“America and Australia are two countries I vastly admire. Nonetheless, they are continuing to abuse psychiatric patients with electroshock treatment (ECT). In America involuntary adults are being shocked despite the best efforts of psychiatric reformers (Oaks, 2009). In Australia psychiatrists have taken shock treatment to a new level of barbarity by shocking 55 toddlers age four and younger in Victoria (Hale, 2009).
The controvery over shocking children has a long history. In 2000 before his untimely death, Steve Baldwin, at the time a professor of psychology in Australia, and his co-author Melissa Oxlad wrote a book reviewing and condemning the practice throughout the world.
“Women of childbearing years represent the most lucrative market for the makers of psychiatric drugs. The knowledge that infants were being born with birth defects and suffering a withdrawal syndrome when these drugs were used during pregnancy was hidden for decades. Knowledge of these terrible risks would have caused a major drop in sales to this customer base.
Ever since the warnings about birth defects started trickling out a few years ago, the drug companies apparently have been plotting to find ways to reverse their negative impact. But the most sinister plot ever developed is a bill moving for approval in the US Senate right now called the “Melanie Blocker-Stokes Mother’s Act,” to set up the screening of all pregnant women for mental illness.
…”Mental health screening under the guise of identifying individuals who are impaired from some supposed mental disturbance is typically simply another front for pharmaceutical marketing,” according to Dr Bose Revenel, co-author with psychologist John Rosemond of the new book, “The Diseasing of America’s Children.”
“Most are funded or the initiative is provided via pharmaceutical companies and medications are typically promoted as a supposed ‘solution,’” he says.
“The problem here is that, among other things, the drugs promoted have been shown to have potentially serious side effects and their effectiveness compared to placebo only trivial,” Dr Revenel reports.
“Furthermore,” he says, “the campaign ignores safe and potentially effective interventions such as dietary and nutritional changes and supplements as well as cognitive therapy – all of which are completely free of potential adverse effects, with effectiveness that rivals or exceeds that of the drugs.”
“If the screening only picked up women likely to benefit from treatment, then maybe it would be justified,” says Dr David Healy, a leading expert on psychiatric drugs from the UK and author of “The Creation of Psychopharmacology.”
“But screening will pick up a quarter or a third or more of all pregnant women and will lead to many of these being treated who do not need treatment,” he warns. “Over 25% of women might be diagnosed where very few of those are likely to need treatment.”
Although no psychotropic drug has FDA approval for use during pregnancy, the recommended treatment for all these so-called “disorders” consists of the newest most expensive antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anticonvulsants. The common practice is to prescribe three or four different drugs at a time for years on end.
…Thousands of infants harmed
In a September 18, 2008 letter to members of Congress urging them to vote against the Mother’s Act, Unite For Life reported that the estimated number of antidepressant-caused infant deaths and injuries over the past four years, based on data from the FDA’s MedWatch, were: 4,360 babies born with serious or life-threatening birth defects; 4,160 babies born with potentially fatal heart defects or heart disease; 2,900 spontaneous abortions; and 3,000 premature births.
The so-called experts supporting the Mother’s Act constantly minimize the risks. However, a study titled, “Acute Neonatal Effects of Cocaine Exposure During Pregnancy,” in the September 2005 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine describes adverse effects for cocaine exposed babies eerily similar to those in babies born to mothers taking antidepressants:
“Several central and autonomic nervous system findings, which included hypertonia, jitteriness or tremors, high-pitched cry, difficulty arousing, irritability, excessive suck, and hyperalertness, were noted more frequently on the initial physical examination in the cocaine-exposed cohort. During the hospitalization, the diagnoses of seizures and autonomic instability were more frequently noted in cocaine-exposed infants.”
The warnings and precautions section on current labeling for SSRIs and SNRIs contains the following statement
:
Neonates exposed “late in the third trimester have developed complications requiring prolonged hospitalization, respiratory support, and tube feeding. … Reported clinical findings have included respiratory distress, cyanosis, apnea, seizures, temperature instability, feeding difficulty, vomiting, hypoglycemia, hypotonia, hypertonia, hyperreflexia, tremor, jitteriness, irritability, and constant crying. These features are consistent with either a direct toxic effect of SSRIs and SNRIs or, possibly, a drug discontinuation syndrome.”
Besides the agony endured by these infants and their families, the additional medical costs are enormous. In 2005, commercial insurers paid an average of $4,247 per day for babies in neonatal intensive care, according to Thomson Healthcare. Direct health care costs for a premature baby average $41,610 or 15 times higher than the $2,830 for a healthy, full-term delivery, a March of Dimes May 2007 report on Preterm Birth estimates.
Advocates of the Mother’s Act claim mental illness poses a greater risk to the mother than drug use to fetus. “The problem with this claim is that there is no consideration for the immense stress a mother has to endure when her baby is sick due to this drug use,” says Kate Gillespie, an attorney who handles birth defect litigation at the Los Angeles based Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman law firm.
“Not to mention the far greater stress that is created by having to constantly deal with life and death health issues, like severe heart defects and respiratory problems, such as persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn, caused by SSRI medication,” she notes.
Baum Hedlund is currently representing over 200 families whose babies were born with birth defects ranging from congenital heart defects to PPHN after the mothers used SSRIs.”
************* Evelyn Pringle
epringle05@yahoo.com (Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Scoop Independent News and an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America)
Read the whole article to get Amy Philos story and the actual numbers regarding the wind fall profits the drug makers are currently cashing in on with these drug sales.
My long time readers know how strongly I feel about mothers being doped up while pregnant and caring for a newborn, as I was court ordered to eat psychiatric meds in the spring of 1989 after the birth of my first child.
Barack Obama was one of the senators pushing the Mothers act in congress.
This bill needs to be defeated, the drug makers need to be held accountable for their crimes against families, and we need to stop torturing our young moms while they give birth because childbirth trauma is one of the main causes of post partum emotional illness. Here is the link to my post partum depression catagory.
My book, A Mothers Journey contains my whole story of post partum psychosis and how I recovered using natural healing after being court ordered to eat drugs for 14 months.
And the You Tube Video I made sharing my story:
Merck, manufacturer of the controversial Gardasil vaccine, has awarded a research grant of $79,000.00 to two Indiana University Kelley School of Business professors to study the effect of two interventions on acceptance of the HPV vaccination among low-income and minority women, according to a press release by the university. One professor, Dena Cox, will examine how consumers make health care decisions. Another professor, Anthony Cox, will explore how consumers evaluate the risk factors involved when considering medical treatments.
Researchers are Business Experts, Not Medical Doctors
Eli Lilly Fellow Dena Cox, who will serve as the principal investigator on the study, was previously a microbiologist before receiving a doctorate in marketing from the University of Houston. Anthony Cox, co-investigator for this study, has a Ph.D. in marketing from Indiana University. Note that neither of these researchers are medical doctors. According to the press release, it is their job to “seek the most effective ways to present HPV vaccine risk and benefit information to low-income Hispanic, African-American and White women, so that they can make informed HPV vaccination decisions.”
Excellent Blog Post By Doug:
“I had some time I didn’t expect to have yesterday since my anticipated appearance on Fox’s Mike and Juliet Show to talk about the link between the acne medication Accutane and depression and suicide was canceled, so I thought I’d write about how my day was going so far. I guess someone told Fox that they are getting a lot of advertising dollars from the pharmaceutical industry, and what I had to say might not make some people happy.
At first they asked if I would like to go on the show and “debate” someone. When I didn’t seem too excited about that they said they would “get back to me” and then later left me a voice message saying that I wouldn’t be going on the show but that I would be “credited” for my work. So I checked out the clip on the internet, and low and behold Fox set up the story by starting out with a family’s complaints about Accutane causing their son to commit suicide, followed by an attractive dermatologist named Cheryl Karcher, MD, who sat there in her white coat and said “I’m soooo sorry for the Zimmers but there is no evidence that Accutane causes depression or suicide….”
….I have presented the evidence elsewhere that Accutane is associated with depression and suicide. So if people want, they can go read it themselves. I have never met anyone who wasn’t on the payroll for Roche who has read the evidence who doesn’t agree, and I have never met any dermatologist who could look me in the eye and tell me that she never had a patient become depressed or feel like they were in a haze while on Accutane.
So there you have it, folks. Out-FOXed again. That is how the media presents things to you. Nothing is ever “proven” and there are always two viewpoints that balance each other out.
So, the next time you turn on your tube to feed yourself, why don’t you send FOX an email asking “Can you put some sugar on that crap you’re feeding me?”
I guess we got it, sort of, with Dr. Karcher.”
Keep Yelling Doug….maybe some day someone at Fox and all of the Media will get it.
Jenny Hatch
PS I was also asked to be on that same talk show last year to discuss my experience with Post Partum Psychosis. We were not able to make it work schedule wise, but I was impressed with the producer who called me. She seemed nice and was really interested in the alternative therapies I have used for healing my emotional illness. I challenged her to get Dr. Breggin on the show. She had never heard of him. When I watched the episode I was supposed to be on, they had a promo for Post Partum Depression on the web listing, but the segment never appeared, so I guess they just dumped the story.
This latest blog entry by Dr. Breggin (A personal hero of mine for the past eighteen years) has some damning information about the Anthrax Murderer Bruce Ivins.
“It was recently disclosed that two murderers, one extremely notorious, were probably taking antidepressants at the time of their crimes, but hardly anyone is taking notice.
On August 7, 2008, a few newspapers mentioned that newly released government papers showed that bioweapons scientist Bruce Ivins had been taking the antidepressant Celexa during the time he developed and carried out his plan to send letters laced with anthrax through the mail. Ivins killed himself with an overdose with other pills on July 29 after learning that the FBI was going to indict him. His terrorist attack killed five people.
Within a week after his suicide, the government made public the information that Ivins had a history of mental instability and that he had been taking Celexa (citalopram), a Prozac knockoff. According to the August 7 Los Angeles Times, a U. S. Attorney reported that Ivins was taking Celexa in the summer and fall of 2001 — the time period during which he was planning and carrying out his anthrax letter assault, which began with poisoned letters postmarked September 18, 2001.
