DRUG WARS || BREAKING NEWS
click on the letter [below] for a pdf file with full text
Congressman queries FDA on Neurontin | Earlier this year, New York state congressional representative Maurice Hinchey [
22nd Dist.] learned of an independent study conducted regarding any links between suicides and the use of the psychpharm drug
Neurontin | The study looked at people who commited suicide yet who had no previos history of mental illness | A conference call was then held between staff from the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] and the law firm that authorized the study | FDA personnel expressed concern and suggested that the informaion gathered on Neurontin was "
the world's most important data set" regarding adverse psychiatric events and use of Nuerontin | That was last spring |
Although the FDA also said the evidence suggested a potential "imminent health hazard" they did nothing about this except as the law firm who reported this to conduct more studies on the drug |
I thought independent studies was the FDA's job | Instead, Congressman Hinchey makes reference to the FDA's active participation in assisting drug companies in lawsuits against them |
Incidentally, this is not the first time Neurontin has come under closer scrutiny | In March 2004,
an article in the New York Times reported that the original manufacturer, Parke-Davis, [now owned by Pfizer] has "
...illegally promoted the drug to prescribing physicians for at least 11 "off-label" (unapproved) medical conditions, using their own employees, euphemistically called "medical liaisons." | Even where I work [a psychiatric facility], doctors are wary about prescribing this drug for
psychiatric patients, who may have clinical conditions for which the drug was originally authorized | They won't say so on the record, but they opine about Nuerontin in front of non-clinical staff; the most common comment is that the drug is clinically "worthless" |
The FDA officials haev known about the rsiks of Neurontin since [at least] March 2004 | Congressman Hinchey's letter [and subsequent press release -
click for the pdf version] makes this notice more public | Now let's see how long these "permanant" government employees continue to sit on this problem |
HUMAN RIGHTS || SOCIAL CONTROL
photos E Fuller Torrey | © 2001 Psyche Laws/TAC || Sally Satel | © 2003 C-Span's Booknotes
Psychiatry has long been infamous for its shrouded segment that promotes
social control, social engineering and
mental abuse | Now, Dubya, Inc, aided by extremists such as
E. Fuller Torrey and
Sally Satel, is getting into the act officially with its
push to decide who among us is mentally ill |
As part of the so-called New Freedom Initatives Bush Rove et al want to screen all Americans [
starting with children; I've made note of this before] to see "...
that the screening be linked with “treatment and supports,” using “specific medications for specific conditions.”
The whole idea of top government involvement in determining who is or isn't sane is disturbing |
Both Torrey and Satel are prodigiously published | Moreover, some of the criticisms they have presented against current health care system shortcomings have validity | But other points to their beliefs go unquestioned | Torrey once postulated [
and had published, in 1973, by Psychiatric News] that schizophrenia was caused by allergies to cats | Ms. Satel, said to be a personal friend of Laura Bush and a fellow with the Neocon think tank
American Enterprise Institute,
has been critized for getting fuzzy between factual commentary and doctrinaire opinion | Rarely is their authority seriously analyzed |
It quickly heads us down some slippery slopes | First,
Dr. Fred Goodwin is still preoccupied with
using drugs on children | Then, from a broader perspective, after the "assessment," Torrey and Satel both openly and actively promote involuntary treatment modalities [e.g.
forced drugging, electroshock] Torrey doing so directly at the
Treatment Advocacy Center | With this in mind how far away are we from Psychiatrist
Donald Ewen Cameron, who conducted depatterning experiments on unsuspecting citizens, or a newer version of
MKUltra or even
The Manchurian Candidate | I don't have answers here, mind you, just asking people to thinkl of the ramifications of such radical lines of thinking |
On a lighter note, these concepts
have their detractors |
TIME WARPS
Oliver Sacks has an essay in a recent
New Yorker, speaking about human perceptions of time |
Some of his findings are not new to me; athletes with a hyper-attuned sense so fine they often "hear" a starting bell "before" it goes off | The examples of self-experimenters using drugs ~ ranging from nitrous oxide to marijuana, mescaline and LSD ~ are well documented and abundant | But my concern at the moment is closer to my line of work; namely what happens with people's time perceptions when confronted with disease |
Sack's extensive work, chronicled in
Awakenings, with people who had survived enchepalitis is another point to explore the pehnomena of time warping | Although I oughtn't be, I was less familiar with the impact of
Parkinson's Disease,
Huntington's and Attention Defecit Disorder | And if I'm unfamiliar with this, I expect that so are many others |
This ignorance of the time reality of others can be critical when working with people identified as mentally ill |
It's bad enough when no thought is given to the impact of a fistful of meds, but such insensitivity is even worse taking this into consideration |
I can't count the number of occasions I've heard staff abruptly tell individuals "...
snap out of it!" "
Pay attention!" and [worst of all] "...
get a move on or we're going to restrict you!"
Often, such edicts and restrictions are imposed with a rapidity that the imposer could not have complied with the edict swift enough themselves | The effect, if not the intent, of such action against one experiencing a dramitically dissonant perception of time, is punishment, pure and simple |
I plan on writing more about this | A link to the appropriate page or pages, shall be put there when it's done |
DRUG WARS
Things are never simple | Vitamin Supplement providers, manufactures of "performance enhancing" drugs and Marijuana growers are excoriated and prosecuted with vigor by the Feds | Not that there aren't risks with unknown elements | But the Big Pharma Industry has generally been treated with kid gloves and tender loving care by the same politicians | Be it the no-hands approach to scadalous prescription drug costs, or a see-no-evil attitude about adverse reactions and dangers to drugs being
legally pushed | Is it any wonder that mental patients complain of being guinea pigs? [rhetorical question on my part] Some of the latest stuff in the headlines |
Doping Bad [
from The Mercury News †] There is Balco, the alleged Bay Area doping ring for elite athletes. And there is Balco, the cradle of conspiracies -- a source of carefully planted media leaks and an alleged political agenda at the highest level of government | A court hearing Friday morning in San Francisco federal court mainly dealt with the latter allegations. Judge Susan Illston took under consideration complaints and counter-complaints swirling around the case.
``Balco is now a household word, and, thanks to misinformation contained in the many leaks, it is a word as loaded as a hand grenade,'' the lawyers for Victor Conte Jr. and James Valente, Balco's president and vice president, respectively, wrote in an informational motion submitted Friday.
``It is now very doubtful that these defendants can ever receive a fair trial -- anywhere.''
The political allegations are being leveled by J. Tony Serra, Anderson's attorney, who in April filed a motion suggesting that the case was powered by political motivations and was ultimately intended to help get President Bush re-elected.
Serra had asked the judge to allow him to get an internal memorandum from the government that could show the case being orchestrated from the White House | Serra said the goal of eliminating performance-enhancing drugs from athletics was ``laudable,'' but that unless the judge orders the prosecution to produce the memorandums, ``We will forever believe that we are being sacrificed for the greater good of the establishment, and that's not right.''
Prosecutor Jeff Nedrow argued that Serra had no evidence to support his charge.
There's more... †
Merek to Tell the Public of Adverse Clinical Testing [
from The New York Times †] Merck & Company says it will post the results of its clinical trials on drugs on a Web site run by the National Institutes of Health. The move comes ahead of a House subcommittee hearing this week where, it is expected, drug companies will be excoriated for refusing to publish unfavorable clinical trial results | Merck said Friday that it had already posted on the Web site, ClinicalTrials.gov, the outlines of 46 studies, or every trial for which the company is currently recruiting patients as well as some others. By the end of the month, the company will post 50 more trials that are already under way but where patients are no longer being recruited. And as the studies are published, Merck will post links to their results, the company said |
"Merck has long been committed to publishing the results of all of our trials in a timely manner," said Dr. Peter Honig, a senior vice president, "and now we're strengthening that commitment." One reason for the new postings, Dr. Honig said, is the industry's growing image problem |
"Let's face it, the perceptions of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole are not healthy at the moment," he said |
There's more... †
Pfizer 'Fesses Up: Antipsychotics can cause Diabetes [
from Associated Press] The Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. warned doctors that the company's antipsychotic drug Geodon has been linked to extremely high blood sugar and diabetes | Pfizer's letter to doctors, announced on Tuesday, follows a September 2003 FDA request that manufacturers of the six most widely used antipsychotic drugs revise labels to reflect additional risks | The remaining drugs affected by the FDA request include Eli Lilly's Zyprexa, Bristol-Myers Squibb's Abilify, Novartis' Clozaril, Janssen's Risperdal and AstraZeneca's Seroquel.
Pfizer's warning letter to doctors said "few reports" of hyperglycemia or diabetes were noted in patients prescribed Geodon. But it also noted fewer patients were treated with that particular antipsychotic | As a whole, so-called atypical antipsychotic drugs were linked to such adverse events as diabetes and high blood sugar - in some cases, extreme enough to induce coma or death | Geodon, approved to treat schizophrenia, on Aug. 23 gained FDA approval for the treatment of acute bipolar mania |
FOOTNOTES † Means you'll have to subscribe to the publication's online story service | Right now, both sources noted above are free | for the NY Times, try entering "gorevidal" into the member and password line | THANKS TO: Stefan Kruszewski
