The Events in Paris have led to a brief interruption to the Persecution Series although this post could have been termed Brand Fascism II.
Illustration: Data Wars, © 2012 Billiam James
The day after the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, Nicholas Sarkozy stood on the steps of the Elysee Palace and said
“This [the shootings] is a declaration of a war on civilization and it is the responsibility of civilization to defend itself”.
Twelve people had been killed.
Follow the data
The issues at stake have been pitched in terms of an attack on the Enlightenment values that make modern civilization possible. The greatest symbol of the Enlightenment is modern Science. The distinguishing feature of Science as opposed to Religion or other forms of knowledge hinges on a willingness of people to follow data even if that data runs counter to their religious or other sectarian interests.
Before the French Revolution, France led the way in governing by data also. Concerned that the country might lose out to Germany, the authorities kept a detailed census of the population and tracked birth, mortality and disease rates. These data illustrating that certain areas of the country were healthier than others helped pinpoint things that could be done to manage the conditions that gave rise to several diseases. These data gave rise to the insurance industry and later the science of epidemiology.
In the midst of the Revolution, Pinel, who is famous for removing the shackles from the insane, created Evidence Based Medicine by insisting all patients be tracked for outcomes and that the data should shape our views. After passionate debates about the role of data in medicine largely conducted in nineteenth century France, Pinel’s initiative ultimately flowered in Evidence Based Medicine – by which most people understand Data Based Medicine.
The use of data to overcome preconceptions and allow a rational ordering of human affairs had by this point given birth to modern democracy. The rule of the people by the people has always hinged on doing the rational thing – we will all be better off if we follow what makes the greatest number of people better off. Anything else may be good in the short term for one section of society but not in the longer run. Following what the data points to means being willing to take on sectional interests
These are ideas to celebrate and the huge crowds gathered in Paris over the weekend, protesting the killings at Charlie Hebdo, believed they were bearing witness to these ideals.
Dark knight rises
In July 2012, twelve people were shot dead in Aurora at a premiere of the Dark Knight Rises movie with a further fifty-four injured. In December 2012, twenty children were shot in Sandy Hook. There have been other mass shootings in Virginia Tech and elsewhere.
We don’t know for certain the details of the psychotropic drugs that the shooters were on in any of these cases but there is enough information about these various events and enough clinical trial data linking antidepressant use to homicide and violence to make it possible to state that pretty well for certain some of these violent events have been triggered by treatment.
Where are the marches in support of civilization?
Ah you say, there is no effort to censor, to suppress the truth here.
The economics of truth
We have witnessed many newspapers and magazines across Europe in recent days refusing to publish Charlie Hebdo related materials or other cartoons that feature the Prophet. They make it clear they are self-censoring – they are putting the safety of staff before freedom of speech. Many people find this capitulation shocking. It’s likely that many Muslims find the capitulation shocking. It is likely that many of those marching in Paris are doing so in part to stiffen the backbone of the media.
This capitulation by the media is shocking because it seems exceptional or has been made to seem that way.
Academic journals in medicine in contrast capitulate every day of the week. The shock would be to find them standing up for basic values. The basic value these journals capitulate on hinges on access to the clinical trial data without which science is not possible – the basic Enlightenment value. The worst journals are the ones that trumpet their commitment to Evidence Based Medicine. Worse again, once upon a time we all had access to the data but the journals have let this slip. We have gone back to a pre-Enlightenment era.
The missing data include the clinical trial data showing not only do antidepressants for instance cause suicide and violence but that they cause more people to commit suicide or become violent than they prevent from doing so – these drugs raise absolute rates of violence and suicide. School or College shootings pretty well never happened before the antidepressants.
The work of Rachel Liebert shows how each of these events have led to a progressively ever tighter security apparatus, in much the way 9/11 did. We are becoming more and more controlled, with more and more livelihoods devoted to security in its various guises, but without any evidence that this control is making us safer – indeed to the contrary.
The protocols of the elders of Harlow
How do the many hundreds of family members left bereaved by these shootings react? Most of them with resignation like most Jews during World War Two or Muslims today bewildered by Middle Eastern carnage. Some begin to research, begin to pick at the threads that are out there suggesting a cover-up on a scale that would leave most people figuring you’d succumbed to a paranoid fantasy if you attempted to voice what you thought was going on.
Among the few who become active, some will become murderous. Many of those who blog or lobby – decent people – will almost certainly have had fantasies of wreaking violence on the executives of GSK, or Pfizer, even on paragons of data transparency such as Patrick Vaillance and Andrew Witty, when they find that in some sense these executives “knew” of the capacity of drugs like the SSRIs to cause suicide – often of the most blood curdling kind – or violence – often of the most horrific kind – or a range of birth defects and mental handicaps.
But its as difficult to imagine succeeding in an effort to get at a senior pharmaceutical executive as it is to imagine getting to Barack Obama, Francois Hollande or David Cameron.
In lieu of a senior company person, what about a journal editor? These are the people who are responsible for letting pharma have whatever they want published without having to provide data. These are the people who publish articles that state certain drugs work well and are safe when in fact the hidden data shows that the drug didn’t work and wasn’t safe. These are the people who encourage industry to use ghost-writers. These are the people who buckle at the first hint of industry displeasure about an article about the adverse effects of a drug.
Many in industry find what these editors do quite shocking. If medical journals were run by people who had previously worked for pharma, they would likely show a lot more backbone than they do now.
So if one those who have been bereaved by the latest brand name wonder drug were to storm an editorial meeting of the New England Journal of Medicine or the British Medical Journal and shoot as many dead as possible, would we call that person a criminal, an extremist or a crazed fundamentalist?
This is not who we are
A few weeks ago Barack Obama justified the release of a report on the activities of the US in torturing suspects in the war on terror, saying that it was important that the truth come out. Things had to change. What the US had done should not be repeated – because “this is not who we are”.
And because the data shows it doesn’t work.
What did we do? Well among other things we borrowed some tricks from the Soviets and used the akathisia that psychotropic drugs can cause to torture suspects into submission.
We have great reason to suspect that much of the violence linked to psychotic patients that sparks popular calls to lock these people up is triggered by the exact same drugs.
We know that some of the horrific shootings by military personnel in Iraq and elsewhere can be linked to soldiers taking the same or related drugs.
When it comes to the physical beatings celebrated in dramas like 24 and Zero Dark Thirty, we left many people in much the same state as they might be in after a course of statins – aged, crippled and cognitively impaired.
But are there any medical voices raised trying to make sure this doesn’t happen again because “this is not who we are”?
Revenge
In 1844 Alexandre Dumas’s powerful revenge fantasy The Count of Monte Cristo was published. The Catholic Church immediately banned it – probably ensuring its success. Revenge is immoral, they said.
Dumas’ hero Edmond Dantes was locked up on false charges in the Chateau d’If, the Alcatraz of its day, to rot forever while one of those who framed him stole his lover and place in society, another became a pillar of the banking establishment and the third became the senior judicial figure in the country. Dantes escaped after eighteen years, and gifted a fortune by a fellow prisoner set about the destruction of those who framed him.
Watching Gerard Depardieu as Dantes, it is close to impossible not to delight in the unfolding of his plans, as he contrives the suicide of the man who stole his wife, the destruction of the banking system, and the crushing of the judge who jailed him.
There are people falsely imprisoned for eighteen years after Prozac or other SSRIs led them to kill the people they held most dear. For the most part, they show an extraordinary generosity of spirit seeking despite this to turn what happened to them to a greater good.
This will never make a novel or a movie – but then truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.
Brisdella: Countess of Monte Cristo
Jane Fonda starred in the movie version of a French comic strip – Barbarella – who was entrusted with a mission to save the Earth. It involved lots of being sexy with Fonda ending up “the most iconic Sex Goddess of the 1960s” as a result according to the New York Times.
Well perhaps Earth will have to be saved by Brisdella, the Sex Goddesses featured in the latest stunning Direct to Consumer Advert for Brisdelle. This is GSK’s paroxetine, Paxil, repackaged for peri-menopausal hot flashes.
A series of women are featured as transformed from Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown to Lara Crofts, Purdy from the Avengers, or Brisdella. See here.
There are the usual small print rushed disclaimers. You’d never guess that Brisdelle is Pregnancy Category X for birth defects and Black Box Warned for Suicide.
When one of these women finds she can’t get off Brisdelle because the withdrawal is too horrific, faced with the prospect having her bones rot because of enforced SSRI intake, a greater risk of stroke because of her enforced SSRI intake, a greater risk of burning hands and feet in perpetuity because of her SSRI intake, what will she do?
What will she do when she finds she has become Nearly Invisible, as Moyra Peralta puts it one of RxISK’s manifestos Nearly Invisible: Drug Traffic Accidents or as one of the women in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown sings
“Though things are pretty much the same
As how they used to be
the doctors still are smiling
they just never smile at me
At first I thought they must be blind
like love or gravity
but then I realisedI feel like supergirl! I’ve become invisible
I’m a magic trick. Isn’t it wonderful?
Like a character in a comic book
I can see what you’re thinking but I don’t careSo if you’re on an empty street
and you hear the tapping of high heeled feet
Or you hear a heart like a phantom beat
or the screams of a woman left incomplete
well don’t fear what you can’t see
the odds are good that its only me
I’m invisible”
Will she cloaked in invisibility, and with the emotional numbness (albeit drug induced) of a contract killer, avenge the children, the parents, the partners who have died a death more common than deaths in War, even when civilian casualties are counted in – brand drug induced death?
Or having worked it out, will she take pleasure in waiting and watching the West fall without having to fire a bullet – as the numbers of mentally handicapped swell and healthcare costs balloon in the absence of the data that would make what we are doing economic and rational. The only way to survive is on an all for one and one for all basis – but this is not how the boys are playing the game. So it should be only a matter of time till they hang separately – except there is always the risk that this time the Empire might get too strong.
Asterix
Deep in European and American hearts is a memory of the collapse of Rome. Impregnable empires can come to an end. Ironically few have celebrated the demise of Rome more than the French, where a cartoon series featuring Asterix the Gaul taking on the might of Rome is a national identifier.
Asterix and his companion Obelix feature as the mascots of Prescrire, the only French voice calling for Data Based Medicine. Prescrire are one of the few medical groups in the world who continue to publish in the face of threats of legal action from Pharma.
In Paris today we have a lot of people mouthing words that come easily “Je Suis Charlie”. For anyone who wants to be Charlie, who wants to get to know what modern politics is all about by feeling it in your marrow, try reporting an adverse event on treatment to your doctor.
Outside your doctor’s surgery/clinic/ consultation room you can believe you are operating in a democracy. Inside the room you may be treated with courtesy and apparent friendliness but you are being treated in an arrangement set in place to police addicts. This is not a domain in which ideals of Liberty, Equality or Fraternity are welcome.
And just as Stalin once put it to France’s future leader Pierre Laval who thought it important to get the Pope onside against Germany, “How many divisions does the Pope have?”, so your doctor is likely to be thinking when faced with someone mentioning Prescrire or RxISK – “How many Corporate Lawyers does Prescrire or RxISK have?”
In Rome today there are almost certain to be people considering how we would manage the radicalization of patients if it ever happened. What shall we do with Prescrire?
No one except those who have lost a loved one or had someone badly injured on treatment realize that Terror has become the new Normal. That we are living in a Reign of Terror – See Brand Fascism.
And yet almost by definition, the only kind of business that will be sustainable in the longer run, at least on Earth in democratic societies (See The Data Access Wars), is one that is science based which means data based. How many Republics will rise and fall before we get the Promised Land?
What would happen if three million French people demanded access to their data?
what a brilliant read! – and so topical.Pity this, in its entirety, is not appearing in every single British daily paper tomorrow – maybe then the general public ( i.e. those who have, so far, been lucky enough to escape all dealings with “mental health”) would begin to understand what goes on.
Having “lost a loved one”, as you put it, you are correct in saying that, yes, I have had many fantasies of bombing the factory that made the killer drug. More satisfying, really (I guess because more likely to happen – though I am not holding my breath), envisioning those pharma executives who connived to keep the killer side effects buried through obfuscation, threats of lawsuits, and so on – in prison stripes at a country club sort of prison. Tennis courts, yes, but away from their families, the esteem in which they are/were held in their communities…..no longer being promoted, leaving their pharma companies and running colleges or states or becoming lobbyists or consultants. No longer sitting in their mansions, their shiny tassel loafers parked comfortably on their coffee tables as they sip their martinis. Perhaps being divorced by their wives, and shunned by their former colleagues as fall guys, jerks who somehow got caught. But the best part comes not in this segment of the fantasy, but before, in a court in which I get to look them in the eye and tell them of my agony, tell them how wonderful my dear, now dead, loved one was. Ask them whether they have searched deep in their hearts to imagine what I must feel towards them, with them not able to hide behind their public relations flacks or their fancy, expensive corporate lawyers. There in a court, naked before me…my turn to speak at last- and them being forced to listen.
My ‘disliking’ extends to those below the ‘top brass’ of Big Pharma, namely GSK, those that have a good insight in how Big Pharma functions. From how they falsify
Clinical tests to how they agressively promote drugs with ‘uncertain’ effects. Among those thousands of employees that with just a hint of imagination can see that they are not doing an honest job towards those to be ‘end users’ of their Product. And how they must know that the public expects them to be excessively
thorough and protecting of their ‘end users’.
They are producing medicines, one of the pillars of modern societies. Along with food and water, we must be able to trust those who are responsible for them.
We wouldn’t accept our local watertreating plant to ‘cut corners’ that made some of us sick, just so they could make a profit out of it?
Fantastic post and so relevant.
Terror on our streets reported widely and people are afraid. Terror lurking in their medicine cabinet and they don’t even realise.
Ove – Back in the day, when haunting various websites was a major obsession of mine, the hostility radiating on the pharma-friendly websites by many such pharma worker bees was palpable….the comments seemed to come from those in unions, on factory floors, and so on….people whose livelihoods depended on their BLOCKBUSTER really being a blockbuster….
As for those perhaps a tier up in the hierarchy, some…well, a few, of them,did become whistleblowers, quit selling the poisons as drug reps, or otherwise bailed out …a handful is better than none, would you say–perhaps they perceived themselves as …just following orders…
Yes I know Dita, even I would probably be one who rather followed order than jeopardise my work and income. We all just want to get by.
But since it is medicines, and they are used frequently, often coupled with horrendeous side effects, developed under suspicious grounds to say the least, and then denied beyond reason by the developer that they have any responsibility.
I’m just not sure that a steady income is enough to justify the employees silence?
Understandable, yes, but perhaps not justifiable.
Well written and well thought out. You have to wonder why doctors aren’t radicalizing and demanding accurate data. My only conclusion is that the years spent in medical school teach conformity rather than to provide doctoral level education.
This post is so cogent, Dr. Healy. Thinking about why doctors are so docile is quite a thick stew – and many reasons come to mind, not the least of them the bread and butter issue mentioned above….those pharma factory workers, many of whom knew in their gut that they were making a witches brew yet unwilling to upset the apple cart of their livelihood….doctors are not above such things, clearly, and after all.
As for others who might rock the boat – politicians, people in the media, etc. Well, how about people in the media? Should we point the finger at them? Why don’t we have more “Charlies” on our side, after all? The carnage certainly merits it, so why not, why not? Here in the U.S., there is lots of ink spilled on defective cars…and Congress does haul car executives before the carpet when it spills over into headlines. But Bigpharma and the number of dead cause little stir; I guess because the payoffs have been too great, and have lasted over so long a time, the relationships built up have smoothed over any rough edges such that these deaths stay under the radar and don’t hit on anyone’s conscience.
So, who does that leave? Does it mean that an uprising from patients and their bereaved and devastated families is necessary? Wait, hasn’t this been tried before? What about that group that encircled a pharmaceutical company in Philadelphia with protest signs? Or the group that occupied Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., across from the White House for a week? Or all those people who have testified countless times before the FDA? Not enough? Do we need street theater in front of the FDA building? “Die-ins” on the Capitol steps? What will it take? Will it take all of us, with all our tactics, over time, or does it mean we need to collectively think smarter?
Cody – You posted your (excellent) comment in January 2015 – I wonder, 5 months later (May 2015) do you have the glimpse of any answers to the question you pose in your last sentence ?
I want to help – but HOW ??
Most of us conform, until something happens which changes us…perhaps something world shattering, perhaps something which seems like a nightmare and then you realise that it is a nightmare…
If we all start thinking clearly about all this, there might have been a time when a bit more action from us could have changed the world……
After Panorama, there were thousands of disgruntled Seroxat digesters complaining and there was also talk of litigation, circa 2002 onwards.
It did not take long for thousands to see the light and realise the undercover operation by GlaxoSmithKline, laid bare by Shelley Jofre, and, the realisation that the MHRA were involved in the cover up with their GlaxoSmithKline infiltrators.
It had become a shocking mess of corruption and we all watched it play out.
If we had staged a mass outcry around 2004 and staged a mini revolution by grouping outside the Bentford Building we could have scored a media victory. But, we didn’t because a) we were too ill to think clearly and b) we had no one to orchestrate such brave tactics.
With Seroxat, the deaths will continue to rise until a) doctors cause a revolution b) doctors realise our revulsion.
Sir Andrew Witty is just doing his job?
Whether he behaves like the Wolf from Wall Street or Bambi, his personal involvement is yet to be cleared….he is ‘under doctors’ orders’ to make GSK profit from everything in their portfolio.
I don’t know Sir Andrew Witty, and, so, he is a step removed from my own particular experience. But, I knew those doctors around me who called me Annie, who called me a lot of things, who, called the shots….and, so I am more inclined to want to bring to public notice “how low can these people sink”.
As highlighted in the recent Lorna case, are we no further forward than we were around 2002 when the deaths spiralled out of control? How easy it is for a Trust, Doctor or Coroner to not only refuse to understand but to publicly disgrace the person who was failed?
The Statute of Limitations puts the kibosh on all complaints.
This is their trump card.
It is a continuing circle of anger and despair and it has to be broken and what we surely need to do is to apply our minds to some sort of strategy rather than spend a lot of exhausting time describing the injustice of it all.
Surely, the time has come to somehow up the ante before it becomes normal for a doctor to kill, make excuses, and people like Sir Andrew Witty, be heralded, for perhaps delivering the Ebola vaccine.
We don’t like to be the ‘forgotten’; it drives us crazy, but we will be if we don’t do something about it.
We seem to expect someone to save us, but, how realistic is that?
Most of this stuff is as far removed from civilisation as you can get.
It goes without saying that I have lost all respect for several doctors who decided to put themselves first and it goes without saying that we have to play them at their own game and push them until they can take no more – and their behaviour is shown up publicly – Seroxat, as, an example, can either push you over the edge or give you an edge – I pushed so hard they came down on me like a ton of bricks and I learnt the most terrible lesson – if you push too hard they turn into self righteous prigs and bigots – I really would have preferred not to have seen this side of human nature which seems to live in most people, but, remains dormant until threatened…
Trust me, I’m a doctor.
Trust me; I am in charge of GlaxoSmithKline.
Trust me; I am in charge of the MHRA.
*Taken* on Trust…
Panorama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99RWfNVJKlo
There is a group of “seniors” (elderly women all, I believe), calling themselves “Cod Pink”, who regularly show up to disrupt various solemn functions in Washington, DC – thus garnering some fleeting media coverage to their causes. While this appeals to the drama of the situation (and the drama in me), it’s the fleeting part that discourages. I plan to talk to some savvy younger social media/tech people to see what sort of ruckus, if any, might be started in that realm.
We need the issue to, as they say, go viral.
I have had that idea for awhile now Cody, not easy to pull off with my limited Resources.
I know for sure my idea would become “viral”, atleast within “Big Pharma”.
Unfortunately it also means throwing myself on the “Bonfire”.
So it will remain a Dream of mine, but some day perhaps!
Would love to show some “pacifist resistance”, because that is the kind of revenge
people generally don’t oppose!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24004825#cm24004825_8656
Jacob Puliyel2015 Jan 13 06:40 a.m. (2 days ago)edited
Baldo and colleagues quote 2 references to suggest that in Germany, a population-based evaluation demonstrated a possible safety signal for DTPa-HBV-IPV-Hib-SP but failed to show an imbalance between observed and expected SUD cases for DTPa-HBV-IPV/Hib von Kries R, 2005 von Kries R, 2006. However this seems to be contradicted by the data that was submitted by the manufacturer to the regulatory authority and the analysis below.
The GlaxoSmithKline Biological Clinical Safety and Pharmacovigilance’s confidential report to the Regulatory Authority on Infanrix hexa (combined Diptheria Tetanus and Acelluar Pertusis, Hepatitis B, inactivated Poliomyelitis and Haemophilus influenza type B vaccine for the period 23 October 2009 to 22 October 2011 (the 15th and 16th Periodic Safety Update Report (PSUR)) has been made available to the public by the Italian Court of Justice Nicola Di Leo and is now available on the internet (http://autismoevaccini.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/vaccin-dc3a9cc3a8s.pdf)
Section 9.3.1.1 on pages 246-249 documents an evaluation of whether the number of ‘sudden deaths’ reported, exceeded the number one could expect to occur by coincidence – that is from the natural background incidence of sudden death. The background incidence of 0.454/1000 live births in the first year and 0.062/1000 live births is used, with a healthy vaccine correlation factor of 0.8 applied. Table 36 on page 249 tabulates the number of sudden death that would be expected to occur by chance within a range of days post vaccination.
Table 1 Cumulative number of observed and expected cases of Sudden Death following Infanrix hexa in children in their first or second year of life
This is available here: http://jacob.puliyel.com/paper.php?id=345
( Source: Table 36 The GlaxoSmithKline Biological Clinical Safety and Pharmacovigilance report to Regulatory Authority )
According to this analysis, the number of sudden death cases reported after vaccination with Infantrix hexa is below the number of cases expected in children in the first year of life. It is equal or below the number of cases expected in children in the 2nd year of life.
However if one analyses the data looking at deaths in first 10 days after administration of vaccine and compares it to the deaths in the next 10 days, it is clear that 97% of deaths (65 deaths) in the infants below 1 year, occur in the first 10 days and 3% (2 deaths) occur in the next 10 days. Had the deaths been coincidental SIDS deaths unrelated to vaccination, the numbers of deaths in the two 10 day periods should have been the same.
Similarly in children older than 1 year, 87.5% deaths (7 deaths) occurred in the first 10 days and 12.5% (1 death) occurred in the next 10 days.
If we consider the number of deaths in the second 10-day-window-period as the baseline SIDS rate in these healthy children coming for immunization, we can see that there was an excess of 63 (65 – 2 = 63) deaths in the first year and excess of 6 deaths (7 – 1 = 6) among those vaccinated between 1 and 2 years.
In the reporting period, one must conclude that Infanrix hexa vaccine could have been responsible for at least 69 deaths.These are all deaths within a small window period (of 3 weeks) after a catastrophic event which has been investigated thoroughly (forensic investigation of sudden unexpected deaths – SIDS/SUDS), therefor ascertainment bias is unlikely to have played a major role.
Table 2 The daily increment in Sudden Death following Infanrix hexa in children ‘ is tabulated and made available here: http://jacob.puliyel.com/paper.php?id=345
The decelerating incremental-deaths further supports the contention that there is a clear relationship of ‘sudden death’ to the vaccination episode. 42 deaths had taken place in the first three days after vaccination, 16 deaths in the next 3 days between day 3 and day 5, 3 deaths between day 6 and day 8, 2 deaths between day 9 and day 11, and there were only 2 deaths in all of the remaining 10 days. The fact that rate of deaths decreases rapidly and continuously as time elapses after immunization, makes it clear that the deaths are related to the vaccination episode.
This is being posted on PubMed Commons to put it up for open review by the scientific community, on account of its urgency, as this is a matter that involves the lives of children and there is a continuing risk to children.
As the authors of this article are best qualified to peer review this submission, I am inviting each of the authors castrom@wustl.edu paolo.bonanni@unifi.it mclaudia@fei.edu.br giovanni.gabutti@unife.it franco@med.uniroma2.it fem75838@gsk.com r.prato@unifg.it fvitale@igiene.unipa.it to review it and to post their review on PubMed Commons.
Jacob Puliyel MD MRCP M Phil
puliyel@gmail.com
David Healy said: “We don’t know for certain the details of the psychotropic drugs that the shooters were on in any of these cases…”
I”m intrigued by this, so I’ve done a bit of research. Here’s what I found.
Adam Lanza, the 20 yr old responsible for the Sandy Hook school shooting, was diagnosed with Asperger’s Disorder and OCD in 2005 but “refused to take suggested medication and did not engage in suggested behaviour therapies”. The autopsy showed that “no drugs were found in the shooter’s system”. Case closed. (Quotes from Sandy Hook Final Report)
http://www.ct.gov/csao/lib/csao/Sandy_Hook_Final_Report.pdf
The Aurora Cinema case is more complex. The shooter, James Holmes, was receiving psychiatric care at the time of the killings, and there are reports that police found sertraline (Zoloft) in his apartment. It’ll be interesting to see if this is raised as an potential contributory factor to his violence at his forthcoming trial.
There is also the case of Will Cornick, the Leeds school kid who killed his teacher Ann Maguire in a knife attack. After the event, a psychiatrist diagnosed “adjustment disorder with psychopathic tendencies” but there’s no mention of his diagnosis or treatment prior to the attack, only a few hints from fellow pupils that he had been bullied and was receiving treatment for depression. It could be that he wasn’t prescribed any psychotropic medication, or that his treatment has been scrutinised and ruled out as a factor in the violence, but the case is now closed with no answers.
Given the warnings of a link between SSRIs and violence, I expected to find discussion of the issue by journalists reporting on these cases. Has it dropped off the radar? Or is it that there is simply nothing to report?
In any case, there is one common theme running through the lives of all these youngsters at the time of their crimes: social rejection and isolation. My own view is that dangerous outsiders are made, not born, but no-one likes want to think too much about that. It reminds me of a quote from The Simpsons when Marge forbids Bart from going round to Nelson’s house…. “Nelson’s a troubled, lonely, sad little boy. He needs to be isolated from everyone.”
Many articles, listed on “SSRI Stories” do refer, if often obliquely, to the fact that the crime was committed by someone with an SSSRI in his/her system. But most often this information is never followed up. General articles, such I one I saw today about military suicides being sky high, never mention prescription drugs as a causative element. It is as if the editors, knowing that their bread is often buttered by BigPharma advertising, have a little black list of things not discussed and this is one of the big ones.
As for the issue of social rejection and isolation, this is a common but not universal theme. Mathy Downing’s little girl Candice had no such factor in her life. She was placed on an SSRI for anxiety over a new school situation and hung herself. She was a fully loved little child. Or the mother in Los Angeles who killed her dearly loved little girls by drowning them – yes, she was depressed but the SSRI tipped her over the edge.
Hard to know where to start! In the first place seventeen people were murdered ,six were slaughtered,and 4 were Jews,not associated with Charlie.Perhaps their murderers were on drugs?Or just genetic Jew haters which appears quite common amongst Mudlims.Somehow you wonder about the killers of children are on meds.Apparently,Terrorists in Gaza take amphetamines according to the Israelis,but that may be propaganda.In the detailed books about Columbind make no mention of drug ingestion,including antidepressants.One of yor commentators is ?prettycertain that many of these events were perpetrated by people on drugs.Prettycertain?Give us a break!The bigwigs that attended the useless rally in Paris included some of the most terrible human rights abusers,including Saudi Arabia,who the day before accused a journalist of apostasy,and sentenced him to a thousand lashes,Maybe they are in sntidepressants as well!Notsurehow you equate journal editorsas part of some conspiracy,but it is a stretch,in my opinion,I also thought that you mentioned some research about torture,and the fact that it is useless.What else would she suggest?most of those released have gone back to work. I also was not impressed with your comment about the resignation of the Jews in World War Two.How would you respond if your home was broken into in the middle of the night,yoiw were beaten anddomeof your family killed,made to walk to a railway station ,transported hundreds miles,starved,and then sent to a gas chamber and killed.Maybe I credible depression,numbing depression,but resignation.Almost as if they collaborated in there own destruction!You say the Mudlims are bewildered?Not if you read the Nudlim press,or listen to their Imams,one of who. Said he was proud of Assad,and the psychopaths who killed those innocents in Paris
Finally,andI have asked you this before,Has there ever been a study comparing a cohort of patients on SSRIs,to s similar group not on drugs and then comparing the two groups for the development of so called adverse events?
Noel, you ask: “Has there ever been a study comparing a cohort of patients on SSRIS to similar group not on drugs and then comparing the two groups for the development of so called adverse events?”…..though I don’t know the answer to this, I do know that BigPharma would never fund such a thing, and I doubt the NIMH would either….as for your comment about “so called adverse events”, in my opinion this statement equates your views with those of a climate change denier.
Stan: Can’t let this go without comment. If you accept the many, many reports and meta-analyses of the causative role of SSRI’s in violence and suicide, but you reject the scientific analyses of weather phenomena that disproves unusual or human-caused climate change, then you are not necessarily a clear-thinking individual, but one who simply has his pet issues and will stand by his opinions, however shaky their foundation. There is wisdom in studying an issue; you should try it with so-called climate change, warming and cooling, which has happened repeatedly to this earth long into the past, as the deep cores taken from Arctic and Antarctic ice have revealed.