Six fired, one dead, no answers

March, 21, 2013 | 10 Comments

Comments

  1. Your reference to Harper magazine reminded me of something which I found disturbing regarding freedom of the press. I used to find lots of information on the dubious practices of Danish pharma company ‘Lundbeck’ in the Copenhagen Post; articles like these: ‘Lundbeck in hot water’ and ‘pill company behind depression website’. I looked one day and all the information was gone. It transpired that in late 2011 Lundbeck took out a corporate subscription and also receives ‘journalistic support’ from the Copenhagen Post. http://cphpost.dk/products-and-services Now only positive references are made to Lundbeck.

    This article entitled ‘Danish sperm bank abandoning home market’ states “We cannot ensure that a donor is not used for more than 12 children….It is like asking Lundbeck [a maker of anti-depressants] to ensure that doctors do not over-prescribe medication….” This implies to me, that not only is Lundbeck getting a spot of ‘free’ advertising here, it’s also implying that any problems with their drugs is actually the fault of the doctor. Nice for Lundbeck but not so good for the medical profession or for the Lundbeck victims, such as my son Shane. Sad.
    Leonie

  2. Being in the alternative news business here in B.C. for the past 15 years covering an array of corporate and government crimes and corruption I was quite surprised by this article. I never heard about it before and I’m wondering just how much coverage of it has appeared in our mainstream media.

    While I am a great admirer of Senator Joe McCarthy and his efforts to expose the Communist/Zionist conspiracy that was taking over America back in the 30s and 40s I would hardly use the term “McCarthyism” to describe the fears that are now prevalent throughout western media when it comes to exposing anything indirectly or directly related to the machinations of the same element that McCarthy fought and died trying to educate the world about. These are the same people who now own and manipulate the pharmaceutical industry, the media and political agendas of all the western nations with the possible exception of Italy and Iceland. It’s my guess that something dangerously controversial was going on in the backrooms of the B.C. legislature that precipitated this current blackout of information.

  3. Mr Topham’s views are offensive to me. I am neither a communist nor a Jew. I am surprised to see his views in this blog as, in my opinion, they do not add to or illuminate any part of the blog. At best they are meretricious nonsense and at worst paranoid and racist propaganda.

    What is the moderator of this blog thinking of?

  4. As the moderator of this blog, I clearly have to comment. The McCarthyism reference might well in some respects be wrong. But the term popularly now refers to a period in American history when any hints that a person thought anything was less than perfect in the United States or any questioning of the status quo was liable to lead to them being branded as un-American or communist. Just as in Eastern Germany, except the other way around in that case, this led a lot of people to keep quiet about their views, and also to fail to come to the defense of others they should have stood up for.

    There is a similar tyranny within medicine today, and particularly within psychiatry, and especially in the United States. The atmosphere of fear is palpable. Anyone questioning the status quo in this case is liable to be dismissed as a Scientologist.

    For the record, I don’t think we get these outcomes because of conspiracies – we get them because some aspect of the system is not working the way it should. As Andrew Witty said recently in the BMJ “the 100,000 people who work for GSK are just like you, right? They’re normal people. Many of them are doctors”

    This was also the case in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. People who end up doing terrible things are just like you and me and some of them are doctors.

    • As one of the token Yankees on this blog, I have to say the analogy to McCarthyism is spot-on. I can remember as a kid being told by teachers that there was nothing necessarily wrong with civil rights for “Negroes”, but I had to understand that the Communists were just using this for their own purposes. So that Martin Luther King guy? Keep your distance. He is not a responsible leader. This never made much sense to me; it just made me curious about those Communists.

      So often what I hear from people inside the mental health system is similar: what I’m saying is not exactly wrong, but it’s irresponsible even if it’s right. If I manage to escape the six-drug cocktail and the life built around my brain disease, that’s fine. But I need to keep quiet about it, for some undefined greater good. And if others don’t find a way out, and go under, they in some sense are collateral damage that has to be accepted for that same elusive greater good. What the hell! Where is this “vast majority” who are supposedly being helped so much in the current drugs-first, people-last system? And if it’s such a wonderful, life-saving system, why is it so fragile that it has to be protected from the power of even one cranky question?

      I’m hoping maybe the arrogant cluelessness of the psychiatric establishment itself in rolling out the new DSM-5 guidelines will help get the ball rolling on the revolt we need. At least Allen Frances, the extremely mainstream doc who chaired the DSM-4 committee, is getting a lot of press for his warnings of the “massive over-diagnosis and harmful over-medication” that DSM-5 will bring. He’s hardly a revolutionary — but just the idea that there might ever be some harm in being medicated is revolutionary enough for now.

  5. Well said….the moderator…
    Clearly, then, the above quote from the, man at the helm, of normality, doesn’t quite know his normal from his abnormal……just like me, just like doctors, we are all normal…..
    So, in that case, Mr. Normal, looking after his 100,000 employees who are also doctors and who are so normal …..why have you let us be abnormal….
    I like Peter Hitchens, he stands no nonsense. He is normal, stronger than most, an authoritive author. He is always talking about Mr. Slippery, our Prime Minister.
    He is not afraid to speak the truth.
    Mr. Normal has surpassed Mr. Slippery…..
    If the little children, or even the bigger children, knew what Mr. Normal and Mr. Slippery were doing to them, then we would have the children running the ‘shots’; not taking them…….

  6. The analogy to McCarthyism is apt. Arthur Topham’s reference to a Communist/Zionist conspiracy as though it were a fact is objectionable as anti-Semitic.

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