Psychiatric Drugs Are False Prophets With Big Profits - Psychiatry has been hijacked

From a column in Psychiatry Today by Robert Berezin M.D. While I do not think that psychotherapy is very workable, his criticism of psychiatry is spot on.

Once again, I just finished another consultation with someone from out of state who was desperate to find a therapist who he could talk to. He didn’t want to be pigeon holed into some DSM-5 reductionistic diagnosis. He didn’t want psychiatric drugs. He was desperate to find a psychiatrist who would understand him, who he could relate to, and could treat him with real psychotherapy. There should never have been a reason for me to consult with anyone from out of state. Unfortunately, the cynical and fraudulent takeover of psychiatry is all but complete. How many real psychiatrists are left?

How did this happen? Over the course of my career, I kept my head down and devoted myself to my craft, psychotherapy. I was certainly aware of the collusion between the APA and the drug companies. But as recently as ten years ago, I honestly did not know that things had really deteriorated this far.

Apparently, Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman and other like-minded psychiatrists, decided that psychoanalysis had too much power, and they wanted to transform the APA once again to the tenets of somatic psychiatry. The underling theory of somatic psychiatry is that the source of human struggle is considered to be the brain itself, rather than the person.

Treatments that follow from this simplistic, mechanistic, and reductionist notion have been to act directly on the brain, always with violating and destructive outcomes.

Somatic psychiatry originated with seizure therapy, or its first modern incarnation, insulin shock therapy (IST). It actually had its roots in the sixteenth century and was used psychiatrically around the time of the American Revolution. It was refined in 1927 into insulin shock therapy, when insulin was used to induce seizures as a treatment for drug addiction, psychopathy, and schizophrenia, with claims of a 50 percent remission rate. Papers were published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, starting in 1937. IST was widely used through the 1940s and 1950s. Its founding etiological principle was the (false) idea that seizures were the opposite of schizophrenia. Induce a seizure, and you balance out psychosis. In the 1930s, a more refined scientific explanation was developed for the (phantom) curative power of seizures. Its science proclaimed that psychiatric problems came from the autonomic nervous system. IST was said to work by blocking the nerve cells of the parasympathetic nervous system, thereby intensifying their tonus and strengthening their anabolic force. This restored the nerve cell, and the patient recovered. The corollary theory was that patients were jolted out of their psychiatric condition.

Next, we have lobotomies, originally called leucotomies. Lobotomies came onto the scene in the 1930s, having been invented and promoted by Antonio Egas Moniz. When I was a psychiatric resident, lobotomies were still fresh in psychiatric memory. The practice had only ceased in the early 1960s, after over twenty thousand people received this “treatment.” Let’s see … what was the science? The source of psychiatric problems was located in the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex. The treatment of choice, then, was to ream out the prefrontal cortex with an ice pick. Respected MDs had a miracle cure and were the vanguard of the field. Science proved that lobotomies cured not only schizophrenia but anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, obsessive/compulsive disorder, and the unwanted behavioral problems associated with mental retardation (this is code for sexual behaviors). It was respected and celebrated in the psychiatric literature and validated in journals with documented studies and peer-reviewed scientific evidence. Lest you think this is an exaggeration, Moniz won a Nobel Prize in 1949 for his great and wonderful discovery.

Eventually, the validating follow-ups were shown to be fabricated and deluded, with self-promoting lies and half truths. Only after a great deal of harm were they debunked. And the ice picks were thrown into the trash heap of psychiatric history. We need to add that after lobotomies gradually attenuated, no one stopped and said, “What in the world did we just do?” How could sticking an ice pick in someone’s brain ever have been even a remote consideration? What was going on that such a grotesque medieval mutilation was actually adopted as a good thing to do? And how could it have been publicly and professionally embraced? However, as always seems to happen, amnesia quickly set in, and we forgot the brutal inhumanity that was so recently celebrated. And the considerable body of discredited scientific validation was never scrutinized for its contribution to and for having promoted such harm. Instead, science moved on to support the next somatic treatment in exactly the same way.

Next, we have electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which came along soon after IST, in 1938. ECT was still a part of the curriculum in my own psychiatric residency in 1971. Entire psychiatric hospitals, built exclusively for ECT, were still operating, with no empty beds. Scientific studies and respected journals provided documented validation for placing electrodes on patients’ heads and applying huge jolts of electricity to generate seizures. Apparently, the jolt theory had gained traction. So we shocked the brain, instead of reaming it out. How humane. In addition to everything else, ECT also was touted as a cure for depression. It was allegedly proved that ECT was a safe, effective cure, with few, if any, drawbacks. The resultant memory loss not only was initially downplayed but was trumpeted as being therapeutic. (By the way, drugs are being developed today to chemically erase memories with the idea that this is therapeutic for trauma—same thing.) Later, under public pressure, ECT was refined to cut down on memory loss. The history of electroconvulsive therapy followed the same trajectory as lobotomies. Eventually, ECT showed itself to be the ineffective and violating practice that it is. But don’t get overconfident. Incredibly, in recent years, ECT has made a comeback and is being promoted once again, when its progeny treatments, antidepressants, don’t work.

Finally, we come the current incarnation of somatic psychiatry - neurobiological psychiatry, and its so-called treatment—drugs. Psychiatric drugs are next in the lineage of “treatments” whose focus is to act upon the physical brain. History is repeating itself.

Our contemporary science has now apparently proven that human problems come from genetic or developmental neurobiological disorders of the physical, anatomical, biochemical brain. The somatic treatments for these neurobiological, genetic, synaptic hormonal neurotransmitter diseases are brain drugs—psychoactive drugs.

In one generation, the APA, in collusion with the drug companies have destroyed psychiatry. The American Public has been sold a bill of goods.

People actually believe that human struggle is a brain disease. It is now taken as fact that there is a chemical imbalance in the brain and psychoactive drugs is just what the doctor ordered. We can now cure biological depression with antidepressants; biological anxiety with benzodiazepines; the fictitious ADHD with, of all things, amphetamines; insomnia with benzodiazepines, and other bizarre psychoactive drugs; Likewise the belief is that schizophrenia and manic-depression should be treated with drugs [...]

The Devious Matrix Called Psychiatry

A new Blog entry by Jon Rappaport entitled The Devious Matrix Called Psychiatry

A very long article well worth the read. Here's the intro

“Psychiatry does more than define mental disorders. It purports to describe actual states of mind, and it coalesces and freezes those descriptions in such a way that people believe these states of mind exist. They don’t. They’re fictions. Fantasies. This is an enormous landscape of consciousness-programming. It’s actually reduction. Like many systems before it, psychiatry tries to reduce the possibilities of wide-ranging free consciousness. Throughout history, people have always been afraid of mind freedom. ‘What will people with free minds do?’ ‘What will society become if people’s minds are free?’ I can tell you: society would change radically, right down to its foundations.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

Over the past 30 years, my work has always returned to freedom of the individual.

Not only Constitutional freedom and Bill-of-Rights freedom, but liberation of the power of individual thought and imagination and invention. Because those qualities are unpredictable, open-ended, and limitless. This is where long-term revolution begins.

So naturally, I’ve investigated the premier “science” that claims to have the best understanding of the mind: psychiatry.

I was neither surprised nor shocked to discover that psychiatry is a fraud, a pseudoscience.

Yet, this “science” is accorded special treatment and licensure and favored status by governments around the world. Why? Because untold numbers of patients can be diagnosed and drugged with highly toxic substances, and even held against their will in closed wards. Dissidents can be contained. Whole populations can be convinced they are either “mentally healthy” or “mentally ill,” as if those two fictional categories described some highly significant status.

If psychiatry were merely recognized as an experimental hypothesis, and so-called professionals diagnosed one another and applied labels to one another and drugged one another, in order to assess the outcome, as any scientist would, before subjecting the public to his idiosyncratic notions…well, fine. I could understand that.

But of course, this is not where we find ourselves. Psychiatrists are considered lofty authorities. They are called as expert witnesses in criminal trials. Then can, in many cases, arbitrarily force their will on patients. They are called upon by media to render their analyses. They occupy sanctified chairs at universities.

So…with that introduction, let me present information which has not been broadly communicated to the public.

More Evidence Antidepressants Might Induce Sexual Dysfunction Even After Stopping Them

From the Website "Mad In America"

A retrospective study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry identified 183 possible cases of people who suffered sexual dysfunction that endured even after stopping taking SSRI antidepressants. Of these, the Israeli researchers identified "23 high-probability cases" of "Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction" (PSSD).

"Possible cases were subjects with normal pretreatment sexual function who first experienced sexual disturbances while using a single SSRI/SNRI, which did not resolve upon drug discontinuation for 1 month or longer," wrote the researchers. "High-probability cases were also younger than 50-year-olds; did not have confounding medical conditions, medications, or drug use; and had normal scores on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale."

"Limitations of the study include retrospective design and selection and report biases that do not allow generalization or estimation of incidence," noted the researchers. "However, our findings add to previous reports and support the existence of PSSD, which may not be fully explained by alternative nonpharmacological factors related to sexual dysfunction, including depression and anxiety."

The website RxISK has been tracking cases of apparent post-SSRI sexual dysfunction.

Ben-Sheetrit, Joseph, Dov Aizenberg, Antonei B. Csoka, Abraham Weizman, and Haggai Hermesh. “Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction: Clinical Characterization and Preliminary Assessment of Contributory Factors and Dose-Response Relationship.” Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, March 2015, 1. doi:10.1097/JCP.0000000000000300. (Abstract)

Of course, this side effect has become another medical condition to treat.

What's Wrong With Research In Psychiatry?

The Last Psychiatrist weblog has a decent article on what's wrong with research in psychiatry. Here are some choice bits, with more at the link:

Apart from the high fives, bravado, and binge alcoholism.

Dynastic:

There are no independent psychiatric researchers. Young academics are mentored by older academics; this isn't optional, for either person. In virtually no circumstance do they study something entirely of their own choosing, it is either an outgrowth of the mentors' research, or is the mentors' research.

Groupthink:

Academic psychiatrists are nearly all on the same page, and refer to one another as if they have a relationship, even when they've never met. ("Chuck Nemeroff is doing some good work on...") It's pointless to list the other characteristics of groupthink here, except to highlight one:

the purpose of groupthink is not to promote an ideology, but self-preservation, and this is unconscious. They don't realize that their lives are devoted to preserving the group, yet young researchers are brought on who connect with the group; peer reviewers-- and journal editors-- come from the group; grant reviewers, and NIMH people themselves came from, and support the group.

An example of groupthink preservation is the referencing of studies. Academics support their propositions with previous studies; however, no one checks the accuracy of these studies. No one has the time, and the group necessarily must trust the work of others in the group. Even if an error were to be found, it would be described as an isolated error. A cursory stroll through this site alone suggests just how "isolated" such errors really are.

Outcomes Research Is Purposefully Avoided, or Ignored:

You might think in a field with nothing but outcome studies (e.g. Prozac vs. placebo) I might not be able to make this claim, but I do.

Most studies are short term. The few long term studies that exist (e.g. Depakote for maintenance) are either equivocal (e.g. Depakote for maintenance) or show no efficacy (e.g. Depakote for maintenance.) And they are ignored.

But these outcomes are distractions. The question isn't is Depakote good for maintenance bipolar. The question is, is there any value to the diagnosis of bipolar? In other words, if you called it anxiety, or personality disorder, or anything else, and then treated them ad lib, would the outcome be different? Is there value to the DSM?

You might argue the diagnosis leads us to the treatment, but in most cases, meds are used across all diagnoses, and more often than not a diagnosis is created to justify the medication.

Are hospitals valuable? You would think that by now we'd have a clear answer to this, the most expensive of maneuvers. I can say, however, that reducing the length of stay from several months to 5-7 days has not affected the suicide rate. I'm not saying they are or are not valuable, I am saying that I don't know-- and that's the problem.

It is 2008 and there are more studies on restless leg syndrome then there are on hospital vs. placebo. You know why? See above.

A damning, valuable article

Psychiatrists Do Not Know What Normal Sex Is.

Psychiatrists are trying to define what normal sex is for the next edition of the DSM, but will probably wind up making everything a for-profit treatable condition that be be treated with a pill.

As Seen on MSNBC

This month the American Psychiatric Association announced the names of “working group” members who will guide the development of the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, the codex of American psychiatry.

Not surprisingly, given the DSM’s colorful history, particularly when it comes to sex, controversy erupted within days of the announcement, especially over membership of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders working group, which will wrestle with questions such as:

• Are sadomasochism or pedophilia mental disorders?
• Are dysfunctions like female hypoactive sexual desire disorder (low sex drive) psychiatric issues, or hormonal issues?

Perhaps the most important question is whether, when it comes to many sexual interests and issues, it’s even possible or desirable to create diagnostic criteria.

At least one petition, spearheaded by transgender activists, is being circulated to oppose the appointment of some members to the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders work group and its chair, Kenneth Zucker, head of the Gender Identity Service at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada. The petition accuses Zucker of having engaged in “junk science” and promoting “hurtful theories” during his career, especially advocating the idea that children who are unambiguously male or female anatomically, but seem confused about their gender identity, can be treated by encouraging gender expression in line with their anatomy.

Zucker rejects the junk-science charge, saying that there “has to be an empirical basis to modify anything” in the DSM. As for hurting people, “in my own career, my primary motivation in working with children, adolescents and families is to help them with the distress and suffering they are experiencing, whatever the reasons they are having these struggles. I want to help people feel better about themselves, not hurt them.”

That sex is controversial comes as no surprise to Dr. Darrel Regier, the vice-chair of the APA’s DSM-V Task Force, based in Arlington, Va.

Sex, he says, in an understatement, “is an area that obviously has lots of emotion attached to it.” But the APA, he says, is doing its best to put science and evidence first, both in who it appoints to working groups and in the process it will use to create the DSM-V (so called because it is the fifth complete version). Each working group will accept input from many experts with varying views, reach a consensus on DSM content, and then put that work group’s product before the board of trustees of the APA and the APA assembly.

All that may be true, but Regier does not expect such reassurances to quell the forces already swirling around the DSM-V as it moves toward a 2012 publication date. Currently, the DSM-IV includes sex-related activities as varied as paraphilias like voyeurism, klismaphilia (erotic use of enemas) and sadism, and functional disorders like dyspareunia (pain with intercourse), erectile disorders and premature ejaculation.

'A set of scientific hypotheses'

The first DSM was issued in 1952. The idea was to create a more standardized way of talking about psychiatric disorders. As psychiatrist Dr. Gail Saltz, a TODAY Show contributor who also practices in New York, explains, the DSM is best viewed as “a language we have chosen to speak, a talking point we mental health professionals have created to communicate as well as we can with each other and with other professions.”

It is not a final arbiter of who’s crazy and who’s not. Saltz, who says she thinks the DSM can be limiting in clinical practice, prefers to take a holistic approach and look at each patient’s collection of symptoms and concerns without being restricted by the DSM’s various criteria.

Regier agrees that’s how doctors should use it, arguing that the DSM “really needs to be seen as a set of scientific hypotheses.” It is, he believes, “a living document” changeable with new research.

But if the DSM is a book of “hypotheses,” why the fuss? Does the DSM matter?

Yes. A lot.

The first reason why is prosaic. If you want your insurance to reimburse your visit to a mental health professional, you are probably going to need a DSM code signifying a diagnosis.

But the more profound reason is that it shapes how doctors, even the rest of rest of society, view sexuality.

“A psychiatric diagnosis is more than shorthand to facilitate communication among professionals or to standardize research parameters,” wrote Dr. Charles Moser and Peggy Kleinplatz in a 2005 paper published in the Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality.

“Psychiatric diagnoses affect child custody decisions, self-esteem, whether individuals are hired or fired, receive security clearances, or have other rights and privileges curtailed. Criminals may find that their sentences are either mitigated or enhanced as a direct result of their diagnoses.

The equating of unusual sexual interests with psychiatric diagnoses has been used to justify the oppression of sexual minorities and to serve political agendas. A review of this area is not only a scientific issue, but also a human rights issue.”

A problem for whom?

There is no shortage of opinion on what ought to be changed, deleted or included in the new DSM-V. Sandra Leiblum, formerly a professor at New Jersey’s Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and an expert in female sexual health who is now in private practice in Bridgewater, N.J., says she wants to see a revision of diagnoses of female hypoactive sexual desire disorder, other female arousal disorders and sexual pain like dyspareunia. For example, she wants language that would separate arousal disorders into genital (more biological in origin) and subjective subtypes.

Carol Queen, a sexologist, sexual rights activist and co-founder of San Francisco’s Center for Sex and Culture, believes the new DSM should stress that sexual variances are only a problem “if they are problems in the life of the person showing up” in a psychiatrist’s office “so that when somebody is eroticizing something, or doing something in a consensual way, that’s not a problem” even if it may seem odd to most of us.

She also proposes an addition, a diagnosis of “absexual” (“ab” meaning “away from”). This would include those who appear to be “turned on by fulminating against it.” Examples could include state governors who crusade against prostitution even while paying hookers for sex, and religious leaders who wind up trying to explain engaging in the sex acts they preach against.

Moser, who is affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, and Kleinplatz, from the University of Ottawa, argue that all paraphilias, like sexual sadism, sexual masochism, transvestism, should be removed from the DSM, insisting that “the DSM criteria for diagnosis of unusual sexual interests as pathological rests on a series of unproven and more importantly, untested assumptions.”

This does not mean, as opponents of this idea have suggested, that they somehow approve of sex between adults and children. “We would argue that the removal of pedophilia from the DSM would focus attention on the criminal aspect of these acts, and not allow the perpetrators to claim mental illness as a defense or use it to mitigate responsibility for their crimes," they wrote. "Individuals convicted of these crimes should be punished as provided by the laws in the jurisdiction in which the crime occurred.”

Most of these suggestions are inherently political, as much as the APA and most psychiatrists would wish to avoid politics. Sex exists as part of the culture, and it cannot be separated from it.

The DSM has reflected cultural shifts through its revisions and new editions. The most famous example is homosexuality. When the first DSM was created in 1952, homosexuality was declared a mental illness. By 1973, and after much heated debate and over objections from religious conservatives, the DSM-II excluded homosexuality as a disorder with the exception of one variant, and that was soon dropped in an interim revision.

Once deviant, now desirable

“Definitely a change in culture affects diagnoses,” Leiblum says. “We used to think oral-genital sex was deviant and we have embraced that. Masturbation was evidence of out-of-control behavior, now we see it as not only normative but to be encouraged.”

So if enough people start to do it, or are more public about doing it, does that mean it is no longer a disorder? “I think it probably affects the degree to which people are willing to look at scientific evidence,” Regier says.

This fuzziness is why, starting in the 1980s, the field moved toward adding the notion of “distress” to the DSM.

“We do not consider something a disorder unless there is a clearly defined description of this entity and there is clearly some significant dysfunction and distress associated with it,” explains Regier. “I would say also if there is no victim involved … this behavior is not imposing a person’s will on another person, that is a critical component when one looks at conditions in this area.”

If you aren’t distressed, and everyone is a consenting grown-up, then there probably isn’t a disorder. But things won’t be that simple for the creators of the new DSM.

“How do you make a criteria that does not pathologize low desire?” Leiblum asks rhetorically. You add the need to be distressed about it. “But then whose distress should be looked at?” she asks, referring to a sexual partner. “You can have hypertension and not feel any distress because there is objective criteria for what is high blood pressure. But there is none of that for sexual diagnoses, even premature ejaculation. What constitutes premature?”

(At a press conference Monday, the International Society of Sexual Medicine made a stab at a definition, saying premature ejaculation is "a male sexual dysfunction characterized by ejaculation which always or nearly always occurs prior to or within about one minute of vaginal penetration; and, inability to delay ejaculation on all or nearly all vaginal penetrations; and, negative personal consequences, such as distress, bother, frustration and/or the avoidance of sexual intimacy.”)

This problematic lack of clarity, Leiblum argues, is especially acute for the paraphilias. Does the criteria amount to “If it’s mine it’s OK, but if it’s yours it’s kinky? These issues need to be grappled with.”

The tragic psychiatric misdiagnosis of Sopis Mirza led to her death

Someone sent in this link to another tragic case where a valid medical condition was misdiagnosed, and the woman involved was committed to a psychiatric hospital for treatment of her non-existent mental disease. Unfortunately, the woman died a few short days after returning home of the very real disease she had contracted.

The woman's name is Sophia Mirza, and her full story can be read online here The medical condition is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, and you can read more about this condition here.

The World Health Organisation has classified Myalgic Encephalomyelitis as a neurological illness, as defined by ICD-10-G93.3, separate from the psychological illnesses classified under ICD-10-F48

ME/CFS - Doctors disbelief kills young woman



ME/CFS - A Hidden National Scandal Exposed

Science proves people's brains equivalent to Jell-O

Reposting an amusing bit from the adventures of modern psychiatry:

As seen online at the Jello Musuem and elsewhere:

March 17, 1993, technicians at St. Jerome hospital in Batavia [NY] test a bowl of lime Jell-O with an EEG machine and confirm the earlier testing by Canadian Doctor Adrian Upton in 1969 that a dome of wiggly Jell-O has brain waves identical to those of adult men and women. In 1969, Dr. Upton connected an electroencephalograph (EEG) to a dome of lime Jell-O, only to find the readings to be almost identical to those of healthy human beings.

This is not quite correct. To be picky, the signals observed are identical to brain waves. There is obviously no brain in a bowl of jello.

Also as originally reported in Mother Earth News back in 1976

THERE'S ALWAYS ROOM FOR MODERN MEDICINE . . . OR IS THERE?

Dr. Adrian Upton, professor of neurology at MacMasters University in Hamilton, Ontario, recently rigged a brain wave machine, artificial respirators, and intravenous feeding equipment to a bowl of lime jello about the size of a human brain, and—gasp!—recorded readings typical of those emitted by a living person. In fact, the good doctor noted, the results of the electronic analysis would not have qualified the dessert as sufficiently "dead" to have the life-sustaining plugs pulled under existing legal guidelines!

Apparently the Smithsonian once held a symposium on Jell-O where 1993 results were confirmed.

(Note - Dr. Upton is NOT a fictitious Doctor. He has had a long career at McMasters University)

What an electroencephalograph machine (or EEG) does is measure electrical activity in the brain. This is probably useful for something, though I’m not sure what.

Of course, the experiment proved that EEGs are quite susceptible to environmental interference. But it seems amusing that brain scientists are using this to try to detect thoughts. How much phenomena is attributed to the mere monitoring of environmental noise?

And confirming anything from the pre-internet era is a bit difficult.

Further Details:

March 17, 1993, technicians at St. Jerome hospital in Batavia test a bowl of lime Jell-O with an EEG machine and confirm earlier testing by Dr. Adrian Upton that showed that a bowl of Jell-O has brain waves identical to those of adult men and women.

Factors Involved in Outcome and Recovery in Schizophrenia Patients Not on Antipsychotic Medications

Factors Involved in Outcome and Recovery in Schizophrenia Patients Not on Antipsychotic Medications: A 15-Year Multifollow-Up Study, PDF of the study is hosted on the PsychRights.org website

A longitudinal study of 145 patients found a 40% recovery rate for those who did not take antipsychotics, versus a 5% rate for those who did, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol 195, May, 2007, No. 5: 407-414

ABSTRACT:

This prospective longitudinal 15-year multifollow-up research studied whether unmedicated patients with schizophrenia can function as well as schizophrenia patients on antipsychotic medications. If so, can differences in premorbid characteristics and personality factors account for this?

One hundred and forty-five patients, including 64 with schizophrenia, were evaluated on premorbid variables, assessed prospectively at index hospitalization, and then followed up 5 times over 15 years.

At each follow-up, patients were compared on symptoms and global outcome. A larger percent of schizophrenia patients not on antipsychotics showed periods of recovery and better global functioning.

[...]

The current longitudinal data suggest not all schizophrenia patients need to use antipsychotic medications continuously throughout their lives.

The original study is available at the link. but the essential results are summarized above.

Dr. Steven Nissen's testimony before Congress

As seen in this post

In his recent testimony before the House subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Feb. 13, 2007, Dr. Steven Nissen, Chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic and President of the American College of Cardiology, informed the committee about the dangers posed by ADHD drugs that are prescribed for 2.5 million U.S. children-10% of 5th grade boys are on these drugs:

"ADHD drugs are closely related to methamphetamine or 'speed,' a major drug of abuse." ADHD drugs increase blood pressure. Approximately 25 children suffered sudden cardiac death after taking these drugs, occasionally after the first dose." "ADHD drugs are closely related to ephedra, a drug that the FDA has sought to ban from OTC products."

At the end of his testimony, he has a ten point program for cleaning up the FDA and the drug approval process.

You can read Dr. Nissen's testimony here (note: PDF file)

(Alternate Link here)

Complete transcripts and a video webcast of the hearing are available on the website of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce:

Hearing on The Adequacy of FDA to Assure the Safety of the Drug Supply

FDA Panel Recommends Warning For Adult Antidepressant Suicide Risk

As seen in Medical News Today

An FDA advisory panel on Wednesday voted 6-2 in favor of updating black box warnings on antidepressants to state that there is an increased suicide risk for young adults up to age 25, the New York Times reports (Carey, New York Times, 12/13). According to FDA's review, for every 1,000 young adults ages 18 to 24 who are given the drugs, about four will act on suicidal thoughts who otherwise would not have done so. The review found that the drugs did not increase the risk of suicide in adults ages 25 to 65 and that they significantly lowered the risk of suicide in people older than 65. Antidepressants since 2004 have carried a black box warning about an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and actions in children and adolescents (New York Times, 12/13). FDA proposed adding new warnings about suicide risk in young adults, which the advisory panel has now endorsed. The advisory panel "also encouraged the FDA to add language to the black box about the importance of treating depression in hopes that the addition of new warnings won't cause doctors to limit the antidepressant prescriptions," the Journal reports (Wall Street Journal, 12/14).

FDA Comments
Thomas Laughren, director of FDA's division of psychiatry products, said, "We don't know" why antidepressants appear to have different effects on different age groups (Graham, Baltimore Sun, 12/14). Laughren said FDA is leaning toward expanding the black box warning to include young adults, and agency officials said they will try to write language that would encourage health care providers to prescribe the drugs carefully, not abandon them, the Washington Post reports. Robert Temple, director of FDA's Office of Medical Policy, said that regulators are in a difficult position because they are obligated to warn physicians about monitoring patients for suicidal tendencies but also are concerned that the warning might lead doctors to stop prescribing the drugs (Vedantam, Washington Post, 12/14).

Testimony
Davis Shern, president of Mental Health America, said that the current black box warning for children and adolescents has resulted in a 20% drop in antidepressant prescriptions for those age groups. At the same time, Shern noted the suicide rate for children and adolescents has increased, according to some estimates. He said, "A black box warning will scare people away from treatment and end up causing greater harm than it does good" (Baltimore Sun, 12/14). Christopher Kratochvil, a psychiatrist and spokesperson for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; John Mann, a psychiatrist and spokesperson for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention; and Donna Barnes, president of the National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide, all said that new suicide warnings might harm depression patients by making them afraid of treatment. However, British psychiatrist David Healy and Harvard University lecturer and psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen said that FDA's review downplayed the risk of suicide from antidepressants and suggested that several suicides in industry-sponsored studies were never disclosed, the Post reports (Washington Post, 12/14).

Broadcast Coverage
Several broadcast programs reported on the FDA panel's consideration of the issue:

• ABCNews' "World News Tonight": The segment includes comments from U.S. residents who testified for and against increased labeling for antidepressants (McKenzie, "World News Tonight," ABCNews, 12/13).
  
  Related ABCNews video is available online.
  


• CBS' "Evening News": The segment includes comments from Sherri Walton, second vice president of the Mental Health Association of Arizona, and U.S. residents who testified for and against increased labeling for antidepressants (Attkisson, "Evening News," CBS, 12/13).
  
  Video of the segment is available online.
  


• NBC's "Nightly News": The segment includes comments from U.S. residents who testified for and against increased labeling for antidepressants (Snyderman, "Nightly News," NBC, 12/13).
  
  Video of the segment is available online.
  


• NPR's "All Things Considered": The segment includes comments from Joanne Silberner, health correspondent for NPR, and U.S. residents who testified for and against increased labeling for antidepressants (Norris, "All Things Considered," NPR, 12/13).
  
  Audio of the segment is available online.
  


• NPR's "Day to Day": The segment includes comments from Silberner (Chadwick, "Day to Day," NPR, 12/13).
  
  Audio of the segment is available online.

SSRI experts head to Washington to testify before FDA panel

The ever insightful Evelyn Pringle has written this column, as seen here and here

On December 13, the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee will hold a public hearing to review the suicidality data from the adult selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) studies.

And, for what seems like the umpteenth time, SSRI experts from all over the US, and as far away as the UK, will travel to Washington to once again testify at yet another hearing on the suicide risks associated with these drugs.

The committee is expected to vote on whether the risk of SSRI-induced suicidality in adults should be included in a black box warning on all SSRI labels, including Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro, and Celexa.

The FDA should begin the hearing by announcing that suicide rates for adults have not declined at all in the US, even with the massive widespread use of SSRIs. According to a federal study by researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere, in the June 2005, Journal of the American Medical Association, despite a dramatic increase in treatment with antidepressants in 2001-2003, when compared to 1990-1992, the rates of suicidal ideation, gestures and attempts among adults have remained basically unchanged.

There is probably no legal expert in the US more qualified to testify about SSRIs than Baum Hedlund attorney Karen Barth-Menzies, and she will be at the hearing with bells on. Over the past 10 years, she has represented thousands of clients against SSRI makers.

By now, the FDA knows that Ms. Menzies makes no secret of the fact that she is outraged about the overprescribing of these powerful and dangerous drugs to all age groups for nothing more than everyday problems.

This will be Ms. Menzies' fourth time up to bat. She has already testified three times at government hearings. She first spoke at an FDA Psychopharmacologic Drugs and Pediatric Advisory Committee hearing in February 2004, about the increased risk of suicide in children and adolescents taking SSRIs.

At that particular hearing, the famous SSRI litigator concluded her testimony by telling the panel: "Put me out of business for the right reasons. Warn about these drugs."

Many of Baum Hedlund's clients who have suffered tragedies caused by SSRIs will be also be attending the hearing and some will be speaking. However, a number of clients who wanted to testify were not selected by the FDA's new "lottery" system, and will not be permitted to speak. But Ms. Menzies says she plans to speak on their behalf.

She has firsthand knowledge of how the drug companies hid the evidence about the suicide risks. The documents that have been unearthed in litigation reveal that the risk was known in the mid-1980s before the first SSRI, Prozac, was approved for use in the US.

Because of Baum Hedlund's work in the Prozac litigation, Ms. Menzies has the ability to provide the committee with the historical background on SSRIs, including internal company documents that show how and why the SSRI suicide risk with adults was obfuscated 15 years ago during the first FDA advisory committee hearings on the suicide issue.

She will explain exactly how the clinical trial data were manipulated by SSRI makers to skew the statistical analyses of suicidality. "Civil lawsuits," she says, "have uncovered internal company documents to which not even the FDA has access."

And she maintains that the drugmakers have purposely failed to conduct studies on the risk of suicidality because they already knew such trials would produce negative results.

In August 2004, Ms. Menzies testified before the California State Senate and called for better patient informed consent about the risks associated with SSRIs.

Next, she testified at the September 2004 FDA Advisory Committee's follow-up hearings and discussed the lack of efficacy in SSRI treatment of children, as documented in pediatric clinical trials that had surfaced during litigation.

In between the February and September 2004 hearings, Ms. Menzies met with members of Congress to discuss SSRI related suicidality and the FDA's failure to alert the public about the dangers of SSRIs, and provided documentary evidence to show that the risks posed were real.

She also provided information to investigators in two separate congressional investigations that resulted in two hearings in 2004, at which drug company executives and FDA officials were interrogated and chastised by members of Congress.

In addition to Ms. Menzies, one of the world's most highly regarded SSRI experts, Dr. David Healy, a professor at North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, at Cardiff University, will be flying in from the UK to testify at the hearing. He, too, will give a repeat performance.

Dr. Healy has authored 12 books, including Let Them Eat Prozac, The Antidepressant Era, and The Creation of Psychopharmacology, and is known to be outspoken when he believes it is necessary. During his testimony at this hearing, Dr. Healy says he plans to draw attention to the manipulation of the clinical trial data on SSRIs.

For over a decade, he has been trying to raise awareness about the link between SSRIs and suicide. Back in August 1991, Dr. Healy authored the paper, "Antidepressant Induced Suicidal Ideation," in which he said that the cases of two patients "suggest that the emergence of suicidal ideation on antidepressants cannot always be attributed to a lifting of psychomotor retardation but rather that the ideas may in some instances be produced by antidepressants."

Three years later in 1994, he authored the paper, "The Fluoxetine and Suicide Controversy," and stated, "In the opinion of this author, the volume of case reports and other studies is sufficient to demonstrate that antidepressants and antipsychotics may induce suicidal ideation in certain individuals under certain conditions."

After the February 2004 advisory committee hearings, Dr. Healy analyzed the data from the pediatric SSRI trials on suicidality and hostility, including those kept hidden for years, and sent his analysis to the FDA on February 19, 2004.

To distinguish the difference between suicide possibly caused by SSRIs verses suicide caused by an underlying illness of depression, Dr Healy broke down the studies into a group of children being treated for depression and a group of anxious children who were being treated for obsessive compulsive disorder or social phobia.

From a pool of 931 depressed patients taking SSRIs versus 811 depressed patients taking placebo, Dr. Healy determined that there were 52 suicidal acts by patients on SSRI versus 18 in the placebo group.

In a pool of 638 anxious patients taking SSRIs versus 562 anxious patients taking a placebo, there were 10 suicidal acts in the SSRI group versus 1 in the placebo group.

When these data sets were combined, in the 1,569 patients on SSRIs there were 62 episodes of suicidality versus only 19 episodes in 1,373 patients on a placebo.

This analysis clearly shows that SSRIs can cause some children who were not depressed to begin with to become suicidal.

Dr. Healy believes the FDA should do more about the industry's practice of paying medical professionals to publish fraudulent research papers ghostwritten by PR firms. "While it is not FDA's brief to regulate the academic literature," he states, "the possibilities of a close to fraudulent representation of data and of extensive ghostwriting does set up an argument that these apparently scientific articles are in fact infomercials rather than the real thing."

"If these articles are essentially advertisements," Dr. Healy says, "it is much less clear that FDA can throw their hands up and plead an inability to do anything about the production of such materials."

Former Federal fraud investigator, Allen Jones, will also be testifying at the hearing and he, too, has testified before about the over-promotion and marketing of psychiatric drugs.

"The pervasive manipulation of clinical trials, the non-reporting of negative trials and the cover-up of debilitating and deadly side effects," Mr. Jones says, "makes it impossible to prescribe, or take, these drugs with any level of meaningful informed consent."

"Doctors and patients alike," he states, "have been betrayed by the governmental entities and officials who are supposed to protect them."

During an investigation in Pennsylvania, Mr. Jones learned all about Big Pharma's methods promoting the sale of psychiatric drugs by corrupting public officials and says, "conflicts of interest permeate the testing, approval and marketing of drugs in America."

"Academic researchers with industry ties," he explains, "put favorable spin on dubious clinical trial results and then the embellished results are presented to FDA Advisory Boards peopled with Pharma consultants, grantees and advisors."

"These results," he reports, "are further embellished in medical journals by still more academics on drug company payrolls."

From there, he says, this body of misleading research becomes institutionalized by "expert panels" in treatment guidelines generated by additional academics and researchers with financial ties to the industry.

As a fraud investigator, he discovered a hidden account in Pennsylvania where drug companies were funneling money to the state employees who were in charge of deciding which psychiatric drugs could be included in the treatment guidelines for the official list of drugs covered by public health plans like Medicaid and prescribed to people in all state institutions and programs.

According to Mr. Jones, the employees "were given unrestricted educational grants that were deposited into an off-the-books account, unregistered, unmonitored, literally operated out of a drawer."

Mr. Jones also found that the drugmakers were paying these same state employees honorariums of up to $2,000 to speak at industry events and giving them perks such as lavish meals and trips.

After the SSRIs and atypical antipsychotics were successfully added to the state formulary list, Mr. Jones reports, Pennsylvania spent a combined total of $139 million in 2003, for those two classes of drugs alone.

Last month, the former Pennsylvania chief pharmacist, identified as being on the take by Mr. Jones during his investigation, was indicted on felony and misdemeanor conflicts of interest charges involving accepting money from drug companies while a state employee with great influence over the drugs that would added to the state formularies to be prescribed to patients in Pennsylvania.

"I predict we will be seeing many more prosecutions of this type," Mr. Jones says, "as the extent of drug company corruption of government officials becomes known."

Another prominent SSRI expert making a return visit to testify once again is Dr. Joe Glenmullen, a psychiatrist and clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and the author of the book, "Prozac Backlash," which describes his experiences of watching patients become suicidal while taking SSRIs.

He has testified previously about a specific side effect of SSRIs called akathisia, which he and many other experts say can make some patients so agitated that they feel death would be a welcome relief.

"This side effect is so well established," Dr. Glenmullen told a previous panel, "that it is clearly described with SSRIs in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the American Psychiatric Association's official diagnostic manual."

"If you look at the transcript of the FDA hearing on this very side effect 10 years ago," he stated, "you will see the FDA saying repeatedly we don't know what to do, we need more research."

"It is a tragedy," he added, "to be here 10 years later and hear the FDA saying the same thing."

"The industry's response to this side effect," he continued, "has been to blame the underlying psychiatric conditions of patients, to dismiss legitimate medical case reports as anecdotes, and to scare the media away from the subject, claiming that it would frighten patients away from treatment."

"Well, I prescribe SSRIs and I warn patients," he told the panel, "and they are not frightened away from treatment."

In conclusion, Dr. Glenmullen clearly stated that the suicidality in SSRI patients was not caused by an underlying psychiatric condition; that it was caused by akathisia.

"Let's stop blaming the victims," he said, "and deal with this very real side effect."

Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine

An excellent review of the book "Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine" (Yale University Press, $30). Here's a snippet:

Lobotomy

Psychiatric patients were unusually vulnerable to medical experimentation. (Remember Jack Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"?)

The lobotomy started in Portugal in 1935 and was revamped in the United States by Drs. Walter Freeman and James Watts. They began the surgery in 1936, drilling holes in the skull and inserting a knife-like object, severing the frontal portions of the brain. This was supposed to dramatically relieve symptoms of mental illness, although the brain damage it caused was permanent. Some patients lost spontaneity or became a bit slaphappy.

To find out when to end the operation, Freeman would put patients under local anesthesia and talk them through the operation, asking simple questions to make sure they were still in touch. He asked one patient, "What's going through your mind?" The reply: "A knife." The doctors later refined their procedure, using an instrument similar to an ice pick, inserting it in tear ducts. Freeman and Watts claimed that 52 percent of their first 623 surgeries were "good," but they did not define what they considered good.

Mental hospital

Scull's book, "Madhouse," recounts the story of Dr. Henry Cotton, a psychiatrist who was in charge of the state mental hospital in Trenton, N.J., from 1907 to 1930. Cotton assumed mental illness was the product of overlooked infections that fed toxins to the brain. His solution was to search for sources of infection and remove them.

Because teeth are close to the brain, Cotton had his patients' teeth pulled. Some of them recovered, a powerful placebo effect. Many did not, so Cotton looked elsewhere for infection. (Or did he wait too long to pull teeth?) He started removing tonsils. Again, no remedy.

Next, he removed colons and other organs, often on unwilling patients, ratcheting up his mortality rate. He had critics, but many followers, too. Cotton was investigated to determine whether his claims of an 85 percent cure rate were true. A report concluded that he was killing his patients, but the report was suppressed. His practices continued until a heart attack killed him in 1933. Long before he died, he had his two sons' teeth removed. They grew up and killed themselves.

The various amounts of electricity used in Electro Shock Therapy

The various amounts of electricity used in Electro Shock Therapy, according to several sources, as seen here:

Bibliographic Entry	Result (w/surrounding text)	Standardized Result
"Electroconvulsive therapy." The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology. 3rd ed. England: Penguin Books, 2001.	"The technique consists of applying a weak electric currrent (20-30 mA) bilaterally to the temperofrontal region of the skull until a grand mal seizure results."	0.02 - 0.03 A
Fink, Max. Electroshock: Restoring the Mind. New York: Oxford, 1999.	"Modern electroshock uses a square-wave form of energy, which has a slight, if any, effect on memory. The frequency of the square waves varies from 30 to 70 cycles per second, with a pulse width of 0.5, 1.0, or 2.0 milliseconds. The duration of stimulation varies between 0.2 and 8.0 seconds, and delivers from 25-500 millicoulombs of energy."	0.0625 - 0.125 A
R. Breggin, Peter. Electroshock: Its Brain Disabling Effects. USA: Springer Publishing Company, 1979.	"The amount of current varies widely from machine to machine and from clinician to clinician (Davies et al. 1971). Kalinowsky (1957b) described a range of 70 to 130 volts (V) for 0.1 to 0.5 sec, with a delivered current varying from 200 to 1600 milliamperes (mA)."	0.2 - 1.6 A
Collins, Meghan. "ECT: Electroconvulsive Therapy." 30 September 2002.	"An AC current is passed up to 6 seconds. The current ranges from 800 mA - 1000 mA, carrying a voltage between 300-500 volts."	0.8 - 1.0 A
Stevens, Lawrence. Psychiatry's Electroconvulsive Shock Treatment: A Crime Against Humanity. The Antipsychiatry Coalition.	"ECT consists of electricity being passed through the brain with a force of from 70 to 400 volts and an amperage of from 200 milliamperes to 1.6 amperes (1600 milliamperes)."	0.2 - 1.6 A

Electroshock therapy, commonly known as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a medical procedure for severe mental illnesses such as mania or schizophrenia. During the actual procedure, electrodes are put on the sides of the patient's head at the temples. An alternating electrical current is sent through the brain. It lasts for a few seconds. In electroshock therapy the patient requires the least amount of electricity to induce a mild seizure.

This procedure is very controversial because it may cause severe brain damage and memory loss. It is not used very much today. There are many risks in running an electric current through a person's brain including brain damage, disturbances in the heart and even death.

The electric current varies from patient to patient and machine to machine. In one source the electric current was as high as 0.8 - 1.0 amperes. This could be more than enough to kill a human if it were applied across the chest. Since it's applied through the brain it is less fatal. [...] The highest amount of electrical current found in one source was 1.6 amperes.

We also have this chart about the amount of Electricity needed to Kill a Human Being:

Bibliographic Entry	Result (w/surrounding text)	Standardized Result
Cutnell, John D., Johnson, Kenneth W. Physics. 4th ed. New York, NY: Wiley, 1998.	"Currents of approximately 0.2 A are potentially fatal, because they can make the heart fibrillate, or beat in an uncontrolled manner."	0.2 A
Carr, Joseph J. Safety for electronic hobbyists. Popular Electronics. October 1997. as found in Britannica.com.	"In general, for limb-contact electrical shocks, accepted rules of thumb are: 1-5 mA is the level of perception; 10 mA is the level where pain is sensed; at 100 mA severe muscular contraction occurs, and at 100-300 mA electrocution occurs."	0.1 - 0.3 A
"Electrical Injuries." The Merck Manual of Medical Information: Home Edition. Pennsylvania: Merck, 1997.	"At currents as low as 60 to 100 milliamperes, low-voltage (110-220 volts), 60-hertz alternating current traveling through the chest for a split second can cause life-threatening irregular heart rhythms. About 300-500 milliamperes of direct current is needed to have the same effect."	0.06 - 0.1 A (AC) 0.3 - 0.5 A (DC)
Zitzewitz, Paul W., Neff, Robert F. Merrill Physics, Principles and Problems. New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 1995.	"The damage caused by electric shock depends on the current flowing through the body -- 1 mA can be felt; 5 mA is painful. Above 15 mA, a person loses muscle control, and 70 mA can be fatal."	0.07 A
Watson, George. SCEN 103 Class 12. University of Delaware. March 8, 1999.	"0.10 death due to fibrillation > 0.20 no fibrillation, but severe burning, no breathing"	0.1 - 0.2 A
Miller, Rex. Industrial Electricity Handbook. Peoria, IL: Chas. A. Bennet, 1993.	"Currents between 100 and 200 mA are lethal."	0.1 - 0.2 A

A common misconception is that larger voltages are more dangerous than smaller ones. However, this is not quite true. The danger to living things comes not from the potential difference, but rather the current flowing between two points. The reason that people may believe this can be explained by the equation V = IR. Since V is directly proportional to I, an increase in voltage can mean an increase in current, if resistance (R) is kept constant.

The amount of damage done by the electric shock depends not only on the magnitude of the current, but it also on which portions of the body that the electric current is flowing through. The reason for this is that different parts of the body have difference resistances, which can lead to an increase in current, evidenced by the formula V = IR.

An interesting fact to note is that it takes less alternating current (AC) to do the same damage as direct current (DC). AC will cause muscles to contract, and if the current were high enough, one would not be able to let go of whatever is causing the current coursing through the body. The cut-off value for this is known as the "let-go current". For women, it is typically 5 to 7 milliamperes, and for men, typically 7 to 9 milliamperes. This is dependent on the muscle mass of the individual.

In general, current that is fatal to humans ranges from 0.06 A to 0.07 A, depending on the person and the type of current.

Readers are free to compare notes and to draw their own conclusions.

Ingredient In Prozac Increases Risk Of Extinction For Freshwater Mussels

As seen in this report

You'd think in a river filled with anti-depressants, freshwater mussels would be, well, happy as clams. Far from it. In fact, a new laboratory study suggests that exposure to Prozac can disrupt the reproductive cycle of these mollusks, potentially increasing their risk of extinction.

The study, one of the first to examine the ecotoxicological effects of Prozac (fluoxetine) on native freshwater mussels, found that the drug caused females to prematurely release their larvae, essentially dooming them. The findings were presented today at the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.

"The results from this study were quite alarming," said co-investigator Rebecca Heltsley, a National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, S.C. "When larvae are released too early, they are not viable, which only contributes to the problems faced by struggling populations of native freshwater mussels."

About 70 percent of the nearly 300 species of freshwater mussels native to North America are extinct, endangered or declining, according to Heltsley. In the past 100 years, no other widespread North American animal group has experienced such notable collapse, she added.

In some cases, native mussels have been crowded out by invasive species such as the zebra mussel, Heltsley said. In others, native mussels have been devastated by increased sediment loads in rivers, habitat alteration and loss, or killed off by pollutants.

"The presence of Prozac and similar drugs in U.S. rivers and streams has likely compounded the problem," Heltsley said. "It's a big concern because freshwater mussels are such an imperiled group."

Prozac, one of the nation's most prescribed anti-depressant medications, helps relieve depression by increasing the brain's supply of a neurotransmitter called serotonin. But like many prescription drugs, some remnants of Prozac ultimately are mixed into wastewater that reaches rivers and streams, Heltsley said. Recently, University of Georgia researchers who found traces of Prozac in fish and frogs concluded the drug slowed the development of these animals.

In their study, Heltsley, along with lead investigator Gregory Cope of North Carolina State University and other colleagues, placed female freshwater mussels carrying larvae into tanks containing laboratory water with varying concentrations of fluoxetine, the active ingredient in Prozac. The Prozac concentrations, which ranged from 0.3 to 3,000 micrograms per liter, mimicked those previously found in surface waters of lakes and streams. They also exposed a similar set of mussels directly to serotonin. Within 48 hours, the mussels in both groups had released their larvae prematurely.

"Protecting freshwater mussels and other aquatic life that are susceptible to the unintended consequences of exposure to pharmaceuticals in our rivers and streams will take a concentrated effort," Heltsley said. "These efforts could include the development of more efficient wastewater treatment facilities that can filter out these products before they reach our waterways."

Freshwater mussels have a key role in the ecology of rivers and streams, Heltsley emphasized. They filter large volumes of water for food each day, thereby helping filter contaminants and excessive nutrients from water and serving as an early warning of water quality problems. They also are an important source of food for muskrats, otters, fish and other animals.

Heltsley and her colleagues are evaluating surface water and sediment samples from a natural water system and will compare the results of this work with the results of their laboratory based study.

The American Chemical Society - the world's largest scientific society - is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

No proof mental illness rooted in biology

Here's an interesting column entitled "No proof mental illness rooted in biology"

The largest lay group is the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI). The media routinely refer to NAMI as advocates for the mentally ill, although its membership consists almost entirely of family members and not the mentally ill themselves. NAMI ascribes to the "biological basis of mental illness," and endorses forced treatment of the mentally ill.

The movement's major source of funding is the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry, which funds the drug research; which funds psychiatric journals, and even the American Psychiatric Association itself; which funds advertising to doctors and the public; and even funds lay groups such as NAMI (at least $11 million) and Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (at least $1 million).

Yet many professionals claim that the mental health movement is not a legitimate medical or scientific endeavor, let alone a civil rights movement, but a political ideology of intolerance and inhumanity. Numerous psychiatrists and psychologists have examined the psychiatric research literature and found it to range from smoke and mirrors to quackery.

Psychiatrists have yet to conclusively prove that a single mental illness has a biological or physical cause, or a genetic origin. Psychiatry has yet to develop a single physical test that can determine that an individual actually has a particular mental illness. Indeed, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders uses behavior, not physical symptoms, to diagnose mental illness, and it lacks both scientific reliability and validity.

worthy read

Rise in violent crime not linked to mental illness

As seen in this story in the New Zealand Herald

The study, Myth and reality: the relationship between mental illness and homicide in New Zealand [Report Link Here], examined the files of 1501 murderers between 1970 and 2000. It found 133, or 8.9 per cent, were judged not fit to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity, in line with rates for low homicide countries internationally.

But an interesting trend emerged. Although the number of murders has tripled, from fewer than 20 a year in the early seventies to between 50 and 70 in recent years, the number of killings by the mentally ill has remained steady - and is usually less than six a year.

The study is one of only four in the world to look at time trends in homicides, and is touted to be the most comprehensive. Researchers satisfied ethical and privacy concerns to cross-match data from the police, coroners' office, Ministry of Health, Justice Department, Parole Board and New Zealand Herald archives.

So what explains the rise in violent crime?

Psychiatric Classifications Not Based on Evidence

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has picked up on that study in the BMJ:

Specifically, the researchers, writing in the July 19 issue of the British Medical Journal, attack the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) -- the bible for psychiatric diagnoses -- for failing to reflect the biology of different conditions.

[...]

Most people would agree that a fundamental problem in psychiatry concerns categories that are descriptive, arrived at by consensus among experts and not through evidence. The simple reason is that experts don't have the kind of pathophysiological evidence required to create and sustain clear-cut categories.

(emphasis added)

need I say more?

Do psychiatrists even know what they are doing?

Serious flaws in the way doctors classify psychiatric disorders have sent drug development way off track, two scientists assert in a paper in the British Medical Journal

As seen in this news report one of the scientists puts it this way:

"We need to take all of our copies of the DSM and throw them into the sea," cries Edward Shorter, lead author of the article and a professor of the history of medicine at the University of Toronto in Canada. "There are such fundamental flaws that the whole thing needs to be rethought. We need to have indications that correspond to natural, underlying disease processes."

The research paper has this take on who defines the diseases in the first place:

Who defines psychiatric diagnoses?

Officially, diagnostic decisions are made through scientific consensus by the World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association. Small committees of experts decide whether, for example, schizophrenia is one disease or several, and the process of decision making should be transparent and based on good scientific evidence. But sometimes the evidence is poor and influenced heavily by the pharmaceutical industry. The industry exerts a major influence through publication of sponsored supplements to journals, which are often poorly peer reviewed and promote unapproved treatments.8 Such supplements are particularly common for drugs for anxiety and depression as these are the most common treated conditions. Worldwide sales of antidepressants dwarf sales of drugs for all other psychiatric disorders.

Industry is said to prefer the disease based approach of DSM-III to any dimensional approach to illness definition. This is because the separate DSM-style diseases represent tidy diagnostic market niches. Every new diagnosis represents a new licensing opportunity. Companies only have to show the effectiveness of an existing drug over placebo for the new diagnosis in large clinical trials. This is expensive but not difficult if the same methods can be used as for previous studies with the old diagnoses.

But the basic symptom for all this is seen as the lack of speedy development of more drugs, instead to acknowledging the more fundamental problem:

Ultimately, the same original problem returns: deficits in the understanding of the basic science of psychiatric disorders. Both the DSM and drug developers are hampered by the same deficiency. In other words, they don't know what they're doing.

Of course, the news article tries to end on an upbeat note for psychiatry. Almost sounds like whistling in the dark.