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 Cide Trick or Treat, The SUI Cide Note, SUI Cide or Homicide, SUI Cide in the OK Corral, SUI Cide & Peace in our Time, The SUI Cide Apparatus, Professional SUI Cide. This is the second in the Pharma series after He Who Would Do a Great Evil.
Faced with questions about the $3 Billion fine imposed on GSK – Is it just the cost of doing business? Andrew Witty, GSK’s CEO, snapped back:
“Although corporate malfeasance cases end up looking very big, they often have their origin in just… one or two people who didn’t quite do the right thing. It’s not about the big piece. The 100,000 people who work for GSK are just like you, right? I’m sure everybody who reads the BMJ has friends who work for drug companies. They’re normal people… Many of them are doctors”.
This comes from an article in the BMJ in a issue that featured AW on their front cover in Barack Obama political poster Shepard Fairey mode with the word HOPE underneath and a strapline – GSK’s Andrew Witty… The acceptable face of big pharma?
But AW wasn’t asked to take off a GSK hat, and answer as someone with a treatment related adverse event whether he would take the blue pill or the red pill.
Neo fascism
“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe”. Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix.
Having taken the Red pill, Neo wakes up to find the following:
1. A Gulag Archipelago
Trials in branded pharmaceuticals from 1960 to 2000 were done in Western clinical centers where the patients did not always exist. Publications based on these non-existent patients litter the academic literature without retraction or even a cautionary note in the case of trials where it is known the patients didn’t exist or the investigators have been jailed, or the company charged with fraud.
Since the mid-1990s trials have moved to South Africa, Russia, India and other countries were patients have little idea what is going on and where if the patients exist and are injured they are routinely lost to follow-up.
2. The disappeared
The New Disappeared aren’t Argentines killed by the Junta. They are ordinary unsuspecting people who have death and disability visited upon them by their treatment. The apparatus of disappearance begins with elaborate methods to avoid collecting the data, to concealment of evidence, to concealment of company agreement that our drug causes this problem, to statistical and controlled trial techniques to make deaths and injuries vanish.
Treatment induced death is now just about the normative mode of death. There is silence all around.
The lengths to which companies go to get an efficacy message out – ghostwriting trials, hiding data, and legal threats – pale in comparison to what they are prepared to do to hide or deny responsibility for the bodies of the Disappeared (See American Woman, American Woman 2).
This now extends to a growing number of children with birth defects, miscarried or born developmentally delayed. Something for Jorge Mario Bergoglio to speak up about.
3. Upper Volta with biologicals
Effective treatments should lead to a reduction in healthcare costs and in levels of disability but healthcare costs and levels of disability are rising. We have some very sophisticated drugs but behind the high tech façade healthcare is crumbling with patients in some cases more scared to go into hospital or even see a doctor than they have been for close on a century or as scared as they might be in Liberia or Sierra Leone.
(Helmut Schmidt in the 1980s described Russia as Upper Volta with Missiles).
4. TTIP pact bloc
Most Western countries have signed up to TRIPs and TTIP which are aimed at maximising pharmaceutical company profits to an extraordinary extent. These put in place a range of punitive sanctions should a country deem the needs of their citizens outweigh the right to profit of a pharmaceutical company.
Aside from the punitive sanctions, if a country does not support their marketing, companies threaten to relocate their operations elsewhere. Countries (viz. the UK) will do almost anything to keep a company operating within their borders – even offering up their citizens as all but involuntary participants in company trials run by doctors whom the taxpayer has educated and salaried. And these clinicians have been told they must partner industry.
5. TuskeGee-eS-Kay
Consent forms were put in place in 1962 as a means of safeguarding patients. These have been transformed into an instrument of legal jeopardy, with patients unwittingly consenting that their data will be hidden from everyone for ever. This means that even when people have been injured in trials companies will say in public and in court we have no evidence for any injury on our drug.
Studies are undertaken on drugs that almost certainly have been undertaken in the knowledge that the drug causes death or injury and detailed knowledge of this hazard has been used to construct RCTs that will help hide the hazard. Neither the patients nor other doctors involved in such trials have any idea what is going on.
6. Ministry of truth
Close to all of the published literature about on-patent drugs is ghostwritten. Prestigious medical journals have encouraged this for the last 30 years. In terms of ensuring the integrity of the primary sources of a story and ensuring the authors are who they appear to be we would all be safer if clinical trials were published in the New York Times than in the New England Journal of Medicine.
7. Censorship
Even the most prestigious medical journals are scared to publish articles raising hazards about drugs, or even articles by anyone identified as someone who raises issues about treatment, for fear of legal action from companies. The situation is every bit as bad as the level of censorship in the former Soviet Union. Tackling Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is kids play compared to tackling Pharma.
Academic journals and societies show an auto-immune response to information that should be the life-blood of medicine.
8. Propaganda 101
Not only has most of the academic literature become one big advert for branded pharmaceuticals but when hazards are raised, companies have learnt how to use any concerns about a drug as a means to increase sales of the drug, and as a means to bind even more doctors ever more closely to the company bosom.
Put a pregnancy category D (causes birth defects) on Paxil and the company will organize a lecture tour as now is a good time to sell Paxil.
9. Holocaust denialism
Regulators never take it upon themselves to establish if a drug has a hazard. Their role is to manage risks. This does not mean that they warn about a hazard a drug might pose. It means they manage public perceptions or beliefs about a risk. Doubt is their product.
In the case of thalidomide the possibility that it caused birth defects met a regulatory response as to whether we have ruled out the possibility that it prevents the miscarriages of babies with birth defects. In the case of Matt Miller, a 13 year old boy who hung himself a week after going on Zoloft, it met a response that we cannot rule out that this was auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong and until we can it would be a mistake to blame the problem on Zoloft.
10. Una duce, una voce
Guidelines depend completely on the published ghostwritten literature on which all data has been withheld. Once guideline makers treat company articles as though they are science they are captured by Pharma. By skilful publication strategies Pharma can always ensure that their latest on-patent drug features on top of the most independent guidelines. Economic pressures have forced a standardisation of healthcare in an effort to contain costs and this has transformed what was guidance into tramlines. These tramlines increasingly dictate what doctors have to prescribe.
11. Stasi-style
Anyone raising the profile of a drug’s hazards is likely to get harassed, marginalized or terminated. The harassment will include having people in the audience to challenge everything said, reviewing everything written to see does it provide the basis of a legal suit, actively targeting and spreading malicious gossip and disinformation through PR networks, calling colleagues or friends to “get the dirt”, “reading everything you have ever written Dr”, triggering tax inspections etc.
12. Medical McCarthyism
Anyone talking about the hazards of a treatment is marginalized by their clinical colleagues and any group seeking a balanced approach to treatment is likely to be stigmatised as Scientologists or as Ideological. This creates a Spiral of Silence where others observing what happens learn to remain silent.
Someone needs to speak up.
13. Scienceology
The norm in science is that there is free access to the data underpinning experiments. If free access is denied, it’s not science. In the case of branded pharmaceuticals, we do not even know what trials have been done. There is a denial of access to any raw data from any clinical trials. We have even less knowledge of what drug trials (healthy volunteer trials) are done and again no access to data even though there are no issues of clinical confidentiality. What is put in the public domain is not data. What will be put in the public domain under GSK’s proposal is managed access which is likely to be worse for everyone than no access.
The selected highlights of a football game and the comments of the pundits afterwards don’t change the score. The selected highlights of Pharma studies and the comments of pundits routinely change the score.
14. Biobabble
Clinicians and the public are routinely sold a biobabble about drugs and diseases that is as ideological as anything found in Soviet Lysenkoism. The problem in this case doesn’t lie in the biological sciences it lies in the social sciences and anthropology as well as the humanities which have been used to produce an informational reductionism and standardization on the one side and to develop marketing on the other. (For a first use of Biobabble – see 1999).
15. The five-year plan
Instead of the old-Soviet style Five Year plan we have the rolling marketing campaign linked to patent expiration. In sequence people have to be persuaded they are anxious, then converted to depression, and after that converted to bipolar disorder, or moved from pain to fibromyalgia, or from ulcers to GERD.
To get it to work, doctors are bribed to adhere to guidelines for illness that may have only been invented a few years before – or penalized for not meeting targets.
16. Homeland security
Few are aware that almost all drugs are made available under police state provisions and supervision. The availability of medicines on a prescription-only basis was introduced as a means to control heroin and cocaine addicts in 1914. The War on Drugs initiated then has become a permanent War in which all citizens are treated as addicts and all doctors as police.
Extending prescription-only privileges to all drugs was sold to the wider population as a means through which medical scepticism would temper patient zeal for treatment. But doctors now funnel drugs to people in the Matrix in amounts that leave many of us begging them to stop or else surreptitiously dumping our medicines.
Rachel Liebert outlines how recent school shootings have chillingly led to the creation of a Homeland Security apparatus in our schools and colleges aimed at detecting any signs of abnormality in any students and getting them on medication.
Brand fascism
“The 100,000 people who work for GSK are just like you, right? I’m sure everybody who reads the BMJ has friends who work for drug companies. They’re normal people… Many of them are doctors.”
Any German in the 1930s or 40s could have said the same of his fellow-countrymen. And the subjects in the famous Milgram experiments were no doubt just like you and me also.
There are lots of Good Germans in the system. All tyrannies have passed – up till this anyway. You have to survive till then, and life is more comfortable in the Matrix than outside. Unless they come to take you away, its better keep your head down. Keep taking the blue pills.
In the 1960s, there was concern at the development of psychiatric techniques that looked likely to lead to brainwashed behavior. These concerns reached the level of a Congressional Hearing in 1967. Seymour Kety, the head of NIH, put the developments in context for Congress:
“The manipulation of the brain by any of the biological techniques which can be developed in the foreseeable future would involve such drastic invasions of privacy, integrity and the unalienable rights of the individual that in their application behavioral control would already have been achieved even if the electrodes carried no current and the pill were placebo”.
Our pharmacological and biological techniques have not moved on much since then. Most of our treatments are weaker now. Their weakness reveals that what has changed is that control has been achieved even when the electrodes carry no current and the pills are placebo or worse.
Jacques Ellul predicted exactly this outcome in the 1960s in The Technological Society. He said the techniques to worry about were our public relations and marketing techniques rather than our engineering or biological techniques. The social scientists and students of rhetoric (media studies) of the 1960s migrated from universities to populate the marketing departments of pharmaceutical companies (see Factories of Post-modernism). They brought with them a means of control through a set of techniques first pioneered by Edward Bernays.
Back in the 1960s the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union was a horror but Soviet citizens could very clearly see the enemy. The control is now far more complete. The mechanisms and levers invisible. We volunteer into rather than are coerced into running the apparatus of repression. We live in a Brand Fascist state.
Illustration: HOPE: Pills You Can Believe In, 2013 created by Billiam James
In parallel, below is my short article ‘Paul Offit and the Milgram Experiment’. Offit is the leading proponent and propagandist for the US vaccine program, and in 2010 Rotateq, the rotavirus vaccine, for which he shared a patent was reported to have been contaminated with pig viruses PV1 and PV2 (quickly dismissed by the FDA). However, there are 299 death reports associated with the Merck vaccine on VAERS (US Vaccine Adverse Events Report System) since it came out in 2006 (Rotarix, the GSK equivalent has only 104 but probably has more limited distribution) http://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/index.php . It should noted additionally:
1) Rotavirus is not associated with death in the developed world (unlike the vaccines). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rotavirus-laboratory-confirmed-cases-of-rotavirus-infections-in-england-and-wales/rotavirus-laboratory-confirmed-cases-of-rotavirus-infections-in-england-and-wales-2000-to-2013
2) Reports on VAERS are not the same as clinical confimation.
3) However, a passive reporting system may only register 2% of cases.
4) The position is complicated by the fact that the rotavirus vaccines are usually only administered in conjunction with others.
5) But the reporting of adverse events and death for rotavirus vaccines are exceptionally high for vaccines.
6) Rotarix, the GSK vaccine, was unnecessarily added to the UK schedule in 2014 http://dtb.bmj.com/content/52/1/10.full and will likely be a cause of death (unlike the illness).
Paul Offit and the Milgram Experiment
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/10/best-of-age-of-autism-paul-offit-and-the-milgram-experiment.html
Question: “How many vaccines is it safe for a pediatrician to give a two month old infant?”
Answer: “It depends how much they are getting paid.” An old joke
The Milgram experiment has long passed into modern folklore. In 1961 a 28 year-old psychologist at Yale, Stanley Milgram, devised an experiment to test the preparedness of ordinary citizens to co-operate in performing inhuman acts.
In the experiment volunteers were induced (as they believed at the time) into subjecting another party to ever larger doses of electricity:
“The subjects believed they were part of an experiment supposedly dealing with the relationship between punishment and learning. An experimenter—who used no coercive powers beyond a stern aura of mechanical and vacant-eyed efficiency—instructed participants to shock a learner by pressing a lever on a machine each time the learner made a mistake on a word-matching task. Each subsequent error led to an increase in the intensity of the shock in 15-volt increments, from 15 to 450 volts.
“In actuality, the shock box was a well-crafted prop and the learner an actor who did not actually get shocked. The result: A majority of the subjects continued to obey to the end—believing they were delivering 450 volt shocks—simply because the experimenter commanded them to. Although subjects were told about the deception afterward, the experience was a very real and powerful one for them during the laboratory hour itself.” …
65% of participants complied with the experiment to the bitter end. Milgram subsequently explained the experiment:
“The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.” …
Without commenting directly on vaccine science I believe it is possible to recognize the elements of social control here. The authoritarian construction is far more certain than the safety of the products. Offit gives us to understand that even if our children were to receive 10,000 vaccines in one go it would still be safe: therefore there can be no issue over 5 or 10 in one go, or dozens over the course of a childhood. In fact, in most cases the practitioners will know only slightly more about the products than the assenting parents. Moreover, everyone has to be persuaded that are no real long-term adverse consequences, and even where they are apparent they are coincidental.
But it is interesting to note that Offit provides a theoretical proposition which does not even depend upon the product: never mind how many there are (and how different they are) they are all safe and perfectly manufactured – it is as if they do not even have to be tested. Indeed, however dramatic the adverse effect they know in advance it wasn’t the vaccine.
Arguing with authority in the middle of the past decade in the UK it was alarming how frequently the fall-back position was Offit’s vacuous claim… Even the UK’s vaccine supremo Prof David Salisbury could appear on television declaring it was safe to give an infant 1000 vaccines. Meanwhile, he admitted to me:
“Turning to my comments on Newsnight – I suggest you read Paul Offit’s paper – as I have done. On page 126, he states: “Current data suggest that the theoretical capacity determined by diversity of antibody variable gene regions would allow for as many as 109 (1,000,000,000) to 1011(100,000,000,000) different antibody specificities”. And “… then each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time” – not antigens. I was speaking very specifically about the infant immune system’s ability to respond, in the context of the ridiculous suggestion that the new vaccine combination, containing far fewer antigens than the one it will replace, would overload the immune system. My words were “The immune system of a baby has got huge spare capacity to deal with challenge. If we didn’t, the human race wouldn’t survive. But let’s look specifically at vaccine. This has been studied carefully. A baby’s immune system could actually tolerate perfectly well 1,000 vaccines”. At no point did I suggest that 1,000 vaccines would not increase the probability of adverse reactions – a quite different matter.” (Email August 26, 2004 10.03 am)
We are, of course, not talking about theoretical vaccines or theoretical infants, nor is there any experimental base that he can cite. We, unfortunately, have the experimental base which is our own children and we are not being listened to – like the imaginary victim in Stanley Milgram’s experiment except that we are not imaginary and neither are our children. Nor, as the present Rotateq vaccine scandal demonstrates do we have remotest idea what is really in the vaccines.
Re Paul Offit and his flippant remark that a baby’s immune system could handle as many as 10,000 vaccines – he then actually upped the ante by saying it was probably “closer to 100,000”.[1]
Experts in companion animal vaccination exhibit a much more careful attitude than that of the cavalier Paul Offit… Consider for example Ronald Schultz, Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an expert in companion animal vaccines. While Professor Schultz acknowledges that “vaccination should be considered an important medical practice” he also cautions on the over-use of vaccines: “I tell practitioners that vaccines are drugs, albeit biological drugs. I remind them that they would not consider it good medicine to give an unnecessary pharmaceutical drug on a recurring basis. I think it is even worse to give a vaccine, or biological drug, that isn’t necessary. The possible adverse consequences of a vaccine generally far outweigh the adverse consequences of a pharmaceutical drug. A pharmaceutical drug is usually much more restricted in its action. However, each time we stimulate an immune response, we have to look at the effect on all body systems—not only on antibody responses or cell-mediated immunity, but also on interactions with the endocrine system and the nervous system.”[2]
References:
[1] Stomping Through a Medical Minefield. Newsweek Magazine, 24 October 2008. Also published in The Indian Express 16 November 2008: http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/stomping-through-a-medical-minefield/386116/0
[2] Titer Testing And Vaccination: A New Look at Traditional Practices. A Roundtable Discussion. Veterinary Healthcare Communications, 2002: http://www.synbiotics.com/Products/CompanionAnimals/Canine/TiterCHEK-CDV-CPV-TiterTesting/96-0460-RoundTableDiscussion.pdf
There are interesting comparisons to be made between companion animal vaccination and human vaccination. For instance, veterinary academics and veterinarians have raised concern about over-vaccination of companion animals and its possible connection with immune-mediated hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, polyarthritis, atopy, chronic allergies, asthma etc.[1] Are there lessons here for human vaccination? For example, could there be a possible connection with over-vaccination and allergies, which have been reported to have hit “epidemic proportions“[2,3,4,5,6] in Australia, and other health problems in humans? While it may be difficult to prove a connection, surely it would be prudent to reduce unnecessary vaccination to avoid any risk?
References:
[1] Titer Testing And Vaccination: A New Look at Traditional Practices. A Roundtable Discussion. Veterinary Healthcare Communications, 2002: http://www.synbiotics.com/Products/CompanionAnimals/Canine/TiterCHEK-CDV-CPV-TiterTesting/96-0460-RoundTableDiscussion.pdf
[2] Child allergy rates at ‘epidemic proportions’. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March 2010: http://www.smh.com.au/national/child-allergy-rates-at-epidemic-proportions-20100309-pus2.html
[3] Chain reaction – In less than a generation, food allergies in children – some of them potentially fatal – have reached epidemic levels. GoodWeekend, 23 July 2011.
[4] Kemp, AS, Mullins, RJ, Weiner, JM. The allergy epidemic: what is the Australian response? Medical Journal of Australia. Vol. 185, No. 4, 21 August 2006.
[5] Food Allergy. The Health Report, ABC Radio National, 30 May 2011: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/healthreport/food-allergy/2954588
[6] HealthNuts Research Update 2011. Murdoch Children’s Research Institute: http://www.mcri.edu.au/media/55207/newsletter_2011_06_04.pdf
While international dog and cat vaccination guidelines warn that we should decrease companion animal vaccination, i.e. “we should aim to reduce the ‘vaccine load’ on individual animals in order to minimize the potential for adverse reactions to vaccine products”[1], vaccination of humans is increasing at a startling rate.
Professor Schultz is an author of the companion animal vaccination guidelines, which acknowledge that “there is gross under-reporting of vaccine-associated adverse events which impedes knowledge of the ongoing safety of these products”.[1] While these animal vaccination guidelines are compromised in that they are industry-funded, they are nevertheless a groundbreaking initiative, with their concept of categorising ‘core’, ‘non-core’ and ‘not recommended’ vaccines.
With the increasing number of human vaccine products coming onto the market, I suggest it’s time to adopt the cautious attitude exhibited by experts in companion animal vaccination, and critically consider the worth of individual vaccine products, and the potentially deleterious consequences of over-vaccinating humans with a multitude of vaccine products throughout life.
Reference:
[1] MJ, Horzinek, MC, Schultz RD. Guidelines for the Vaccination of Dogs and Cats. Journal of Small Animal Practice. Vol. 51, June 2010: http://www.wsava.org/sites/default/files/VaccinationGuidelines2010.pdf
Thunderous applause…Sir Andrew Witty.
Esio Trot was a Roald Dahl story televised over Christmas.
It tells the story of illusion and delusion.
A lonely man tries to win the heart of a woman he is sweet on by tricking her into believing that her ‘tortoise’ is growing larger by swapping her tortoise, with a fishing rod from his upper balcony and buying hundreds of tortoises of varying sizes.
Esiotrot is a master class in how pharmaceutical companies work and how hospitals and surgeries work…..
There was deceit, although meant in the nicest possible way, the owner of the tortoise was in no position to suspect that her Alfie was in fact not Alfie but morphed into several larger Alfies…
Esio Trot – Tortoise. I tried doing the same with SEROXAT – TAXORES – but this does not have the same ring about it….
Esio Trot had a happy ending – which is what we all want – in our dreams – all we have to do is reverse their techniques….
enilKthimSoxalG
We could play games like this for hours, weeks, years, even, and we could talk to a rotcod, or, we could talk to a tortoise……..and hope we live as long as they do.
Thanks for this. If I may say, you touch on a number of what I consider to be really important points that can easily be missed with a more superficial or casual understanding of the facts. I do hope this will be widely read. Regards, Mick
Is this David Healys last act of defiance, to lay the cards down for all to see, Before resigning to a more care-less day-to-day as a psychiatrist and an author? Because the contents of this latest post is almost like a ‘manifest’. Point by Point of malfunction in the branch of science he himself is so dedicated to.
He is obviously not trying to make friends among his peers, and definately not among his advisaries in Big Pharma.
Perhaps the subjects in this series of articles and the simultaneous other articles has thrown me off track, but this sounded a bit like a resignation to me. I hope I’m wrong.
Who would pick up the torch if David Healy resigned?
This is a brilliant piece of writing exposing this most dreadful crime against humanity.
” In sequence people have to be persuaded they are anxious, then converted to depression, and after that converted to bipolar disorder, or moved from pain to fibromyalgia, or from ulcers to GERD.”
Its unbelievable how accurate this is.
They first get you to put words in your mouth and then they can legally justify getting you to put poisons in your mouth. Then one is placed in the most difficult precarious places of ones life …how to swim against the tide, how to climb out of that slippery sloped rabbit hole of psych druggery.
I totally agree …”someone needs to speak up.”
Its time for the Medical Profession to wise up, man up, stand up, own up and speak up!
Dr Healy – Thank you for all you are doing despite the Cartel of Cover up’s ongoing abduction of patients. Whilst you write the truth, many of us are suffering the truth – we have two choices. Option 1) is to bow to the Gaslighting by the Pharma cartel and pharma doctors – accept being labelled as “paranoid” for questioning the dangers of Pharma’s drugs, allow our bodies to be continually used, abused and monitored to check the harm Pharma drugs do..and continue to take Pharma’s suicide ideation drugs that cause parkinsons and so much more….Option 2) is to speak up and tell the Pharma cartel of doctors and others that we know what they have done – speak out about the harm of the cartel’s drugs – the violation of clinical trials done on our bodies as we cling to the hope that someone cares about our human rights and patient safety…Option 2 is obviously the death row option but many of us can never bow to the manmade gods of corruption and power – my beloved mother stated many times “Give me a rogue but never give me a liar” – whilst we can agree that Pharma is economical with the truth…their tactics are frightening – when a patient speaks out in truth the whole family suffers – in hindsight perhaps Option 1) is best…because sadly there is no middle ground, no mercy, no safety for we are the “disappeared”…
I used to take the blue pill every day. I wanted to believe that the health care system and pharmaceutical companies were looking after us all and although not perfect always had our best interests at heart.
I didn’t attempt to find out what I now know as fact because I never needed to. So I passively cooperated in the lie that is our health care.
Then one day my son was diagnosed with a rare Neurological disorder. I was devastated but confident that with the right drugs he would at least be able to have some improvement and try and get on with his life.
That was the day I took the red pill.
My first revelation was to find out that he couldn’t have the only drug specific to his condition because it is too expensive. It is literally liquid gold because the pharmaceutical company that developed it have put never-ending patents on it, as soon as one runs out they change a molecule and put another on. Since developing the drug they have raised the price by 300%.
At the moment my son is taking 140 tablets a month, and he isn’t on full treatment yet. The drug specific to his condition would be taken twice daily.
The second revelation was discovering that he would have to be a guinea pig and take drugs not developed for his condition. This means lots of side effects but if he doesn’t have the side effects he has to put up with full effects of his condition which in turn means he has no life at 20 years old.
One of the drugs was an antidepressant. He was on a significant dose even though he hasn’t got clinical depression. The side effects were horrendous, nose bleeds, visual defects, headaches, brain zaps, tremor, facial spasms, nausea, sexual dysfunction to name a few.
The antidepressant he is on now gives him dry mouth, mouth ulcers, constipation, sweating and urinary retention but if he doesn’t take it he will collapse paralysed 3 – 5 times a day and suffer hallucinations. Rock and hard place spring to mind.
Third revelation, GP’s do not know about withdrawal from antidepressants. The antidepressant he was on is one of the few drugs that actually carries a warning in the PIL about withdrawal. It may as well not do because how it is worded it makes it seem as if it’s very rare and the withdrawal is no worse than the side effects. My son is lucky he has a great GP so it’s not as if she doesn’t care she just didn’t realise that it could be so severe. He was advised to taper for three days which to him was like saying withdrawal is no big deal so he was that desperate to stop taking them he stopped that day. That was a big mistake …
That was my biggest revelation of all. I didn’t bat an eyelid when he was first put on antidepressants. I honestly did not realise how powerful they are and I don’t know why I didn’t. I’m not academic but I’m not an idiot I knew that antidepressants altered chemicals in the brain … why did that not bother me ???
I think it’s because even though most of us don’t realise it we are drip fed pharmaceutical propaganda and it seeps in and then it’s the truth. You see what you want to see while your swimming in the clear blue water. It’s only when you start to drown that you see the murky depths that lurk below.
I can never go back to the blue pill now. The story hasn’t ended yet for my family and when it does I won’t be able to wake up and say it was all a bad dream. Even if we get a happy ending I’ve seen the big bad wolf now and no pill will make me forget him.
I sincerely hope Ove is wrong because when I was drowning David Healy and his knowledge and research were the only lifeline I had to grab onto.
Basically. every time we accept drugs from our Doctors we take part in an experiment – isn’t this the sad truth?
I would love to know how many “adverse reaction” green( think it was green anyway!) slips ever left doctors’surgeries in respect of adverse reactions to Seroxat. I know how much trouble I had to get my son’s GP to fill one in – although agreeing that what we had witnessed was a rage attack caused by Seroxat. I refused to leave his room until he had completed it and put it in his ‘out tray’. Of course I have no proof that it was mailed off!
I totally agree with you.I’m sure I can’t be the only one who gets “well it shouldn’t do” as the answer when I object to higher levels of medication (steroid preparations in my case) because they very soon cause weight gain! I use the level that my body seems comfortable with – it does not meet with their satisfaction but the steroids enter through MY nose and mouth so I reserve the right to accept or decline.I appreciate that I am fortunate in being able to make a choice – my son was not so lucky. He was put on 30mg of Seroxat 15 years ago; after a few months, they were withdrawn ” cold turkey”. He is STILL on strong meds to stabilise his mood etc.He is now starting on the long road of reducing and ( hopefully) removing them all from his system.He has had to battle for this – surely it is his right to choose.Dr. David Healy is his hero – no one else would tell him straight that what he suffered all those years ago was due to the Seroxat. As a family, we owe our sanity to him as the Panorama programmes came very soon after our son’s initial experience with Seroxat.After watching it, I spoke to my son’s psychiatrist here in North Wales and was told that ” there is a hot- headed young psychiatrist up the road who is collating evidence of rage on Seroxat – contact him if you like but don’t be too drawn-in by his words”. I’m sure you can all guess who that young man was!We did contact him and what a difference that made to our lives. David Healy is a true gentle man who would do his best for any of the most vulnerable amongst us. Thanks from the bottom of our hearts – and long may you continue with your good work although you, like the rest of us, have the right to call it a day when you feel that you need a break from it all!
The man in the illustration.
We don’t know how much sympathy he has for those struggling with withdrawal.
We don’t know if he knows how many suicides have taken place.
We don’t know if he feels that JP Garnier dumped responsibility on his shoulders.
We don’t know how much he knows about clinical trials with children.
We don’t know how he would tackle litigation.
We know the only answer to thousands of questions we could ask of him.
He believes in this pill.
We have discussed titles, fines, possible corruption of clinical trials, successful Paxil litigation in the US, but, we have not discussed all this with him…………….
Lady Justice is blind– to demographics, social and cultural anthropology — blind to lack of precedence.
IF the criminal charges are accurately reflective of the degree of fraud that is directly proportional to the degree of harm and close to the financial gain that is the only clear motive for the transgressions of Pharma/psychiatry/health care industry– is there any reason to doubt that punishment would be swift and sure?
Seems odd that clear cut crimes against humanity are now little more than cocktail hour conversations replete with anecdotal endorsement for the dark side of human nature.
Je Suis Charlie Hebdo
The day before the shooting in Paris, this post claimed that tackling Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was kids play compared with tackling Pharma.
There can be legitimate debate about censorship – about whether it is appropriate to offend a community by featuring images or cartoons that offend its sensibilities. But few people in Muslim or other communities would in any way support what happened yesterday in Paris.
But it would be a mistake to think that what we have is a set of benign liberal democracies standing up against terror and terrorism on the other side. The liberal democracies were born in a Reign of Terror in Paris. And there is terror and violence at their heart still.
Try taking a report of an adverse event to most doctors and you will feel this violence.
While most of our academic journals in medicine run articles critical of Pharma from time to time, these are carefully vetted articles and they function as a smokescreen for the fact that these journals are even less prepared to be appropriately critical of Pharma than satirical magazines are to poke fun at religious or political leaders.
And of course in what will someday rank as one of the greatest failures of nerve of all time, while calling themselves scientific, none of our journals dare ask companies to make available the data underpinning the claims made in their publications.
Stalin’s ironic query to France’s Pierre Laval in 1935 “how many divisions does the Pope have” – needs to be updated to “how many corporate law-firms does he employ”.
Thanks for saying this, David — it’s not an easy thing to say today, but we need to hear it.
Apparently in his last trial in ’05, for helping send fighters to Iraq, one of the Kouachi brothers talked about Abu Ghraib Prison and U.S. torture. That’s what transformed him from an idle young punk into a warrior, he said. Now I’m sure not going to make friends with this murderer, call him a freedom fighter or make excuses for his crimes. But I can’t start making excuses for Abu Ghraib either … or stop asking myself who else might end up in a place like that someday, just for getting in the way of the almighty free market.
I’ve seen plenty of “crazies” denounce Big Pharma too. Some of them are even genuinely scary ultra-rightists who don’t give a damn about free speech and blame everything on the Jews. Drug companies actually love it when this happens because it lets them put on the halo of the underdog. Don’t you dare criticize us, or you’re just like those crazy fascists. And it’s tempting to think, well, why don’t we at least ease up for a year or two?
Nope. You’re right. Can’t ease up.
Private Eye said, “very little seems funny today”.
Salman Rushdie, said “Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect”.
Swedish artist, Lars Vikls, said “This will create fear among people on a whole different level than we’re used to”.
Jean Cabut , 76, lead cartoonist, who became dead, said, “Sometimes laughter can hurt – but laughter, humour and mockery are our only weapons”.
Stephane Charbonniere, editor of Charlie Hebdo, who also became dead, said “I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.”
Easing up, or, kneeling down, is not an option.
Tá mé Charlie – what are religions trying to say…what are patients trying to say…whilst I stand in solidarity with freedom of speech – what is going on today is a drama a very sad tragedy of taking out the uninformed innocent – is it a destraction to the real cover up that is going on – the real culprits in all of this is the massive control of communities, governments and patient rights groups – Big Pharma are being sued in the US, China and Japan on bribery and corruption – they are fined billions, million, and sometimes just a mere 760,000 for their kickbacks to doctors and in many cases over 200 hospitals…they are fined and then allowed to move on with their crimes….pharma sponsor World Health Foundation, Pharma sponsor UN, Pharma Sponsor EU, Pharma sponsor Interpol to investigate many unpatented pharma – yet pharma are the ones who have been fined billions, millions and hundreds of thousands …throughout this world…Pharma are in power – no one else – no other religion no government and sadly no patients…
Lorna.
Continuing the Ticker Tape…
Another multi story…
This is happening too regularly, but, I have rarely read such trite excuses.
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/11715700.Psychiatric_patient_jumped_from_top_floor_of_multi_storey_car_park__inquest_told/?ref=rss
This could be ‘me’ opening the front door of my house to a man who gave me Seroxat (although I was not quite as pretty and blonde) and it is fourteen years ago.
She looks normal to me.
But, she wasn’t normal.
“doctors swapped over her anti-depressants”.
The coroner “was satisfied that the changeover of medication had not played a part in her death”. She did receive the “best of care” from doctors.
Her mother had *instincts* about the change in medication. She said “she was sent home to wean herself off her medication”.
The Trust has rectified this deathly situation by adding an answer phone to their previous contact number facility.
My own aged mother also had *instincts* about my *medication* but the psychiatrist refused to speak to her.
He did not like confrontation from an extremely worried, old lady, who had, concerns.
The only person who saved my life was my mother…..she was the one, at 82, whose care and compassion, nursed me for months and months – she is now 94 – all the gp did was to isolate us – and fill our pockets with, an, unmanaged, amount of pills – all bouncing off the original prescription. It wasn’t the gp who walked the dog, did the shopping, mowed the lawn, did the homework, cooked us food – looked after us.
She was too busy casting aspersions, rumours, gossip and delivering our fate with her ceaseless and reckless prescribing. I should have had police protection from this woman – and, the psychiatrist, who could not be bothered to check my medication in his hospital and then denied all responsibility.
It is becoming sickeningly regular to read about another death.
RIP Lorna. I am sorry no one could be bothered to save you.
You looked lovely and normal to me.
This time – the protagonist – was the – telephone – as her mother – quite rightly – said.
We all know who are hiding behind their balaclavas, and, so, it goes, on…..with the ‘identity theft’ from ‘Pharma’s henchmen/women’.
To provide another example from the vaccine product industry, I’m challenging a very questionable Cochrane Vaccines Field systematic review re aluminium and vaccine safety. This review paper is likely to have been influential on vaccination policy and practice, yet it is not open for public scrutiny and rests behind the paywall of The Lancet Infectious Diseases: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(04)00927-2/abstract
The systematic review, co-authored by Tom Jefferson, Melanie Rudin and Carlo Di Pietrantonj (published in 2004), concludes in the abstract: “We found no evidence that aluminium salts in vaccines cause any serious or long-lasting adverse events. Despite a lack of good-quality evidence we do not recommend that any further research on this topic is undertaken.”
In their review Jefferson et al admit that: “Overall, the methodological quality of included studies was low.” And yet “despite a lack of good-quality evidence” Jefferson et al advise “we do not recommend that any further research on this topic is undertaken”.
From my layperson’s perspective this Cochrane Vaccines Field ‘systematic review’ looks like garbage in garbage out.
I suggest this review has facilitated poorly evidenced acceptance of the safety of aluminium-adjuvanted vaccines. As a consequence, an increasing number of aluminium-adjuvanted vaccines are being added to vaccination schedules around the world e.g. multiple doses of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccines, and multiple doses of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, amongst others. The meningococcal B vaccine is the latest to be promoted. The long-term cumulative effects of the ever-growing list of vaccine products are unknown.
My letters on this matter to Peter Gøtzsche, co-founder of The Cochrane Collaboration and Director of The Nordic Cochrane Centre, provide more detail, see:
Letter dated 8 July 2014: http://users.on.net/~peter.hart/Challenge_to_Cochrane_re_vax-safety_and_aluminium.pdf
Letter dated 17 July 2014: http://users.on.net/~peter.hart/Vaccine_safety_and_aluminium_follow-up_to_Cochrane.pdf
Further to my comment above, on 9 July 2014 Peter Gøtzsche responded to my letter of 8 July 2014 encouraging me to “submit a criticism” on this important matter to The Cochrane Collaboration.
Professor Gøtzsche also provided some other interesting comments which would have been useful for me to quote. When I asked his permission to do this he responded: “It was a personal email, so I would like to approve if you want to publicise any of it…” (10 July 2014) However, his initial email response of 9 July 2014 wasn’t actually ‘personal’, as he had also included people I had cc’d as witnesses in my original covering email to him, i.e. Tom Jefferson, Paul Glasziou, Chris Del Mar, Mark Wilson, Peter Doshi, Peter Collignon, Fiona Godlee and Ray Moynihan.
I subsequently drafted a post for my website quoting Professor Gøtzsche from his email of 9 July 2014. I forwarded the draft post to him (and the other cc’s) for his approval (15 July 2014), but received no response.
I also emailed Professor Gøtzsche to ask him how I should go about ‘submitting a criticism’ to The Cochrane Collaboration, (including my follow up letter of 17 July 2014), but again no response.
It has proven difficult to ‘submit a criticism’ on Jefferson et al’s review, because despite the fact it was prepared by members of the Cochrane Vaccines Field, and is included in the Cochrane Vaccines Field bibliography[1], apparently it is not ‘a Cochrane review’, according to advice received from representatives of The Cochrane Collaboration, i.e. George Swingler (16 and 23 July 2014) and David Tovey (25 and 27 August), plus the author Tom Jefferson (24 March 2013).
I find it bewildering that a systematic review published under the auspices of the Cochrane Vaccines Field is not a Cochrane review…
Jefferson et al’s review was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases in February 2004.[2] George Swingler advised me: “The Cochrane Collaboration has no editorial authority over the Lancet Infectious Diseases, and is thus not in a position to respond to a comment on the paper published in that journal.” (16 July 2014.)
Jefferson et al’s review published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases notes that “TJ and MR are at Cochrane Vaccines Field and Health Reviews Ltd, Rome Italy; and CDP is at Cochrane Vaccines Field, Alessandria, Italy. Correspondence: Dr Tom Jefferson, Cochrane Vaccines Field…”
David Tovey subsequently advised me: “Cochrane researchers are free to publish their work elsewhere, as happened here, although I should say that I am not aware of the specific circumstances in this case, and there may be important details of which I am unaware.” (27 August 2014.)
While Cochrane researchers may be “free to publish their work elsewhere”, is it appropriate for them to use the apparent imprimatur of ‘Cochrane’ for their work (e.g. under the apparent auspices of the ‘Cochrane Vaccines Field’) if The Cochrane Collaboration will refuse to be accountable for this work? I suggest this is highly questionable, as it seems to me The Cochrane Collaboration should be accountable for papers published under the auspices of ‘Cochrane’.
As The Cochrane Collaboration refused to take responsibility for Jefferson et al’s Cochrane Vaccines Field ‘systematic review’ on aluminium and vaccine safety, I was essentially fobbed off to The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.
On 11 August 2014 I forwarded a letter to John McConnell, Editor of The Lancet Infectious Diseases, requesting that The Lancet Infectious Diseases take urgent action to re-evaluate the systematic review on aluminium and vaccine safety prepared by members of the Cochrane Vaccines Field. I stated that, in my opinion, this so-called ‘systematic review’ should be retracted by The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
My letter to John McConnell can be accessed via this link: http://users.on.net/~peter.hart/Letter_to_Lancet_Infect_Dis_re_Cochrane_aluminium_review.pdf
As far as I am aware, I received no acknowledgement or response from Mr McConnell.
I followed up with an email to Mr McConnell on 16 December 2014, requesting his urgent response on this matter. As of yet I have still not received a response.
References:
[1] Cochrane Vaccines Field Bibliography (since 2003): http://vaccinesfield.cochrane.org/bibliography-2003
[2] Jefferson T, Rudin M, Di Pietrantoni C. Adverse events after immunisation with aluminium-containing DTP vaccines: systematic review of the evidence. Lancet Infect Dis. Volume 4, No. 2, p84-90, February 2004: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(04)00927-2/abstract
Further to my previous posts… On 16 December 2014 I forwarded a letter to David Tovey, Editor in Chief of The Cochrane Library, again requesting that The Cochrane Collaboration address the matter of this poorly evidenced review and the implications it has for international vaccination policy and practice, particularly in helping to facilitate the proliferation of aluminium-containing vaccine products, and potential over-vaccination of children and adults.
In my letter I note that it is a matter for concern that this poorly evidenced review prepared by members of the Cochrane Vaccines Field has been used to categorically promote the safety of aluminium-adjuvanted vaccines. For example, an article about the review, titled “Aluminium in Vaccines Poses No Harm”, published on the industry-sponsored website WebMD in January 2004, states: “After scouring through all the available medical data, researchers in Rome say there is no evidence that aluminium – contained within the combined diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine commonly known as DTP and routinely given to children – poses any serious or long-term side effects.”
In the article Paul Offit, arguably the vaccine industry’s foremost vaccine product promoter, lauds Jefferson et al’s review on vaccine safety and aluminium as “a very thorough, thoughtful review of the subject…”. Tom Jefferson is reported as saying: “Scare stories on aluminium-containing vaccines are not supported by evidence”.
Yet only a year or so previously, in an interview with The Telegraph (published in October 2002) titled “Vaccines expert warns studies are useless”, Tom Jefferson candidly stated: “Most safety studies on childhood vaccines have not been conducted thoroughly enough to tell whether the jabs cause side effects” and the information available on the safety of vaccines that are routinely given to babies and toddlers was “simply inadequate”.
It is bizarre that Dr Jefferson did a backflip on his publicly doubtful attitude towards vaccine safety studies just a year or so later in his 2004 Cochrane Vaccines Field review on vaccine safety and aluminium, and in his comments on the industry-sponsored website WebMD.
The review on vaccine safety and aluminium prepared by members of the Cochrane Vaccines Field, i.e. Jefferson et al, is self-admittedly based on studies that were of overall low methodological quality. It is also notable that this review by members of the Cochrane Vaccines Field is not freely accessible, being located behind the paywall on The Lancet Infectious Diseases website. These lapses in quality of evidence and accessibility are at odds with The Cochrane Collaboration’s declaration that “our mission is to promote evidence-informed health decision-making by producing high-quality, relevant, accessible systematic reviews and other synthesised research evidence”.
I have received no acknowledgement or response to my letter from Dr Tovey.
My fully referenced letter to Dr Tovey can be accessed via this link: http://users.on.net/~peter.hart/Letter_to_David_Tovey_re_Cochrane_aluminium_vax_safety_review.pdf
All my letters on this subject are listed on this webpage on my website: http://over-vaccination.net/letters-challenging-over-vaccination/aluminium-and-vaccine-safety/