The title of this post borrows a famous line from Monty Python:
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition
This is an advance notice of things to come rather than a post per se.
To get a sense of the things to come, it is worth reading the Antidepressants, Homicide and a Challenge post and the comments that come after it where many regular contributors to RxISK pick up aspects of the challenge. The challenge is how can we get a fair trial for a drug induced problem like homicide because if we cannot get a fair trial the very same factors that mean we cannot get justice also mean we cannot get good clinical care.
A bunch of different opinions are put forward in the comments – some appealing to what Harriet Vogt calls the emotional approach as opposed to a strategic approach. The emotional approach is what both Trump and Harris are now taking. There is very little solid evidence as to the strategy they plan to implement.
In responses to some of the comments, semi-reluctantly I offer to add a strategic response. Reluctantly because it is not easy to get the Ducks to line up. The effort will be difficult and tiring. Nothing has been done so far but I’m committing to doing it in a series of No One Expects the Reformation posts.
A post today on DavidHealy.org – Friendly Fire – reprises some of the Antidepressant and Homicide details while introducing a new player to the game – the US military or perhaps militaries more generally.
US Veterans are uniquely placed as a group to deliver a strategic option if between us and them we can agree on the right strategy. This post sketches a possible strategy and offers some tactics, if picked up by Vets, might get us somewhere.
In terms of strategy, anyone who has been injured needs to remember that their injuries have not happened in isolation. There are a larger set of forces in play that need to be understood and shaped if we hope to get anywhere.
A catchphrase for this might be:
War is Surgery on a Grand Scale
RxISK will feature a return to some vaccine thoughts for the next week or two.
DH meanwhile will try laying out some emotional and strategic aspects to the dilemmas antidepressant induced homicide reveals in a series of posts about possible Reformations to the System.
In the meantime, the Q and A after the Mad in America Webinar version of Antidepressants and Homicide brought the Clancy case into the frame. This involved Lindsay Clancy’s killing of her 3 children and attempted suicide two years ago.
As chance would have it, the New Yorker has just published an account of this case A Husband in the Aftermath of his Wife’s Unfathomable Act.
For those unable to access the piece, there is a readable version HERE.
annie says
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition –
But ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ is a significant line in Hamlet because it ushers in what will become a whole array of references to rotting, decay, corruption, and festering.
It is remarkable how the FDA allowed the Fraudulent clinical trials by want of a peculiar reasoning, how the medical journals went along with it, how ‘off-piste’ go the Guidelines, how doctors are succoured in, how ghostwriting became normal, and since 1999 which was my introduction to Seroxat, how little things have changed or got a whole lot worse.
Take the weight-loss drugs which have become Party Political. For the last two days you can’t move for politicians, journalists, tv and radio, increasing the market share of fatty farma – Clare Gerada on BBC Today, Evan Davis on PM yesterday giving out at least ten minutes of pharma spin.
So many famous faces taking the jab, give it to the poor to get them back to work, give it to little children for their obesity epidemic – it’s like 1984 with bells on.
Like SSRIs, no long term trials. Plenty of horrific side-effects.
War is Surgery on a Grand Scale
GSK Suing over vaccines for Covid and RSV
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/gsk-takes-mrna-patent-fight-moderna-suing-over-vaccines-covid-rsv
DH meanwhile will try laying out some emotional and strategic aspects to the dilemmas antidepressant induced homicide reveals in a series of posts about possible Reformations to the System.
Friendly Fire –
Slide 28: Marilyn Lemak
Janet Lagerloef
https://rxisk.org/janet-lagerloef-responds-to-eric-zorn/
Harriet Vogt says
I don’t blame you being ‘semi-reluctant ‘ for one second – the ducks are all over the shop. Please don’t force yourself. A fundamental problem – that you have revealed to me more clearly than anyone – is that ‘The System’ believes itself to be rationally driven by ‘evidence based medicine’. But is, in fact, emotionally driven by the notion of evidence based medicine – when the RCT evidence base bears little or no relation to the patient in front of them and is largely marketing.
A great X friend and iatrogenic warrior, Alyne Duthie, pointed me to this essay you and Dee wrote, capturing the rxisk in a sentence:
‘When it comes to detecting harms related to drugs, clinicians’ and patients’ judgment trumps trials, say David Healy and Dee Mangin. Failure to realise this is the greatest threat to the safety of medicines’
https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l5777
My thoughts on how campaigning elements seem to work – emotive affecting change vs instrumental effecting change – aren’t meant to be a straightjacket – just one way of seeing – and balancing expectations.
My simple observation is that the tipping points of 20-30 year campaigns (thanks to the defective reporting systems, thanks to you also for clarifying that mystery) tend to be the instrumental elements, because, pretty obviously, that’s how you ultimately change a fixed system – by penetrating its own ‘thought’ processes.
Examples being the Read Davies ‘systematic review into the incidence, severity and duration of antidepressant withdrawal effect’, the fact that Adele Framer’s Surviving ADs was being used even by HCPs as the authority on AD withdrawal, Rxisk’s 2018 Citizen Petition on PSSD and 2019 recognition by the EMA. All kosher system behaviours, if you like.
This sort of schematic clearly does NOT work for drug-induced homicide – for the complex reasons you explored in your talk the other weekend. More of that, briefly, in a moment – reflecting on The New Yorker piece you posted, ‘ A husband in the aftermath of his wife’s unfathomable act’
But, before commenting – it was ofc wholly, tragically, fathomable – one piece of ‘instrumentally effected’ positive news. I made a new GP friend on X the other day, after he made this statement,
https://x.com/jamie_wallis/status/1845207327462314028
‘As a GP I would never start an antidepressant in this age. There have been coroners warnings galore about the risks. For context, I’ve had 17 year old patients in practices who I’ve taken to clinical meeting and none of the other GPs would prescribe either. How is a PA even thinking of starting antidepressants in this age group? Dangerous.’
A really good guy, who was shocked and genuinely affected by Dexter’s terrible death – I told him about that. Which raises another HUGE issue – you touched on in the Drug Dysregulation Sybdrome talk – toxic dosage levels being the norm. So much work to do .
I read Lindsay’s story quickly this morning – with a sinking heart. This poor woman is a perfectionist, almost ‘Stepford Wife’ Mom – completely exhausted by trying to combine mothering of three small children with night shifts in maternity, drugged both insensiible and insomniac. When I read this sentence, I thought, OMG, that’s it, that’s the evidence that the drugs have driven her to kill her beloved children.“I have thoughts of wanting to die, and I feel numb to them.”
The defence was precisely right – horrific overmedication. But the way the system could only conceive of her actions as those of a mad person not as a poisoned, involuntarily intoxicated person, was an action replay of many of the cases you worked on and discussed. I keep meaning to look further into the case of David Hawkins, the one person you mentioned who got off – not a jury trial I seem to recall.
It also showed how little psychiatrists and prosecutors understand about motherhood and the psychological effects of sustained sleep deprivation – generalized anxiety disorder, what nonsense. The unthinkable nightmares antidepressants can cause seemingly by disrupting natural REM sleep patterns are surely connected.
There is no logic either. I was appalled to read that Lindsay has now been prescribed an antidepressant that renders her numb and prevents her from crying. Wouldn’t you think they’d join the dots? No, of course not – that’s not in the algorithm.
For sure, as you say, ‘The challenge is how can we get a fair trial for a drug induced problem like homicide because if we cannot get a fair trial the very same factors that mean we cannot get justice also mean we cannot get good clinical care.’
Actually my algorithm specialist, problem solving No 2 son, had a neat and focussed strategy. But it’s unprintable. You’ll know.
Dr. David Healy says
One of the strategic issues you are missing here perhaps because only lately encountering what is going on is that Charles Medawar with Social Audit in the 1990s played the MHRA, the ABPI, the Royal College and others at their own game – filed complaints and won.
Paxil Progress was there long before Surviving Antidepressants and alerted a generation their dependence issues without claiming it knew how to solve them. Bob Fiddaman was very active on this front from 2000 onwards, and helped establish the need for liquid versions of these meds in order to be able to Taper.
Baum Hedlund took a legal action against GSK for dependence in 2004 and won.
So none of the recent efforts are new. They also seem amnesic to what has gone before. If there is a degree of success now compared to before it can’t be down to these efforts but is much more likely to be a case of pharma wanting to get rid of SSRIs because they are dirt cheap so they have opened the door to regulators and others agreeing there is a problem that needs handling.
What’s the strategy that might change this – other than resign yourself to living a life dictated by the patent life of meds? And when it comes to pointing out the hazards after a certain point, accept that you are now working for the pharmaceutical industry?
D
Harriet Vogt says
We have different perspectives. You, amongst many other talents, uomo universo and all that, are an historian. I’m a commercial world analyst of consumer and market dynamics – with a patient safety obsession. You’ve written scholarly works on the pharmacological evolution of ADs and lived all the history. But – I’ve done a lot of background research digging, much of it inspired by leads from my friends in the prescribedharm community.
The only piece of history you mention that I haven’t explored and didn’t know about – is Charles Medawar suing the MHRA. Would be interested to learn more.
Ofc, the commercial reality is that antidepressants have been relegated to cashcow unimportance by pharmacos for years. There are still some high value, old niche products, but there are ‘blockbuster’ rich picking elsewhere, as we all know.
I suppose the big question is how does history evolve or even flip into change? What are the tipping points? It’s Kuhn meets Malcolm Gladwell, ( for us populist readers – I’ve read Kuhn too!).
In my iatrogenesis aware lifetime, pretty narrowly UK based, system recognition of antidepressant withdrawal has been the big change. Part of it is critical mass – there comes a time when the scale of suffering even unto death for some can no longer be dismissed.
Alto/Adele herself started as a member of Paxil Progress, as you probably know, that being the drug that nearly killed her. But, ferocious citizen scientist and personality (and wit) that she is – we’ve connected a lot on X- it seems to me that she transformed Surviving ADs from a major peer support forum into a political force for change, building on the past in a transformative way.
And, Mark’s hyperbolic tapering – I entirely understand its flaws from a simple minded, lay perspective – if going up creates fundamental changes in a system, then going down isn’t necessarily going to reverse those changes – has added a scientific or ‘scientific’ flourish to the system’s understanding of and belief in the reality of AD withdrawal. It’s interpreted as ‘slow and careful’ which seems progressive to me – and pushing this through into autopilot practice is the big test.
So, in a sense, the most prevalent harm is now recognised and embedded in the UK system, albeit not yet practice. But what about all the others? Just because one decent GP is well aware of suicidality risks in young people and actually follows the guidance, AD scrips are still rising for this cohort, as are actual patient numbers.
From a simple strategic pov, you could say there’s a spectrum of harms – ranging from tolerable adverse effects through long term disabilities to death. The awful truth is that the system is able to dismiss the very worst – iatrogenic homicide – as extremely rare. Although I see from Wisner Baum’s website, cheecked out the other night after your talk trying to get a fix on legal aspects, that iatrogenic mass homicide is a business area for them. They’re still quoting Rxisk figures from 2015 highlighting a hierarchy of drugs causing violent reactions where varenicline tops the list. I’ve worked on OTC medical devices for stop smoking so was aware of that vile drug. Equally, I’ve come across quite a lot of smokers it helped to quit.
Laying aside emotion – which is hard – PSSD, assuming a deliberate move on your/ Rxisk’s part – is a powerful strategic direction. Because its prevalence is unknown and to some extent unknowable, it is unpredictably life destroying – and patients will have had a sample of it . Viz charismatic Lewis Capadli talking in the Daily Mail about sertraline’s ADE, that he can’t come to save his ******* life.
But the real game changer, the market disrupter as I see it , is your MOA revelation- Drug Dysregulation Syndrome. A tangible explanation of what these drugs are actually doing to human beings, how they work for some and harm others. Incredibly – the chemical imbalance baloney is still extant – an example the other day from Sam Cook writing for walesonline that we jumped on https://x.com/shvogt/status/1845779691883368605. It’s a heinous lie, as we all know, because patients believe there is something fundamentally wrong with their brains, not their lives, and imagine that the drugs are keeping them on an even keel, not the fact that they are staving off withdrawal.
In a way, Drug Dysregulation Syndrome removes the medical mystery from SSRIs and turns them into a more physically understandable class of drug that could be sold OTC. We agree on this point – I think – perversely OTC is likely to be safer than Rx ever was. How many patients would persist with a drug that made them feel dizzy and numbed their genitals, if a medical authority hadn’t informed them that it would cure their chemical imbalance , the source of their woes?
I suppose there’s also the political context in the UK. Arguably space cadet Wes Streeting’s plans for sending job advisors into hospitals. I fear that this is more likely to increase patients’ self-perceived need for drugs to help them cope. But theoretically it could segue into more of a social prescribing. ‘beyond pills’ culture. With scrips for ADS and stimulants on the increase – expect that’s probably wishful thinking.
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/10/06/dwp-nhs-co-working-job-advisors-hospitals/
A few thoughts to throw into your whopper hopper.
Dr. David Healy says
Forget trying to flatter me. We have articles appearing regularly saying SSRIs don’t cause suicide and warnings need to be removed. We have children in Canada, Britain, France and elsewhere being put on SSRIs and committing suicide and parents cannot get an expert willing to get involved. Some of the academics and doctors approached are better academics than anyone you’ve mentioned and intensely critical of the pharmaceutical industry but claim to be unable to write reports on cases like these – not unwilling but not knowing how to be an expert. It is quite notable that critical psychiatrists in the UK seem in the same position either unable to unwilling to get their hands dirty.
In my opinion, having been around for a long time and over 30 years in this game – things are getting grimmer not better. If there are openings it is because it suits industry not because any medics or academics on our side has developed a backbone or worked out how crack things open.
What some folk with PSSD have done is magnificent – and what is particularly magnificent is their articulation of the growing vacuum at the heart of modern healthcare but it is not leading at the moment to any research that makes a difference or altering a fraction of the ghostwritten medical literature and lack of access to trial that means doctors who are adherent to the guidelines are the ones who pose the greatest threat to us.
Negligence used to be about the doctor who did unorthodox things. The greatest threat now is the orthodox doctor. This would have been unimaginable 20 years ago even to a President of the Royal College but doesn’t cause an eyebrow to lift now.
D
Dr. David Healy says
Harriet
25 years ago Lilly were openly running adverts saying my SSRI causes less discontinuation syndrome than yours. They were sponsoring symposia at academic meetings including the College and journal supplements on the dependence and discontinuation topic. Almost all psychiatrists 25 years ago freely acknowledged SSRIs caused dependence.
The Panorama programs ran from 2002 to 2007 – first time Panorama ever repeated a program on a topic. Can you see anything like that happening now?
D
Harriet Vogt says
D
I recognise all the systemic rot and weakness that you have been fighting for 30 years. The difference is I haven’t lived it, so I don’t feel it so much as think it.
Yes, I saw the recent research, and several previous efforts, trying to dismiss black box warnings as causing more harm than good. I know marketing forces are pulling the strings. I know neurologists were aware of valproate’s teratogenic effects two decade before the NHS came clean. I know most adverse effects are dismissed as madness, because prescribers have no understanding of the drugs they dish out. We can all go on and on. I’ve listened and learned.
What I am trying to do is tease out threads of change, however driven – AD withdrawal is definitely one in the UK and I dearly hope that PSSD becomes another significant one – that we can build on. And I actually do believe that explaining what SSRIs realistically do would be a breakthrough in consumer understanding . Not sure I care that much about prescribers.
And btw I’m not trying to ‘flatter you’- good manners is a sensible approach to self-preservation when you risk being eaten alive by a beast.
Dr. David Healy says
AD withdrawal is definitely not a thread of change. The benzodiazepine dependence story could have been pitched as a thread of change and campaigners flattered themselves and pointed to the internet and social media (TV) as the new tools that would force change and improve things forever.
But the benzo crisis was engineered by pharma to get rid of them. Folk heroes like Malcolm Lader were making lots of money speaking on industry platforms running down benzos and assuring docs the new serotonergic drugs were the answer.
You are missing the real players in this. Talking about AD issues just plays into their hands. Industry have far more control now than ever before and surely the vaccine story must have told everyone we are further from a tipping point than we have ever been.
One of the big problems ‘we’ have is we end up operating in a mental health ghetto not realising that the problems inked to mental health drugs apply to all drugs. We could have a lot more allies if we realized this. The more we talk AD dependence or even PSSD the more the population in general stop listening as this has nothing to do with them
D
annie says
Does the perpetual ask for Informed Consent, fall at the wayside, when most of the stuff, has been off-limits, and does it help along David’s intriguing question?
https://x.com/woodymatters/status/1846607457470079436
We can say definitively that GSK paying $3B fines made no difference to Paroxetine being prescribed and has led to further destruction of lives of children and adults. GSK know this. It takes ‘hard-nosed’ types to walk away from it and pursue their careers despite it.
Paroxetine was a very dirty trick.
GSK thought they could indent themselves in the SSRI market; it didn’t destroy them.
Instead a young boy recently died in France.
So, it’s not all stopping.
Shelley Jofre and Karen Barth Menzies, in a Malibu beach house, looking through all the folders and finding details of horrific deaths of youngsters.
Secret emails reveal that the UK’s biggest drug company distorted trial results of an anti-depressant, covering up a link with suicide in teenagers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6291773.stm
Panorama reveals that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) attempted to show that Seroxat worked for depressed children despite failed clinical trials.
And that GSK-employed ghostwriters influenced ‘independent’ academics.
GSK told Panorama: “GSK utterly rejects any suggestion that it has improperly withheld drug trial information.”
Read a statement from GSK
Your stories and views
Read transcript
GSK faces action in the US where bereaved families have joined together to sue the company.
As a result, GSK has been forced to open its confidential internal archive.
Karen Barth Menzies is a partner in one of the firms representing many of the families.
She has examined thousands of the documents which are stored, box upon box, in an apartment in Malibu, California.
She said: “Even when they have negative studies that show that this drug Seroxat is going to harm some kids they still spin that study as remarkably effective and safe for children.”
GSK’s biggest clinical trial of Seroxat on children was held in the US in the 1990s and called Study 329.
Child psychiatrist Dr Neal Ryan of the University of Pittsburgh was paid by GSK as a co-author of Study 329.
In 2002 he also gave a talk on childhood depression at a medical conference sponsored by GSK.
He said that Seroxat could be a suitable treatment for children and later told Panorama reporter Shelley Jofre that it probably lowered rather than raised suicide rates.
In amongst the archive of emails in Malibu, Shelley was surprised to find that her own emails to Dr Ryan from 2002 asking questions about the safety of Seroxat had been forwarded to GSK asking for advice on how to respond to her.
She also found an email from a public relations executive working for GSK which said: “Originally we had planned to do extensive media relations surrounding this study until we actually viewed the results.
“Essentially the study did not really show it was effective in treating adolescent depression, which is not something we want to publicise.”
But the article was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry which says it ranks as number one in child mental health in the world.
The editor in chief of the British Medical Journal, Fiona Godlee, said that what she calls the “blind-eye culture of medicine” should be exposed by professionals.
She has written in response to the Panorama film: “We shouldn’t have to rely on investigative journalists to ask the difficult questions.
“Reputations for sale are reputations at risk. We need to make that risk so high it’s not worth taking.”
Read Fiona Godlee’s reaction to Panorama
The Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) began a criminal investigation into GSK three years ago but no action has been taken yet.
A spokesperson told Panorama that the investigation has been given substantial additional resources and remains a high priority.
Seroxat was banned for under 18s in 2003 after the MHRA, revealed that GSK’s own studies showed the drug actually trebles the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviour in depressed children.
Do GSK define themselves, as a World Leader, by the behaviour of their opponents?
Dr. David Healy says
Annie
A few years later – that same BMJ with Fiona G as editor featured Andrew Witty, CEO of GSK as the acceptable face of the pharmaceutical industry with him on the Front Cover in an Obama like image suggesting he was a figure of hope
David
annie says
I know, in fact, I was trying to find it. Study 329 was beset by problems with the BMJ who took over a year, finding fault with Study 329, and putting up many objections.
“The controversy will not end if they simply stop talking about it. If anything, it will get worse.”
“Behind the scenes, Nardo’s letter had impact.”
No correction, no retraction, no apology, no comment: paroxetine trial reanalysis raises questions about institutional responsibility
https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4629.full?ijkey=00ZjcBlMGct6aDR&keytype=ref
18 September 2015
Kristina K. Gehrki
17 September 2015
David Healy
https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4629/rapid-responses
Mickey Nardo
That was just a quick run through, but the point is that the whole history of the story is in that “grain of sand” – again, hidden in plain view. We owe a debt of gratitude to the people like David Healy, Robert Whitaker, Casper, Bernard Carroll, Paul Thacker, Allen Jones, and the countless others who smelled this rat and gave us the tools to begin to read between the lines [from the top down as well as the bottom up]. The only way to make a dent in this sorry edifice is to keep linking the elements until denial is no longer even possible. I guess my Freudian roots are showing here, but unconsciousness is how all this works, and in this case, it’s been the enemy from the start – actively maintained by people with something to gain from it…
The HOPE front page was utterly ridiculous – Andrew Witty
This is part 4 in Health Care’s Colossus, a series about how UnitedHealth Group wields its unrivaled physician empire to boost its profits and expand its influence.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/10/16/united-health-optum-care-medicare-advantage-strategy-dashboard-emails-documents/
The emails from UnitedHealth Group managers were filled with exclamation marks and pleasantries about the weather. But the underlying message to doctors in late 2020 was persistent and urgent: Hit your targets to see more patients. We need to bring in more money.
At the time, deaths from Covid-19 were surging, and no vaccine was available. But inside a UnitedHealth practice, the “#1 PRIORITY” became documenting older patients’ chronic illnesses to generate more revenue from the federal government, the emails show.
HOPE – some things never change…
mary H. says
Annie, would you please remind me how Shelley Jofre first suspected that there was a story to uncover – which resulted in the excellent Seroxat programmes in 2002? Took one plucky woman to push her way through the mire that she found, once looking, for sure. At the time, it felt as if it would cause a breakthrough didn’t it – did to me anyway as I’d no idea that such corruption was present anywhere, least of all affecting prescriptions from doctors who we had always been taught were trustworthy. Was an eye-opener for sure – but was it a game-changer?
Dr. David Healy says
She read the published article. Almost no doctors, psychiatrists or otherwise, spotted what retrospectively was obvious – there were lots of children described as emotionally labile. A simple question to ask GSK – what does this mean?
There used to be an old conservative party jibe about Tony Blair – how do we know he’s lying – when his lips move. All she did was apply the same technique to companies but also the academics who appeared on the authorship of articles and the editors of good journals.
D
D
annie says
A film in 2001 revealed that a million and a half people in Britain were hooked on prescription tranquillisers – a situation the government’s Mental Health tsar admitted was a “disaster”. But in a case of history repeating itself, in 2002 Shelley reported on the the mass prescription of newer, supposedly non-addictive anti-depressants like Seroxat. She discovered that many people who had begun taking Seroxat in the belief they could stop the drug whenever they wanted, had in fact become hooked on it, while others had become suicidal. The programme sparked an enormous audience response, with a staggering 65,000 people ringing the BBC helpline and 1,500 e-mailing in.
Over the years Shelley has continued her investigations into Seroxat, resulting in four films, which have forced a complete rethink of the drug’s safety and effectiveness as well as an overhaul of the way patients report side effects from any prescription medicine.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/47qj6F2mySgbBD5gV6QbGFw/shelley-jofre
January 29, 2007|
By Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman PC
Documents Reveal Academic “Thought Leaders” Hired by Drug Maker Promoted Paxil for Children and Adolescents Despite Clinical Trials Showing the Drug Was Ineffective and Unsafe
On Monday, January 29, 2007, BBC-One will air “Secrets of the Drug Trials,” a program detailing the investigation by reporter Shelley Jofre, which reveals how “one of Britain’s biggest drug companies misled doctors into prescribing the antidepressant Seroxat (known as Paxil in the US) to teenagers, even after one of its own clinical trials indicated that they were more likely to become suicidal after taking it.” This program is Panorama’s fourth in a series involving the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) Paxil.
https://www.wisnerbaum.com/blog/2007/january/bbc-to-air-secrets-of-the-drug-trials-on-panoram/
Secrets of the Drug Trials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hENtdYoG0Fg
What comes out of the boxes in Malibu – a MUST WATCH
Dr Pedro says
We can conquer this.
Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency… and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
annie says
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Here’s part of a transcript featuring Benbow and BBC investigative journalist, Shelley Jofre.
Much of what is transcribed here never went to air.
Key:
Q = Jofre
A = Benbow
https://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2014/12/where-are-they-now-dr-alastair-benbow.html
Q. Let us move on. What has the company done about the Wyoming verdict?
A. As I told you before, in this matter because of a confidentiality agreement between the family and GSK I am not able to specifically comment on the mitigation, but what I can say is that there is no reliable clinical evidence that Seroxat causes violence, aggression or homicide. This tragic, tragic case is something that does occur from time to time in patients who are depressed…
Q. This man had no history of suicidal thoughts or tendencies. The jurors sat and listened to all the evidence and decided that there were four deaths that were mainly caused by Seroxat. Your company was found guilty of negligence. You cannot ignore that.
A. No, and nor would we want to ignore it. This was a tragic case but we remain firmly convinced that Seroxat did not cause the tragic events in this case.
Q. So the jurors got it wrong!
A. No, I am not saying that. What I am saying – as I have said before – is that there is a confidentiality agreement between the family and GSK in this matter and I cannot comment on the specifics of this but we remain firmly convinced that Seroxat did not cause the tragic events in this case.
Q. It was pretty clear-cut. There was nothing else to explain his behaviour. He had only been on the drug two days and he clearly had a reaction that threw him into mental turmoil and made him behave in this way.
A. Yes, but there is a lot of speculation in the question you asked there but as I said I cannot comment specifically on this case because of a confidentiality agreement between the family and GSK. What I can say is that looking at all the data and the clinical trials there is no reliable evidence that Seroxat causes violence, aggression or homicide.
Q. All the evidence was produced in the trial. I am sure your company more or less produced the best evidence that was available. The jurors decided Seroxat was responsible for those four deaths and that is pretty serious.
A. As I have said before, I cannot comment on the specifics of the case…
Q. You cannot tell me that the clinical trials support Seroxat as not being linked to aggression or suicide?
A. Yes, I can say that. The clinical trial data and spontaneous adverse event data for reporting over the last ten years since Seroxat was made available in the UK do not support the finding that Seroxat causes aggression, violence or homicide.
Q. All of this data was presented to the jurors so they had ample opportunity to hear arguments on both sides and they felt Seroxat was responsible for the deaths.
A. As I say I cannot comment on the legal situation because of a confidentiality…
Q. I am not asking you to comment on the legal situation. I am asking you to comment on the fact that your company’s drug was found responsible for four deaths.
A. As I said, I cannot comment on the specific situation but what I can say, quite clearly, is that when you look at the data from clinical trials and from the data in use in tens of millions of patients in 1999 that there is no reliable evidence that Seroxat causes violence, homicide or aggression.
Q. Is your company just going to ignore this verdict as if it never happened?
A. No we take very seriously any event that occurs when patients are taken off…
Q. What have you done to make sure that this does not happen again?
A. We have looked very, very carefully at the data, and as I say the data clearly shows that there is no reliable evidence that Seroxat causes violence, aggression or homicide.
The conversation continues…
Here’s some brief segments of Benbow in action. The other ‘Alasdair’ in this short video is Alasdair Breckenridge. Both Breckenridge and Benbow are seen here defending Seroxat.
Breckenridge was the former Chairman of the British drug regulator, the MHRA. Before joining them he worked at GlaxoSmithKline.
Smashed it with The Video –
Bob Fiddaman – the greatest sharer
It all seems perfectly ridiculous in the cold-light-of-day…
Harriet Vogt says
You are absolutely right to say, focus on the big strategic issues in this fight– ‘mental health’ is a tactical skirmish – albeit, imo, one of particular relevance.
The heart of it – as you’ve been exposing for decades (not flattery) – is, put simply, that evidence based medicine is a dangerous chimera. The evidence base driving an automated system is corrupt, the patient is missing.
That’s why your evidence to IMMDS Review made me sit up – tangible ideas for turning a wholly inadequate, company driven, bureaucratic ADE monitoring system into something slightly closer to what it should be – patient harm responsive. All the harms are there like red flags all over social media – it ‘s unconscionable that the MHRA and more sluggishly FDA take 20-30 years to register them – in the interim having cosy debates with manufacturers about evidence for causation vs correlation.
The awful truth that I find, as a foot soldier. is not only that many doctors are operating as automatons programmed to act on ‘the evidence’ – so are patients. Only when harmed does critical thinking kick in, but not even then for most.
After all the global outrage re vaccine harms, especially where mandated, manufacturers, governments regulators all caught lying on a cosmic scale and risking the health of their populations – what’s going to change? I’ve met plenty of patients saying, never again, but equally lots queuing up for the next jab. Is anyone suing the MHRA or FDA? Afaik manufacturers are exempt. Yes, there are injury compensation programmes but any significant legal action?
I did read that GSK had committed to trial data transparency – but skimming their public statement, it seems like whitewash:
o To be transparent about ongoing research, before it begins.
o To consider how information can be made accessible and shared appropriately with patients and the public.
o To disclose the results, irrespective of whether they might be perceived as positive or negative.
o To share information in a way that protects privacy and intellectual property
https://www.gsk.com/media/10585/gsk-position-on-disclosure-of-clinical-research-sept-2023.pdf
So what’s to be done? And I guess this is where you start hitting the wall. More of the same? There are some big beasts (positive usage) working like you in the pivotal scientific evidence arena – Carl Heneghan comes to mind for us lay people. And sometimes scientists have more force when you work together, like the PSSD professionals, like I suppose the Great Barrington Declaration gang – but for all their huffing and puffing, have they made a difference? Emotive affect maybe. You could still do more of that.
I did read that GSK had committed to trial data transparency – but skimming their public statement it seems like whitewash:
o To be transparent about ongoing research, before it begins.
o To consider how information can be made accessible and shared appropriately with patients and the public.
o To disclose the results, irrespective of whether they might be perceived as positive or negative.
o To share information in a way that protects privacy and intellectual property
https://www.gsk.com/media/10585/gsk-position-on-disclosure-of-clinical-research-sept-2023.pdf
There are changes in the system, the threads I hang onto – a bit desperately, I grant you. Reducing polypharmacy is high on the agenda, as you’ve noted, because of the poor health economics, not recognition of a corrupt evidence base. Sometimes the right things happen for the wrong reasons – and anything that saves older folk from being killed off by an overload of chemicals is a positive imo. As you know, there’s loads of work being done in this area– a figure that stuck in my head from some Liverpool University research – 3% greater risk of dying for each new drug added to the overload.
‘Mental health’ – a set of words that have driven an epidemic of misery and medication – is tactically potent for obvious reasons. Whilst vaccines have scale, ‘mental health’ is where some of the most powerful evidence of chicanery lies. Re-positioning the human condition as disordered and then drugging it must be one of the most venal marketing scams of all time. That’s why we all surely believe it’s one of the most important tactical battles.
But, Wes Streeting, who honestly looks like someone has plugged him in, has not only decreed that job coaches will be inflicted on the hospitalised – but has now come up with the idea that all those whose obesity is an obstacle to being members of a productive neo-liberal society, will be given Ozempic jabs to fix that. He obviously hasn’t read even Novo Nordisk’s own list of ADEs:
https://www.ozempic.com/how-to-take/side-effects.html
It’s tempting to join you in the ‘slough of despond’, (resisting the Slough quip) courtesy of John Bunyan:
‘Now I saw in my dream that, just as they had ended this talk, they drew near to a very miry slough that was in the midst of the plain; and they being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was “Despond.” Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and CHRISTIAN, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire’.
Harriet Vogt says
I don’t understand why you say,,‘Talking about AD issues just plays into their (industry’s) hands?’ Unless you mean driving a low value commodity towards higher margin OTC? This would be a positive outcome for patients imo, even if industry benefits. I’m probably being obtuse and/or naive – what are the other dimensions to your thinking?
What I do understand is that ADs longevity is in large part owing to no obvious product replacement. Watching Nutt, the salesman, is always a good barometer – initial sales pitch – SSRIs seem to have very few adverse effects, more recently, given psychedelic commercial interests – they’re not very effective. But afaik , apart from safety issues, psychedelics are unscaleable for mass use so where does that leave us?
Harriet Vogt says
Coda re ‘Talking about ADs plays into their hands’.
Re-reading your comment – I think I now understand your point – focussing attention on ADs about which they care not one jot – diverts scrutiny from other unethical behaviours.
Yes, get that, totally.
annie says
I was quite struck by the imperious nature of Stephen Fry, Ruby Wax, and Jo Brand
https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/jo-brand-stephen-fry-ruby-wax-royal-college-of-psychiatrists-alastair-campbell-b1187831.html
Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s spin doctor during the Iraq war. He has expanded on his ‘mental health’ problems considerably. He had a sit down with Simon Wessely on one of his RSM Podcasts.
https://archive.reading.ac.uk/news-events/2017/November/pr748137.html
Politics if very much a part of the ‘Mental Health’ Agenda, and the place we should increasingly look.
Deaths happen every day from the wrong drugs given, to vaccines, with very little efficacy measures, to a complete whitewash from Drug Regulators, to the complete inability to have frank and honest, transparency.
The politics is where it should be looked.
We are not safe, nor will be safe, when Famous Faces, call for more psychiatrists, who will continue to have a ‘mental block’ when it comes to Drug Dangers.
If the Royal College of Psychiatrists wants to expand Psychiatrists, it should be up front about how little they know and stop peddling Stephen Fry and his ilk, and Alastair Campbell, as the success stories.
Behind them are legions of dead and injured, but this doesn’t seem to fit in, at all…
Patrick D Hahn says
I just finished reading that piece in the New Yorker. This woman was given a dozen different drugs. How can any human being possibly need that much medication?
It says volumes that the author didn;t even bother listing all the drugs, but I’d bet every one of them has agitation/suicidality/violence listed as a “side effect.”
I notice one of the drugs the author did list was Ambien. I don’t know about anybody else, but I don’t feel safe being in the same country as a drug that has “sleep-driving” listed as a side effect.
Harriet Vogt says
Emerged from the slough, chastising myself for UK parochial, miserable thinking.
Since companies have lost interest in ‘Mental Health’ markets – in favour of vaccines and ‘fat busters’ – as we all recognise, a new battle front has opened up around the latter, the Metabolic campaigners.
I’ve been following Aseem Malhotra for a while – read ‘The Pioppi Diet’ when it first came out about 6-7 years ago – and John Abramson’s work for a bit longer https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f6123
I’ve found time to watch part of ‘Do no pharm’ – which despite its slightly cheesy title – is pretty powerful stuff – featuring some key players in that arena – John Abramson himself is compelling. So far, I’m half way through – it’s long – Paul Thacker nailed it, ’You cannot have pharma corruption without corrupt doctors, they are implicit to the whole cycle’.
And, let us not forget RFKJr himself – whom for some instinctive reason I viscerally dislike – all those show offy, shirtless press-ups don’t help – is taking the fight – political – in a big way – obviously vaccine driven but metabolic too. The Prescription Drug User Fee Act “puts bureaucrats’ purse strings in the hands of the pharmaceutical industry.” Odds are that – unbelievably,incredibly, godhelpamericaandusally – Trump will be coming back for a second term, so, having expediently joined forces with Trump, RFKJr looks like he will have his moment. Bill Maher’s take is hialriously – accurate https://x.com/billmaher/status/1847475437636612258
So reasons to be cheerful? Maybe. But then looking, parochially again, at the UK’s QRISK algorithm for drugging cardiovascular risk – not treating CVD disease – it’s back to the slough.
https://www.albanyhousemedicalcentre.co.uk/health-information/cardiovascular-risk-score-qrisk2-and-the-use-of-statins/
And, as for justice and humanity when a cascade of prescribed toxicity has driven you to murder those whom you love dearly with all your heart – your children – forget it.