For all of you who follow my work I do hope you realize that my focus is on ALL serotonergic medications even though it seems the main focus is on antidepressants. The name of my book “Prozac: Panacea or Pandora?” has a subtitle that better describes the main focus of the book introduced as Prozac began sweeping America. The subtitle is what was to be the main title of the book until we realized the people at that point knew little about serotonin and the serotonin theory as they do now. That subtitle is “Our Serotonin Nightmare!”
Antidepressants are the most widely prescribed of the serotonergic medications leading to the use of antipsychotics as the patients suffer antidepressant-induced psychosis (most often a manic psychosis) and oh so many other side effects both psychiatric and physical. The newer atypical antipsychotics such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon, Abilify, Invega, etc. are also serotonergic medications. To simplify I often describe them as a mix of an SSRI antidepressant and the older antipsycotics. Although drug makers would lead you to believe otherwise there is LITTLE involved in the development of their “new” products, but mainly in how those drugs are advertised and marketed.
THE HIDDEN TERRORISTS AMONG US
Mark Taylor, the first boy shot at Columbine High School, known as the “Miracle Boy” after surviving 7 – 13 bullets that day spoke to the FDA in the 2004 hearings on antidepressants. He why we are worried about terrorists when the drug makers are even bigger terrorists. The following is VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION not only on Johnson and Johnson, but also on how all drug companies break the law every day by falsifying research, marketing anything but the truth about the medicines you take, thus endangering your health and well being, producing amazing amounts of not only harm, but death. In fact according to a 1995 study, done by pharmacists sickened by the numbers dying from the drugs they were handing out (200,000 annually-DRUG TOPICS, October 23, 1995, pg. 14-16 ), walking into your doctor’s office and leaving with a prescription is exposing you to the third leading cause of death in America – prescription medications “taken as prescribed”! According to this study the death toll far exceeds the loss of lives in the 9/11 tragedy, for which we went to war for over a decade. These drugs we call “medications” are killing as many every week in this country as we lost on 9/11. Where is the war on this hidden terrorist among us?
No worries because you are not taking this particular medication? Not only does this situation cost the one suffering the adverse effects which are kept hidden …. learn how this affects us all with all of us paying the costs of this deception and harm ……
BACKSTAGE AT JOHNSON & JOHNSON …. Letter from the Editors … At some point over the course of this massive, magisterial 15-chapter story, you will get angry, and you will stay angry. It may happen when you learn that Johnson & Johnson handed out promotional Legos to pediatricians so that they’d be more likely to prescribe a drug called Risperdal to children with behavioral problems, although the FDA had repeatedly told the company not to market it to children. It may happen when you read that a team of scientists and company executives decided to massage the numbers on a study showing that Risperdal puts little boys at risk of developing large breasts—46DD breasts in the case of Austin Pledger, whom you can see in this video. Or it may happen at one of a few dozen other points in this 20-year history of the drug, which ended up being a blockbuster for J&J even if you account for $3 billion and counting in legal claims.
And that’s what’s so impressive about this project by Steven Brill, one of our era’s best reporters. We all either take prescription drugs or love someone who does. Many of us depend on them to live. We may be aware that drug companies occasionally release bad products or take pains to get around government regulations. But we still know far too little about the culture of the industry that produced the Risperdal scandal, and who the people are behind these life-and-death decisions. Steven has made all of that clear. You read the damning emails, you examine the internal documents, you see the close relationship between J&J salespeople and their hired scientists and feel as if you’re inside the room when plaintiffs’ attorneys figure out a way to fight back.
Rarely are systems—giant, seemingly impenetrable bureaucracies—laid this bare and made this human. It’s thrilling…..
THE RISPERDAL NIGHTMARE….On May 20, about 100 stock analysts gathered in the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to hear good news from top executives at Johnson & Johnson: The company had 10 new drugs in the pipeline that might achieve more than a billion dollars in annual sales.
For 129 years, New Brunswick has served as the headquarters of J&J, America’s seventh most valuable public company. With consumer products from Band-Aids to baby powder, Neutrogena to Rogaine, Listerine to Visine, Aveeno to Tylenol and Sudafed to Splenda, Johnson & Johnson is the biggest and, according to multiple surveys, most admired corporation in the world’s most prosperous industry—healthcare.
But the real money—about 80 percent of its revenue and 91 percent of its profit—comes not from those consumer favorites, but from Johnson & Johnson’s high-margin medical devices: artificial hips and knees, heart stents, surgical tools and monitoring devices; and from still higher-margin prescription drugs targeting Crohn’s disease (Remicade), cancer (Zytiga, Velcade), schizophrenia (Risperdal), diabetes (Invokana), psoriasis (Stelara), migraines (Topamax), heart disease (Xarelto) and attention deficit disorder (Concerta).
How J&J Makes Its Money
Ads for many of these products dominate our television screens and magazine pages. Each drug relies on its own elaborate marketing plan and carefully pitched promotional materials, used by hundreds of salespeople whose incomes turn on how much product they can push to the thousands of doctors who write prescriptions. All command increasing portions of our health insurance premiums and our own wallets, as well as our hopes and anxiety when we or our loved ones fall ill.
What follows is the backstage story of how an iconic company marketed a blockbuster drug that raised those hopes and fed on that anxiety. It is a story that in its depiction of strategies, tactics and mindset should make us wonder about the prescription drugs that are so much a part of our lives.
CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK TO CONTINUE READING:
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/miracleindustry/americas-most-admired-lawbreaker/
NOTE: IMPORTANCE OF ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE (PATIENT REPORTS) IN REMOVING DRUGS FROM THE MARKET
People often dismiss patient reports forgetting that peer reviewed research is NOT what gets drugs pulled from the market. Its purpose is to get drugs approved, not removed. But what got Thalidomide removed from the market? It was all the cases of missing arms and legs of the babies born to the mothers of those who took the drug.
This statement on the importance of anecdotal evidence as opposed to peer reviewed double blind studies is from Dr. Johnathan Cole, MD, the father of Psychopharmacology:
“The real world is not perfect. Drugs can and do cause adverse effects which can resemble the manifestations of the illness and arguments about the causes and nature of these adverse events, including suicides, must rest on case reports [anecdotal evidence] and data collected in small studies for other purposes. . . If some cases stand out strikingly, there are logically others where the adverse effect is more subtle.”
Ann Blake Tracy, Executive Director,
International Coalition for Drug Awareness
drugawareness.org & ssristories.NET
Author: ”Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? – Our Serotonin Nightmare – The Complete Truth of the Full Impact of Antidepressants Upon Us & Our World” & Withdrawal CD “Help! I Can’t Get Off My Antidepressant!”
WITHDRAWAL WARNING: In sharing this information about adverse reactions to antidepressants I always recommend that you also give reference to my CD on safe withdrawal, Help! I Can’t Get Off My Antidepressant!, so that we do not have more people dropping off these drugs too quickly – a move which I have warned from the beginning can be even more dangerous than staying on the drugs!
WITHDRAWAL HELP: You can find the hour and a half long CD on safe and effective withdrawal helps here: http://store.drugawareness.org/ And if you need additional consultations with Ann Blake-Tracy, you can book one at www.drugawareness.org or sign up for one of the memberships in the International Coalition for Drug Awareness which includes free consultations as one of the benefits of that particular membership plan. For only a $30 membership for one month you can even get 30 days of access to the withdrawal CD with tips on rebuilding after the meds, all six of my DVDs, hundreds of radio interviews, lectures, TV interviews I have done over the years PLUS access to my book on antidepressants (500 plus pages) with more information than you will find anywhere else (that is only $5 more than the book alone would cost) at www.drugawareness.org. (Definitely the best option to save outrageous postage charges for those out of the country!)
