Health Supreme by Sepp Hasslberger

Networking For A Better Future - News and perspectives you may not find in the media

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October 16, 2004

FDA Orders Antidepressant Suicide Warnings Over Psychiatric Association Resistance

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has been strangely resistant to the idea of warning patients of an increased risk of suicides when taking antidepressant drugs or SSRIs. One would think that psychiatrists should be the first ones to call for such warnings, but perhaps they fear to "lose ground" to natural alternatives in the treatment of mental disorders, which they have been persecuting for decades, concentrating their treatment efforts nearly exclusively on the "chemical option".

Stefan Kruszewski, a Psychiatrist from Harrisburg, PA has raised the question in a letter to the British Medical Journal: APA at odds with FDA Advisory Panel

At the time that the FDA advisory panels were meeting and Dr. Robert Temple for the FDA and the AHRP-convened expert panel (including Dr. Healy) were recommending stronger warnings for antidepressants, The American Psychiatric Association issued its statement to “policymakers” in their News release. The APA specifically recommended: “The continuation of current FDA warnings with respect to SSRIs—warnings that are appropriate and consistent with the scientific data.”

Kruszewski further comments that "the APA is mired in special interests. Unfortunately, the welfare of individuals is not nearly as important to them as are the profits of the drug companies that support the organization. The APA and its sister organizations that include NTAC (National Technical Assistance Center for State Mental Health Planning)  and SAMHSA proudly sponsor and endorse the President's "New Freedom Commission on Mental Health" ... while all of them are sponsored heavily by Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Glaxo, Wyeth, Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, Abbott Labs ..."

Fortunately there was enough pressure from concerned citizens, but also from Congressional committees and New York Attorney General Spitzer to induce action by the FDA, even over heavy psychiatric resistance. See Vera Hassner Sharav's and Ann Blake Tracy's comments on the melee and the final outcome:

.


ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION

www.ahrp.org

We have won the first battle in a struggle for full disclose of serious adverse drug effects and disclosure of failed clinical trials. Prescribing physicians and the public have an urgent need and a right to know. Not until Congressional committees and the Attorney General of New York entered the fray, and examined a body of concealed evidence, did FDA officials “see the light.”

From now on, parents will be informed that a causal relationship has been found between suicidal behavior and antidepressant drugs. They will, for the first time, be able to make an informed decision affecting their children’s health and lives.

For more than 15 years drug companies, the psychiatric establishment - including the American Psychiatric Association, the National Institute of Mental Health - and the FDA denied the link between antidepressants and increased suicide.

But the evidence from controlled clinical trials and post-marketing case reports is overwhelming: children and adolescents who were prescribed an antidepressant were twice as likely to become suicidal compared to those given a placebo. Furthermore, the drugs showed no clinically significant benefit beyond placebo.

News reports rarely disclosed that leading psychiatrists who are cited as “experts” have significant financial ties to the manufacturers of these drugs, and might therefore have a conflict of interest. Is it unreasonable to suspect that their steadfast defense of the drugs’ efficacy and safety might be even slightly influenced by their financial ties?

But journalists continue to be beguiled by speculative scientific hypotheticals which psychiatrists discuss as though they have been proven. Misinformation is transmitted to the public about unproven “chemical imbalances” in the brain of depressed people—when, in fact, NO EVIDENCE EXISTS demonstrating any chemical or structural brain abnormality in people diagnosed with a mental illness.

Indeed, no psychiatric diagnosis - for adults or children - has attained the scientific standard of a demonstrable medical disease. Psychiatry has only identified symptoms which may have any number of causes - some drug-induced, others due to a physiological disease.  Thus, psychiatry’s authoritative (though flawed) diagnostic reference tool - the DSM IV - refers only to “disorders” not disease.

Although the focus, thus far, has centered on the suicide risk for children under 18, FDA’s warning for antidepressants applies to adults and children. Evidence exists demonstrating a suicide link to these drugs in adults as well.

A front page article in today’s Wall Street Journal refers to “decades of nueuroscience wisdom” then proceeds to transmit yet another round of speculative hypotheticals about children’s brains, promoted - without validation - by “expert” psychiatrists whose institutions are dependent on antidepressant drug company funding.

Neurogenesis

“A growing number of studies suggest that the antidepressants called SSRIs stimulate the birth of new neurons in the brain. Boosting this "neurogenesis" might have different effects on a developing brain than a mature one.

Adult brains, according to decades of neuroscience wisdom, weren't supposed to be able to make new neurons. But in a 2003 paper, molecular psychiatrist Ronald Duman of Yale and his colleagues showed that, in lab animals, antidepressants boost neurogenesis in parts of the brain.

The birth of new neurons takes time. Newborn neurons take weeks to travel to their target. Scientists now believe that this explains why SSRIs take weeks to affect depression.

The creation of new neurons in the brain had been assumed to be beneficial. In depressed adults, the hippocampus - the part of the brain responsible for learning, memory and emotion - is typically shrunken. By restoring it to full size, and presumably, full health, depression might be lifted. But in young people with depression, the hippocampus isn't shrunken. It may be that the influx of new neurons is somehow detrimental to adolescents. Some scientists wonder whether the new neurons could destabilize fragile brain circuits in kids suffering from mental illness.”

See: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Why Depression Looks Different In a Kid's Brain, By SHARON BEGLEY
New Studies May Help Explain Links Between Suicide And Antidepressant Use The Role of Impulse Control
October 15, 2004; Page A1


Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
212-595-8974
veracare@ahrp.org



ASSOCIATED PRESS
FDA Orders Strong Antidepressant Warnings

By DIEDTRA HENDERSON, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - All antidepressants must carry a "black box" warning, the government's strongest safety alert, linking the drugs to increased suicidal thoughts and behavior among children and teens taking them, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday.


- - - - - -


A comment by Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D., Executive Director of the International Coalition For Drug Awareness - www.drugawareness.org - who has been campaigning for years against the use of these drugs and has warned of the suicide "side" effects.


FINALLY, after years of deadly drugs being available to children with no warning of the danger of increased fatalities due to suicide, the FDA issues a black box warning for all antidepressants on the market!

This is long overdue and many children have died or suffered serious damage as a result of this lack of warning. Perhaps NOW doctors will finally think before handing these drugs out like candy to children and teens.

The scientific evidence behind this has been out there for decades. All anyone ever had to do was read it. I explained that clearly in my latest testimony before the FDA on September 13, 2004. I will include that here.

I am Ann Blake Tracy, PhD, head of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness. I am the author of "Prozac: Panacea or Pandora." My house has been mortgaged to the hilt to pay for the last 15 years that I have devoted to nothing but research on SSRI antidepressants and to fund my trip here.

I have testified as an expert witness for twelve and a half years in court cases involving these drugs.

Research on serotonin has been clear from the very beginning, that the most damaging thing that could be done to the serotonergic system would be to impair one's ability to metabolize serotonin, yet that is exactly how SSRI antidepressants exert their effects. For decades research has shown that impairing serotonin metabolism will produce nightmares, hot flushes, migraines, pains around the heart, difficulty breathing, worsening of bronchial complaints, tension and anxiety which appear from out of nowhere, depression, suicide - especially very violent suicide and repeated attempts, hostility, violent crime, arson, substance abuse including cravings for alcohol and other drugs, psychosis, mania, organic brain disease [brain damage], autism, anorexia, reckless driving, Alzheimer's, impulsive behavior with no concern for punishment, and argumentative behavior.

How anyone ever thought it would be therapeutic to chemically induce these reactions is beyond me, yet these reactions are exactly what we witnessed in our society over the past decade and a half as a result of the widespread use of these drugs.

Can you remember two decades ago when depressed people used to slip away quietly to kill themselves rather than killing everyone around them and then themselves, as they do while taking an SSRI antidepressant?

A study out of the University of Southern California, in 1996, looked at a group of mutant mice that had been genetically engineered. In an experiment that had gone terribly wrong, they were the most violent creatures they had ever witnessed. They were born lacking the MAOA enzyme which metabolizes serotonin. The end result is the same as if they were taking an SSRI antidepressant which does inhibit the metabolism of serotonin.

This has been a national holocaust. It must end. These are extremely dangerous drugs that should have been banned as similar drugs were in the past.

As a society, we once thought LSD and PCP to be miracle medications. We have never seen drugs so similar to LSD and PCP as these SSRI antidepressants are. All of these drugs produce dreaming during periods of wakefulness. The higher serotonin levels overstimulate the brain stem leading to a lack of muscle paralysis. That was seen clearly in the case of comedian Phil Hartman and his wife in the terrible murder-suicide [whose wrongful death suit has been settled by the makers of Zoloft].

Thank you.

Ann Blake Tracy, Ph.D.,
Executive Director, International Coalition For Drug Awareness
Website: www.drugawareness.org

Author: Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare & audio tape on safe withdrawal: "Help! I Can't Get Off My Antidepressant!"
Order Number: 800-280-0730
Office: 801-282-5282
Cell: 801-209-1800


See also related:


FATAL FLAW Efforts to Overturn SSRI Black Box warning before it has even been implemented
Even as the Black Box Suicidality Warning on SSRI antidepressant labels have not yet been implemented, aggressive efforts are underway by a powerful consortium of medical-pharmaceutical self-interest groups - among them, the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Psychiatric Associaion (APA), American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) -- to overturn the hard won 'Black Box' suicidality warning label on antidepressant drugs.

Diabetes link to child mind drugs BBC News - 23 October 2004
Atypical antipsychotics - olanzapine, quetiapine and risperidone - have been associated with insulin resistance, associated with an increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke...

Just Say No to Bush's Drugs - By: Melissa Carr - Independent Media TV

The Influence of TMAP: Mandatory Mental Health Evaluations

NJ Star-Ledger: Choosing their words carefully
Thursday, December 23, 2004 BY ED SILVERMAN
Three months after a panel of government scientists called on drug makers to add "black box" warnings to their antidepressants, the changes have yet to be made.

Neurontin Suicides: FDA Still Turning A Deaf Ear Charges Rep Hinchey

Pharma: Tame Watchdogs Not Protecting Public Health

FDA Waffles Over Antidepressants Causing Suicides

Paxil, Zoloft, Xantax - Drug Induced Violence

FDA Covers Up Report - Mosholder: 'Antidepressants Double Suicides in Children'

Antidepressants Potentially Misused In Treating Adolescents, Stanford Study Finds
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared in 2004 that certain antidepressants are linked to an increased risk of suicide in adolescents, there was surprisingly little data about how depression was being treated in young patients. Now new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine provides critical documentation of the potential misuse of these medications in the years leading up to the FDA's decision to issue the so-called "black-box" warnings.

Anti-depressant warning too late for some

 


posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Saturday October 16 2004
updated on Tuesday December 7 2010

URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/10/16/fda_orders_antidepressant_suicide_warnings_over_psychiatric_association_resistance.htm

 


Related Articles

Antidepressants - Drugging kids in school
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, is a custom-made "disease" to start selling drugs quite legally to school kids. Have the doctor prescribe them. Your kid will be that much better off - or not? It appears that the real dough about the adverse effects of antidepressant drugs has been kept secret so as not to ruin sales. Violence and suicide are common side effects of those drugs, and... [read more]
February 11, 2004 - Sepp Hasslberger

Investigator Exposes Pharma Corruption - Loses Job
An investigator with the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General was removed from his post and sent home after he talked to the press about his discovery of a black bank account fed by pharma companies Janssen and Pfizer and apparently used to pay off FDA officials in charge of approving drugs. The story is reported in the British Medical Journal.... [read more]
May 15, 2004 - Sepp Hasslberger

Pharma Promotion Dishonest - Slanted Reporting of Paxil, Prozac Studies
Pharmaceutical manufacturers cannot promote the use of drugs for other uses than those approved for the label, however it has become normal practice to dishonestly slant the reporting of scientific studies to suggest such unapproved use of drugs or to hype the supposed benefits of certain medicines, while hiding their adverse effects. GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of the antidepressant Paxil, released on its company Web site the reports of clinical tests... [read more]
June 15, 2004 - Sepp Hasslberger

Bush To Impose Psychiatric Drug Regime
Plans to screen whole US population for mental illness According to a recent article in the British Medical Journal, US president George Bush is to announce a major "mental health" initiative in this coming month of July. The proposal will extend screening and psychiatric medication to kids and grown-ups all over the US, following a pilot scheme of recommended medication practice developed in Texas and already exported to several other... [read more]
June 23, 2004 - Sepp Hasslberger

Alberto Gonzales and Bush Concentration Camps - Is America Going Fascist?
"First they came for the Jews" ... is the beginning of pastor Niemöller's famous depiction of the gradual nature of Nazi fascism's rise to domination of every aspect of life and its eradication of dissent in pre-WW II Germany. "First they came for the terrorists" ... writes Thom Hartmann in a harrowing article that examines the current situation in the U.S., comparing it to what was happening under the eyes... [read more]
January 12, 2005 - Sepp Hasslberger

Vioxx, Celebrex, Prozac: Bush Medical Malpractice Bill To Shield Pharma
Tucked away "like a gleaming diamond in proposed legislation to curb malpractice lawsuits is a provision that would give an unconscionable degree of protection to firms responsible for drugs or medical devices that turn out to be harmful", says New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in his latest editorial, A Gift for Drug Makers. The provision is set to prohibit judges from awarding punitive damages if a drug has received... [read more]
January 16, 2005 - Sepp Hasslberger

 

 

 


Readers' Comments


I am disgusted and beyond disturbed at all the articles and information i have been reading. What started out as a assignment for my speech class to determine ritalin deaths, I have found something that is far greater or just as disturbing. no horrifying. When did we as a nation begin a backward spiral protecting our children. I thought we had come a long way in fighting for our children instead we are listening to total strangers about what WE know is best for them. We trust our government and doctors without question. How is this so? Wake up america these are our children the future Einsteins and Newtons of the world. If it is so preeched that everyone is unique and this is what makes are exsistence so great then why are we forcing them to conform to society's definition of who they should be or how they should behave. Please listen to your heart, listen to your children. There are many things we as parents fear when it comes to our children, but my gosh, do we now have to worry that our own government are "legal drug pushers" trying to snuff out our kids.

Posted by: mary on August 14, 2005 04:06 AM

 


It is an unfortunate time for all of us. But, albeit depressing, it is hopeful yet that the American people will rise up against the pharmaceutical companies and their cronies ( our own FDA, food companies, medical industry, etc...) and tell them who's boss. NO ONE will experiment on my child, whether it is to make a shareholder richer OR to make a teacher's life easier in the classroom.
IT'S TIME FOLKS. Take back control of your health. Go Alternative. Go Chiropractic.

Posted by: Ellen on February 10, 2006 04:57 PM

 















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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

These articles are brought to you strictly for educational and informational purposes. Be sure to consult your health practitioner of choice before utilizing any of the information to cure or mitigate disease. Any copyrighted material cited is used strictly in a non commercial way and in accordance with the "fair use" doctrine.

 

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