Pfizer Sued in California: Covering up Zoloft Side Effects
23 July 2004 - Pfizer has been sued in the Los Angeles Superior Court by Roberta Madison, a nurse who decided to file her claim on behalf of all the persons that have been misled by Pfizer's claims of the safety and effectiveness of Zoloft, reports the Miami Herald.
Zoloft is a hot selling drug that rakes in billions for the pharma manufacturer. While no more effective than placebo - the drug is showing serious side effects, inducing violent and suicidal behaviour in many of those who take it.
Meanwhile another drug maker, Janssen Pharmaceutica, has admitted in a letter to doctors that a similar drug, Risperdal, has been promoted with misleading claims and that the company has minimized its potentially fatal risks.
Both drugs are implicated in a recent scandal over pharmaceutical corruption, resulting in guidelines for the prescription of psychiatric medication that favour the drugs of those pharma manufacturers who sponsored the development of the guidelines, first piloted in Texas and now being exported to more states.
The drugs recommended by the tainted guidelines already rake in billions for their makers, but business will certainly be even better if the psychiatric testing program recommended by Bush's 'Freedom Commission' for Mental Health takes off.
Psychiatric drugs are not child's play. Children suffer and die from them, says whistleblower Dr. Stefan Kruszewski a psychiatrist hired by the Bureau of Program Integrity in the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare to root out fraud, abuse and waste within the Department. When he did his job and insisted on making public what he found, he was promptly fired. Kruszewski discovered that four children and one adult who had been prescribed potentially lethal combinations of medications died while under state care. He believes they died from drug toxicity, but he was not permitted to review the autopsy reports.
Meanwhile, implementation of the testing-and-drugs initiative seems to be well under way. Illinois is the first state set to require universal testing of pregnant mothers and of children up to 18 years of age, according to an article in The Illinois Leader.
Lawsuit charges Pfizer misled public about anti-depressant Zoloft
ALEX VEIGA || Associated Press
Posted on Fri, Jul. 23, 2004
LOS ANGELES - A California woman is suing Pfizer Inc., claiming the drug maker mislead physicians and patients about the safety, effectiveness and side effects of the anti-depressant drug Zoloft.
The 19-page complaint, filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, contends that Pfizer buried evidence showing the drug was no more effective than a placebo and its users tended to develop an array of side effects, including withdrawal symptoms, dependency, convulsions and psychosis.
The lawsuit also accused the New York-based drug maker of suppressing data indicating the drug increased the risk of suicidal and violent impulses in users.
"Pfizer has engaged in repeated and persistent false and misleading conduct by misrepresenting, concealing and otherwise failing to disclose to physicians and other prescribing health care providers information in its possession ... concerning the safety and effectiveness of Zoloft," the lawsuit claims.
The woman, Roberta Madison, was identified as a nurse and doctor of Public Health who lives in Los Angeles.Madison's claim does not stem from personal injury, the suit states. Instead she decided to sue on behalf of all Californians who "have been misled about Zoloft," the law firm representing her said in a statement.
The suit asked the court to order Pfizer to pay an undetermined amount of money in restitution, including proceeds from Zoloft sales, to users of the drug in California. It also seeks a court order forcing Pfizer to give access to Zoloft research studies.The lawsuit asserts that while Pfizer has been known to publicize positive information about Zoloft, the company has "intentionally withheld and concealed" negative information on the drug, ultimately hampering physicians' ability to determine whether to prescribe the drug.
The suit also claims early Pfizer studies of the drug's effectiveness were negative, failed or were neutral, and the majority of the studies showed there were no clinically or statistically significant differences between the drug and placebo, but the drug maker concealed the results.
"Many Pfizer studies not only failed to demonstrate that Zoloft is efficacious, they clearly demonstrated that Zoloft is associated with serious, severe and sometimes fatal side effects," the suit claimed.A message left after hours with a Pfizer spokesman was not immediately returned Friday.
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Original in: Miami Herald (need to be registered to get access)
CHILD WELFARE
Maker of drug admits hiding its risks
Posted on Sat, Jul. 24, 2004BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
The maker of a billion-dollar antipsychotic medication has acknowledged misleading doctors and other healthcare providers about the safety of its product, minimizing potentially deadly side effects.The drug, Risperdal, has been commonly prescribed to Florida children in state care, including to a handful of boys who developed lactating breasts after taking it.
On Wednesday, drug maker Janssen Pharmaceutica wrote a two-page letter to doctors, warning them that the company, in promotional material, had ''minimized potentially fatal risks, and made misleading claims'' that the medication was more safe in treating mental illness than other drugs in the same category.
Most physicians received the letter Friday.
Risperdal is the leading drug used to combat schizophrenia and other types of psychotic disorders, earning Janssen about $2.1 billion in annual sales. The drug was first marketed about eight years ago, and is prescribed to more than 10 million people worldwide.
The ''important correction of drug information'' came shortly after federal regulators had accused Janssen of ''disseminating'' advertising and marketing material that was ``false or misleading.''
A letter from Janssen to doctors, dated Nov. 10, 2003, claimed Risperdal did not increase the risk of diabetes among consumers compared with other similar drugs, called neuroleptics or antipsychotics.
But an April 2004 letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to Janssen asserts quite the contrary. Research indicated ''an increased risk of hyperglycemia-related adverse effects and diabetes with Risperdal,'' the letter stated.
A TROUBLED HISTORY
In 2001, The Herald published a series of stories about the common use of Risperdal among children in state care. Child-welfare advocates said the drug routinely was being used by foster care providers as a ''chemical restraint'' on children whose unruly behavior was a frustration to caretakers.
''I had clients who were displaying severe side effects, and I tried to alert the Department of Children & Families both as to the local problem and the growing national concern about a range of psychotropic medications, Risperdal and other antipsychotics in particular,'' said Coral Springs attorney and children's advocate Andrea Moore.
''They listened, but they did not hear me,'' Moore added.
Broward Circuit Judge John A. Frusciante, who must approve requests from doctors before they can prescribe mind-altering drugs to children whose cases he oversees, said Risperdal continues to be used frequently by doctors who treat children in state care.
''It is not uncommon,'' Frusciante said.
''This whole psychotropic drug issue is a problem for us,'' Frusciante said. "It's a very scary area to be in, because we know medication can be a tremendous help for a number of children. But we also know that there are risks to the children who are taking these medications.''
Friday, DCF officials told The Herald they would review the new material and ask doctors who care for foster children to re-evaluate their medication options.
''We will make this information available to all our districts, program supervisors, community-based care agencies and partners,'' said DCF spokesman Bill Spann. "In addition, we will provide this information to all the physicians who care for the children in foster care, and ask them to review the cases of any children who are on the drug."
''We will ask them to take the appropriate action,'' Spann said.
ONE IN THREE TREATED
The state Agency for Health Care Administration, which pays the drug bill for most children in state care, as well as needy children who are insured by Medicaid, could not say Friday how many Florida Medicaid recipients are being administered the drug.
In 2001, after The Herald's series, DCF reviewed the records of most foster children. Records showed about about one in three foster children taking a powerful mood-altering drug. Many were taking untested combinations, or ''cocktails,'' of the drugs.
Infants and toddlers were being given psychiatric drugs, according to a 2003 study by the Florida Statewide Advocacy Council.
Antoinette R. Appel, a Plantation neuropsychologist, studied the records of about 50 South Florida foster children who had been prescribed Risperdal.
She said many of the children developed severe side-effects, including obesity, lethargy, lack of concentration, hormonal disorders and the inappropriate development of secondary sexual characteristics, such as lactating breasts in boys or young girls.
Carolyn Salisbury, associate director of the University of Miami's Children & Youth Law Clinic, has pleaded with child welfare authorities for about five years to curtail the widespread use of mood-altering drugs among foster kids, who often complain the drugs make them more ill.
VICTORY IN COURT
One of the clinic's most high-profile clients, identified in court papers as M.W., won a Florida Supreme Court ruling that child welfare authorities cannot lock up foster kids in psychiatric hospitals without a hearing. M.W. had developed lactating breasts after doctors forced him to take Risperdal, court records show.
One of Salisbury's clients, a 15-year-old girl, begged her to prevent the child welfare agency from forcing her to take Risperdal, Salisbury said. The girl had become obese and suffered from dramatic mood swings, alternating between feeling agitated or very depressed.
''I always object to my foster child clients being placed on Risperdal... ,'' Salisbury said. "However, DCF continues to place children in their care on the drug, even though DCF knows full well the horrible side effects foster children continue to suffer on this drug.''
There are a number of interesting comments on the page of the British Medical Journal, where the plans for widespread testing in the US were originally exposed. One of the latest comments is Allen Jones' reaction to the many concerned voices, making reference to the Bush testing plan already being put into effect in Illinois:
I am gratified to read the responses of so many persons who are concerned about the unbridled screening of our nation's children on the basis of a government initiative of dubious origin. To those who remain skeptical, or in disbelief, please read the following from the state of Illinois:http://www.illinoisleader.com/news/newsview.asp?c=17748
http://illinoisleader.com/news/newsview.asp?c=17852
Illinois now has legislation requiring Mental Health screening of children from the womb through age 18. It also allows children to be evaluated without parental consent and calls for screening of all pregnant women from conception until one year after delivery.
Barbara Shaw of the Illinois Children's Mental Health Partnership, Director of the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority spearheaded the effort. Some of you may remember the shameful, race-based, “Violence Prevention” efforts which were defeated in the past when their likewise-dubious agendas were revealed.
www.ivpa.org/ (link no longer active).Please suspend disbelief. This IS happening now.
Allen Jones
Whistleblower
And here an article by Phillip Day from the UK, about the treatment of children with psychiatric drugs and how school violence is often linked to their use. Extracted from his book The Mind Game
The Great Childhood Maddening
by Phillip Day"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, towards our elected officials, towards his parents, towards a belief in a supernatural being, and towards the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well - by creating the international child of the future." - Psychiatrist Chester M Pierce, Harvard University, addressing teachers at a 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
- Thomas Jefferson"If you tolerate this, then your children will be next." - The Manic Street Preachers
The sleepy September day in Greenwood, South Carolina, meanders peacefully as James Wilson loads the small .22 calibre shells into his rifle and works the bolt, driving the first tiny bullet into the breach. Minutes later the 19-year-old walks into the elementary school cafeteria and begins shooting screaming children and a teacher, before working his way through the school, systematically selecting his targets. He kicks open the door to a girls' restroom, where he shoots another teacher, moving next to a third-grade classroom, where he shoots more children. Two children die and seven are wounded in the killing spree.
James' senseless and chillingly unemotional act shocked the world. How could someone do such a thing? Schoolyard shootings, increasingly bizarre and horrifying street murders and drug violence had been increasing since the 1970's in America, and people were at a loss to know why. Wasn't there something other-worldly, frankly demonic, about such a scene of carnage, set in the heart of one of the safest zones in society - our schools?
THE CIRCUS SPECTACLE
Violence in society is of course nothing new. Back in Nero's day, the popular sport was setting light to Christians or watching them torn apart by wild animals in the arenas. Hangings, impalings, crucifixions and various executions down through the ages drew large crowds. The French Revolution was extremely popular for those women who used to knit in front of the guillotine, making their garments all the while experiencing the bloody executions of unfortunates right before them. Yet, although violence perpetrated by rulers in the past was ubiquitous, it is interesting to note that private citizens were generally not taking each others' lives the way we are seeing today, even though the weapons to do so were widely available. In America during the '40's and '50's, for example, guns were still commonly owned, even as they are today, yet school shootings and road rage incidents were unknown. The concept of right and wrong prevented explosions of personal violence in the main, and punishment was swift and harsh for those who disobeyed the law.
But today, four decades after 'progressive education' was introduced into classrooms aimed at eroding this same concept of right and wrong, everything has changed. When examining shooting incidents like James Wilson's, we can note some common denominators:
- Often the shooter has given warning signals of impending violence
- The shooter has previously displayed evidence of a blurred understanding of right and wrong
- The shooter often commits suicide after the event
- The shooter has a history of psychiatric drug treatment
- The incidents occur in societies where psychiatric drugs are commonly prescribed
- These psychiatric drugs themselves have an extremely well documented history of altering perceptions, inciting hostility and violence, and dissipating inhibitions
James had been taking psychiatric drugs for years, prescribed to him by Greenwood psychiatrist Willie Moseley. These included Xanax, Valium, Vistaril, Mellaril, Thorazine, Tofranil and Halcion. James Crossen, program director of the Chemical Dependency Recovery Unit at the Medical Center of North Hollywood, California, gives his considered opinion on what could have caused the 1988 shootings to happen: "That that young man should have been on drugs all his life, since he was fourteen, is ghoulish. The drugs would be a major contributing factor in such a surprising and sudden act of violence - a major contributor."
Four months after James' rampage, Patrick Purdy, 26, entered a Stockton, California schoolyard and opened fire, killing five children and wounding 29 more, including a teacher, before killing himself. Purdy had an extensive psychiatric drug history.
Two years previously, on 20th November 1986, 14-year-old Rod Matthews had gone on the rampage in Canton, Massachusetts, beating a classmate, Shawn Ouillette, to death with a baseball bat in the woods near his home. The academically gifted Matthews had been taking the psychiatric drug Ritalin since he was nine, and was withdrawing from his medication at the time of the killing. Matthews had told a teacher in the weeks before the killing that he had an urge to kill somebody. The teacher had merely replied that murder was a felony.
Nine months previously, young Timmy Becton, aged 10, had used his 3-year-old niece as a shield while wielding a shotgun at a sheriff's deputy, who had visited the Becton residence with a truant officer. "I'd sooner shoot you than go to school!" Timmy reportedly yelled. The month before, he had been taken to see a psychiatrist to help him with his hatred of school. The psychiatrist prescribed Prozac. His parents described that their son had suffered personality changes when the dosage of the drug was increased. They reported violent mood swings, during which Timmy would get 'really angry'.
The first of the school shooting incidents had occurred on 20th May 1988, when Laurie Dann, 30, walked into a school in Winnetka, Illinois, with three handguns and opened fire, killing one and wounding five. Laurie then fled the school and killed a man in a house nearby before committing suicide.
In 1995 in Illinois, Brian Pruitt, 16, fatally stabbed his grandmother in her bedroom and then laid in wait, killing his grandfather when he returned home. Brian had a history of psychiatric drug treatment.
In July 1996, two boys, aged 15 and 16 stabbed a high-school student after they had been taking sedatives, which they later told police made them feel 'invincible'.
In 1997 in New Jersey, Sam Manzie, 15, attacked and raped 11-year-old Eddie Werner, who had called on the Manzie home selling items door-to-door for the local PTA. Sam strangled Eddie with an electrical cord after the assault, photographing him with the cord still wrapped around his neck. He then threw away his victim's clothes and possessions in a rubbish bin next to the psychiatric facility where he had been receiving regular treatments, including the drug Paxil. His mother reports that Sam had told her: "I wasn't killing that little boy, I was killing [my psychiatrist] because he didn't listen to me."
On 25th May 1997, 18-year-old Jeremy Strohmeyer raped and murdered a 7-year-old girl in the ladies' room of a casino one week after commencing the drug Dexedrine.
On 21st May 1988, 14-year-old Kip Kinkel began his brief rule of terror. Kip's problems began when he was diagnosed with dyslexia and placed on Ritalin. His problems persisted. He attended 'anger control' classes and was additionally prescribed Prozac. Kip later went bezerk, entering his Springfield, Oregon high school and opening fire, killing two and injuring 22. He had also shot both his parents to death.
On 20th July 1987, two horrified parents walked into their garage to find their 16-year-old son swinging from the ceiling. After nine years on Ritalin, and undergoing withdrawal from the psychiatric drug, the tormented young man had hanged himself with water-skiing rope.
In October 1993, 15-year-old Gerard McCra shot his parents and sister to death. He had been taking Ritalin since the age of six. While this explosion of violence shocked Massachusetts, the Boston Globe was keen to begin its story, not in lamenting the tragedy to the family and the neighbourhood, but citing a quote from a medical spokesman incongruously attempting to cover himself: "There is no scientific evidence indicating that Ritalin causes, or in any way triggers violence in children who take the commonly prescribed medication for hyperactivity."
That this ridiculous statement is allowed to be published is all the more unsettling since the manufacturer of Ritalin itself, CIBA Pharmaceutical Company, had published the following public warning about its drug eight years before in 1985:
DRUG DEPENDENCE: Ritalin should be given cautiously to emotionally unstable patients, such as those with a history of drug dependence or alcoholism, because such patients may increase dosage on their own initiative. Chronically abusive use can lead to marked tolerance and physic dependence with varying degrees of abnormal behaviour. Frank psychotic episodes can occur, especially with parental abuse. Careful supervision is required during drug withdrawal, since severe depression as well as the effects of chronic over-activity can be unmasked.
Gerard McCra was reportedly abused by his parents while on Ritalin. Note that, by the admission of the manufacturers themselves, the purpose of Ritalin is to 'mask' the symptoms of 'over-activity', not cure them.
On 14th September 1989, Joseph Wesbecker marauded through a Louisville, Kentucky printing works, blasting eight former co-workers to death, wounding 12 others before turning the gun on himself. One of his surviving victims shudders: "I looked up into the face of who was holding the rifle. He was completely gone. There was just nothing there of what makes a person a person. He was gone. And I thought that, soon, I would be even more gone than he." An autopsy later showed that Joseph had 'therapeutic' levels of the anti-depressant Prozac in his blood at the time of the killings.
Prozac has a long and infamous history of dangerous side-effects. Regulatory agencies around the world consistently receive a string of adverse reaction reports on the drug. Even Valium, a known, highly addictive anti-depressant, only garnered 7,000 adverse reaction reports in the US over 20 years. In just 10 years, Prozac had amassed a stunning 40,000 complaints, including mass murders, suicides, mutilations and more than 2,30o deaths.
On 20th April 1999, Eric Harris, an 18-year-old senior at Columbine High School in Colorado, went on a murderous killing spree. Both Eric and his partner, Dylan Klebold, committed suicide after the event. Blood samples confirmed that Eric had been taking
Luvox, a mind-altering drug in the same class as Prozac. Luvox (fluvoxamine) and Prozac (fluoxetine) are known as 'selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors' (SSRI's), so-named because they block the brain's absorption of the neurotransmitter serotonin, responsible for mood stabilisation. Luvox's manufacturers even warn that Luvox is 'sometimes fatal' to those who take it, and can activate mania and impair judgment and thinking.Nicholas Regush, producer of medical features for ABC News, stated: "This is a widely recognised feature of antidepressants, as documented by their very own manufacturers. These drugs are also associated with bouts of irritability, hostility and aggression. Exactly how all this behavioural change is processed in the brain and how long-lasting it might be is poorly understood. Contrary to the big shows of knowledge by psychiatrists, there is a whole lot of guessing going on."
Eight years before the shootings, Columbine High had been the subject of a 1991 ABC 20/20 documentary for its controversial 'death education' class, in which students discussed such macabre topics as how they wanted to look in their caskets. Both Eric and Dylan had a well-documented obsession with violence, Satanism and weapons, both having been arrested for burglary in 1998 and placed into an 'anger management' program. Both were fans of the infamous pop-star, Marilyn Manson. Eric's web-site alone should have had the alarm bells ringing. Warning statements abounded, such as "I am the law. If you don't like it, you die!" and "You all better hide in your houses because I am coming for EVERYONE soon, and I WILL be armed to the teeth, and I WILL shoot to kill and I WILL KILL EVERYTHING."
DEATH IN THE PLAYGROUND
Today, children routinely threaten their teachers with extreme violence - so much so that in America, a special school police force patrols the campus to confiscate weapons and keep an eye on things. When I was at school, threats of that kind, while maybe entertained after a public humiliation, were never articulated. Even to breathe a threat to a teacher would have ensured a punishment so swift and solid, our feet wouldn't have hit the ground.
Fifty years ago, children almost never killed. Today it is commonplace. Apart from the above, cases such as those involving James Bulger, the Menendez brothers and Damilola Taylor have horrified the world. Gil Garcetti, District Attorney for Los Angeles County, remarks: "It's incredible, the ability of the very young to commit the most horrendous crimes was unthinkable 20 years ago."
Today, robberies are carried out by conscience-deadened youth drug-addicts. Murders, tortures and sadism are practised with Satanic ritual to a degree that was unheard of prior to the advent of the drug culture. Judge Susan Winfield of Washington DC comments: "Youngsters used to shoot each other in the body. Then in the head. Now, they shoot each other in the face." But still the 1980 Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry persists with its nonsense: "taken no more than two or three times a week, cocaine creates no serious problems."
TEACHER'S COLLEGE
Psychiatry's penetration of the world's schools has long since been accomplished. As early as 1925, more than 1,000 schools in America were changing their educational curricula according to the dictates of the psychiatrists who dominated the highly influentialTeacher's College at Columbia University in New York. The new educational system was designed to eliminate what John Dewey, a Teacher's College educational director, referred to as 'stress factors' in the classroom. The 'evils' articulated by the college, which were damaging the pupils, included school failure, academic curricula and disciplinary procedures.
The views of Dewey and his colleagues were congruent with the beliefs of Wundtian psychiatry. Teacher's College was to come to regard children as nothing but animals requiring guidance. Dewey, widely renowned for 'revolutionising' American and Russian education, and later world curricula, declared that putting undue pressures on a child to perform was to risk making them mentally ill. In fact, the true agenda espoused by James Earl Russell, Edward Lee Thorndike and John Dewey, who dominated Teacher's College, was no less than exercising complete control over the minds of youth, thereby gaining a more compliant society in the future. Educators, trained in the new principles given to them by Teacher's College, would help all the children 'fit into society':
"The ultimate problem of all education is to co-ordinate the psychological and social factors. The co-ordination demands that the child be capable of expressing himself, but in such a way as to realise social ends."
One knows trouble is coming when a luminary such as Thorndike, occupying so powerful a position of influence over the world's teachers, believes that "artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements, are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language, and history include content that is intrinsically of little value. Nearly every subject is enlarged unwisely to satisfy the academic ideal of thoroughness."
Copyright © 2004 Phillip Day
Extracted from The Mind GameFurther Resources
To discover the truth about the so-called 'mental health' industry and the damage it daily wreaks in our society:The Mind Game by Phillip Day
Here a comment by CCHR's Peter Dockx with information on how to counter this initiative, which apparently was recently funded with an initial 20 Million Dollars by Congress:
$20 Million Approved By Congress to Screen US Population for "Mental Illness"
The House Appropriations Committee Funds President's New Freedom Commission Initiative That Includes Plan To Screen All U.S. Citizens For Mental Illness
Tell Congress and the White House NO MENTAL SCREENINGS FOR AMERICANS AND NO FUNDING FOR THIS PLAN!Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee approved $20 million in new federal dollars to begin implementation of the plans set forth by the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFC) to get every man, woman and child in America "screened" for 'mental illness'.
Amidst broad public concern that many of the antidepressants being prescribed to Americans are under federal investigation for causing suicidal reactions, the New Freedom on Mental Health Commission's campaign for national mental health 'screening' - will result in millions more Americans being diagnosed with fraudulent and unscientific mental disorders, and prescribed dangerous and deadly psychiatric drugs.
Now, $20 million has been approved by the House Appropriations Committee for 'State Incentive Transformation Grants', in order to begin nationwide implementation of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health's plan. It's the beginning of a 'Brave New World' should the Senate fund this.
The Commission based its entire findings on the definition of mental illness as defined by psychiatry's billing bible, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The methods of mental health 'screening' recommended by the New Freedom Commission are lists of arbitrary questions based on this DSM. If this "sweeping mental health initiative" is implemented, millions more Americans will certainly be diagnosed and drugged given the subjective diagnoses.
FACTS:
- The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health's report states that "mental illnesses are shockingly common," but neglects to address or even mention the fact that there is no medical or scientific means by which to diagnose mental 'illnesses'. Psychiatrists and mental health proponents promote psychiatric 'disorders' as a disease, or an illness that can be diagnosed in the same manner as real physical illness. This is a fraud. There are no blood tests, brain scans or chemical imbalance tests to validate any mental disorder as an illness or 'disease'. With no scientific/medical criteria to substantiate these claims, anyone could be diagnosed as mentally ill based solely on a checklist of behaviors.
- The DSM contains hundreds of psychiatric mental 'disorders' which are a list of behavioral symptoms that are literally voted into existence and inserted into the DSM. Such diagnoses include "Caffeine-Related Disorder", "Mathematics Disorder", "Disorder of Written Expression", and the all-encompassing "Phase of Life Problem". These 'disorders' are simply a classification of symptoms that are drastically different from, and foreign to, anything in medicine.
- The New Freedom Commission is blatantly promoting the coercive and manipulative tactics that have led to millions of children being falsely labeled with mental disorders in our public schools. Schools have become mental health clinics where children are diagnosed based on subjective questionnaires, instead of given proven educational solutions. This fact was substantiated by a report from the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education, which found that 2.4 million children had been diagnosed with mental 'disorders' and placed in Special Education, when in fact these children had simply not been taught to read.
- The issue of coerced child drugging in public schools has become so prevalent that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Child Medication Safety Act in May 2003, to prevent schools from forcing a parent to drug their child as a condition of attending school.
- Due to psychiatric influence, parents have been reported to Child Protective Services and charged with medical neglect for refusing to give their child a psychiatric drug, such as those currently under investigation for causing suicidal reactions. Parents have been charged with 'medical neglect' for refusing psychiatric treatment - despite the fact that there is no scientific proof that there is anything medically wrong with the child.
- In a recent report by Allen Jones, a former investigator in the Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General (OIG), Bureau of Special Investigations, condemning the New Freedom Commission (NFC), he states, "Despite a nearly 500% increase in American children being prescribed mental health drugs during the past 6 years, the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health found that not enough adolescents are benefiting from mental health treatment. The NFC recommendations prominently call for mandatory mental health screening for all high school students, with follow-up 'treatment' as required - this means more kids on mind-altering and potentially lethal psychiatric drugs."
WHAT TO DO:
1) Oppose any federal, state, or local plans for universal mental health screening. Contact the White House (202-456-1111), the Speaker of the House (Rep. Hastert at 202-225-2976) and the Senate Leader (Senator Frist at 202-224-3344), your own Members of Congress (go to www.congress.org), the House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner at 202-225-6205, and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Judd Gregg at 202-224-3324 and tell them to STOP funding this New Freedom Commission on Mental Health plan in the Labor/HHS appropriations bill. Alert your state legislators and oppose school board initiatives to add psychiatric screening programs.
2) Support the Child Medication Act (S. 1390) currently stalled in the Senate by Senator Edward Kennedy - This legislation prohibits schools from coercing parents to place their children on psychiatric medications that are on the controlled substances list. Senator Kennedy, with large support from pharmaceutical companies, has not let this very modest proposal even receive a hearing, saying that it needs more study. Senator Kennedy (202-224-4543) as well as Senator Gregg (202-224-3324) the Committee chairman, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (202-224-3344) need to hear from the public.
3) Check to see if your state has a provision in state special education law that prohibits a school district from overriding parental refusal to submit their child to a special education or mental health evaluation. If yes, alert other parents, and if not, work for one.
Peter Dockx
Government Affairs
CCHR InternationalSee also related articles:
Glaxo settles New York drug suit
GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to publish results of clinical tests on its drugs, to settle a US lawsuit. The firm was sued by New York attorney-general Eliot Spitzer over allegations that it withheld negative information about its antidepressant pill, Paxil.Prozac Nation? Is the Party Over? - by Richard C. Morais, 09.06.04 Forbes Magazine
Antidepressants dangerous and should be banned, crusader says
By Elaine Jarvik - Deseret Morning News
Ann Tracy knows hundreds of grisly stories: the professor on Prozac who bit her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who stabbed herself in the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who bludgeoned her son and then drank a can of Drano; the 12-year-old girl who strangled herself with a bungee cord...Bush To Impose Psychiatric Drug Regime
Pharma Promotion Dishonest - Slanted Reporting of Paxil, Prozac Studies
Investigator Exposes Pharma Corruption - Loses Job
SSRI Antidepressant Withdrawal Syndrome in Newborns - by Elizabeth Rudy, D.V.M., R.Ph. (file is in pdf format, available from Washington University)
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday July 25 2004
updated on Friday October 25 2013URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/07/25/pfizer_sued_in_california_covering_up_zoloft_side_effects.htm
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According to a recent article published in the British Medical Journal, a scientific report by one of its researchers, Dr. Andrew Mosholder, showing that antidepressant drugs double the suicide rate in children taking them, was suppressed by the FDA. Instead of owning up to its mistake and issuing generalized warnings, the agency has launched a criminal investigation to find out which employees leaked Dr. Mosholder's report. Apart from the FDA's... [read more]
August 12, 2004 - Sepp HasslbergerPaxil, Zoloft, Xantax - Drug Induced Violence
23 August 2004 - The New York Times reports on the Murder case of Christopher Pittman coming up for trial. The 12-year-old has shot his grandparents and put their house on fire, but he says it was the effect of the drug he was on at the time - the antidepressant Zoloft. The case comes amid widespread allegations that antidepressant drugs cause many to commit suicide, a charge hotly denied... [read more]
August 26, 2004 - Sepp HasslbergerFDA 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... [read more]
October 16, 2004 - Sepp HasslbergerBush 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 HasslbergerEli Lilly Knew Prozac Causes Suicides, Violence - FDA Closed Both Eyes
Prozac, called fluoxetine by generic name, is a psychiatric drug prescribed to over 50 million people including millions of children. The drug was linked to increased suicides and violence as early as 1988, in a recently emerged document. Apparently the evaluation was known to Prozac's maker Eli Lilly as early as the 'eighties, but was never even given to the FDA. This is the preoccupying picture that emerged just days... [read more]
January 01, 2005 - Sepp Hasslberger
