Anti-Depressants Linked to Cases of Birth Defects

A new study published in the British Medical Journal implicate Paxil, Prozac, Fluoxetine were linked to birth defects when a pregnant women used the drugs. Zoloft was not link to birth defects, but it is linked to suicide just like Paxil and Prozac are.
This was an extensive study 27000 women who had children from 1997 until 2009. The study was done by the CDC. What is also striking is that these “expert” drug pushers said that women should not stop taking anti-depressants despite the risk of birth defects. Do all these experts only think about money? It is patently clear anti-depressants don’t work and never have and now that create birth defects.
Here is a quote from ABC news "When you look at sertraline, it’s one of the most commonly used antidepressants," said Cooper. He said the findings that the Zoloft was not associated with any birth defects should be "reassuring" for expectant women. Really Dr. Cooper what about that Zoloft has a high risk of a person committing suicide. Is that reassuring too?
The more common birth defects associated with anti-depressants include heart defects, issues with the abdominal wall, anus and malformation of the skull and brain. So the risk of having your child with malformation of the skull and brain outweighs the need for an anti-depressant? The article went further to say Eli Lilly which makes Prozac and GSK which makes Paxil went onto defending themselves.
Hopefully, more and more women will get the idea that taking drugs during pregnancy is a big risk. When doctors say the risk is low beware that the risk is extremely high. The also come after the State of California passed a draconian law that parents can’t opted out of shots based on personal preference.
The police state is taking shape where people are being forced to take medications. Take a look at the movie THX 1138 by George Lucas, a police state planet or drugs.

Has America Become a Nation of Psychotics on Psychotics?

(photovecteezy)

An article reprint by James Ridgeway who writes for The Guardian newspaper, and is the senior Washington correspondent for Mother Jones magazine.

You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.
Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses - primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics. Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis.
It is anything but a coincidence that the explosion in antipsychotic use coincides with the pharmaceutical industry's development of a new class of medications known as "atypical antipsychotics." Beginning with Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel in the 1990s, followed by Abilify in the early 2000s, these drugs were touted as being more effective than older antipsychotics like Haldol and Thorazine. More importantly, they lacked the most noxious side effects of the older drugs - in particular, the tremors and other motor control problems.
The atypical anti-psychotics were the bright new stars in the pharmaceutical industry's roster of psychotropic drugs - costly, patented medications that made people feel and behave better without any shaking or drooling. Sales grew steadily, until by 2009 Seroquel and Abilify numbered fifth and sixth in annual drug sales, and prescriptions written for the top three atypical antipsychotics totaled more than 20 million. Suddenly, antipsychotics weren't just for psychotics any more.
Not just for psychotics anymore
By now, just about everyone knows how the drug industry works to influence the minds of American doctors, plying them with gifts, junkets, ego-tripping awards, and research funding in exchange for endorsing or prescribing the latest and most lucrative drugs. "Psychiatrists are particularly targeted by Big Pharma because psychiatric diagnoses are very subjective," says Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, whose Pharmed Out project tracks the industry's influence on American medicine, and who last month hosted a conference on the subject at Georgetown. A shrink can't give you a blood test or an MRI to figure out precisely what's wrong with you. So it's often a case of diagnosis by prescription. (If you feel better after you take an anti-depressant, it's assumed that you were depressed.) As the researchers in one study of the drug industry's influence put it, "the lack of biological tests for mental disorders renders psychiatry especially vulnerable to industry influence." For this reason, they argue, it's particularly important that the guidelines for diagnosing and treating mental illness be compiled "on the basis of an objective review of the scientific evidence" - and not on whether the doctors writing them got a big grant from Merck or own stock in AstraZeneca
Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and a leading critic of the Big Pharma, puts it more bluntly: "Psychiatrists are in the pocket of industry." Angell has pointed out that most of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the bible of mental health clinicians, have ties to the drug industry. Likewise, a 2009 study showed that 18 out of 20 of the shrinks who wrote the American Psychiatric Association's most recent clinical guidelines for treating depression, bipolar disorders, and schizophrenia had financial ties to drug companies.

In a recent article in The New York Review of Books, Angell deconstructs what she calls an apparent "raging epidemic of mental illness" among Americans. The use of psychoactive drugs—including both antidepressants and antipsychotics—has exploded, and if the new drugs are so effective, Angell points out, we should "expect the prevalence of mental illness to be declining, not rising." Instead, "the tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007 - from one in 184 Americans to one in seventy-six. For children, the rise is even more startling - a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades. Mental illness is now the leading cause of disability in children." Under the tutelage of Big Pharma, we are "simply expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one." Fugh-Berman agrees: In the age of aggressive drug marketing, she says, "Psychiatric diagnoses have expanded to include many perfectly normal people."
Cost benefit analysis
What's especially troubling about the over-prescription of the new antipsychotics is its prevalence among the very young and the very old - vulnerable groups who often do not make their own choices when it comes to what medications they take. Investigations into antipsychotic use suggest that their purpose, in these cases, may be to subdue and tranquilize rather than to treat any genuine psychosis.
Carl Elliott reports in Mother Jones magazine: "Once bipolar disorder could be treated with atypicals, rates of diagnoses rose dramatically, especially in children. According to a recent Columbia University study, the number of children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder rose 40-fold between 1994 and 2003." And according to another study, "one in five children who visited a psychiatrist came away with a prescription for an antipsychotic drug."
A remarkable series published in the Palm Beach Post in May true revealed that the state of Florida's juvenile justice department has literally been pouring these drugs into juvenile facilities, "routinely" doling them out "for reasons that never were approved by federal regulators." The numbers are staggering: "In 2007, for example, the Department of Juvenile Justice bought more than twice as much Seroquel as ibuprofen. Overall, in 24 months, the department bought 326,081 tablets of Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs for use in state-operated jails and homes for children…That's enough to hand out 446 pills a day, seven days a week, for two years in a row, to kids in jails and programs that can hold no more than 2,300 boys and girls on a given day." Further, the paper discovered that "One in three of the psychiatrists who have contracted with the state Department of Juvenile Justice in the past five years has taken speaker fees or gifts from companies that make antipsychotic medications."
In addition to expanding the diagnoses of serious mental illness, drug companies have encouraged doctors to prescribe atypical anti-psychotics for a host of off-label uses. In one particularly notorious episode, the drugmaker Eli Lilly pushed Zyprexa on the caregivers of old people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, as well as agitation, anxiety, and insomnia. In selling to nursing home doctors, sales reps reportedly used the slogan "five at five"meaning that five milligrams of Zyprexa at 5 pm would sedate their more difficult charges. The practice persisted even after FDA had warned Lilly that the drug was not approved for such uses, and that it could lead to obesity and even diabetes in elderly patients.

In a video interview conducted in 2006, Sharham Ahari, who sold Zyprexa for two years at the beginning of the decade, described to me how the sales people would wangle the doctors into prescribing it. At the time, he recalled, his doctor clients were giving him a lot of grief over patients who were "flipping out" over the weight gain associated with the drug, along with the diabetes. "We were instructed to downplay side effects and focus on the efficacy of drug…to recommend the patient drink a glass a water before taking a pill before the meal and then after the meal in hopes the stomach would expand" and provide an easy way out of this obstacle to increased sales. When docs complained, he recalled, "I told them, ‘Our drug is state of the art. What's more important? You want them to get better or do you want them to stay the same--a thin psychotic patient or a fat stable patient.'"
For the drug companies, Shahrman says, the decision to continue pushing the drug despite side effects is matter of cost benefit analysis: Whether you will make more money by continuing to market the drug for off-label use, and perhaps defending against lawsuits, than you would otherwise. In the case of Zyprexa, in January 2009, Lilly settled a lawsuit brought by with the US Justice Department, agreeing to pay $1.4 billion, including "a criminal fine of $515 million, the largest ever in a health care case, and the largest criminal fine for an individual corporation ever imposed in a United States criminal prosecution of any kind,''the Department of Justice said in announcing the settlement." But Lilly's sale of Zyprexa in that year alone was over $1.8 billion.

Making patients worse

As it turns out, the atypical antipsychotics may not even be the best choice for people with genuine, undisputed psychosis.
A growing number of health professionals have come to think these drugs are not really as effective as older, less expensive medicines which they have replaced, that they themselves produce side effects that cause other sorts of diseases such as diabetes and plunge the patient deeper into the gloomy world of serious mental disorder. Along with stories of success come reports of people turned into virtual zombies.
Elliott reports in Mother Jones: "After another large analysis in The Lancet found that most atypicals actually performed worse than older drugs, two senior British psychiatrists penned a damning editorial that ran in the same issue. Dr. Peter Tyrer, the editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, and Dr. Tim Kendall of the Royal College of Psychiatrists wrote: "The spurious invention of the atypicals can now be regarded as invention only, cleverly manipulated by the drug industry for marketing purposes and only now being exposed."
Bottom line: Stop Big Pharma and the parasitic shrink community from wantonly pushing these pills across the population.

Antidepressant Linked to Cause Autism When Used by Pregnant Women

A recent article from SFgate.com and other news sources indicates that a recent study published in Archives of General Psychiatry, looked at the possible role of maternal antidepressant use before and during pregnancy. Prenatal Children whose mothers take Prozac, Zolft, or similar SSRI antidepressants during pregnancy are twice as likely as other children to have a diagnosis of autism or similar disorder. The study of 298 autistic children in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California system found a two fold increase in risk of the disorder when mothers took antidepressants at some point in the year before giving birth.
The study doesn't prove that the antidepressants actually caused autism, but it shows that genetics is not the sole reason for autism. Environmental issue can cause autism and antidepressants appear to be a common cause. We hope and expect there will be more studies, but we are not surprised of the results.

"The problem with our 'treatment procedures' is that, unlike standard medical practices, we have no way to verify the true cause of the problem or the effectiveness of our 'solutions'. We have gone from hot/cold baths, to lobotomies, to electric shocks, to psychotropic drugs - with no proof of any kind. If other MDs treated a broken arm the way we treat the human brain they would be in court. And so, more and more, that is where we find ourselves." Dr. Thomas Szasz MD, chair of psychiatry, Syracuse University.

Antidepressants Do Not Work to Treat Autism Either

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved any medications to specifically treat autism, but they have approved three SSRIs sertraline (Zoloft), fluoxetine (Prozac) and fluvoxamine (Luvox) to alleviate certain symptoms of the illness. But research indicated that these antidepressants also provide no benefits.
Another study found that the antidepressant citalopram (Celexa) is not any better than a placebo at alleviating autism symptoms. Additionally researchers concluded that studies of other antidepressants revealed the same results.

Besides not working, these antidepressants often cause major side effects, especially in young people. In the citalopram study, one child participant developed severe seizures from taking the drug. Even after being taken off it, the child continued to have seizures. Other children taking it had a hard time sleeping and concentrating. Hard time concentrating is a symptom of autism, so the study shows the so called alleviate is causing the problem.

It must be devasting for a mother to have an autistic child, but what is worse is the potential prescription of an antidepressant is actually causing the life long problem for the child. The responsibility lies heavily on the pharmaceutical companies that produced these drugs Eli Lilly(prozac), Pfizer(zolft), Solvay(Luvox), GlaxoSmithkline(Paxil), Forest Labs(Celexa). There are class action lawsuit currently by baumhedlundlaw.com, rxbirthdefects.com and others

The Enemy Can’t Kill the US Soldier, but the Enemy within Psychiatry and the Pharmaceutical Industry has Racked Upped Casualties

Excerpt of article by Jennifer Senior-New York Magazine Feb. 6, 2011

“I feel like people with my symptoms are becoming the majority of the Army,” says a major from the New York area who recently started taking Effexor, an antidepressant, and a variety of sleep meds after a second tour in Iraq. “Feeling anxious when you don’t have a reason to, being a little depressed, having low grade anhedonia(inability to experience pleasure), not sleeping well this is the new normal for those of us who’ve been repeatedly deployed.”
The Army’s own research confirms that drug and alcohol abuse, disciplinary infractions, and criminal activity are increasing among active-duty service members. Most ominously, a growing number of soldiers can’t handle the strains of war at all. Until three years ago, the suicide rate of the Army, the branch with by far the most men and women in this war, was actually lower than the American population’s a testament to the hardiness of our troops, given that young men with weapons are, at least as a statistical matter, disproportionately prone to suicide. But in 2008, the Army suicide rate surpassed that of the civilian population’s, and the Marines’ surpassed it shortly thereafter. So grim is the problem that this summer, the Army released a remarkably candid suicide report. “If we include accidental death, which frequently is the result of high-risk behavior (e.g., drinking and driving, drug overdose),” it concluded, “we find that less young men and women die in combat than die by their own actions. Simply stated, we are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy.” End article

In other words, nearly as many soldiers are dying at home today as are dying abroad.

What are the drugs the army psychiatrists and doctors are prescribing to our soldiers? Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Celexa, Effexor, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan, Restoril, Xanax, Adderall, Ritalin, Haldol, Risperdal, Seroquel, Ambien, Lunesta, Elavil, Trazodone War. The mainstream media will not report this, as it reflects badly on their pharmaceutical sponsors.

Some Global Reports of Suicide Just The Last Few Months Directly Attributed to Anti-depressants

New Zealand
New Zealand man 26, was found dead on Mount Victoria in March 2008 a month after leaving his home without his wallet or shoes.
He had been suffering depression after a he had diagnosed himself as having Aspergers syndrome, a form of autism. His father told the coroner he believed that the initial mental health intervention of a prescription for an anti-depressant, Citalopram (celexa) maybe the cause for his son to effectively committing suicide by fire. His family is now taking up their case with the New Zealand Health Minister. According to reports from (voxy.co.nz).

UK
In Bristol England the news site thisisbristol.co.uk A twenty year old woman who had to move out of home because of the destructive impact she was having on her family killed herself by taking a huge drug overdose. A toxicology report showed that she had 21.4mg of Clozapine a powerful anti-psychotic drug which she had not been prescribed in her system. Assistant deputy coroner Terry Moore said: "The quantity she took satisfies me she knew what she was doing." He recorded a verdict of suicide.

A court inquest determined that an Ipswich England man jumped to his death from a bridge. The Greater Suffolk Coroner, Dr Peter Dean recorded the verdict that he took his own life. EADT.co.uk indicated that on June 25, it was reported he appeared to be a “lot calmer” and was put on anti-depressants. He was also advised to contact the doctor if he had any thoughts of self-harming. He committed suicide on Sept 30th.

Walesonline.co.uk reported Oct. 12th that a Wales teenager was found hanging in a sports club in December of 2008. The inquest results show he was on medication for depression.

USA
Washington: King5.com news reported that a twenty year old University of Washington women death was ruled a suicide by hanging by the medical examiner. She was found dead near a fraternity house on October 6th. Reports indicate she was prescribed Zoloft.

Pennsylvania: (goerie.com) A teenagers family remembers and Walks for Depressed Teens. Their daughter in April died of an overdose of anti-depressants.
Ohio: News reports indicate the Carroll County Coroner Mandal Haas in northeast Ohio found that a woman suspected of killing her two young children before taking her own life had been taking medication for depression.
Unfortunately there were likely more and more will be reported until this madness is stopped!

Another LA Starlet on a Crash Course and with a long list of Prescription Drugs

There is a recently released probation report which shows all the prescription drugs that Lindsay Lohan has been taking. News sources indicate the report discloses Adderall for ADD, Zoloft for anxiety, Dilaudid a pain killer, Trazadone an antidepressant, and Nexium for heartburn.
There is no wonder why Ms. Lohan finds her self in trouble. Antidepressant don't lead to relief, they lead to trouble. Just simply do the research

FAA is Planning to Approve Antidepressant Popping Pilots and their Lethal Side Effects

We have always wondered what government agency would be most likely to put a person in harms way. If you join the military then you volunteer to be placed in the line of fire when under enemy attack. The antidepressant use can also kill you on the base just like it did at Ft. Hood several months ago. The IRS will use fear instead of death, and they can certainly incarcerate you which can be a slow death. The FDA has been approving psychotropic drugs, heart medications, birth control pills et al, which have horrendous track records and mortal consequences. Some of those drugs have been taken off the market, but most like antidepressants are still available even though it is widely known that they are not effective. Now we have the latest US government agency the FAA, which will now allow pilots to medicate and fly.
Some of the side effects of these allowable medication drugs (Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro) are suicide, mania, agitation, dizziness, fatigue, insomnia, tremors, muscle aches, diarrhea, fast heartbeat, fever chills, fainting, bizarre behavior, aggressiveness, joint or wrist aches and pain, ringing in the ears, confusion, decreased concentration, decreased coordination, exaggerated feeling of well being, irritability, hostility, memory loss, vomiting, mood changes, unusual weakness, vision changes, hallucinations, and worsening of depression. Why would anyone fly in a tin can at 35,000 feet when the driver may have one or more of these side effects? It seems clear the FAA is looking at only one head in the head count. Based on these side effects you could have a maniac flying the plane! You should get thrown off the plane for bizarre behavior, but now you get to be the captain.
According to news reports the FAA will seek to evaluate the pilots on antidepressants while the pilot is grounded for approximately six months and ongoing through their careers. They also imply pilots could be using antidepressants now without disclosing that information. If so those pilots will be barred from flying, and would undergo a longer evaluation.
Foxnews quotes FAA administrator Randy Babbit "We know more today about the science of the medications being given and we know a lot more about depression itself," Babbitt said. "The policy is changing I mean our number one priority is safety, and the public certainly has the right to know that everybody in the cockpit is healthy, both mentally and physically." End quote. If they truly knew more about these medications they would know they do not work at all, and that the side effects are lethal.
Foxnews also reports Babbitt saying the new rule is aimed, in part, at removing the stigma of mental illness, much as the FAA began to deal with drug abuse and alcoholism in the cockpit with the establishment 40 years ago of its Human Intervention and Motivation Study, end quote. Does the FAA have more concern about the stigma of mental illness or passenger safety? It appears to us that this is a social experiment, so mentally ill pilots retain their jobs regardless of the consequences. We can’t discriminate, so we need to allow depressed pilots to fly with lethal medications. It is not about safety, but political correctness.
It is now up to passengers to express their concerns with this experiment, and for Airlines to form their own rules regarding potentially lethal medicated pilots. I believe the mass majority will want a healthy pilot free of mind altering drugs or medication. Antidepressants clearly alter the mind.

Possible Fraud by Pharmaceutical Companies as Placebo Confirmed as more Effective and Safer than Antidepressants

A recently article reported in Newsweek Magazine, of a study by (The Journal of the American Medical Association) and other studies have shown that the effectiveness of antidepressants is almost entirely due to the hope and aspirations that the drug will be effective and not the drug at all. Hence, a placebo is more effective than antidepressants, and there are no side effects from placebos. The side effects from antidepressants alone can kill you. According to the FDA the use of antidepressants can cause anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania, mania and suicide. They have also been attributed to mass murder (Columbine, Virginia Tech) to list a couple. Newsweek reports regarding a study by Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein of the University of Connecticut. Patients on a placebo improved about 75 percent as much as those on the drugs. Essentially you positive mind will cure your depression.

Many may ask how is it possible that these drugs could get approved by the FDA for decades if they are proven to be ineffective. Well the early failed results appear to have been suppressed. Thomas Moore of George Washington University used the freedom of information act to analyze the FDA earlier studies of antidepressants. There were numerous company sponsored studies by the makers of Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Effexor and others. Many of these studies were unpublished, and over 50% more unpublished studies than other classes of drugs. Apparently 40% of the all clinical trials had never been published, and most of those unpublished trials according to Newsweek's article were the trials that proved antidepressants were a failure. The damaging results indicate pharmaceutical companies may be fraudulent in their studies and disclosures, and we ask why companies are allowed to sponsor trials. In addition, the FDA appears to have allowed it. Who is watching the store? Why wouldn’t the government at minimum only allow independent studies? But even that could be problem. Scientists at Universities who have questioned antidepressant results and who have cited Irvin Kirsch’s results have been reprimanded and their future grants have been threatened. These University grants are typically funded by large pharmaceutical companies. Looks like for our own safety we need to find another independent study group, and perhaps the Department of Justice can look into the FDA and pharmaceutical studies for authenticity.

Newsweek’s article also points out the relationship of the chemical imbalance theory causing depression. Pharmaceutical companies have claimed for decades that this chemical imbalance is the cause of depression. The typical SSRI (serotonin reuptake inhibitor) is supposed to raise the serotonin level of the patient. This is the basis of all their research. Well a new drug study indicates that lowering serotonin is as effective as raising serotonin on depression. The new drug tianeptine made in France lowers serotonin. Now the American and UK pharmaceutical companies’ main argument is gone, but they never really had an argument. In actuality, there is no scientific evidence at all that demonstrates antidepressants alleviate depression. The hope and expectation that a pill “sugar pill” will be effective recently has shown to alleviate depression.

When Bristol Myers Squibb’s advertises Abilify as an add-on to one’s current antidepressant because of it’s ineffectiveness on depression, it is an indication from the industry that their products have failed. In addition, many of these drugs are marketed for Bi-Polar Disorder, ADHD, and even non-smoking. ADHD has also been found to be fraudulent (see the book ADHDFraud by Fred Baughman Jr.). Will it be found that antidepressants are ineffective with these maladies also? There is certain to be more investigation into these past unpublished results, and we hope the justice department will look into fraud and misrepresentation. Like the Real Estate bubble the pharmaceutical house of cards is coming down, and we are sure there are many lawsuits to come with this disturbing information.

An Alternative to Psychotropic Drugs

Virtually every campus or company mass shooting involves the shooter taking an SSRI(selective re-uptake inhibitor) like Prozac, Zoloft, Exfexor, and Paxal among others. A lot of these shooters report that they feel like zombies and they want to get "off their meds". There is a book Prozac Backlash by Joseph Glenmullen which he talks about an aggressive effect when a person is taken "off their meds" abruptly. But the Columbine killers Klebold and Harris were clearly on medication.
These drugs, the huge pharmaceutical companies that make them, the doctor who prescribe them, and the government agencies who support questionable research but are suppose to be the "watchdog" are all guilty of creating a health and legal menace.
The effects of these drugs are well chronicled and are advertised as potentially causing adverse effects such as anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, hypomania, mania, and thoughts of suicide. We are certain nobody wishes to feel any of these effects, and what mother wishes to have their child feel this way.
Chiropractors have been studying and addressing the neurotransmitters of the body since the 50's when Dr. Palmer discovered that Chiropractors can correct abnormalities of the intellect as well as the body. During that period Judges would commit mental patients to Chiropractic Sanitarium, and they produces and much higher cure and discharge rate of release then their rival sanitariums.
Chiropractor practice is a drug free alternative solution to the mass murder effects of pharmaceutical. Before you even think of putting your child on a mind altering drug you should take the safe step and see a chiropractor and exercise a natural cure