The History of a Medical Psychosis

February, 24, 2023 | 9 Comments

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  1. Slide 45:          The beating Tell Tale Heart

    “Gold Coating…

    “I felt like I had reached the end of a very long journey. Then I walked downstairs into the lower hallway of the House of Commons, found a quiet corner, covered my face with my hands and wept.”

    MP’s 14-year mission to make prescription drug use safer nearly over with law named after his late daughter

    Because of Terence Young, in the next month, the most significant reform to drug safety legislation in 50 years will receive royal assent: Vanessa’s Law

    https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/mps-14-year-mission-to-make-prescription-drug-use-safer-nearly-over-with-law-named-after-his-late-daughter

    OTTAWA — Terence Young swore an oath to himself the morning after his 15-year-old daughter, Vanessa, died from the side-effects of a prescribed drug in March 2000: He would find out why it happened and make sure other families didn’t have to suffer the agony of losing a child from a preventable cause.

    Orders from Nowhere that Kill

    In The Death of Stephen O’Neill I suggested his doctors, like soldiers in an army, simply by dint of following orders were capable of doing horrific things.

    https://davidhealy.org/orders-from-nowhere-that-kill/

    Forbidden Knowledge

    https://twitter.com/DrNancyOlivieri/status/1627291970765828096

    Forbidden Knowledge: A Self-Advocate’s Guide to Managing Your Prescription Drugs 

    Paperback – Feb. 21 2023

    by Terence H. Young (Author)

    https://www.amazon.ca/Forbidden-Knowledge-Pharma-Never-Prescription/dp/1459750683

    Brook Jackson Retweeted

    “Brook Jackson, the clinical trials superviser who blew the whistle on Pfizer over its testing of Covid vaccines, has announced that a court date has been assigned to her case.

    It will be held on March 1, 2023 at 2:00 pm at the Jack Brooks Federal Courthouse in Beaumont, Texas”

    https://twitter.com/TexasLindsay_/status/1627119068414107649

    Fire in the Bellies…

  2. before that became cool!…

    He’s got my support based on his past successes, his endurance, his goal, his design [and maybe for standing up to Dr. Nemeroff before that became cool!]…

    before that became cool!…

    Posted on Sunday 22 January 2012

    The first thing I ever read about Dr. David Healy was about his encounter with Dr. Charlie Nemeroff in 2001:

    https://1boringoldman.com/index.php/2012/01/22/before-that-became-cool/

    It’s ten years later. Charlie Nemeroff is marginalized to Miami [“dumped” by Emory], and David Healy is going strong with two new websites and a book that Amazon says will arrive in early February [see below]. That speaks to the fact that there are at least some forces in the universe pressing for the greater good.

    He sees the book and the two web sites as related pieces of an effort to make the protest against the current mess into a scientific project aimed at making real changes in the system rather than just making noise about its foibles – to produce an accurate and quickly available compendium of the adverse effects of drugs. I don’t yet see the entire picture, but I think there is going to be one to see as he proceeds. If you’re looking for a star to hitch your wagon to, Dr. David Healy is as likely a candidate as we’ve seen in a very long time.

  3. Adam Meir Clayton became the poster boy for assisted suicide in Canada. He had suffered from something called “Somatic Symptom Disorder,” or feelings of excruciating pain with no known physical cause.

    In the course of his all-too-short life, he had been prescribed twenty-one different drugs, including Paxil. This is never made explicit in this video, by the way. But they do show show (for one second) a list of the drugs he had been given. I had to stop the video in order to count all the drugs he had been given.

    No one even seems to have considered the possibility that all these drugs could have been the cause of his problems — although his complaints sound to me suspiciously like the symptoms of antidepressant withdrawal. And yet, if you watch the video, the only complaint mentioned before he began the drugs was he was “flicking his fingers.”

    Adam committed suicide alone in a motel room, and his parents have made his crusade for “death with dignity” their cause. I know these people have suffered an irremediable loss, and I have no doubt they mean well, but wouldn’t living with dignity be preferable?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-w6c-ybwXk

  4. “splashes your company’s name across the world’s press…

    Thomas Fox practices law in Houston, Texas. He is the author of two books dealing with anti-bribery and anti-corruption:

    https://www.corporatecomplianceinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/GSK-II.pdf

    All of these ‘coincidences’ may lead the DOJ or the UK SFO to conclude that GSK has a culture of non-compliance or worse yet – a culture of corruption. The FT article cited to un-named legal experts for the following, “If prosecutors find a pattern of such behavior, they are likely to take a tougher stance towards the company.” Do not forget that GSK had paid a $3bn fine for false marketing and is currently under a Corporate Integrity Agreement (the equivalent of a DPA) for those illegal actions.

    These statements of contrition are quite a distance from the place where GSK started last summer when the bribery allegations broke when the company tried to use the ‘rogue employee(s)’ defense, when it said that the bribery and corruption involved only a “few rogue Chinese-born employees” that were “outside our systems of controls” Oops.

    All of this leads me to believe that the GSK Board was not sufficiently engaged. While one might think a company which had received a $3bn fine and was under a Corporate Integrity Agreement for its marketing sins might have sufficient Board attention; perhaps legal marketing had greater Board scrutiny than doing business in compliance with the FCPA or UK Bribery Act.

    One of the clear lessons from the GSK matter is that serious allegations of bribery and corruption require a serious corporate response. Not, as GSK did in their best Inspector Clouseau imitation, failing to find the nose on their face.

  5. Shelley Jofre
    @ShelleyJofre
    ·
    48m

    We revealed on ⁦@BBCPanorama⁩ in 2002 how hard it was to withdraw from Seroxat and other SSRIs. Scandalous it’s taken over 2 decades for this: British Journal of General Practice publishes advice for GPs on Withdrawing from SSRI Antidepressants –

    https://iipdw.org/british-journal-of-general-practice-publishes-advice-for-gps-on-withdrawing-from-ssri-antidepressants/

    British Journal of General Practice publishes advice for GPs on Withdrawing from SSRI Antidepressants

    February 27, 2023 by Lucy Fernandes

    https://iipdw.org/british-journal-of-general-practice-publishes-advice-for-gps-on-withdrawing-from-ssri-antidepressants/

    You can read and download the article on the BJGP website: Withdrawing from SSRI Antidepressants: advice for primary care.

    This is an important moment as the journal is widely read by GPs, who are the main prescribers of SSRI antidepressants in the UK.

    Although there was a mention of this topic on the BJGP website last year, which linked to IIPDW’s video, this is the first time this information appears in print in a UK journal aimed at GPs.

    Up until now, GPs have received very little information about safe tapering and withdrawal syndromes, and the recent NICE Guideline on the topic lacks needed detail about how to withdraw patients.

    As GPs are less likely to read about SSRI withdrawal in psychiatry journals (such as this article in the Lancet Psychiatry) or publications aimed at patients (such as the leaflet published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists), this article may be the first time many GPs learn this information.

    Anyone can respond to the new article via the eLetter tab just above it. Some eLetters are published in the journal as formal letters, a good way of encouraging dialogue and building on the available information. Please do consider doing contributing in this way!

    Lastly, it’s worth taking a look at the ‘We Recommend’ section to the right of the article. It includes ‘Four research papers I wish my GP had read before prescribing antidepressants‘ by IIPDW Board Member Stevie Lewes, which is among the top 5% of most shared academic articles.

    It also includes ‘Tapering Antidepressants: Why do tens of thousands turn to Facebook groups for support?‘ by late researcher and advocate Ed White.

    BOB FIDDAMAN
    @Fiddaman

    The four Panorama expose’s should have alerted regulators. I’ll never forget Breckenridge and Benbow squirming as they faced tough questions from the ‘ankle-biter’, Shelley Jofre.

    Thank you for your service, Shelley!

    James Moore
    @jf_moore
    ·
    29m

    Replying to @ShelleyJofre and @BBCPanorama

    Thank you, Shelley, for banging the drum on this issue for so long. This
    @BJGPjournal article is welcome but it doesn’t go far enough, no suggested tapers, no examination of methods. As it stands, it leaves more questions than answers for prescribers and patients. #antidepressant

    Withdrawing from SSRI antidepressants: advice for primary care

    https://bjgp.org/content/73/728/138

    Emilia G Palmer, Sangeetha Sornalingam, Lisa Page and Maxwell Cooper

    British Journal of General Practice 2023; 73 (728): 138-140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp23X732273

    Contribute and read comments about this article: bjgp.org/letters

  6. A film in 2001 revealed that a million and a half people in Britain were hooked on prescription tranquillisers – a situation the government’s Mental Health tsar admitted was a “disaster”. But in a case of history repeating itself, in 2002 Shelley reported on the the mass prescription of newer, supposedly non-addictive anti-depressants like Seroxat. She discovered that many people who had begun taking Seroxat in the belief they could stop the drug whenever they wanted, had in fact become hooked on it, while others had become suicidal. The programme sparked an enormous audience response, with a staggering 65,000 people ringing the BBC helpline and 1,500 e-mailing in.

    Over the years Shelley has continued her investigations into Seroxat, resulting in four films, which have forced a complete rethink of the drug’s safety and effectiveness as well as an overhaul of the way patients report side effects from any prescription medicine.

    The films won a Mental Health Media Award for Public Impact and were nominated for a Royal Television Society Award in 2003. Shelley also won the Bafta Scotland award for Best Current Affairs programme 1995 for her report The Twilight Zone. She was also nominated for the RTS 1998 Regional Journalist of The Year and the RTS 1997 Young Journalist of The Year.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/47qj6F2mySgbBD5gV6QbGFw/shelley-jofre

    The Troubled Life of Study 329: Consequences of Failure to Retract

    https://davidhealy.org/the-troubled-life-of-study-329-the-consequences-of-failure-to-retract/

    JOFRE: The next step was to use apparently independent academics to help, like Professor Martin Keller. Head of Psychiatry at a prestigious university his name is worth a lot to companies like GSK.

    BARTH MENZIES: They figured out well if we use opinion users in the field, academics that everybody looks up to and the leaders in the field to sell our product, doctors are going to be far more influenced than by just regular sales representatives.

    JOFRE: So just what quality should a key opinion leader possess. Here’s professor Keller in his own words giving video evidence to lawyers who are suing GlaxoSmithKline. Professor

    MARTIN KELLER Brown University You’re respected for being a…. um… how to put this, an honourable person, and therefore when you give an opinion about something, people tend to listen and say oh, this individual gave their opinion, it’s worth considering.

    JOFRE: But how independent is he? In a single year Martin Keller earned half a million dollars from drug companies including GSK. His name is at the head of GSK’s study 329 but how much input did he really have? In a memo Dr Keller thanked a ghost writer for the initial preparation of the manuscript, a ghost writer who works for a PR company – a PR company hired by GSK. “You did a superb job with this. Thank you very much. It is excellent. Enclosed are some rather minor changes from me…”

    JOFRE: Here’s another letter from the ghost writer to Dr Keller. It says that all the necessary materials are enclosed so that he can submit study 329 for publication, even down to the covering letter which says: “please re-type on your letterhead. Revise if you wish.” Ghost-written medical research like this is becoming a real problem.

    https://study329.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Transcript-Secrets-of-the-drug-trials.pdf

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