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 response to Healy
Senior clinicians working in the Trust reviewed Professor Healey’s report and would like to provide a response to a number of points raised by Professor Healey.
The Consultants who reviewed the report are as follows; Dr McMahon – Associate Medical Director, Mental Health and Disability Directorate; Dr McFarland – Chair of the SAI; and Dr Chada – Consultant in the Home Treatment service.
As clinicians working in a HSCB Trust we endeavour to provide the best care possible to patients presenting to our service.
We make the following points
- We work to nationally agreed guidelines such as those recommended by NICE and Up-to-date
- Anti-depressants prescribed for both anxiety and depression have been approved by the rigorous (world renowned) medication approval system in the U.K., the MHRA (Medication & Healthcare Regulations Authority). The drugs prescribed have also been approved by the FDA. They were prescribed within BNF guidelines. (British National Formulary).
- Medication prescribed was carefully monitored and when it appeared there was a possible reaction to one of the SSRis (Sertraline), this was discontinued. This demonstrates that the Senior Clinician was aware of the potential side effects of the SSRI and acted on it.
- There are no specific cautions about the use of Buspirone and any potential suicidality in the current BNF guidance. It was prescribed in keeping with recognised indications and within the prescribing guidelines noted above.
- There have been a number of meta-analyses carried out in relation to the risk/benefit of using antidepressants both in children and adults. The meta-analyses clearly indicate that the benefit in adults aged over 25 significantly outweighs the risk as reflected in the National Guidance.
- As we are following regionally approved guidelines and the standard met by other similar Doctors and Clinicians, we refute the Trust is putting people at risk;
- We would agree with Professor Healy that there was no evidence of negligence, nonetheless we will share some of the learning highlighted in his report;
I hope this is helpful. Thank you.
Dr P McMahon Consultant Psychiatrist
There are two astonishing things about this.
The first intriguing feature is that this McMahon statement is almost identical to responses I later had from the Northern Irish, English and Welsh Governments in response to a letter I sent about the O’Neill inquest to Michelle O’Neill – the Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland – see Overture to Michelle O’Neill.
The response from Vaughan Gething in Wales is given in full here because it follows on an earlier letter to him and response from his office – I Recognise these Constraints – and it leads deliciously to the next step in the saga (next post). All 3 government responses can be downloaded from Richard Pengelly N. Ireland, Leigh Smale England, and Vaughan Gething. They are strangely similar and very like the McMahon statement.
Gething to Healy December 10th
Dear Professor Healy,
Thank you for your e-mail of 26 November regarding the inquest into Stephen O’Neill’s death following him taking prescribed anti-depressants.
I note the previous letter that you sent on this matter on 2 September which you copied to me. I must clarify that I did not respond to your letter as it was directed to Michelle O’Neill. However, I did share it with Welsh Government officials to consider the points you raised and what action may need to be taken.
In Wales, we take an evidence-based approach to deciding which treatments should be routinely available in the NHS. To do this, we rely on the expert advice of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and our own appraisal body, the All-Wales Medicines Strategy Group (AWMSG). NICE and the AWMSG recommendations are based on the best available evidence.
NICE’s evidence-based recommendations developed by independent committees, including professionals and lay members, and consulted on by stakeholders. We rely upon this robust process to assist health care professionals, patients and their carers’ decisions about appropriate treatment and health care.
We also rely on the work of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) which is responsible for ensuring that medicines and medical devices work and are acceptably safe.
May I suggest that you write to both the Chief Executive of NICE, Sir Andrew Dillon, and the MHRA, Dr June Raine, to address any concerns you may have in regards to their processes.
Yours sincerely,
Vaughan
Vaughan Gething AM
Minister for Health,
Welsh Assembly Government
Healy to Gething Dec 11th
Re Ghostwriting and Public Health
Dear Mr Gething
Many thanks for the response to my recent letter. I have followed your advice and written to Andrew Dillon, copying you in. I will copy him into this letter.
It’s not the job of NICE to police the medical literature. I would imagine pretty well everyone would figure it’s up to physicians to do the policing. Given that journal editors and bodies like Cochrane are failing to do so, it falls to me to tell you of this risk – hence my previous letter. I wrote to NICE about these issues after giving a lecture in the Welsh Senedd building last December.
I assume, given your reply didn’t quibble with what I wrote, that senior physicians in your Department have not suggested that Healy is entirely wrong. They might well be interested in any response from NICE – but this is passing a buck they seem to know about.
At the end of the day I can try to look after the safety of patients in my care, by rarely paying heed to NICE Guidance. But most doctors across Wales will not feel able to do this and will give their patients treatments that risk harming them because to do otherwise would fly in the face of what they perceive to be NICE Guidelines with a consequent risk of losing their job if their practice is reviewed by Medical Directors in Welsh Health Boards. Everyone can pass the buck here – you, the Medical Directors, NICE, MHRA and doctors.
A JAMA article this week indicates life expectancy has been falling in the US for 5 years. In recent weeks there have been similar reports from the Health Foundation and Public Health England. And an ONS report last week said babies born in the UK now will live 3 years less than previously expected. A strong case can be made that polypharmacy is a contributor to these figures, driven by Guidelines like NICE’s, and that this outcome was almost inevitable if Guidelines are based on a Fake literature.
But these issues are not just about patient safety. You (not Pharma) are paying for screening staff, auditors and managers to deliver services that essentially are about getting people to take drugs – as for instance osteoporosis services and lately the children’s mental health services a recent Minister of Health called the greatest point of failure of the NHS.
I remain happy to discuss any aspect of these issues with you or your department before I leave this job and the country early next year.
Yours sincerely
Professor David Healy MD FRCPsych
cc. A Dillon (NICE).
Two More Astonishing Things
First, it might just be worth noting that McMahon concedes Stephen O’Neill had a toxic reaction to Sertraline and then goes on to mention NICE and MHRA but NICE have no guidance on how to treat SSRI toxicity and MHRA have licensed nothing for treating SSRI toxicity.
Second, another remarkable feature of the McMahon input to the inquest is that you’d expect politicians like Vaughan Gething to say just what they said – what is a politician faced with a query from the media, patients, or Healy on an issue about drugs going to do except say that we are not doctors – we are advised by the regulator and the guideline makers.
Politicians aren’t doctors. But doctors it seems, if not politicians, are people who know no more about how to practice medicine than politicians.
This goes right to the vacuum at the heart of medicine that the Covid Pandemic exposes. Back when I trained, before we had respirologists, physicians with an interest in chest problems were experts in physiology. They relished unexpected clinical twists and the challenge to work out what was going on.
Then they became people who dished out inhalers and LABAs – always the latest, all guideline approved and regulator approved. And they now stand paralysed in the face of Covid. They have no idea how to deal with the unexpected.
The point here is that anyone who wants to pigeon-hole Stephen O’Neill’s death as just one of those weird mental health things is now facing exactly the same thing play out on a Global Technicolor Screen.
Our drugs are more dangerous than germs and our doctors have forgotten this. You should be very scared.
Its time for our so called marvellous health services and frontline workers to stop adhering to guidelines that based on a Fake Literature are getting in the way of seeing and hearing and helping the patient right in front of us.
Orders from Nowhere have no place in Healthcare.
To be continued with The NICE before Christmas.
Scary thing No 1 is the deference of politicians to their advisors – at what point would they ever ask an awkward question. I am used to the useless situation over two and a half decades that if you ask a question through your MP you eventually get a bland and evasive response from a minister briefed by their civil servants and the MP – even if they are in opposition – assumes that that is the end of the matter. We have heard from the experts and there is nothing more to be done. Health safety is a subject outside politics.
The other thing is the unholy alliance between the politicians and the pharmaceutical industry – it is always assumed in this game of mutual patronage that they are somehow doing good, when actually most often – or indeed all the time – they are selling the public down the river. There was a remarkable document by the House of Common’s Health Committee in 2005 ‘The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry’ which was a beautiful sunset mistaken for a dawn.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf
The report was published just ahead of the 2005 election, the committee dissolved and pharma made sure nothing like it ever happened again.
Gee, you mean there is yet another installment!
Spent the whole week looking forward to this one.
Orders from nowhere seems to sum it up perfectly. Just brilliant.
Isn’t ‘nowhere’ the person on third base?
This is so frustrating. I mean what can you do when these people are totally deaf. Its just all so predictable.
So basically they are saying we are happy to continue harming society. And we will continue to ignore the rights of patients to make decisions with genuine informed consent.
Its interesting how Dr Healy replies to these people within the day but they take weeks to reply back. Probably scurrying around in the background like rats trying to figure out a response.
Consider,
“…we rely on the expert advice of..” lol
I have in the past been given this kind of comment (as well as many of the others from their standard letter folder).
So I wrote back and asked to see a copy of this so called ‘expert advice’. They dragged their feet but eventually forwarded me three abstracts from (im guessing ghost written) studies. I wrote back and said please forward the full study as it could well be that conclusions in abstracts may be inconsistent with the data in the body of the article. They wrote back and said they cannot forward that to me because (im guessing that in their records) “it doesn’t exist or cannot be found”. I wrote back and said so what you are saying is that you have made so called expert decisions using non existent expert advice that is anything but expert in fact its totally unacceptable and as people with lots of letters after your names how can you have any credibility whatsoever. No other profession could get away with this outrageous conduct! They wrote back to me and said, we will no longer continue to correspond on this matter.
“Institutional corruption which is usually built into the routines and practices of organisations is usually more damaging to the institution and society than individual corruption, which in advanced societies typically consists of isolated acts of misconduct with effects limited in time and scope” D F Thompson 2013
These kinds of letters simply reveal over an over again a mindset that undermines any self examination or introspection and because of that sadly I cant see any good happening anytime soon and certainly not in the area of reforming the system.
Anyways I look forward to the next installment.
The Smale letter, passed on by Matt Hancock, before the shower of meteorites, fell..
The Smale letter sounds more like a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the GlaxoSmithKline Transparency Party..
Product Information – I doubt the Patient Information Leaflet on Seroxat has registered. Want a little learning about Side-Effects, go no further than this mighty tome..
The references to the Patient Information Leaflets show a blindingly naïve awe of how the Pharmaceutical Companies write up these ‘advisory’ notes for patients. They conceal details of ‘unfavourable’ clinical trials, they contain no truths of raw data and they are poured over by lawyers to ensure that there is little comeback if and when things go wrong.
It points to the Trust they have in Pharma doing the right thing, and this swings right down to NICE, MHRA and at the bottom of this pile – are the doctors.
Read closely, what Smale had to say :
https://davidhealy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/12-2019-12-11-Smale-to-Healy-Dec-11.pdf
Did the entire Seroxat Saga pass them by. Clearly it did.
Did high profile cases of homicide and suicide pass them by. Clearly they did.
Did an Expert Witness with considerable experience pass them by. Clearly he did.
The MHRA report on Seroxat was a lamentable document. If dealt with only the conclusions of the Pharmas’ controlled trails and not the data on which they are based.
http://paulflynnmp.co.uk/seroxat04.htm
It seemed implausible in 1932 for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to warn of a future when people will enjoy having their liberties taken away, ‘living in servitude in a painless concentration camp….distracted from the desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.’ Not so now.
Stephen’s case illustrates, once again, that no matter how hard you try to infiltrate the cast-iron locked doors of truth and transparency, there will always be politicians and agencies riding roughshod over every rational point put to them.
We have written evidence of palpable ignorance.
You tell your doctor what is going on with you and your drugs and their reaction is to point the finger – at you – and not in a nice way.
The calamitous “Talk to your Doctor” campaign is not worth the paper it is written on –
Clearly; the whole Shabang, is out of step …
Huge respect for what you are doing David
re letter from Leigh Smale England above
MINISTERIAL CORRESPONDENCE OFFICER
Company NameUK Department of Health
Dates EmployedApr 2016 – Present
LocationLondon, United Kingdom
As a Ministerial Correspondence Officer, I am responsible for constructing high-quality replies to correspondence addressed to Ministers, from both the public and MPs. I also draft the Secretary of State’s personal letters to members of the public. I am currently a member of the Department’s Serious Case Review Team which answers correspondence which is sensitive, for instance, when there has been a death at an NHS facility, whistleblowers, and from people who are suicidal. Deputy Team Leader
Leigh S ends his letter 25 nov 10 to you ..parliament has been dissolved.what happens in future will be a matter for forthcoming governments.
What’s happened is that Matt Hancock is still Health minister – and Covid19 has happened.
Should he be contacted again (even bearing in mind he is very ‘experienced’ ) and sent a copy of the Covid Document drawn up by you and Juan L.P?
Suzanne
Wonderful digging on Leigh Smale – these are quotes to use for years to come.
There is more to and from LS to come
David
Maybe I’m a cockeyed optimist. But when it comes to Covid-19 I’m glad to see at least some docs starting to use their own eyes, ears and brains – and to share what they are seeing. Two quick examples: ventilators, and cardiac catheterization.
We began this pandemic, like Italy, with a huge reliance on Ventilators. They were trumpeted as THE crucial tool for saving lives. It’s a punishing tool, however, that requires massive sedation to tolerate having a tube shoved down your trachea and air forced into your ailing lungs. Those who survive often have brain or lung damage leading to permanent cognitive and physical problems. At first, docs were following rigid rules on oxygen-saturation scores – any score below 90, or even 92, was deemed to put you at risk for serious organ damage and thus to cry out for mechanical ventilation.
Possibly these rules made some sense for Low O2 caused by other problems. In the past, doctors say, a patient with O2 scores in the 80’s was usually unconscious, confused and/or in severe physical distress. But Covid-19 patients with scores even lower were often articulate and fairly comfortable. It was crazy, said one doc – we were telling the patient to get off his cellphone so he could be intubated. Something was clearly different about the “hypoxia” caused by Covid-19. So they started experimenting with plain old face masks, nasal tubes or CPAP machines – less invasive ways of getting O2 levels up. It worked, and a lot fewer people are now on ventilators.
Covid-19 patients were also showing up with test results that seemed to shout “heart attack.” They’d be rushed in for cardiac catheterization, only to find no blockage! Docs were putting their patients’ EKGs up on Twitter, asking each other “Are you seeing this sort of thing?” And they figured out that the virus itself was causing cardiac symptoms, which had to be dealt with by other means.
Of course there was the big PR push for hydroxychloroquine, helped by a badly skewed clinical trial out of France. Some doctors swallowed the pill mindlessly, even hoarding the stuff for their own family and friends. But others pushed back hard, pointing out the danger of fatal heart-rhythm disruption. The brief Golden Age of HCQ (mostly) ended with the first published clinical trial I think I’ve ever seen that focused on harms as well as benefits. It stated bluntly that more patients died on HCQ than on placebo.
As for some of those other meds that David Healy and Joan-Ramon Laporte flagged as Covid-19 risks: at least there’s a lively debate. Including whether chronic steroid inhaler use, and use of biologics like Enbrel and Humira, increase your risk of catching Covid and/or getting severe symptoms. Going off these meds cold-turkey is a risk in itself, as you can get “rebound” asthma, etc. Which makes it easier for their defenders to shout “Don’t Stop!” But the cat (or at least maybe its ears and tail) is out of the bag. Andrew Kolodny and others have warned of elevated risks for patients on long-term opioids. And two Oxford researchers just wrote the BMJ to call for research into the likely immune-suppressant role of gabapentin.
Okay, none of this amounts to a revolution. HCQ may have been especially easy to question, if only because of Donald Trump’s role in pushing for its use (and the fact that its makers held back from aggressively promoting it). Still, the crisis has provoked at least some folks on the front lines of health care to start coloring outside the lines. I’m liking it.
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/Analysis
—timeliness and transparency of medicine regulators
BMJ 2020; 369 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1107 (Published 29 April 2020)
Correspondence to: A Bhasale abha9370@uni.sydney.edu.au
As new risks of SGLT2 inhibitors have emerged, how have regulators responded? Alice Bhasale and colleagues compare the number, timing, strength, and transparency of public safety communications across leading medicines regulators
Corrections
Communicating emerging risks of SGLT2 inhibitors—timeliness and transparency of medicine regulators
BMJ 2020; 369 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1745 (Published 04 May 2020)
Responses
In this analysis (BMJ 2020;369:m1107, doi:10.1136/bmj.m1107, published 29 April 2020), one of the five serious risks of SGLT2 inhibitors was omitted—acute kidney injury. The full list is diabetic ketoacidosis, lower limb amputation, severe genitourinary infections, acute kidney injury, and fracture. This has been amended online.
recovery&renewal
@recover2renew
O M G.
Antidepressants could be used to prevent people at high risk from developing depression
https://www.keele.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/april/antidepressants-research/depression-healthcare-research.php?utm_content=1588446157&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter
Antidepressants are well established for use in the treatment of depression, but new research by Keele University has shown that they can potentially prevent the condition in people who are at high risk of developing depressive illness.
Professor Farooq added that this approach is not yet ready for use in routine clinical practice but needs to be tested in larger, well designed studies. He stressed that funding agencies such as Medical Research Council UK need to prioritise research using pharmacological agents in preventing rather than treating depression.
Professor Farooq said: “Our study represents a major public health advance for preventing depression and we are not aware of any research that has shown such a significant effect of antidepressants in preventing depression. If the findings are confirmed in future studies this will help to prevent a colossal burden of disease caused by depressive illness worldwide.”
Journal of Affective Disorders
Volume 269, 15 May 2020, Pages 58-69
Keel …
Good cop
‘We hope that as we emerge from the COVID crisis we can avoid repeating psychiatry’s mistakes.’
https://twitter.com/Mad_In_America/status/1257390424282615810/photo/1
Bad cop
https://twitter.com/WesselyS
John Read
@ReadReadj
That’s sad news. Public Health England reported that we are already prescribing antidepressants to one in six adults! And now this, I wonder how many were told that they will have a 50% chance of experiencing withdrawal when they try to come off?
Coronavirus and mental health: Pharmacists are struggling to source antidepressants, after a rise in demand during lockdown
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/mental-health-coronavirus-antidepressants-medication-supplies-uk-lockdown-rise-demand-2842273
The review made no mention whatsoever of any adverse effects or withdrawal. Mostly short-term studies. 15 of the 29 findings found no better than placebo.
(And Keele is misleading us when it claims it is new research. It is a review of old research).
o.m.g. seconded!
Sometimes I feel like nothing will surprise me anymore and then I read this insane stuff. This is beyond frightening.
Professor Farooq said: “Our study represents a major public health advance for preventing depression and we are not aware of any research that has shown such a significant effect of antidepressants in preventing depression. If the findings are confirmed in future studies this will help to prevent a colossal burden of disease caused by depressive illness worldwide.”
Who is paying Mr Farooq? A pharma marketing department?
This is not a health advance but just straight foolishness.
This is not going to prevent a colossal burden but cause one!
And by the way what exactly is this ‘disease’ Mr Farooq is referring to?
‘Close to Immorally Wrong’ ……
Covid-19: Confidentiality agreements allow antibody test manufacturers to withhold evaluation results
Elisabeth Mahase thebmj 4/5/20
Commercial agreements between the UK government and manufacturers of covid-19 antibody tests are allowing the latter to control whether evaluation results of their products are made publicly available.
This matter came to light when a pre-print paper1 assessing nine different antibody tests for covid-19 was published with the names of the tests anonymised. The paper reported that none of the devices were adequate, with sensitivity ranging from 55 to 70% and specificity from 95 to 100%. This was against the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’s 98% specificity target, which is high because of the risk false positive results could pose if these tests were used to ease lockdown.
The study, conducted by the National Covid Testing Scientific Advisory Panel, said, “Individual manufacturers did not approve release of device level data, so device names are anonymised.”
This has raised serious concerns over how much power the manufacturing companies—who have a financial interest in their product selling well—should have in determining what information is or is not made public.
Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics at the University of Birmingham, said, “That seems close to immorally wrong—that the world now cannot tell what tests there were in that study. It was a well done study, it was paid for with taxpayers money, but the only people who know what tests were in that study are the people in the UK government and probably the researchers, and they are bound by confidentiality not to let the rest of the world know what tests were actually evaluated.”
He added, “Frankly, I can’t believe that we would think this is a reasonable way to behave—to let the test companies make the decision about whether information is published or not. We all know about publication bias, conflicts of interest. The biomarker companies are the only ones making money in this pandemic, and there is a lot of money to be made. We should not put them in a position where they are in charge of letting us know or not know the results of our studies. It should all be out there for us to understand.”
Deeks said that the regulatory processes for tests needs to be improved.
“The regulators now need to take a long look—often in the history of medicine when things have gone wrong we reflect on our regulation and see it’s lacking. I’m sure that we are at that point now with biomarker tests,” he said.
A spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care’s Office for Life Sciences confirmed to The BMJ that the names of the tests were withheld because of “commercial confidentiality.”
They said, “You will appreciate that we can’t share the details of all partners and providers of testing materials, as these are subject to commercially sensitive agreements, and in many cases subject to commercial confidentiality.”
I’m having trouble trying to remember reading something that had more wth (what the heck) moments in it than this thread.
From the
1. head in the sand Mr Gething
2. Delusionally dangerous Dr Farooq to
3. The scary report that lockdown is herding more people onto ads (There has roughly been a 10 to 15 per cent rise in antidepressant prescriptions across the country), to
4. The report that now 1 in 6 people in England are on them, to this:
5. the picture in the link provided by Annie above. I will repost the link here
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/mental-health-coronavirus-antidepressants-medication-supplies-uk-lockdown-rise-demand-2842273
Look at the picture at the top of the article. Its of a woman with a packet of sertraline 50mg
stuck to her neck. But take a look at the packaging. Its got bold writing across the front ‘sertraline sandox eco’
Its got a big green S in the bottom right corner.
Is pharma trying to tell us that because its called ‘eco’ that only positive things will come out of it, that it is safe for living things, that it is safe for the environment and that its ‘eco’-(fill in the next word for yourself) – friendly.
What another shameful disgrace by pharma marketing. They have reached a new low imo.
These drugs are not eco- friendly they are an eco-horror!!
So why is the FDA now approving the use of Cymbalta by children?
AntiDepAware
@AntiDepAware
MISSD
@MISSDFoundation
MISSD is a nonprofit working to reduce avoidable deaths by increasing awareness of akathisia & other adverse drug effects. See http://missd.co & http://Missd.LearnUpon.com
Ask @afspnational @NAMICommunicate @mhas2s @APAPsychiatric @rcpsych
to have a #RealConvo w/ #parents about deadly #SSRI side effects and help us reduce the avoidable deaths of #children.
@US_FDA approves @LillyPad ‘s #Cymbalta for kids despite @LillyPad’s own clinical trial showed 6 kids developed self-harm, 2 attempted suicide, 1 overdosed, 1 injured himself, 2 had suicidal thoughts & 3 experienced #depression, hallucinations & seizure.
Should Children Be Prescribed Cymbalta?
https://www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2020/5/5/should-children-be-prescribed-cymbalta
The Food and Drug Administration has quietly expanded the use of an antidepressant to treat fibromyalgia in pediatric patients between 13 to 17 years of age – despite the known risk of suicidal behavior by children on antidepressant drugs.
Cymbalta (also known by its generic name, duloxetine) is a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) made by Eli Lilly that was first approved by the FDA as a treatment for depression in 2004.
In the years that followed, Cymbalta’s use greatly expanded as it was also approved as a treatment for anxiety, diabetic neuropathy, chronic musculoskeletal pain and fibromyalgia in adults.
The approvals came with a major caveat: a black box warning label that specifically cautioned patients and providers that “Cymbalta is not approved for use in pediatric patients” because it could increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children.
So why is the FDA now approving the use of Cymbalta by children?
Read on…
“The approval appears to be based on a single placebo-controlled study — sponsored by Eli Lilly — in which 184 children with juvenile fibromyalgia were given duloxetine, placebo or a combination of the two over the course of 39 weeks.
Eli Lilly not only funded the study, but its employees designed it, collected data, conducted the analysis, and wrote the article that reported on its findings, which was published last year in the journal of Pediatric Rheumatology. “
6. W.t.h. !! This must surely be an example of uninformed consent from parents.
This is giving me sleepless nights wondering how on earth Eli Lilly can get approval to give an snri to children. I guess they know where to find the gold right! These hoodwinked parents will have no idea of the fate that awaits!
Just been refreshing myself on Eli Lilly’s (infamous) history.
This company is right up there with GSK on the ‘pathological lack of corporate integrity’ list.
Its interesting to learn that 2009 they had to pay more than $1.4 billion for illegal marketing of Zyprexa.
This came about due to a wide ranging off label marketing particularly to children.
$1.4 billion sounds like a mindboggling amount of money but here’s the thing between 1996 and 2009 Lilly had worldwide sales of nearly $40 billion from zyprexa.
Apparently the settlement agreement included a Corporate Integrity Agreement.
Maybe that corporate integrity agreement was time limited because pushing these drugs on children for whatever reason using in house study justification not forgetting these drugs carry a black box warning sure doesn’t sound like integrity to me.
Lilly claimed that their drug Prozac didn’t increase the risk of suicide and violence yet quietly settled lawsuits out of court to hide the evidence just as they had done with Zyprexa.
Sounds to me like its simply business as usual for Lilly!
Dear Dr Healy,
‘Orders from Nowhere’ ….Orders certainly come from Somewhere and in Ireland such Orders come from Pharma corrupt Government HSE & their Gestapo who police such pharmagods of prey. Patients suffer and die. Dr Healy has dared to tackle the Establishment. Many times I have thought ‘If only we had a Dr Healy over here’. But on reflection we had the Good Dr Michael Corry addressing our Health Ministers but Irish Psychiatry spoke out when one Junior Minister started to raise questions on the Safety of SSRIs. He was told very publicly by the President of Irish Psychiatry to ‘Consider his Position’. A blanket of silence fell again over the Irish Republic. We all suffered Pharma Terrorism at a frightening level. Sadly we still do.
It was reading ‘Sense About Science’ – Follow the Patient that I recognised myself and soon realised that this must be happening to thousands of others.
On the death of Stephen O’Neill, I recognise ‘Dear Luise’ Death by Psychiatry – a young girl stolen from her life by the Danish Maddness of Psychiatry – Shane Clancy driven to homicide & suicide by SSRIs – Jake McGill Lynch 14 year old boy, dead by Prozac – the many homicides/suicides in Ireland alone lead to cover ups of the deaths of innocent citizens who dared to trust the ‘Good Doctor’.
Even the insight into what is happening today in this post, does it make a difference? The Pharmagods thrive on no matter how many wonderful doctors we have and despite all efforts to ‘alert’ the Public.
A little voice inside of me keeps screaming ‘How dare they?’ But sadly they do what they want, no matter how brave one believes one self to be.
The words Dr Healy wrote some years ago ‘The doctor’s surgery can be the most dangerous place for The Patient’ is so true…
God Bless all!
Teri
Read this today and couldn’t help thinking here is another person who has received orders form nowhere and a diag-nonsense from the medical profession.
Very few people are unable to un-patient themselves and so are led down the path of a complete hoodwinking. If I were her I would seriously doubt this label.
Can’t help but wonder what this poor woman is swallowing from the doctor…and tried to stop swallowing at age 17!
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/entertainment/celebrity/halsey-makes-peace-with-bipolar-disorder-in-new-youtube-series/ar-BB14tPNl?ocid=spartanntp