martharosenberg
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Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? Do you wake up…hungry for food? You may be suffering from……fill in the disease du jour.
Selling symptoms to suggestible people has been a gold mine for Big Pharma since it started advertising directly to the consumer almost 15 years ago. Thanks to disease mongering ads, millions of people who were once fine now have depression, insomnia, season allergies, GERD and assorted attention and pain disorders. Worse, they want these afflictions because the medications that treat them have been made so glamorous.
It was once said that Americans have the most expensive urine in the world because of all the unneeded vitamins they take. But taking unneeded prescription drugs is not just a waste of money like vitamins. Unneeded prescription drugs are behind accidents and car crashes, suicides including military suicides, mass shootings like Virginia Tech and Columbine and unanticipated deaths from drug interactions. They raise our insurance rates and taxes and convince people who would have improved without medication (or who improved from the placebo effect) that they are "really sick" and need to remain on the meds. They violate the medical profession's oath to help and not harm at the deepest level.
Taking unneeded psychiatric drugs is especially dangerous Allen Frances, M.D. Professor Emeritus at Duke University School of Medicine, recently said in a provocative interview with Opednews' Rob Kall. Temper tantrums in children can morph into "Disruptive Mood Disregulation Disorder," normal forgetting of old age becomes "Minor Neurocognitive Disorder," gluttony becomes "Binge Eating Disorder" and grief becomes "major depression." Choosing to go on a psychiatric drug "requires all the thought that you would put into a decision on who you are going to marry, what car you are going to buy [and] what house you are going to buy," warns Dr. Frances because it's often a one-way street.
It is easier to acquire a diagnosis of a mental disorder than lose one says Dr. Frances and easier to go on the drugs than off them. Many clinicians and patients report that "rebound" effects from terminating psychiatric drugs can be intolerable, forcing people to remain on them. Worse, rebound effects are often mislabeled as "the disease coming back" rather than weaning off drugs someone did not need to take to begin with.
Another dangerous and unethical marketing area is specialty drugs, normally reserved for serious illnesses, now marketed to the general population. These genetically engineered, injected drugs like Humira, Enbrel and Remicide can cost more than $20,000 a year and are Big Pharma's next profit center now that the patents have run out on the blockbusters Lipitor, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Singulair and Concerta.
Bilking taxpayers and people with private health insurance is not the only reason the drugs, often called biologics or TNF blockers, are unethical. They are also linked to cancers, TB and dangerous side effects that are only justifiable when the person has a major disease. Humira, for example, "may increase the chance of getting lymphoma, including a rare kind, or other cancers" hepatitis B infection in carriers of the virus, allergic reactions, nervous system problems, blood problems, heart failure, certain immune reactions including a lupus-like syndrome, liver problems, and new or worsening psoriasis" says its label. "Some people have died from these infections."
Still, Big Pharma is marketing these extreme drugs for mild skin and digestive disorders, arthritis and even asthma. Yes asthma.
Are you over 40 and experiencing back pain asks one Big Pharma "quiz" to determine if your back pain may be a "chronic autoimmune condition" and hopefully sell a $20,000 a year drug. Is it worst in the morning? You may have "Ankylosing Spondylitis."
Taunting people with symptoms that almost everyone has--Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? Do you wake up…hungry for food--would be obnoxious or funny--if it did not work so well. END
Martha Rosenberg will speak on these topics at the Mid-Manhattan Public Library in June.
Thanks to resistance from angry consumers, most milk no longer contains the synthetic, genetically modified recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) developed by Monsanto. The unwanted ingredient was in most commercial milk unlabeled until a backlash against such artificial hormones convinced major grocery store chains and restaurants to banish it. But does that mean commercial milk is safe to drink? Not necessarily.
All dairy cows and “22 to 70 percent of calves” receive antibiotics on dairy farms, admitted Robert D. Byrne, PhD, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs of the National Milk Producers Federation at Capitol Hill hearings about the overuse of livestock antibiotics in 2008. The drugs are used only to “reduce the level of potentially harmful bacteria which result infections and sickness,” and are FDA-approved Byrne added. There is also a drug “withdrawal time” to make sure milk isn’t contaminated, and milk is “screened” before it is accepted into a processing plant.
But a report in the New York Times was not as reassuring. It revealed that milk is tested for only six of 20 antibiotics and that 788 dairy cows in one year had drug residues at slaughter.
The dairy industry has vehemently fought antibiotic restrictions by the government. John J. Wilson, a senior vice president for Dairy Farmers of America, said that the idea of testing for more antibiotics was “very damaging to innocent dairy farmers,” and that there was little reason to think that the slaughterhouse findings of high drug residues “would be replicated in tests of the milk supply.”
And when the FDA proposed testing for more drugs in 2011 the dairy industry got so furious, it used the d-word. Agri-Mark, a Northeast cooperative, sent a letter to its members instructing them to DUMP milk if it had been tested by the FDA, “to ensure that all of our milk sales, cheese, butter and other products are in no danger of recall.”
Dairies whose animals harbor high levels of antibiotics are disturbingly common. “Our investigation found that you hold animals under conditions which are so inadequate that diseased and/or medicated animals bearing potentially harmful drug residues in edible tissues are likely to enter the food supply,” reads a letter from the FDA to Dennis H. Eldred, the owner of Willet Dairy, in 2005. Four years later Willet Dairy, New York’s largest dairy, was shown on Nightline practicing shocking cruelty against its dairy animals.
There are many milk alternatives which taste as good as milk and lack the antibiotic risks. Milk products from soybeans, rice, almonds, hemp, coconut and flax are earning a respected place on grocery store shelves. END
This month's proposed gun laws are producing the same, "I-can't-believe-I'm-hearing-this incredulity.
Make gun trafficking a felony? You mean it isn't already?
Mandate universal background checks? You mean they aren't already? (40 percent of gun buyers are background-check free!)
Limit gun purchases to one a month? You mean people are buying multiple guns a month?
(Yes, straw buyers purchase hundreds a month.)
Medical providers should share the mental health records of "prohibited buyers" like Seung-Hui Cho of the Virginia Tech massacre and at least ten other mass shooters with law enforcement authorities? They don't already? (In Illinois last year only two counties out of more than 100 reported prohibited buyers to authorities.)
Both citizens and lawmakers have been sleeping at the wheel while the NRA has stripped away one right after another from people who do not want to live in an armed camp. No insurance is required of gun owners though they are capable of inflicting infinitely more damage than car owners and even vicous dog owners, both of whom are insured. What?
Gun owners are not registered like car owners and dog owners, to protect innocent children who go into their homes not to mention law enforcement officers called there. How did that happen?
And where were mothers, fathers, gun victims, teachers, medical professionals, community members, school officials, employers, employees and city, state and federal officials when the "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act" was passed in 2005? This law gives complete legal immunity to "manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages resulting from the misuse of their products" that might be brought by those killed and maimed by guns. The entire gun industry in suit-proof to protect it from "reckless lawsuits" says the NRA. The gun lobby is "protected"; what about us?
Thanks to the black hand of the NRA and its Mafia-like lobbyists, toy guns are better regulated than real guns!
Luckily, the nation is taking a look at the firearm free-for-all we have been living under and enacting anti-straw buyer laws. Thanks to a straw buyer, convicted felon William Spengler, who killed his own grandmother, waltzed into a Gander Mountain in Henrietta, N.Y. and chose the weapons with which he killed firefighters on Christmas Eve 2012. Thanks to straw buyers, 1,300 firearms seized on Chicago's streets were traced to one dealer, Chuck’s Gun Shop, since 2008.
Just like 9/11, we have been lulled into a false sense of security about existing laws…and Sandy Hook was the wakeup call. END
Vote against gun proliferation by boycotting Starbucks.
http://gunvictimsaction.org/starbucks-boycott/
Recently some of the nation's top researchers, clinicians and scientists convened in Washington D.C. for the first annual Selling Sickness conference--examining how Pharma "sells" diseases to move the medications intended to treat them.
Examples of Pharma's disease-mongering business model abound, especially since direct-to-consumer advertising began in the late 1990's. Depression, bipolar disorder, seasonal allergies, insomnia and gastro reflux disease (GERD) are just some of the "diseases" that tripled and quadrupled in the population thanks to TV advertising, sometimes accompanied by self-administered "quizzes." Even more lucrative have been childhood and adult ADHD, assorted behavioral, mood and "spectrum" disorders, excessive sleepiness and "wakefulness" disorders and of course restless legs syndrome. Ka-ching.
Proof of Pharma's disease-selling model is as close as investment reports which unabashedly gush about growing "markets" for fibromyalgia or depression. And 2013 reveals that a "market" for ankylosing spondylitis is unfolding now that Abbott has dedicated an entire company to sell its extreme drug Humira.
Do you have back pain? Are you dismissing it as resulting from "lifting too much" at the gym or "bad posture" ask Abbott radio ads. You might have ankylosing spondylitis. Instead of spending five dollars a month on aspirin or acetaminophen, you could be spending $20,000 a year on Humira and exposing yourself to tuberculosis (TB) and serious viruses, fungi, or bacterial infection!
Why would people voluntarily take a drug that "may increase the chance of getting lymphoma, including a rare kind, or other cancers… hepatitis B infection in carriers of the virus, allergic reactions, nervous system problems, blood problems, heart failure, certain immune reactions including a lupus-like syndrome, liver problems, and new or worsening psoriasis"? Side effects that are worse than the conditions being treated? ("Some people have died from these infections," says the label) Because advertising works!
ADHD has been another lucrative disease for Pharma, though marketers worry about the five million kids at risk of going off their ADHD meds when they leave home. "I remember being the kid with ADHD. Truth is, I still have it," said an ad from stimulant maker Shire with a photo of Adam Levine, the lead singer of Maroon 5, in the Northwestern University student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern. "It's Your ADHD. Own It," is the tagline. (Was "Stay Sick" the second choice?)
This week, a widely disseminated press release furthers the ADHD financial damage control by announcing research that reveals that "ADHD Can Often Persist Into Adulthood." News outlets obediently headlined their articles "ADHD Doesn't Go Away," and "ADHD Can Often Persist Into Adulthood" (gee, thanks!) without even noting the financial partnership between Shire and the study's lead organization, Boston Children's Hospital, penned just four months ago. Oops.
Finally there's the lucrative "disease" of menopause which made Pharma billions until the meno drugs Premarin and Prempro were found to causes endometrial cancer and breast cancer respectively. This week, an FDA advisory committee continues the unsavory tradition of overmedicating a non-disease by considering gabapentin (Neurontin) and paroxetine (Paxil) for "treatment of moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms due to menopause."
How safe are gabapentin and paroxetine? Both Neurontin-maker Pfizer and Paxil-maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC settled major lawsuits over buried risks related to the drugs and face many others. One Paxil study that hid risks was written by GlaxoSmithKline's marketing firm not the credited doctors, according to court proceedings brought by the New York Attorney General.
It is easy to blame Pharma, a bought FDA, bought medical institutions and a rubber stamp press for promotion of expensive and dangerous drugs for non-diseases. But patients who decide from seeing an ad that they are "sick" also perpetuate the business model--and raise insurance rates.
END
Chicago, Il
Carrying photos of lost loved ones and signs reading "We Deserve a Vote," a strong crowd turned out in the freezing Chicago rain in support of universal background checks on Friday.
Organized by10 Illinois and Chicago based anti-gun violence groups, the rally comes weeks after the Obamas attended services for slain Hadiya Pendleton in Chicago and as Illinois' ban against concealed weapons has been overturned.
The stakes to curtail gun violence cannot be higher said Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle because legislation to ban assault weapons is in the Illinois legislature "right now." Preckwinkle, who served as a Chicago alderman for 19 years, was able to pass a $25 county tax on firearms last year but noted the loopholes in Illinois which perpetuate gun violence.
Firearms Owner's Identification (FOID) Cards are issued in Illinois, for example, for ten years and there is "no checking" if the owner has been charged with crimes since issuance, said Preckwinkle. And, "designated streetpersons" who supply weapons through straw purchase operations simply say they "lost" their weapon or "it was stolen" when they are identified or apprehended.
"We have a Sandy Hook every month," proclaimed Tio Hardiman from Ceasefire IL which focuses on street violence and works with 1,100 high risk individuals. While a "full court press" is necessary, said Hardiman, the recent attention to gun violence in Chicago after the shooting death of Hadiya Pendleton, who had appeared at President Obama's inauguration, has produced a rare drop in shootings and gun deaths in February.
April 16, 2007 changed the life forever of Garret Evans. That's when he witnessed a .22 pistol appear in his Virginia Tech classroom and his instructor shot in the head, falling to the ground, Evans told the crowd. Shot through the leg himself, surrounded by wounded friends and dying classmates, Evans says the mass shooting of 33 was so "surreal" that six people were admitted to psychiatric units within 24 hours. An appropriate background check would have stopped the shooter, Cho Seung-hui, whose mental incapacitation slipped through loose laws, according to published reports.
In a short interview after his remarks, Evans said he now speaks about gun violence and glorification at schools and organizations and that "no venue is too big." His hardest challenge since the shooting was finishing his degree program in economics at Virginia Tech, he says. Through faith, he has forgiven the troubled shooter since "pulling a gun on someone is not a joyous act."
Also addressing the crowd was Stephen Young who lost his son to gun violence in 1996. Public outrage ended the Vietnam War which cost 58,000 lives, Young told the crowd, yet gun violence claims an equal number of lives every two years in the United States and there is not similar outrage.
Many are watching gun policy in Illinois for a reason other than the shooting of Hadiya Pendleton. On December 11, the same day as the deadly Oregon mall shooting, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the gun lobby in determining that Illinois' longtime ban on carrying a concealed weapon was unconstitutional. A subsequent request by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan for a rehearing was rejected by a federal appeals court on Friday-- and the ruling was announced at the rally by Lee Goodman of Stop Concealed Carry. Undaunted, Goodman expressed hopes that Madigan would take the fight to the Supreme Court. The crowd chanted "We Deserve a Vote. END
Part One appears here http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/martharosenberg/faux-patients-sell-dru...
No drug ads or Pharma sponsors dot the website of the Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation which has renamed itself the Zen-like "Balanced Mind Foundation." (Meditation/medication--same idea, right?) Instead, visitors to the site will find slick slide shows, tales of children saved by bipolar drugs and a list of donor families. But according to the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry the actual guidelines the Balanced Mind Foundation uses to discern bipolar disorder in children and adolescents were funded by Abbott, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Forest, Janssen, Novartis and Pfizer. Oops.
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the group that produces the journal, is also viewed as a possible Pharma front organization. Its journal is where Paxil's "study 329," which buried the suicide risks of the antidepressant in adolescents leading to wide use, appeared. Court proceedings brought by the New York Attorney General in 2004 revealed the research was not even written by the 22 doctors and researchers listed but by the marketing firm of GlaxoSmithKline who makes Paxil, Scientific Therapeutics Information. What?
"You did a superb job with this," wrote the paper's first so-called author, Brown University's Martin Keller to Scientific Therapeutics Information's ghostwriter Sally Laden. "It is excellent. Enclosed are rather minor changes from me."
Authors of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry's influential 2007 drug guidelines for very young children--"this will sometimes involve the use of medications," they presell--also had Pharma ties. Financial links were disclosed to Abbott, AstraZeneca, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cephalon, Eli Lilly, Forest Labs, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), several divisions of Johnson & Johnson, and ten other drug companies. In 2012 alone the Academy received $221,000 from Eli Lilly for research, an "outreach program" and a conference reception.
Children are forced by school personnel to take their drugs,” says former drug rep Gwen Olsen, author of Confessions of a Drug Pusher. “They are forced by their parents to take their drugs, and they are forced by their doctors to take their drugs. So, children are the ideal patient-type because they represent refilled prescription compliance and ‘longevity.’”
Another group widely viewed as a Pharma front is the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, dedicated to stamping out suicide caused by deficiencies of the drugs it promotes. Suicide prevention is a knee-jerk marketing tool for Pharma even though suicides are rising, not falling, despite the 400 percent increase in its heavily promoted antidepressants; it now accounts for 36,000 deaths a year. Hello?
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention received $100,000 from Eli Lilly in 2011 and $50,000 in 2012 and was led for a time by psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff who left Emory University in disgrace after Congress found he failed to disclose at least $1.2 million in Pharma income to Emory.
In fact, the prevention group is well funded enough, it makes its own donations, Pharma fashion. It gave between $10,000 and $24,000 to the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, along with Paxil-maker GSK, according to the spring 2008 UIC Medicine magazine.
Another iffy group is the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, described as "a non-profit association representing 1,300 mental health and addictions treatment and rehabilitation organizations," on its website but taking at least a half a million dollars in Pharma grants. In 2010, the Council received $190,000, from Eli Lilly and $500,000 from AstraZeneca. Nice non-profit work if you can get it. The previous year the group received funding from AstaZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb, according to its magazine.
No wonder the Council pushes Mental Illness Awareness Week, Suicide Prevention and the lucrative idea that addiction is "a treatable chronic medical condition, similar to diabetes or heart disease," in its National Council magazine. Ka-ching.
Finally, there is the three-year-old American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders (APSARD), the first international organization based in the U.S. to focus exclusively on ADHD. "APSARD will offer a range of services including a comprehensive website, an annual scientific meeting, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal, and the development of guidelines that address diagnosis, assessment and treatment of ADHD across the lifespan," promises its first press release without mentioning that Eli Lilly will fund its newsletters* and 2010 conference. Oops.
In addition to Pharma, psychiatrists are also raking in money from expensive drugs that adults and children may not even need. A psychiatrist working eight hours a day doing talk therapy "earns approximately $940 a day, $4,700 a week and $225,000 per year," notes an article called, "The Industrialized, New-Deal Age of Psychiatry," by psychiatrist Ronald Ricker. That is "chump change" compared with 15-minute, once-a-month med checks that net from $85 to $100 dollars, says Ricker. By seeing 38 to 42 patients each day at $100 a visit plus extra fees averaging $30 per appointment, a psychiatrist can make "roughly $104,000 a month, and $1,248,000 per year," he computes. The pill bonanza is abetted by the phony disease and patient groups Pharma funds. END
Evelyn Pringle is an investigative journalist and a pharmaceutical researcher.
Martha Rosenberg is an investigative health reporter and the author of Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health (Prometheus Books).
But another cruel delicacy banned in Chicago for a short time in 2006, remains legal. Foie gras is a delicacy that requires geese and ducks to be force fed to bloat their livers, often until they can barely walk, their throats are bloody or punctured and they struggle to breathe. Few who have viewed videos of foie gras production, widely posted on the Web, will eat it again.
A ban on restaurants serving foie gras provoked a vehement backlash from Chicago chefs who were making money off the dish. "Why should someone tell us what we can or can't serve, buy or produce that the FDA puts its stamp on daily?" asked chef Michael Tsonton of Copperblue restaurant in Chicago. "We live in a free-market society and if people are truly offended they won't buy it," agreed David Richards, owner of Sweets & Savories. Even Chicago Tribune restaurant critic Phil Vettel ridiculed the ban and wrote, "Has City Council finally quacked?" Will undercover "quack-easies" spring up to deflect the cruelty issues?
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), expected to be a leading voice for animal welfare, also defends foie gras. One veterinarian AVMA delegate at 2005 hearings defended foie gras production by saying banning it could lead to resolutions against veal calves and other "production agriculture." Don't veterinarians take an oath to relieve animal suffering? "We cannot condemn an accepted agricultural practice on . . . emotion," he proclaimed. At least 14 countries have banned or partially banned foie gras ….on emotion.
Chicago chefs so feared ethical issues invading their kitchens--as shark fins now have--they created a group called Chicago Chefs for Choice to fight the ban and they succeeded. Restaurateurs held Foie Gras Fest fundraisers with all-foie gras menus as in--hip to be cruel.
Sweets & Savories featured a Kobe beef burger topped with foie gras pâté and seared foie gras accompanied by pumpkin flan. Graham Elliot Bowles, chef at Avenues in the Peninsula Hotel, offered a foie gras tasting menu with a foie gras custard, mousse, brioche, vinaigrette, lollipop, and milk shake for $238 per diner. A fourth course was a terrine of foie gras snow frozen and whirred into a powder and served with kangaroo, lime, eucalyptus, and melon. Similar derisive and reactionary menus were invented by California chefs before a recent foie gras ban went into effect.
Gov. Pat Quinn and officials in the other four states banning shark fins should be commended. If we wait for people to be "truly offended" by cruel practices, shark fin will remain on the menu. So will foie gras. END
Find out more about foods to avoid in Martha Rosenberg's acclaimed expose, Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health. http://www.amazon.com/Born-With-Junk-Food-Deficiency/dp/1616145935/ref=t...
In 2008, the American Heart Association's journal Circulation reported that just one egg a day increased the risk of heart failure in a group of doctors studied. And in 2010, an article the Canadian Journal of Cardiology lamented the "wide-spread misconception . . . that consumption of dietary cholesterol and egg yolks is harmless." The article further cautioned that "stopping the consumption of egg yolks after a stroke or myocardial infarction [heart attack] would be like quitting smoking after a diagnosis of lung cancer: a necessary action, but late."
Heart disease isn't the only health concern associated with eating eggs. According to studies in the journals Nutrition and Diabetes Care, eating eggs is "positively associated" with the risk of diabetes.
Eggs also have a link to ovarian cancer, says an article in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, and the culprit is not necessarily cholesterol. (The chicken egg has the highest cholesterol of any other foodstuff--packing approximately 275 mg of cholesterol--more than one day's worth).
"It seems possible that eating eggs regularly is causally linked to the occurrence of a proportion of cancers of the ovary, perhaps as many as 40 percent, among women who eat at least 1 egg a week," wrote the authors. In one study the article cites, three eggs per week increased ovarian-cancer mortality three-fold, compared with less than one egg per week.
Eggs have also been assailed for their germ content, in addition to their nutritional content, thanks to their modern production methods--30,000 or more caged hens stacked on top of each other over their own manure. The FDA reports that egg operations are so festooned with salmonella and other bacteria that during inspections, it found a hatchery injecting antibiotics directly into the eggs of laying hens, presumably to take the offensive with germ control.
Would eggs from such antibiotic-treated hen also have antibiotic residues? Yes, says an article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry which reports that "detectable residues were observed in eggs derived from enrofloxacin-treated hens" as well as "yolks from hens treated with enrofloxacin."
Clearly there are more concerns about the safety of eggs and especially commercially produced eggs than those addressed in this week's article in the British Medical Journal.
END
The suicide rate rose similarly last year and also included troops who had not faced combat. There were 38 Army suicides in July of 2012 compared with 32 suicides in July of 2011. In a 2010 Army report called Health Promotion, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention Report, 36 percent of the troops who killed themselves had never even deployed. The suicide rate increased by more than 150 percent in the Army and more than 50 percent in the Marine Corps between 2001 to 2009, reported Military Times in a series of in-depth articles.
One in six service members was on a psychoactive drug in 2010 and "many troops are taking more than one kind, mixing several pills in daily 'cocktails' for example, an antidepressant with an antipsychotic to prevent nightmares, plus an anti-epileptic to reduce headaches--despite minimal clinical research testing such combinations," said Military Times.
The pills and pill cocktails many troops are prescribed are clearly linked to suicidal thoughts and behavior. Antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil, antipsychotics like Seroquel and Zyprexa and anti-seizure drugs like Lyrica and Neurontin all carry clear suicide warnings and all are widely used in the military. Almost 5,000 newspaper reports link antidepressants to suicide, homicide and bizarre behavior on the website SSRIstories.com. The malaria drug Lariam is also highly correlated with suicide and its use actually increased in the Navy and Marine Corps in 2011, according to the Associated Press.
Eighty-nine percent of troops with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are now given psychoactive drugs and between 2005 and 2009, half of all TRICARE (the military health plan) prescriptions for people between 18 and 34 were for antidepressants. During the same time period, epilepsy drugs like Topamax and Neurontin, increasingly given off-label for mental conditions, increased 56 percent, reports Military Times. In 2008, 578,000 epilepsy pills and 89,000 antipsychotics were prescribed to deploying troops.
Both the increase in the overall suicide rate in the US (rising to 36,000 a year after falling in the 1990s according to USA Today) and in the military coincide with the debut of direct-to-consumer drug advertising in the late 1990s. They are also correlated with the FDA's approval of many drugs with suicide links and a population that is increasingly taking psychoactive drugs for minor problems and symptoms. Several powerful military psychiatrists and administrators are also consultants to Big Pharma who shamelessly enroll veterans in drug studies and promote the pills that drug companies pay them to promote. Who can say conflict of interest?
When concerns about the rise in the general suicide rate in the US surfaced last fall, US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin announced federal grants for suicide hotlines, more mental health workers, better depression screening and Facebook tracking of suicidal messages. Nowhere, did she mention examining the role of suicide-linked drugs on, ahem, suicide. The Pentagon is apparently in similar denial.
More information about overmedication of troops and suicide-linked drugs is found in Martha Rosenberg's recently published Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health.
By Martha Rosenberg and Evelyn Pringle
It's happened to anyone who's attended an open-mike session at an FDA advisory committee hearing. A queue of "patients" materializes out of nowhere to testify, often in tears, about the crucial need for approval of a drug the public has often not even heard of. Sometimes the drug has not been approved by the FDA at all, but often it's just not been approved for the use the patients wants--so it's not reimbursable.
"When insurers balk at reimbursing patients for new prescription medications, these groups typically swing into action, rallying sufferers to appear before public and consumer panels, contact lawmakers, and provide media outlets a human face to attach to a cause," writes Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times of the artificial grassroots groups, sometimes called Astroturf.
Who are these "patient groups" with Pharma agendas? They include the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, which gets half its funding from Pharma and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), which received $23 million in just two years from Pharma. Both were investigated by Congress along with the Mental Health America, the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, Screening for Mental Health Inc, Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, the National Center for Mental Checkups at Columbia University (Teen Screen) and the Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation.
In recent years, a front group called Active Minds has also surfaced on college campuses to tap the lucrative college "mental illness" market. A lot of money is lost, say Pharma internal documents, when kids go to college and go off the meds their parents and teachers insist they take.
Treating poor people who are on government health plans with expensive drugs is also part of Pharma's plan. "For years, the alliance [NAMI] has fought states' legislative efforts to limit doctors' freedom to prescribe drugs, no matter how expensive, to treat mental illness in patients who rely on government health care programs like Medicaid, says the New York Times. "Some of these medicines routinely top the list of the most expensive drugs that states buy for their poorest patients."
How expensive? The prices listed at DrugStore.com in June 2011 for atypical antipsychotics, for 100 middle dose pills were: Abilify $1,644, Geodon $958, Invega $1,789, Risperdal $953, Seroquel $2,000 and Zyprexa $1,680. The prices for antidepressants at a middle dose for 90 pills were: Celexa $346, Cymbalta $440, Effexor $238, Lexapro $313, Paxil $346, Pristiq $418, Prozac $631, Wellbutrin $311 and Zoloft $381.
Prices for 90 or 100 anticonvulsants pills at a middle dose included Depakote $190, Gabitril $595, Lyrica $282, Neurontin $405 and a walloping $895 for Topamax and $1,040 for Lamictal. (According to the American Enterprise Institute, the government wasted $51 million buying Lamictal in 2009 though a generic was available.)
The cost for common drug "cocktails" is even worse. If a bipolar child is prescribed a middle dose of the mood stabilizers Topamax and Lamictal, the yearly cost would be $23,220. If Seroquel is added, at a cost of $24,000, along with the ADHD drug Concerta at $7,812, and Neurontin at $4,860, one bipolar child would make Pharma $59,892 a year based on 2011 prices at DrugStore.com. No wonder Pharma wants us, the taxpayers, to pick up the tab.
Of course the Pharma buzz is that pills are cheaper than "talk therapy." But the $24 billion a year the US spends on antidepressants and antipsychotics alone would enable 240,000 psychotherapists to provide 6 million hours of psychotherapy according to one journal article. Nor would the therapists require faux patient groups.
END
