---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: sarinasvoice@aol.com
Date: Jan 8, 2008 5:21 AM
Subject: PETITION TO ABOLISH SUICIDE-CAUSING ANTI-DEPRESSANTS
To: sarinasvoice@aol.com

We only have 847 signatures and need "thousands" more.
If anyone has not signed the Petition, here is the website http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/COPESfoundation/

Please, please make sure you sign it. Then forward it to "everyone" in your address book, beg them to sign it and forward it to everyone in their address book, and so on and so on. We need to keep forwarding it and keep it circulating.

Thank you,

Camille Milke, Eternal "Mommy" of Sarina Angel
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow and Forever........
My Beautiful Baby Girl, 1/26/86 - 10/28/07, 21 years 9 months 3 days
COPES Foundation (Coalition Of Parents Enduring Suicide)
Founder and President,
Main - 505-269-2286, Fax - 505-213-999
http://www.copesfoundation.com/http://www.iloveyousarina21.last-memories.com/

THE WAKE-UP CALL BY "ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION", NOW THAT THE SHRINKS AND BIG PHARMA'S CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY WOULD BE EXPOSED TO USA PUBLIC AT LARGE
by Justice lover

Vera Hassner Sharav, the leading activist behind ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION website, has been doing an excellent job in exposing the crimes of psychiatry and Big Pharma. Hers are carefully prepared reports, and solid conclusions. The following report is just one more of such reports.

However, the lingering question arising from her reports, including this latest one is this : why would she not demand the immediate outlaw of psychiatry, a legal ban which would also put an end the criminal practices of the drugs industry, which has been heavily dependent on the shrinks' prescriptions and criminal practices ?

Implied in her reluctance is the practice of those "90% honest shrinks" (like Dr. Thomas Szasz and Dr. Peter Breggin and their shrink supporters), who despite telling the truth about psychiatric crimes and deceptions, provide a negative example to the rest of the shrinks by perpetuating psychiatry, rather than demanding its immediate abolition and to ban it altogether immediately !

Psychiatry, being the dangerous and criminal quackery that it is, is not an issue of "mental health" alone. It is a human rights issue of the greatest importance, as the practices of psychiatry are obviously fascist practices ! Psychiatry cannot be reformed for the same reasons that fascism and any dangerous quackery cannot be reformed ! Psychiatry has been a danger to humanity's well being for too long !



ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org and http://ahrp.blogspot.com/

FYI

On Tuesday, Jan. 8, at 9:00 PM (Eastern), 10:00 PM (Pacific), Public Broadcasting System will examine the most controversial issue in American healthcare:
why are more than 6 million American children being forced to take powerful,toxic psychiatric drugs--some starting as young as two years old?Is it good medicine? What's the evidence to support the practice?

The program promises to examine what many psychiatrists are beginning to acknowledge: American children are being subjected to an uncontrolled high risk experiment. Millions of American children are being prescribed the most toxic brain damaging drugs--with absolutely no scientific evidence of a therapeutic benefit to support the practice.

The increasing use of antipsychotic drugs for children is correlated with an inexplicable epidemic in American children being "diagnosed" as bipolar, an unprecedented diagnosis in children.

Bipolar just happens to be an FDA approved use for antipsychotic drugs.So, the marked increased rates of bipolar diagnoses in children over the last five to seven years appears to be a case of the drugs prompting the diagnosis.

Indeed, as Dr. Steven Hyman, a neuroscientist and former director of theNational Institute of Mental Health, acknowledges, those diagnoses are unsupported by scientific evidence.Psychiatry's sling-shot prescribing practices rely on an irresponsible dictum: shoot first, ask questions years after major harm has been done.

Such a cowboy mentality has led to a market-driven chemical assault on our children.Children's fears, cries, and anxieties, are being muffled with toxic drugs that undermine their mental and physical health.Psychiatrists who are financially invested in expanding the market are diverting parents' attention from the lack of science and the drugs' harmful effects.

Hopefully, viewers will wake up to the fact that America's children are the target of psychopharmacological abuse.There is no credible scientific evidence demonstrating a therapeutic benefit from antipsychotics. These drugs' most prominent effect is somnolence.How many children--like four-year old Rebecca Riley-- will be sacrificed before this lethal paradigm of "treatment" in psychiatry is halted? Is bad medicine any better just because it is promoted by influential Harvard University child psychiatrists ?

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

Here is the link to the relevant article :
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/

FRONTLINE EXAMINES WHY MORE THAN 6 MILLION AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE TAKING POWERFUL PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

MORE ON THE DANGEROUS QUACKERY THAT PSYCHIATRY IS, AND ON THE HARMFUL POISONS THE SHRINKS DISH OUT TO CHILDREN IN RETURN FOR BIG PHARMA BRIBES
by Justice Lover

Here are the details :



ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org <http://www.ahrp.org/> and http://ahrp.blogspot.com

FYI

A letter to the Australian / New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry shreds a
promotional editorial by influential US psychiatrists
who call for "early intervention" in "early onset bipolar disorder." The
lack of evidence in support of their position is laid bare.

"We are concerned that some of our colleagues seem so ready to diagnose BD in young people when the diagnosis is far from clear cut....We are also concerned that the 'growing evidence for early intervention in bipolar disorder' seems so unconvincing and we are concerned that the Journal allows the publication of
such an article as its editorial, without comment."

In psychiatry, clinical practice standards bear no relationship to
scientific evidence. And journals in psychiatry regularly publish biased
reports and editorials without so much as disclosing the extensive financial entanglements of authors.

To understand what prompts psychiatrists to recommend "early" pharmacologic intervention by use of toxic drugs of unproven benefit for those for whom they are prescribed, one has only to examine their financial ties to drug companies.

For example, Robert L. Findling, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics,Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio; Director, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospitals of Cleveland, has extensive on-going financial ties to manufacturers of psychotropic drugs.

See: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/513204
Dr. Findling received grants for clinical research from: Abbott,
AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celltech-Medeva, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline,
Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, New River, Novartis, Otsuka, Pfizer, Shire,
Solvay, and Wyeth.

Dr. Findling has been a consultant for: Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers
Squibb, Celltech-Medeva, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli
Lilly, New River, Novartis, Otsuka, Pfizer, Sanofi-Synthelabo, Shire,
Solvay, and Wyeth.

Dr. Findling has been listed on the speakers' bureau for Shire.
http://www.softconference.com/aacap/generic.asp?ID=415



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

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

MORE ON THE DECEPTIONS AND CORRUPTION OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION (APA)
by Justice Lover

The following AHRP report exposes more evidence of the deceptions and corruption of the APA.
It provides more proof of the dangerous quackery called psychiatry which continues with zionist like impunity to claim that it is a "Medical Specialty", thus forcing Big Pharma's dangerous psychiatric poisons on innocent people.

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org/ <http://www.ahrp.org/>
and http://ahrp.blogspot.com/

FYI

In a remarkably informative and perceptive article by Kent Garber in US News, "Who's Behind the Bible of Mental Illness," readers are informed about the dual significance of psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual(DSM):
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/2007/12/20/whos-behind-the-bible-of-mental-illness.html

The DSM "is hugely influential because it determines what is and is not amental disorder" and "is responsible for much of the sales growth inprescription drugs."By increasing the number of "disorders" the DSM panelists ipso facto broadenthe population for whom psychotropic drugs are prescribed--translating intoincreased sales and profits.

The American Psychiatric Association publishes the DSM--as well as selects the panel of psychiatrists who determine which behavior is listed as amental "disorder." The APA, therefore, provides an invaluable service for industry for which the APA and its most influential members receive millionsof dollars from drug manufacturers.

The article documents APA's lame effort to thwart criticism such as it received following the report by Lisa Cosgrove and Sheldon Krimsky documenting undisclosed financial conflicts of interest by DSM-IV panelists[1] http://www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/PDF/DSM%20COI.PDF andhttp://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/144/27/

APA's "transparency" claims notwithstanding, APA's version of financial disclosure for DSM-V panelists is riddled with "errors" of omission and waivers from disclosure. http://psych.org/news_room/press_releases/DSM-V%20Task%20Force%20Bios%20and%20Disclosures%20FINAL.pdf

The panelists and the APA fail to disclose the nature and magnitude of panelists' hidden financial ties such as remuneration paid through a drug company's PR "communication" firms: e.g. DSM-V Task Force chairman, David Kupfer, reported multiple consulting arrangements with communications companies that "sponsored pharmaceutical meetings & editorial work." His public form, however, does not reveal that income from two of these companies, Prescott Communications and Innovative Medical Education, came from work for Forrest Pharmaceuticals and Pfizer,respectively. The APA said Kupfer did not need to disclose the ties because he was not paid directly by drug companies.

Nor did DSM-V Task Force panelists disclose so-called "unrestricted" pharmaceutical company grants awarded to their university department. Such grants may involve multi-million dollars.

Disclosure--whether applied to clinical trial reports or to documents purporting to disclose psychiatrists' financial ties to pharmaceutical companies--are either complete, and therefore, informative; or they are cherry picked half-truths, and therefore, evasive, likely fraudulent.

Indeed, as US News notes, studies have repeatedly shown a connection between authors who received income from drug companies and published papers favoring the firms' products. The papers also tend to underreport negativeside effects.

We believe that partial disclosure of conflict of interest is as bad as no disclosure because the public is misled into believing they are beingleveled with. And, whether intentional or not, partial disclosure is deceptive.

See: Financial Ties between DSM-IV Panel Members and the PharmaceuticalIndustry by Lisa Cosgrove, Sheldon Krimsky, Manisha Vijayaraghavan, LisaSchneider, Psychother Psychosom 2006;75:154-160.http://www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/PDF/DSM%20COI.PDF

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

The link to the US News article :

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/2007/12/20/whos-behind-the-bible-of-mental-illness.html
Who's Behind the Bible of Mental Illness Critics say that touted efforts against conflicts fall short by Kent Garber
Posted December 20, 2007

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

MORE ON THE COMBINED BIG PHARMA-SHRINKS ASSAULT ON AMERICAN CHILDREN OR : THE HEINOUS CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, CHILDREN IN PARTICULAR, BY BIG PHARMA AND BY THE SHRINKS CONTINUE UNABATED IN THE USA AND WORLDWIDE

by Justice Lover

The very existence of Psychiatry as a "Medical Specialty" when it is obvious that it is no more than a very dangerous quackery, which has no scientific basis, is by itself an outrageous world scandal !

The fact that it has been legalised makes this scandal worse, and much more so as it has been authorised by law to impose its dangerous torture-"treatments" arbitrarily under the false psychiatric dogma-pretext of "mental illness" on innocent people.

It is a well known fact that the shrinks have been heavily bribed by Big Pharma for prescribing its psychiatric poisons to their victim-patients so as to keep Big Pharma colossal profits on the rise all the time. This is not merely intolerable corruption of horrendous proportions, it is a series of crimes against humanity for which both shrinks and Big Pharma heads must be held accountable !

Worst of all is that in recent times the victimisation by Big Pharma- shrinks of young children ,as well as elderly people in nursing homes, keeps increasing by the day, and very little is done to stop such heinous crimes against humanity !

The following AHRP report has more details of such currently perpetrated heinous crimes against humanity as follows :

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org/ and http://ahrp.blogspot.com/

FYI

Massachusetts has embarked on a mandatory mental health screening policy targeting disadvantaged, poor children whose medical care is paid by Medicaid.The Boston Globe reports (below):

"As of Monday, annual checkups for the nearly half a million Massachusetts children on Medicaid will carry a new requirement: Doctors must offer simple questionnaires to detect warning signs of possible mental health problems,from autism in toddlers to depression in teens. The checklists vary by age but ask questions about children's behavior - whether they are spending more time alone, seeming to have less fun, having trouble sleeping..."

Indeed, the vagueness of questions used in screening tools betrays the fact that there is no scientifically valid mental screening standard--nor, for that matter, is there a scientific, measurable tool for diagnosing children's mental health. It's all subjective and given to bias--often, as has been documented, by industry-financed bias. [1]http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychiatrists-retained-by-drug-industry.html

The new requirement applies to the 460,000 children covered by Massachusetts Medicaid from birth to age 21.The policy institutionalizes two-tier medicine, setting disadvantaged children into a class apart. People on Medicaid have no resources for making informed choices or for obtaining second opinions--these children are trapped into a system whereby Bad Medicine is shielded from accountability.Mental screening is not in the best interest of children; it is but subterfuge for increasing psychotropic drug sales.As pointed out by Dr. John Abramson, a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School and author of Overdosed America, "What happens is that there's a very quick translation of mental health symptoms into drug treatment."

Beyond the issue of mislabeling healthy but rambunctious children as mentally ill, the highly toxic treatments being widely prescribed are producing irreversible, measurable harm. One would have expected cautionary approach after the untimely death at age 4 of Rebecca Riley who was "diagnosed" as bipolar at the age of 2 1/2 by a Tufts trained child psychiatrist, and prescribed a toxic combination of psychotropic drugs.http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/09/bipolar-soars-as-diagnosis-for-young.html

In adults the hazardous effects of the prescribed drugs are shown to cut life span by 25 years! http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2006/apr/05_0180.htm.Even a few prominent psychiatrists now acknowledge that children are being experimented upon with psychotropic drugs:

"We are using these medications and don't know how they work, if they work,or at what cost. It amounts to a huge experiment with the lives of American kids, and what it tells us is that we've got to do something other than we're doing now." John March MD, Prof. child /Adolescent Psychiatry, Dukehttp://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/399/31/"

"We don't know the first thing about safety and efficacy of these drugs even by themselves in these young ages, let alone when they are mixed together...We have to realize that we are risking treating children who could turn into obese diabetics with involuntary movements." Neuroscientist Steven Hyman MD, Former Director, NIMH http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2007/06/17/backlash_on_bipolar_diagnoses_in_children

Indeed, the scope, the magnitude and the nature of irreversible physiological harm produced by antipsychotic drugs in children as they disrupt normal function of major body systems and brain function has not yet been fully documented. However, a recent report by Christoph Correll, M.D.(Hillside Hospital), and Harold Carlson, M.D. (Stony Brook), in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2006) warns clinicians:

"children and adolescents appear to be at higher risk than adults for antipsychotic induced hyperprolactinemia [abnormally high levels of prolactin in the blood], weight gain, metabolic abnormalities and elevated serum prolactin....Weight gain is a leading pathway to the metabolic syndrome and diabetes mellitus."

Shame on a society that allows its children's best interest to be undermined by industry-influenced government mental health policies.

Parents are being misled about the risks posed by psychotropic drugs by those who stand to gain from increased sale.Shame on a society that blindly follows the dictates of financially compromised medical professionals.See: New York Times report documenting the money trail between pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists whose prescribing correlated with the dollar amount received from psychotropic drug manufacturers. [1]http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychiatrists-retained-by-drug-industry.html

Massachusetts citizens have a right to know how much money psychiatrists and pediatricians in their state have received from Big Pharma.Most especially, citizens have a right to know how much pharmaceutical money, influential Harvard-affiliated Mass General Hospital child psychiatrists have received.The Globe Editorial (below) adds insult to injury. It was written by someone ignorant about the body of compelling evidence documenting the harm caused to children who are prescribed psychotropic drugs. [3]

The editorial makes bald unsubstantiated claims that smack of pharmaceutical industry PR copy:" Early detection of bipolar disorder, autism, or depression can lead to effective treatment that will avoid costly periods of institutionalization if the condition is left unattended." Where is the evidence for that false claim? In fact, "bipolar disorder" in children is highly controversial, its legitimacy unrecognized anywhere in the world other than in the US.

The real hook of the Massachusetts policy is to provide financial incentive to "diagnose" children: "With the diagnosis doors and services can open to you."Children--in particular those on Medicaid--are being turned into a captive consumer drug market without regard for the harmful consequences.

Stay Tuned for an AHRP 2008 initiative.In the meantime, Write a letter to the Boston Globe editor:http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/write/

References:

1. THE NEW YORK TIMES May 10, 2007 Psychiatrists, Children and DrugIndustry's Role By GARDINER HARRIS, BENEDICT CAREY and JANET ROBERTShttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/health/10psyche.html

2. THE NEW YORK TIMES June 6, 2006 Use of Antipsychotics by the Young RoseFivefold By BENEDICT CAREYhttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/health/06psych.html

3. Texas: 60% of foster care children are being drugged:http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/03/chemical-sledgehammer-children-in.html http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/11/children-need-protection.htmlFlorida: St. Petersburg Times The 'atypical' dilemma Skyrocketing numbers of kids are prescribed powerful antipsychotic drugs. Is it safe? Nobody knows. ROBERT FARLEY, July 29, 2007http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/29/news_pf/Worldandnation/The__atypical__dilemm.shtmlhttp://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/08/skyrocketing-antipsychotic-drug-use-in.htmlNew York: DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE December 9, 2007 Potent Pills: More foster kids getting mood-altering drugs by Gary Craighttp://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071209/NEWS01/71206023/1002/NEWS

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

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

BIG PHARMA ON TRIAL NOW FOR SOME OF THEIR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. WHEN WILL THE TOP SHRINKS BE PUT ON TRIAL FOR THEIR COMPLICITY, AND FOR THEIR OWN MAJOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY ?
by Justice Lover

Although the following AHRP report concerns the testing of an antibiotic drug on African children, nevertheless the implications are the same for similar tests with psychiatric drugs on children worldwide.

Here is the report :



ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org <http://www.ahrp.org/> and http://ahrp.blogspot.com
<http://ahrp.blogspot.com/>

FYI

Reuters reports that the Nigerian government has ordered the arrest of three
Pfizer defendants in the Trovan antibiotic trial conducted in 1996.

Pfizer is charged with killing 11 children in that unethical, illegal drug
trial, and leaving at least 189 severely disabled--blind, deaf, paralyzed
and brain damaged.

The Nigerian government is seeking $7 billion and the Kano state government
(where the trial took place) is seeking another $2 billion.

The company has evaded judicial review for more than a decade. It is hoped
that at last the facts of that lethal trial will be aired in open
proceedings and justice will be served.


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

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN454820.html
Nigeria court seeks 3 arrests in Pfizer drug trial
Mon 24 Dec 2007, 15:13 GMT

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) - A Nigerian court on Monday ordered the arrests of
three of the defendants in a trial over a drug test conducted by Pfizer in
1996 which Nigerian authorities say killed 11 children and left others
disabled.

The northern state of Kano is suing Pfizer for $2 billion in damages and
pressing criminal charges over the testing of the antibiotic Trovan on
children in Kano during a meningitis epidemic that killed 12,000 children in
six months.

The federal government is suing for an additional $6.5 billion and also
pressing criminal charges.

Pfizer denies accusations that Trovan harmed children and that the company
did not obtain proper regulatory and parental approval. It says it was
meningitis that killed the children or damaged their health, while Trovan
saved lives.

The High Court in Kano on Monday held a hearing in the state's criminal case
against Pfizer.

Lawyers for Pfizer were present but Judge Shehu Atiku complained that
individual defendants should have been there too and issued arrest warrants
against three of them.

Pfizer is arguing in a separate process in a Lagos court that the defendants
were not properly served criminal summons and therefore were not technically
charged or obliged to appear in court.

The civil and criminal cases launched by the state and federal governments
since May have developed into a tangle of unresolved petitions and side
issues, dragging on from one adjournment to the next. No witness has been
heard and no substantive issue tackled.

Atiku adjourned the Kano state criminal case to January 29 to hear a motion
in which Pfizer challenges the court's jurisdiction.

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

MORE ON THE QUACKERY THAT PSYCHIATRY IS AND ON THE INVALIDITY OF ITS DOGMA
by Justice Lover


Ever since the anti-psychiatry movement among psychiatrists began some 40 years ago the dogma of psychiatry has been exposed as deception, namely, the claim that psychiatry is a "Medical Specialty" which is "treating mentally ill patients" has no scientific basis, and can be regarded as sheer speculation, at best. The psychiatric theory about "chemical imbalance" in the brains of the "mentally ill" is part of that speculation/deception, and the further psychiatric claim to "correct" that "imbalance" by prescribing Big Pharma poisons to the victim-patients, is no more than a cruel sales gimmick on behalf of Big Pharma.

The following article by AHRP sheds more light on that outrageous psyciatric deception.

Here it is :

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org/ <http://www.ahrp.org/>
and http://ahrp.blogspot.com/

FYI


"The Media and the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression" by Jonathan Leo& Jeffrey R. Lacasse is a follow up to their seminal article in PLoSMedicine (2005), in which they debunked the "chemical imbalance" theory ofdepression. The "chemical imbalance" theory in psychiatry rests on the observation that mood could be artificially manipulated with drugs - those which raised monoamine levels improved mood, while those which lowered amine levels led to depression, but it remained to be seen if naturally occurring fluctuations in neurotransmitter levels were responsible for, or caused, the ebb and flow of mood levels.


As the authors point out, in spite of the enormous amount of money and time that has been spent in the quest to confirm the chemical imbalance theory, direct proof has never materialized. Moreover, during the past several decades, a significant amount of evidence has accumulated which calls the theory's validity into question. Of particular note, in the two years since publication of their PLoSarticle, not a single scientific article challenged their conclusion. Indeed, the chairman of FDA Psychopharmacology Advisory Committee acknowledged that the "chemical imbalance" theory was but a "useful metaphor"--as opposed to a valid hypothesis.

Another credible, evidence-based assessment of the "chemical imbalance" theory is to be found on the website of The Mental Health Service at McGill University: "The term 'chemical imbalance' is thrown around a lot these days. True conditions caused by chemical imbalances are relatively rare. All thoughts, feelings and motions in the brain are mediated by the release of chemicals in brain pathways.

Every person's brain is unique, leading each of us to have different traits and abilities. Just because your brain works in a particular way does not mean that you have a chemical imbalance. A certain amount of sadness, anxiety or other emotional upset is normal, and though we may be able to block these feelings by chemicals, this would tend to dehumanize us. Even when we use medication to help an individual with overwhelming emotions, most of the time this is not to repair a 'chemical imbalance' but simply to help contain symptoms." [Link]

However, invalid thought it may be, as Drs. Leo and Lacasse point out the "chemical imbalance" theory has had extraordinary commercial value for both the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry: "With the advent of the chemical imbalance theory, the companies were no longer just providing soothing tonics, they were now providing medications to treat diseases, as exemplified by an early SSRI advertisement stating: "When serotonin is in short supply, you may suffer from depression."

The wording here is all-important. The advertisement takes a correlation between serotonin shortage and psychological stress-and even this is highly questionable and unverifiable in any individual case-and makes a leap of faith to the conclusion that depression is caused by a serotonin imbalance, not that psychological stress impacts the serotonin system. And the marketing did not stop with depression; eventually we were told that whatever our problems might be, whether anxiety, excessive shyness, depression, or the inability to pay attention, the underlying cause was a faulty transmitter level which could be rectified with a pill.

A 2005 survey from the Harvard School of Public Health reported that nearly half of all Americans will at some point develop a mental illness, presumably from a chemical imbalance, with 29% developing an anxiety disorder and 20% a mood disorder."The "chemical imbalance" theory has provided promoters of psychoactive "feel good" prescription drugs with the means for distancing their products from illicit street drugs whose chemical action is almost indistinguishable. Whereas drugs used to "take the edge off" stress are typically considered street drugs and are consumed by "users" or "addicts," substances used to rectify a "chemical imbalance" can be called medications--and these are legitimately consumed by patients.

A fly in the ointment occurred when Ricky Williams, the star running back for the Miami Dolphins who had been "diagnosed" with Social Anxiety Disorder, and for several years was paid by GlaxoSmithKline to promote Paxil for anxiety disorder, was described in 2002, by People magazine, as suffering from a "depression-like chemical imbalance that affects roughly three million Americans." Williams tested positive for marijuana on several occasions. But while his marijuana use was frowned upon, his use of Paxil was considered acceptable. One was a medication supposed to treat a chemical imbalance, while the other was a drug signaling a lack of willpower.

However, Williams' contract with Glaxo came to a sudden halt in 2004, when he stated that marijuana was ten times better than Paxil. What got him into hot water, Drs. Leo and Lacasse, note, was not so much praising the competition, but rather putting his sponsor's "medication" in the same category as an illicit drug. Williams threatened the assumption underlying the conventional unsupportable divide between legal and illegal drug use. His juxtaposition threatened the most powerful industries--including professional sports, the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatry, and the mass media.

Another fly in the ointment raising questions about the validity of the dividing line between prescribed and illicit psychoactive substances, is a recent controlled clinical trial conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins. The researchers ostensibly tested the "Mystical" effects of psilocybin, the active ingredient in mushrooms which is an illegal drug that causes hallucinations. However, two months after the trial they found that "79% of those prescribed psilocybin reported moderately or greatly increased levels of life satisfaction compared with those given a placebo. A majority said their mood, attitudes and behaviors had changed for the better." [Link]

No SSRI clinical trial had that high a rate of long-lasting improvements in mood, attitude and behavior.The authors sent inquiries to reporters who mentioned the "chemical imbalance" theory as if it had been proven, asking for citations of such proof. The responses--or lack of responses--and the biased, pro-industry reporting about mental health treatments, are no less troubling than the biased reporting in the New York Times about the events leading up to the Iraq War.

"In hindsight, as the Times editors now acknowledge (5/326/04), Judith Miller's war coverage was overly one-sided. Her fundamental flaw could be described as a lack of professional skepticism toward the Bush administration, as she willingly parroted what those pushing for war were saying, while giving little credence to the stance of the other side. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Michael Massing commented that the Times and Miller's reporting were examples of media "submissiveness."

This depiction could just as well apply to the media's reporting of mental health issues. As just one example, in some cases, the media still go to the people responsible for the original problems. For instance, several of the researchers involved with the studies of SSRIs in children are still cited in the press even though the following information has come out about their published studies: they downplayed the suicide risk; they exaggerated the benefits; and the papers published under their names were actually written by ghostwriters paid by the pharmaceutical industry.The Times editors have acknowledged both the problems with Miller's reporting and their own lack of editorial oversight of her.

It remains to be seen if members of the media will ever look inward and reflect on their role in the promotion of the chemical imbalance theory. (For those familiar with the New York Times' coverage of mental health issues over the past 10 years, it is refreshing that after a series of health reporters who essentially abdicated their role as investigative journalists, there is a newer group of Times reporters with more skeptical inclination..."


Both articles by Jonathan Leo and Jeffrey Lacasse are freely accessible.http://www.springerlink.com/content/u37j12152n826q60/fulltext.pdf andhttp://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020392

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org212-595-8974


( Emphasis by Justice Lover)