North American Indians. Exposed to a virgin population new infections can be particularly virulent
- [Pharmacosis](https://davidhealy.org/pharmacosis/) - There is a new Contagion out there. Kate Winslet beware. Disease with no name This new epidemic has rapidly become at least the fourth leading cause of death and disability - it may even be the greatest cause of death because all we have counted so far are deaths in hospital where such deaths can
- [The Day the Lyrics Lied](https://davidhealy.org/the-day-the-lyrics-lied/) - This post was written by Dr Irene Campbell-Taylor, a former Clinical Neuroscientist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. It is essential to read the marketing copy of pharmaceutical companies with care and attention for critical hidden details. It is rare to find an announcement with such obvious errors and dangerous suggestions
- [A Symbolta of Sorts](https://davidhealy.org/a-symbolta-of-sorts/) - In the early 1990s, Prozac was riding high but Lilly were planning its successor. The leading candidate was duloxetine – a dual inhibitor of both serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake as the older tricylic antidepressants (TCAs) had been. The company approached me in 1992 to recruit patients to a clinical trial of the new drug but
- [May Fools' Day](https://davidhealy.org/may-fools-day/) - Following the long-standing tradition, dating back at least to Chaucer, of playing practical jokes on May 1, The Scientist clearly thought it would be a good idea to show the outside world that science doesn’t always have to be stuffy and picked the appropriate day to demonstrate the point (http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/32019/title/Data-Diving/). May Fools' Day joke Sadly,
- [Pills and The Man](https://davidhealy.org/pills-and-the-man/) - Following Louis Appleby’s, Dan Troy’s and FDA’s logic (see Platonic Lies and Pla(u)to) the greatest public health benefit would come from getting the greatest number of people on the greatest amount of medications to ward off all conceivable risks. This clearly isn’t going to work out well. This isn’t going to work out well Let’s say we
- [Pla(u)to: The Car That Pharma Built](https://davidhealy.org/plauto-the-car-that-pharma-built/) - There is a line from Lilly and FDA in 1991 through to Louis Appleby in 2012 (see Platonic Lies) that runs through Pfizer in 2001. A few nights poor sleep before meeting Bill Clinton In November 1998, Victor Motus, a prominent member of the Filipino community in Southern California, had a few nights of poor
- [If Pharma Made Cars](https://davidhealy.org/if-pharma-made-cars/) - If Pharma made cars, the seat-belt warning signs would be removed, and the beeping noise if you moved without a seat-belt on would be silenced, as the start of a gradual process that would result in seat-belts being removed or made non-functional. The safety-bags would be removed or made ornamental. The car would be turbo-charged. The
- [Odysseus Come Home](https://davidhealy.org/odysseus-come-home/) - Odysseus was in his 70s. Coming up to the 50th anniversary of a very happy marriage. He had formerly been a respected professional, a longtime member of the bowling and social clubs – a pillar of the community. He had had minor episodes of anxiety primarily since retirement but no diagnosis of nervous problems. He
- [We Need To Talk About Doctors](https://davidhealy.org/we-need-to-talk-about-doctors/) - Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) came into favor in the wake of thalidomide as a method to evaluate drugs and their risks. They were supposed to keep ineffective drugs off the market, but companies have learned that you can do any number of trials and if even some show a marginal benefit they can get their
- [Out of My Mind. Driven to Drink](https://davidhealy.org/out-of-my-mind-driven-to-drink/) - Author: Anne-Marie (This story epitomizes what RxISK.org is all about. It shows one woman extraordinarily getting to grips with a problem she has on treatment. The hope when RxISK is up and running is that we will be able to make it easier for people like Anne-Marie to engage with their doctors to solve problems like this. Unfortunately
- [Watch where you wave that Wand](https://davidhealy.org/watch-where-you-wave-that-wand/) - It was a white wand — the kind a little girl might have. White ribbon wound round a long straw, at the top of which a double pair of white wings was set. Another more delicate white ribbon looped around the wings, to the front of which was fixed a downy feather, and behind which the ribbon was
- [Model Doctors?](https://davidhealy.org/model-doctors/) - Another inquest may bring out the risks to doctors from their professional associations behaving as the American Psychiatric Association (APA) or the Irish College of Psychiatry has done (see Professional suicide – the Clancy case). She posed no suicide risk. She was put on citalopram Yvonne Woodley, a 42-year-old woman with two young daughters, ran
- [The Best Bias That Money Can Buy](https://davidhealy.org/the-best-bias-that-money-can-buy/) - Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were adopted by FDA in 1962 following the thalidomide disaster. This was a way to manage the risks posed by potential poisons. If the toxicity from a drug could be shown to overcome to some extent the toxicity stemming from the illness, a risk-benefit ratio would be set up that would
- [Heads We Win, Tails You Lose](https://davidhealy.org/heads-we-win-tails-you-lose/) - In the late 1980s, Eli Lilly, when faced with an excess of suicidal behaviors in Prozac trials, set up a trial of Prozac in an interesting group of patients. These patients had what is often called borderline personality disorder or intermittent brief depressive disorder or recurrent brief depressive disorder. The trial terminated early. Placebo was
- [The Bureaucrat That Didn't Bark](https://davidhealy.org/the-bureaucrat-that-didnt-bark/) - Prozac’s commercial success after its launch in 1987 spurred SmithKline Beecham, Pfizer, and others to bring Paxil (Seroxat, Deroxat, Aropax), Zoloft (Lustral), and other Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to market. En route there was the tricky problem of managing what was recognized within companies by the early 1980s but denied in public, namely, that
- [Drug Companies Use Studies the Way a Drunk Uses a Lamppost](https://davidhealy.org/drug-companies-use-studies-the-way-a-drunk-uses-a-lamppost/) - Drug companies use studies the way a drunk uses a lamppost — for support rather than illumination. This quote adapted from English romcom author Jilly Cooper (who adapted it from others before her) seems an appropriate preface for a series of company approaches to data handling that have concealed rather than revealed treatment-induced problems. In
- [Mickey Nardo: Tangled up in Life](https://davidhealy.org/mickey-nardo-tangled-up-in-life/) - Mickey Nardo died yesterday. I got to visit with him and his wife Sharon on the phone a short while before he got involved with Jo Le Noury, Jon Jureidini, Melissa Raven, Catalin Tufanaru, Elia Abi-Jaoude and me Restoring Study 329 in 2013. It was one of those moments - I can still remember exactly
- [Access to RxISK Data: Conflicts of Interest](https://davidhealy.org/access-to-data-conflicts-of-interest/) - Won’t get fooled again outlined a stunning propaganda coup by GSK. On the back of a campaign for open access to clinical trial data that has drawn its inspiration from efforts by the Cochrane Tamiflu reviewers to get access to Roche’s clinical trial data, Andrew Witty came out and proclaimed that GSK were all in
- [Won't Get Fooled Again? GlaxoSmithKline and Access to Data](https://davidhealy.org/wont-get-fooled-again-glaxosmithkline-and-access-to-data/) - On November 22nd the European Medicines’ Agency (EMA) is holding a workshop on access to the data from clinical trials. While there have been many efforts by many people over the years to make the clinical trial process more transparent, the EMA workshop has come about primarily following the efforts of Peter Gøtzsche of the
- [Benefit Risk Madness: Antipsychotics and Suicide](https://davidhealy.org/benefit-risk-madness-antipsychotics-and-suicide/) - Following the posting of The Madness of Psychiatry, there has been a flurry of activity in the twittersphere with Louis Appleby, the UK's suicide czar posting: What makes adolescents act on suicidal thoughts? New paper shows psychotic symptoms increase risk 20-fold. archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?a… You might get the impression from this that all patients have to do
- [The Madness of North Wales](https://davidhealy.org/the-madness-of-north-wales/) - Influenced like many of my generation by the writings of Laing, Szasz, Illich, Jung and Freud, I studied medicine to do psychiatry. At the time research was becoming mandatory for anyone hoping to engage with the field. I chose to work on the serotonin system. But this was working on the mind as much as the brain;
- [The Unbearable Lightness of Being](https://davidhealy.org/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being/) - This is the last of 3 posts laying out the philosophical basis for RxISK.org which will be live in the next few weeks. The others are Cri de Coeur & Once is Never. In his masterpiece on love and life The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera faces us with a dilemma about the important things
- [Homeland Security](https://davidhealy.org/homeland-security/) - In the latest hit series Homeland Claire Danes plays Carrie Mathison a CIA agent with bipolar disorder taking Clozapine. She takes the drug to prevent herself tipping over into frank paranoia in a world where being paranoid is necessary for survival. Anyone who knows anything about Clozapine knows Claire Danes is definitely not on it –
- [Coincidence a Fine Thing](https://davidhealy.org/coincidence-a-fine-thing/) - Coincidence can be a fine thing. No sooner had I finished The tricks that drug companies do live after them, asking for examples of maneuvers to add to a generally available repository of tricks, than up pops Robert Gibbons' paper, Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior With Antidepressant Treatment, with not one but two maneuvers and reminders of others.‎
- [Restoring Study 329: Letter to BMJ Jan 2016](https://davidhealy.org/restoring-study-329-letter-to-bmj-jan-2016/) - Editorial Note: This was our final letter in the correspondence that began here and ran through here. There has been no response from Dr Godlee. 28 January 2016 Dr Fiona Godlee Editor, BMJ Re: BMJ handling of conflict of interest Dear Dr Godlee Thank you for your email response of January 11 2016 to our
- [The Madness of Childbirth](https://davidhealy.org/the-madness-of-childbirth/) - The North Wales asylum made its way into my life by accident. The history department at Bangor University secured a grant to look at the social impact of the asylum. Looking at the records they collected, it was striking how people declared their madness a century ago – they tore off their clothes and escaped through
- [The Shipwreck of the Singular](https://davidhealy.org/the-shipwreck-of-the-singular/) - Crusoe’s first appearance was in The Creation of Psychopharmacology, where in recognition of the tensions inherent in medicine between the numerous who enter clinical trials and the single person being treated by a doctor, the book opened with a quote from George Oppen’s Of Being Numerous, in which he notes that: “Crusoe we say was
- [Surrender](https://davidhealy.org/surrender/) - There has been a big delay between posts. This has been primarily about trying to find an image or images for this post - unsuccessfully so far. The trigger to the post came from a piece on Surrendered Wives. The BBC website had the attached piece - strangely as part of their 100 Women series.
- [Professional Suicide](https://davidhealy.org/professional-suicide/) - On October 15, 2004, after FDA had put a Black Box Warning on antidepressants to draw attention to the risk that they can cause suicide, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) came out with a news release whose key statement was: ‘The American Psychiatric Association believes that Antidepressants save lives.” This was perhaps the first professional
- [The Dram of Eale](https://davidhealy.org/the-dram-of-eale/) - They told me the 80 year old man who'd had a stroke must be depressed – he wasn’t rehabilitating properly. Could I see him and look at whether the citalopram he’d been started on a week before needed tweaking? Jeff was solidly middle class, professional. He had never been ill before his stroke and never ever
- [Once is Never](https://davidhealy.org/once-is-never/) - This is the second of 3 posts laying out the philosophical basis for RxISK.org which will be live in the next few weeks. The others are Cri de Coeur & the Unbearable lightness of being. In Cri de Coeur, I outlined a scenario in which a treatment that causes suicide when put into good trials without
- [The First Vaccine Wars](https://davidhealy.org/the-first-vaccine-wars/) - Editorial: This is a final post in the current vaccine series. In 1798 Edward Jenner in Britain demonstrated that vaccination with cowpox was a safer way to confer immunity to smallpox than variolation with smallpox. It quickly spread. In Britain, variolation was banned in favor of vaccination in 1840. In 1853, vaccinations were made compulsory
- [Study 329: MK, HK, SK and GSK](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-mk-hk-sk-and-gsk/) - The Letter below from Marty Keller and colleagues was sent to many media outlets, to retraction watch, and to professional organizations on Wednesday. Paul Basken from the Chronicle for Higher Education asked me for a response which I sent about an hour after receiving the letter. This response is from me rather than the 329
- [Welcome to Data Based Medicine](https://davidhealy.org/welcome-to-data-based-medicine/) - Adverse drug events are now the fourth leading cause of death in hospitals It’s a reasonable bet they are an even greater cause of death in non-hospital settings where there is no one to monitor things going wrong and no one to intervene to save a life. In mental health for instance drug-induced problems are
- [4-24 March 2012: North American visit](https://davidhealy.org/4-24-march-2012-north-american-visit/) - Lectures and promotion for Pharmageddon and RxISK.org. My speaking calendar is as follows (more details to come). Date Time City Location Details 5 March 12-1pm Boston Tufts University (Farnsworth 250 Conference Room) The Changing Face of Psychosis 8 March 9:30-10:30am 12-1pm New Jersey Rutgers (First Floor Conference Room, Institute for Health, Health Care
- [False Friends](https://davidhealy.org/false-friends/) - ‘Evidence’ is what the French call a false friend. You think you understand the word but you don’t. In French or Dutch, the Evidence in Evidence Based Medicine means that something is self-evident – as in using a parachute when jumping from a plane or penicillin for septicemia or an antipsychotic to tranquilize. You don’t need
- [We Need Data for Data Based Medicine](https://davidhealy.org/we-need-data-for-data-based-medicine/) - One of the purposes of this blog is to invite colleagues to add to the knowledge base on drug groups. To submit a paper or to provide your comments, please contact us. I'll start the ball rolling with the following draft Data Based Medicine (DBM) papers: Antidepressants for Takers Antidepressants for Prescribers We have draft
- [Press Release: Pharmageddon is here](https://davidhealy.org/press-release-pharmageddon-is-here/) - For immediate release Toronto, February 28, 2012. Pharmaceutical companies have hijacked healthcare in America, and the results are life-threatening.In his new book, Pharmageddon, Dr. David Healy documents a riveting and terrifying story that affects us all. Healy also has an idea for the solution..."A medical classic the day it was published." "Pharmageddon is a must-read for
- [Pharmacosis: Trigger Algorithm](https://davidhealy.org/pharmacosis-trigger-algorithm/) - The first descriptions of a drug causing suicide came in 1955. A few years later in 1958 and again in 1959 the problem was described with imipramine. Treatment induced suicide became a prominent media issue in 1990 with a paper by Teicher and Cole. But it was not until 2004 that regulators and companies conceded that these
- [Pharmacosis: Terminator Algorithm](https://davidhealy.org/pharmacosis-terminator-algorithm/) - The single commonest question to RxISK.org has been about dependence on and withdrawal from treatments, such as anticonvulsants, statins, diuretics and others. We often think that it is only drugs of abuse that can cause dependence and withdrawal but in fact an astonishing number, perhaps most medicines, can cause problems (see Medicine Induced Stress Syndromes, Dependence
- [The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre: Protestant Patients, Catholic Drugs](https://davidhealy.org/the-st-bartholomews-day-massacre-protestant-patients-catholic-drugs/) - Margot's lover in La Reine Margot was one of the Huguenots who survived the massacre set in train by her brother Charles IX on St Bartholomew's Day in Paris in 1572. There are many politicians, bureaucrats, doctors and others, the Royalists, in a position to make a difference who know that psychotropic drugs can cause suicide or
- [101 Uses for a Dead Journal](https://davidhealy.org/101-uses-for-a-dead-journal/) - There used to be a wonderful cartoon series called 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, which led me 25 years ago to give a talk at a British Association for Psychopharmacology meeting entitled 101 Uses for a Dead Psychiatrist. That was back in the days when Psychopharmacology meetings were places of debate and the British
- [Not So Black: Ablixa and Homicidal Side Effects](https://davidhealy.org/not-so-black-ablixa-and-homicidal-side-effects/) - If you don't want to know what happens in the movie Side Effects - do not read further. The post does not reveal all but does reveal important details. So now we know Soderbergh’s movie Side Effects is not so Black/Noir after all – more Fifty Shades of Grey. Emily Hawkins (Rooney Mara) is put
- [Six fired, one dead, no answers](https://davidhealy.org/six-fired-one-dead-no-answers/) - This post was written by Alan Cassels and first appeared in Focus magazine online in early March. The full version is here. Alan was one of the creators of the Selling Sickness, or disease mongering idea. His recent book is "Seeking Sickness: Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease. There is an editorial comment below. A
- [EU-nuch in the Humira-m](https://davidhealy.org/eu-nuch-in-the-humira-m/) - No such thing as being 'European' There is no such thing as being European when you take a drug like Humira or Depakote and something goes wrong. When something goes wrong on their drug, companies go to extraordinary lengths to make it almost impossible for doctors or patients to report adverse events. It’s part of a
- [Sexual Dysfunction Enduring After Treatment Halts: s-DEATH](https://davidhealy.org/sexual-dysfunction-enduring-after-treatment-halts-s-death/) - Editorial note: This post is copied from RxISK where there will be 5 posts this week on aspects of Enduring Sexual Dysfunction after treatment, covering the issues below. Wikipedia stumbles and falls Wikipedia used to host a valued page on Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD). On January 27th this was taken down. A Post-Finasteride Syndrome page has
- [The Macbeth Test](https://davidhealy.org/the-macbeth-test/) - Editorial Note: No one outside the UK may be paying any heed to the all-consuming debate within Britain about the referendum on the future of Scotland. Everything comes back to this. Corporations have been saying they'll pull out if Scotland leaves the UK (Standard Life) or that they'd prefer if Scotland left (British Airways). The EU have said Scotland would have
- [Welcome to Troy](https://davidhealy.org/welcome-to-troy/) - A lot people it seems have been singing and dancing in the street at news last week that AbbVie the pharmaceutical company that make Humira have dropped a legal action against the European Medicine’s Agency (EMA) that was aimed at blocking any access by researchers or others to their clinical trial data. Stacy of Arc
- [Study 329: Big Risk](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-big-risk/) - Editorial Note: This is the Fourth Crusoe Report. "Death waits for these things like a cement floor waits for a dropping light bulb" Big pharma Study 329 seems to fit the classic picture. It has Big Pharma ghostwriting articles, hiding data, corrupting the scientific process and leaving a trail of death, disability and grieving relatives
- [Pharmaceutical Rape is not a Metaphor](https://davidhealy.org/pharmaceutical-rape-is-not-a-metaphor/) - Ed Note: This is the first of a 5 part series on Pharmaceutical Rape by Laurie Oakley. We are looking for images to illustrate the series and would welcome any cartoons or other images that are germane to themes below. The first image here is Martin Shkreli, the man who raised the price of Daraprim
- [Study 329 Taper Phase](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-taper-phase/) - Editorial Note: It was tempting not to run a post today for fear it might get lost in the wash of the Clinton-Trump debate. But today is the fourteenth anniversary of the day FDA issued an approvable letter for Paxil for children, as well as the fifty-fourth anniversary of the 1962 FDA Act that created
- [Go Figure: Study 329](https://davidhealy.org/go-figure-study-329/) - Editorial Note: This post merges the Go Figure sequence of posts from several weeks ago with the 329 series. In the wake of the French Revolution of 1968, the government was still tottering when on February 4 1970, sixteen miners died with twelve others maimed in an explosion at a mine in Lens in France. The
- [Why Do People Sing?](https://davidhealy.org/why-do-people-sing/) - In 1989, BBC ran a program Under African Skies covering the music of the continent. The program and music from it captured on Cassette and later Record became widely known. On Side 2 of 4 sides of cassette, there is a brief snippet of 4 children at St Joseph's Music School in Harare answering their
- [Club 329: Part 1](https://davidhealy.org/club-329-part-1/) - Editorial Note: This post is by Leonie Fennel. It's one of two involving Leonie. Last week, Dr Ben Goldacre gave a public lecture in the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin (organised by the 3U Partnership and the very lovely Dr Ruth Davis). Dr Goldacre is a doctor, academic, campaigner and writer; he is also
- [Club 329: Part 3](https://davidhealy.org/club-329-part-3/) - Editorial Note: This post by Leonie Fennel carries on from parts 1 and 2 in this series. There will be one more post. I dreamt I met my son Shane last night - in a jewelry shop, of all places. I was admiring the beautiful costume jewelry, when I overturned the dainty display and went
- [Psychiatry Gone Astray](https://davidhealy.org/psychiatry-gone-astray/) - Dr Peter Gøtzsche exposes some of the myths associated with antidepressant use.
- [Study 329: Response to Keller & Colleagues](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-response-to-keller-colleagues/) - Editorial Note: This post offers our response to the Keller letter. It was published in BMJ in early February. Again all material is available on Study329.org. The response does not make much of the fact that not all of the Als in Keller et al have lined up to sign their letter. One of the
- [Pharmaceutical Rape: The Good Patient](https://davidhealy.org/pharmaceutical-rape-the-good-patient/) - This is part 3 of Laurie Oakley's series on Pharmaceutical Rape. In our society We learn a social script in which a “good patient” obeys the orders of doctors as authority figures. The ideal patient is a passive patient, subordinate to the physician. We are expected to relate to doctors as experts whose judgment we
- [Pharmaceutical Rape: Cast of Characters](https://davidhealy.org/pharmaceutical-rape-cast-of-characters/) - Ed Note: This is part two in Laurie Oakley's Pharmaceutical Rape series. WHEN IT COMES to pharmaceutical rape, it is no simple task to determine just who the “rapists” are (or to determine the safety or lack of safety of the treatments that they promote), but we are certain that the behavior exists, and that
- [April Fool in Harlow: Anecdote Fishing in Harlow](https://davidhealy.org/april-fool-in-harlow-anecdote-fishing-in-harlow/) - This is the second of a series of six posts that began with Not So Bad Pharma and will continue with The Tragedy of Lou Lasagna, The Empire of Humbug 1, The Empire of Humbug 2 & Brand Fascism. To celebrate May Fool's Day last year The Scientist ran an article on Data Diving. This
- [Marilyn's Curse](https://davidhealy.org/marilyns-curse/) - Editorial Note: This an unexpected eighth part to the Lasagna Trilogy that started with Not So Bad Pharma and runs through to Witty A: Report to the President. Ondine Ondine was a nymph whose lover swore that his every waking breath was a testimony to his love of her. Finding him unfaithful, she cursed him –
- [The Madness of Young People](https://davidhealy.org/the-madness-of-young-people/) - In 1861 Benedikt Morel, a physician in France, described a terrifying new illness. It involved young people in their late teens or early twenties about to enter what should have been the prime of their lives who instead sank into a profound and seemingly incurable state of what he termed precocious dementia. Morel painted a
- [The Spin That No Data Can Overcome](https://davidhealy.org/the-spin-that-no-data-can-overcome/) - Roger Shepard's above illustration shows two tables of exactly the same size and shape. It’s an extraordinary example of how even when you know that the table tops are the same, the data changes nothing. The dynamics of perspective mean we continue to see things in the wrong way. Early on in the Prozac and
- [Randomized God](https://davidhealy.org/randomized-god/) - Several controlled clinical trials have recently been reported in which patients with cardiac conditions who were prayed for appeared to do better than those not prayed for (1, 2, 3). The surprise that prayer seems to do something has to be matched by surprise at the fact that its effects are relatively weak. If we are to
- [Where Were The Adults?](https://davidhealy.org/where-were-the-adults/) - Along with Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline (see Drug companies use studies the way a drunk uses a lamppost), Pfizer created ghost suicidal acts on placebo. Other companies did further things that concealed the suicide problem. Did Pfizer? Black box warning on pediatric use of antidepressants In 2004, following the lead of the British Regulator (MHRA), the FDA put
- [Study 329: BMJ Transparency](https://davidhealy.org/study-329-bmj-transparency/) - Two weeks ago The BMJ ran an editorial by Richard Smith (former editor) and Fiona Godlee (current editor) on the retraction of a 1989 article by R K Chandra under the heading of A Major Failure of Scientific Governance. While making money from the publication of pharmaceutical company trials, and in the face of a
- [Lives Touched by GSK](https://davidhealy.org/lives-touched-by-gsk/) - (Anonymous) Notes of a Paxil guinea pig What does GSK owe to the youngsters in its infamous Study 329 who became suicidal while taking the company’s paroxetine (Paxil/Seroxat)? As someone who was briefly a GSK Guinea Pig, I’d say the most important thing they’re owed is the truth. It’s a highly delinquent debt – but it’s
- [The Madness of Carl Jung: A Dangerous Method](https://davidhealy.org/the-madness-of-carl-jung-a-dangerous-method/) - Carl Jung was one of Freud's earliest supporters and in many respects rivaled him in terms of influence. Some of their interactions provide the basis for the story behind the book and recent movie - A Dangerous Method. Just as Freud did, he famously analyzed himself and while doing so apparently became psychotic. His psychosis
- [Doctor Munchausen I Presume!](https://davidhealy.org/doctor-munchausen-i-presume/) - Editorial note: As Britain descends into an orgy of handwringing about the abuse of vulnerable people, this is the first of several posts to tackle the issue. In 2000 when I gave a lecture on Psychopharmacology and the Government of the Self at the invitation of the University of Toronto, I ran into a problem.
- [Doctor Munchausen: Dying for a Cure](https://davidhealy.org/doctor-munchausen-dying-for-a-cure/) - Editorial Note: This is the second in a Doctor Munchausen series of posts - meditations on the fact that medicine is likely the place where the greatest amount of abuse on earth happens - but no-one notices and no-one intervenes. The post below comes from the foreword to Dying for a Cure, Rebekah Beddoe's book
- [Father Munchausen, I Presume!](https://davidhealy.org/father-munchausen-i-presume/) - Editorial Note: This is the fourth of seven Doctor Munchausen posts - Doctor Munchausen, I presume, Dying for a Cure, Dear Louise and the forthcoming Doctor Munchausen as a Sense about Science Trustee, and Doctor Munchausen Joins your local Hospital Board. I’ve had some criticism of the recent Doctor Munchausen posts. They’re not fair on doctors. Many
- [Persecution of Vulnerable Adults: POVA](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-of-vulnerable-adults-pova/) - The post outlines exactly what harassment and intimidation within the health service looks like.
- [Harassment: From the BBC to the GMC](https://davidhealy.org/harassment-from-the-bbc-to-the-gmc/) - For those of you who like Breaking Bad, this the third in the Persecution Murder Mystery series. Without giving away the plot, it jumps right to last week. It has been adapted from a letter to members of the House of Commons committee on harassment in the NHS. The second part of the letter will
- [Harassment: Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who](https://davidhealy.org/harassment-rolf-harris-to-james-coyne-to-doctor-who/) - This is the fourth in the Persecution Series - a continuation of the letter to the H of Commons posted earlier this week. Click on the image to view the words and the detail. Abuse is always repeated I was referred to GMC some 8 years ago. Then the referral came from David Nutt and
- [Persecution: Black Riders Seen in the Shire](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-black-riders-seen-in-the-shire/) - Fifth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who. On the left is a map of North Wales, on the right Middle Earth from Lord of the Rings. Tolkien based his story on
- [Persecution: Was Collective Narcissism Mordor's Problem?](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-was-collective-narcissism-mordors-problem/) - This is the Sixth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, & Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire. This completes the scene setting. Next week the posts will get down to the gritty-nitty. The
- [Persecution: SUI-Cide is Painless in Betsi](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-sui-cide-is-painless-in-betsi/) - This is the Sixth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire & Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor. When something serious goes wrong in healthcare it is standard to have a
- [Persecution: SUI-Cide Trick or Treat?](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-sui-cide-trick-or-treat/) - This is the Eighth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire, Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor and SUI-Cide in Betsi as well as the second in the SUI-Cide series. The SUI
- [Persecution: SUI-Cide Note](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-sui-cide-note/) - This is the Ninth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire, Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor, and third in the Suicide Series SUI-Cide in Betsi, SUI-Cide Trick or Treat. Dr Higgo's
- [Persecution: SUI Cide or HomiCide?](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-sui-cide-or-homicide/) - This is the Tenth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire, Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor, and fourth in the SUI Cide Series SUI Cide in Betsi, SUI Cide Trick or
- [Persecution: SUI Cide In The OK Corral](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-sui-cide-in-the-ok-corral/) - This is the Eleventh in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics,The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire, Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor, and fifth in the SUI Cide Series SUI Cide in Betsi, SUI Cide Trick or Treat,
- [Persecution: SUI Cide & Peace In Our Time](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-sui-cide-peace-in-our-time/) - This is the Twelfth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire, Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor, and sixth in the SUI Cide Series SUI Cide in Betsi, SUI Cide Trick or
- [La Reine Margot: Data access, ghostwriting, suicide and mad reviewers](https://davidhealy.org/la-reine-margot-data-access-ghostwriting-suicide-and-mad-reviewers/) - Another study giving a first hint of the findings in our 2012 Mortality in Schizophrenia paper (See The Madness of Psychiatry) was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2006 - Lifetime Rates of Suicide in Schizophrenia. It took several years and some smuggling to get it into print. In the course of exploring the issues, it seemed
- [Persecution: The SUI Cide Apparatus](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-the-sui-cide-apparatus/) - This is the Thirteenth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire, Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor, and seventh in the SUI Cide Series SUI Cide in Betsi, SUI Cide Trick or
- [Persecution: Professional SUI Cide](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-professional-sui-cide/) - This is the Fourteenth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire, Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor, and eight in the SUI Cide Series SUI Cide in Betsi, SUI Cide Trick or
- [Persecution: He Who Would Do A Great Evil](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-he-who-would-do-a-great-evil/) - This is the Fifteenth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire, Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor, of which there were eight in the SUI Cide Series SUI Cide in Betsi, SUI
- [Persecution: Brand Fascism](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-brand-fascism/) - This is the Sixteenth in the Persecution Series, after The Persecution of Heretics, The Persecution of Vulnerable Adults, Harassment from the BBC to GMC, Harassment from Rolf Harris to James Coyne to Doctor Who, Persecution: Black Riders in the Shire, Persecution: Rumbles from Mordor, of which there were eight in the SUI Cide Series SUI Cide in Betsi, SUI
- [Persecution: Dangerous Liaisons II](https://davidhealy.org/persecution-dangerous-liaisons-ii/) - Editorial Note: This is the eighteenth post in the Persecution series, and a sequel to Dangerous Liaisons. See Brand Fascism for a listing of prior posts in the sequence. Slightly over a week ago in New York I was subject to a blizzard of questions from a lawyer for Forest, who taking great pleasure in
- [Platonic Lies](https://davidhealy.org/platonic-lies/) - When she sent Margaret's Story to us, M had already written to Britain's Suicide Czar, Louis Appleby. She got the following response: Dear Mrs Thank you for taking the trouble to contact me. I am so sorry to hear about the death of your son. Those of us who work in suicide prevention are always aware of
- [American Woman 2](https://davidhealy.org/american-woman-2/) - GSK has many phone numbers... but it's not clear how many connect to GSK.
- [We're All North Korean Now](https://davidhealy.org/were-all-north-korean-now/) - There has been a fascination recently with watching the orchestrated demonstrations of flag-waving enthusiasm for the regime that emanate from North Korea – the waves of people moving in synchrony like a shoal of fish. It’s difficult to know whether it is scarier to have the population behave this way and not believe in their leaders
- [The Factories of Post-Modernism](https://davidhealy.org/the-factories-of-post-modernism/) - In the 1960s revolution was afoot. Antipsychiatry was born. The new revolutionnaries targetted medicalization and claimed mental illnesses didn't exist. Out of this cauldron, postmodernism was discovered. Postmodernism provided the basis for an ongoing guerilla war against capitalism and industrial society waged by social scientists, anthropologists and others trained in the humanities. Science had led us to doubt the
- [Shocking The Homeland](https://davidhealy.org/shocking-the-homeland/) - The thriller Homeland reached its denouement in the UK at the weekend – in an Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) scene. Claire Danes, a Homeland security agent supposedly taking Clozapine to contain her paranoia has to distinguish reality from psychosis to save the United States (see Homeland Security). Quite obviously to anyone who knows anything about Clozapine,
- [There's Something About Mary](https://davidhealy.org/theres-something-about-mary/) - A paper looking at antidepressants and birth defects in Denmark has just appeared (Jimenez-Solem et al 2012).
- [Psychotic Doubt](https://davidhealy.org/psychotic-doubt/) - Toward the end of the 1990s, hiding the suicide risk on antidepressants by unearthing ghost suicides and suicidal acts from the early washout phase of trials looks like it might have seemed to company and FDA officials as problematic as Macbeth’s invitation to Banquo to make sure he came back to the feast later that
- [Burn in Hell](https://davidhealy.org/burn-in-hell/) - In my last post, Psychotic Doubt, we saw the most successful maneuver that has ever been devised for hiding dead bodies and silencing us when we are injured. We saw a mechanism that acts like the authority of a psychoanalyst (when Freud was still in vogue), or an ecclesiastical authority (until recently), to silence dissent
- [Cri de Coeur](https://davidhealy.org/cri-de-coeur/) - This is the first of 3 posts laying out the philosophical basis for RxISK.org which will be live in the next few weeks. The others are Once is Never & the Unbearable lightness of being. “[I suggest] a meeting with yourself and your reviewers. I have spoken in public on these issues and offered to
- [What Would Batman Do Now?](https://davidhealy.org/what-would-batman-do-now/) - Johanna Ryan in her post Dependence Day points to serious problems linked to psychotropic drug use in the military and what seem to be recent alarming developments, but there is a 60 year history here. In the 1950s, the VA hospital system commissioned Norman Farberow to look at rising rates of suicides among veterans. He
- [A Black Box Warning for Clinical Trials?](https://davidhealy.org/a-black-box-warning-for-clinical-trials/) - Controlled trials are universally touted as providing gold standard information on drugs. Doctors are routinely taught to disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes and trust in controlled trials instead. Governments in North America and Europe are forcing patients to participate in controlled trials — saying that you get better care in a controlled trial
- [Lost in Medication: The Crusoe Report 3](https://davidhealy.org/lost-in-medication-the-crusoe-report-3/) - Editorial Note: This follows Restoring Health part 1 and What's Poisoning Health part 2 of the Crusoe Report in response to the Witty Magna Carta posts. A medicine is a mix of a chemical that pharmaceutical companies produce and knowledge about how to use the chemical – that we produce. Making even basic chemicals was beyond us for millennia.
- [Petra's Story: Cymbalta](https://davidhealy.org/petras-story/) - This piece is the first of a series showing people struggling with the Kafkka-esque absurdities of modern healthcare. It is written anonymously. If you'd like to share your story, please contact us. — David Healy A little over two years ago my daughter’s partner was killed in a tragic accident while in the company of
- [Margaret's Story](https://davidhealy.org/margarets-story/) - (The story outlined below is authored by 'Margaret'. Since this was first written there have been a number of developments and an update to 'Margaret's Story' will follow - DH). Our son went to his GP with poor sleep because of worries at work. His doctor said he was depressed and put him on a combination
- [American Woman](https://davidhealy.org/american-woman/) - On Thursday, May 31, 2001, a woman whose name is known only to GlaxoSmithKline emailed the company: I was absolutely distraught "My name is... I was diagnosed with panic disorder about four-and-a-half years ago. Since that time I've been taking Paxil, which is truly a miracle drug. I've been panic-free with this drug and have
- [Every Drink Spiked](https://davidhealy.org/every-drink-spiked/) - This post is written anonymously. I outlined how my daughter Petra came to take Cymbalta on this blog a few months ago (see Petra’s story; also see Symbolta of Sorts). This post tells of events that led to her coming off. Petra is an enthusiast for motor sport events. She has been on track days,
- [Witty A: Report to the President](https://davidhealy.org/witty-a-report-to-the-president/) - Editorial Note: This was to be the last in the Lasagna posts that began with Not So Bad Pharma, April Fool in Harlow, The Tragedy of Lou Lasagna, Empire of Humbug: Bad Pharma, Empire of Humbug 2, and Brand Fascism. But the series will continue into Marilyn's Curse and When does Yes Mean No. Faced with questions about the
- [The Data Access Wars](https://davidhealy.org/the-data-access-wars/) - This is the first of three Crusoe posts. For background on Crusoe, see Watch where you wave that wand, The Oedipus Effect, The Tree must go. Beta Centauri was unquestionably a long way from Massachusetts. Somewhat to her surprise Crusoe found breathing no problem, and the temperature seemed just about right. The scenery as they’d come in was
- [The Church of GSKology 2](https://davidhealy.org/the-church-of-gskology-2/) - A century ago Freud and Jung made us aware of the biases underpinning what patients say. Not everything should be accepted at face value. In particular claims of abuse may not be based on reality. We needed experts – analysts – they claimed to tease out what is real from what is not. The Catholic Church
- [AbbVie: Sharing The Yellow Stuff](https://davidhealy.org/abbvie-sharing-the-yellow-stuff/) - Editorial Note: This is the second part of our effort to "translate" Neal Parker's recent presentation in Bruxelles. The first half is here Neal Parker Avoiding Adverse Events. Reading the first half and Neal Parker's original transcript - available here - will give lots more material for the Caption Competition below. The least dramatic moment in Mr Parker's
- [When does Yes mean No](https://davidhealy.org/when-does-yes-mean-no/) - Editorial Note: This is the ninth piece or final third of the final triptych in the Lasagna trilogy of triptychs that started with Not So Bad Pharma and runs through to Marilyn's Curse. Marilyn died of an overdose of barbiturate sleeping pills (Tragedy). A bystander, Lou Lasagna, noted she had been denied access to a sleeping pill that
- [The Empire of Humbug: Not So Bad Pharma](https://davidhealy.org/the-empire-of-humbug-not-so-bad-pharma/) - Editorial Note: This is the fifth is the Lasagna series of posts that began with Not So Bad Pharma, April Fool in Harlow, The Tragedy of Lou Lasagna, Empire of Humbug: Bad Pharma and will continue through to Brand Fascism and Witty A: Report to the President. In 1954 soon after his article with Beecher put the
- [The Empire of Humbug: Bad Pharma](https://davidhealy.org/the-empire-of-humbug-bad-pharma/) - Editorial Note: This is the fourth in the Lasagna series of posts - Not So Bad Pharma, April Fool in Harlow and Tragedy. It will be followed by The Empire of Humbug: Not so Bad Pharma, Brand Fascism & Witty A: Report to President. The first RCT In 1956, two of the creators of the modern
- [Somatic Symptom Disorder](https://davidhealy.org/somatic-symptom-disorder/) - Editorial Note: Richard commented on Peter Gøtzsche's recent post Psychiatry Gone Astray. He was invited to develop his comment and does so here. My name is Richard Lawhern. I advocate for nearly 5,000 chronic pain patients as a volunteer moderator and content writer at "Living With TN", a social networking website. We support people with Trigeminal Neuralgia -
- [Health Action International: Access to Trial Data](https://davidhealy.org/health-action-international-access-to-trial-data/) - Editorial Note: Leah Cowan and Ancel-la Santos from Health Action International wrote this post covering the release of a HAI position paper on Access to Clinical Trial Data. HAI have been to the forefront of the move to patient reporting of Adverse Events. It has a position as a partner with the European Consumer Organization
- [The Attitude of Chicks to Trojans & Horses](https://davidhealy.org/the-attitude-of-chicks-to-trojans-horses/) - Few patients would provide consent to clinical trials if they knew their data would be kept hidden.
- [The Oedipus Effect](https://davidhealy.org/the-oedipus-effect/) - Crusoe was called to see the woman. It all began she said when on the way home after a successful board meeting, taking shelter from a sudden downpour, he stepped into an empty building. There he saw something. Perhaps it was the nutmeg with the meal or the mushrooms that did it. A bunch of children, he said,
- [23-30 January 2012: Toronto](https://davidhealy.org/23-30-january-2012-toronto/) - Interviews, meetings, and pre-planning for the launch of my latest book, Pharmageddon. Have had some enquiries about where I might be speaking. Stay tuned for my March schedule -- am back in Toronto, and some other North American cities, and will post another blog with details as I get them.
- [The Tragedy of Lou Lasagna](https://davidhealy.org/the-tragedy-of-lou-lasagna/) - Editorial Note: This is the 3rd of 6 posts. The first two are Not So Bad Pharma, & April Fool in Harlow. The rest will be The Empire of Humbug 1 & 2 and Brand Fascism. There is an independent debate on some of the issues, including my writing style, at Hearing Voices on 1boringoldman. In 1956,
- [Humira in Ulcerative Colitis](https://davidhealy.org/humira-in-ulcerative-colitis/) - Editorial Note: I have to thank Ken Spriggs for pointing out the Humira in Ulcerative Colitis Review site. For anyone interested in AbbVie-ing and in Humira this site offers some sobering reading. Humira in ulcerative colitis reviews With the recent approval of Humira (Adalimumab) by the FDA, there is a growing need for ulcerative colitis
- [GSK's Manifesto: Voyeurs of the World Unite!](https://davidhealy.org/gsks-manifesto-voyeurs-of-the-world-unite/) - Editorial Note: There is a widespread impression that the pharmaceutical industry are split on the issue of access to clinical trial data with the bad guys like AbbVie taking legal actions to block access and the good guys like GSK in favor of transparency. An editorial like this one from GSK's James Shannon in the Huffington Post
- [The House of GSK](https://davidhealy.org/the-house-of-gsk/) - In a just published article in the BMJ, Peter Doshi notes how in recent months the English pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have assiduously portrayed themselves as advocates of transparency and in support of access to clinical trial data. Well in support of 'Responsible Access'. Responsible essentially means that a researcher commits to the primacy of RCTs and
- [One Script To Rule Them All](https://davidhealy.org/one-script-to-rule-them-all/) - So Long and Thanks for all the Fish portrayed doctors in a rather flattering light – the victims of a tragedy. They were portrayed as losing out in a Faustian bargain when they failed to realize the hazards in making all new drugs available on prescription only. The bargain offered them a chance to entrench
- [Eastern Health Meets Western Industry](https://davidhealy.org/eastern-health-meets-western-industry/) - Editorial Note: It's common to find those behind Global Mental Health say that they might not originally have believed in the reality of mental illness and the efficacy of treatment but they do now. This and two following position pieces don't come from the same conversion perspective. I have always believed in the reality of

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- [Home](https://davidhealy.org/) - Making medicines safer for all of us Adverse drug events are now the fourth leading cause of death in hospitals. It’s a reasonable bet they are an even greater cause of death in non-hospital settings where there is no one to monitor things going wrong and no one to intervene to save a life. In
- [Articles](https://davidhealy.org/articles/) - Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications Healy D, Dunne M, Duignan J & Heffernan S J (1980). The use of ultrasonography in the diagnosis of retroperitoneal abscesses of the appendix. Irish J of Medical Science, 149, 479. Healy D, Carney PA & Leonard BE (1983). Monoamine- related markers of depression: change following treatment. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 17,
- [Resources](https://davidhealy.org/resources/) - Data Based Medicine Sites RxISK.org is a medication safety website featuring a blog, adverse event reporting system, and free tools and resources to help you weigh the benefits of a drug against its side effects. TaperMD is a revolutionary solution to the problems of managing multiple medications in older adults. Developed with McMaster University, it
- [Contact](https://davidhealy.org/contact/) - Neither davidhealy.org nor RxISK.org are clinics. They are places where you can contribute examples of what drugs have done to you, things you have found out about them, and your thoughts on a medical system that doesn’t listen to its ‘consumers’. Twitter, Facebook and Contact Us are good ways to establish contact if there are things
- [Terms and Conditions](https://davidhealy.org/terms/) - Updated 28 September 2023 1. Introduction The terms “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to Data Based Medicine Global Ltd., a corporation incorporated under the laws of the UK, and its affiliated companies. These Terms and Conditions govern your use of rxisk.org, davidhealy.org, ssristories.org, and study329.org (the “Websites”); by using these Websites, you accept these Terms
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- [David Healy](https://davidhealy.org/bio/) - David Healy is a psychiatrist, scientist, psychopharmacologist, and author. Before becoming a professor of Psychiatry in Wales, and more recently in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University in Canada, he studied medicine in Dublin, and at Cambridge University. He is a former Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, and has authored more
- [Books](https://davidhealy.org/books/) - Shipwreck of the Singular Healthcare’s Castaways Paperback, Kindle Edition and Hardcover. Samizdat Health (2021) Children of the Cure Missing Data, Lost Lives and Antidepressants. by David Healy, Joanna Le Noury and Julie Wood. Paperback, Kindle Edition and Audiobook. Samizdat Health (2020) The Decapitation of Care A short history of the rise and fall of healthcare.
- [Pharmageddon is the Story of a Tragedy](https://davidhealy.org/pharmageddon-is-the-story-of-a-tragedy/) - In 1962 a sleeping pill called thalidomide caused a horrific drug disaster whose emblematic images of limbless and handicapped babies born to distraught mothers linger to this day. The United States Congress swung into action. They wanted to prevent such a tragedy happening again. They were also determined to rein in the marketing excesses of the
- [About Data Based Medicine](https://davidhealy.org/about-data-based-medicine/) - Adverse drug events are now the fourth leading cause of death in hospitals It’s a reasonable bet they are an even greater cause of death in non-hospital settings where there is no one to monitor things going wrong and no one to intervene to save a life. In mental health for instance drug-induced problems are
- [Cause and Effect](https://davidhealy.org/cause-and-effect/) - Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering... © Billiam James 2022 THE CRACK THROUGH WHICH THE SCIENCE GETS IN The Covid Vaccines have introduced us to an issue that everyone on a medical treatment faces – how do we tell when a drug, device, or vaccine has caused a problem? For
- [Politics of Care](https://davidhealy.org/politics-of-care/) - Shipwrecked by the Cure, © 2012 Billiam James Shipwreck of the Singular charts our journey over two centuries to Here. How so much that was good in terms of increased life expectancy and quality that came with a development of medicine since 1800 now risks turning to ashes. The parallels with global climate change are
- [In the news](https://davidhealy.org/media-coverage/) - [table id=5 /]
- [Curriculum Vitae](https://davidhealy.org/curriculum-vitae/) - Prepared March 2015 DAVID HEALY, MD FRCPsych North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine Hergest Unit, Ysbyty Gwynedd, BANGOR, Gwynedd LL57 2PW, Wales (UK) Tel: (1248) 384452 Fax: (1248) 371397 E-Mail: David.Healy54@googlemail.com Citzenship: Republic of Ireland Country of Residence: UK APPOINTMENTS January 2014 — Professor of Psychiatry, Bangor University November 2004 — Professor of Psychiatry, Cardiff

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