The Guardian just ran an article on PSSD – It feels like we’ve been lobotomized.
The following day they surprisingly had two articles on Singulair – Montelukast – hazards
Safety fears over asthma drug after young children suffer severe side effect and A healthy kid dies and there has been no change’.
For a paper that has not noticed a single hazard of a drug or vaccine for 20 years, this is quite a change. Perhaps they been cued by the New York Times, which curiously recently had an article on PSSD and two on Singulair – See Silencing Doctors, Silencing Safety. Have these ‘Left leaning’ papers, as The Mail would make sure to tell you, begun to shake off the shackles the Democrat and Labour Parties have had them in? The Mail has been much better at covering adverse treatment effects both drug and non-drug – see Bad Therapy.
By way of kicking off this piece, let me mention Rosie Tilli, who is central to the Guardian article and who also kicked off the PSSD podcast series. Podcast Episode 1 is linked here and Podcast Episode 2 here. These illustrate extraordinarily the vacuum at the heart of modern healthcare.
Vacuum Consumes Royal College
From: Simon W Sent: September 7, 2023
To: dignitas@dignitas.ch
Cc: <MHRACustomerServices@mhra.gov.uk>; drladesmith@outlook.com; pss <pss@rcpsych.ac.uk>
Subject: PSSD sufferer seeking euthanasia
Thank you for your response. I’ll hand this over to the MHRA, Patient Safety Commissioner and President of RcPsych (cc’d) to give them the opportunity to explain what their organisations will be doing for PSSD sufferers. If they fail to provide an effective answer then I will pursue euthanasia.
Kind regards,
From: President president@rcpsych.ac.uk 18 Sept 2023
Subject: Email from Dr Lade Smith
Dear Simon
I wanted to write to you directly as I am aware you have been trying to contact me in my role as President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I’m afraid since starting the role 2 months ago, I have been overwhelmed with requests, submissions, diary commitments and various duties required of the President, in addition to getting used to the role as well as doing my usual day job. In addition, you have been using an outdated email address for me, which is why I am only replying now.
I am very sorry to hear about your experience and the impact it is having on you. I have asked the College staff team to signpost you to ways in which you can get support which I hope will be of help. If not, I have outlined them below.
- You would benefit from review by a psychiatrist. I suspect that a comprehensive biopsychosocial holistic review with formulation including a full medication review would help to ascertain your needs and what might help you – you can get an appointment via your GP, although if you would prefer not to approach your GP, you should be able to get an appointment via your local IAPT service (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies). These services usually take self-referrals and are a useful starting point to access to mental healthcare.
- If in crisis, you can refer yourself to your local mental health (MH) crisis resolution and home treatment team – you can get the number through NHS 111, and they should be able to signpost you to your local service MH helpline (some services have them).
- You can also call the Samaritans if in crisis.
- You can present to your local area crisis café – these are usually run by voluntary sector services, and dependent on the area in which you live – some have them, some do not.
- You can present to your local A&E to receive psychiatric support in a crisis.
You have asked in your email about the College’s position with regard to sexual side effects of antidepressant medication. Antidepressants are an important clinically recommended treatment option that are effective at reducing the symptoms of depression, particularly more severe forms and when used in combination with psychological therapies. We know that they can help people recover from what can be a serious and potentially life-threatening condition.
As with other medications, they can cause people to experience side effects. This includes changes in libido or sexual function as is outlined in our patient resource and other patient information. Having completed a research degree in the sexual and reproductive side effects of psychotropic medication, I am acutely aware of the importance of sexual side effects of psychiatric medication. In common with all other medications, most people experience mild and transient side effects.
As with other medications, there are individual differences in sensitivity to antidepressants. Rarely, some individuals experience persistent and longer lasting effects on sexual function. The College is clear that psychiatrists and other clinicians should review the side effects and discuss these with their patients to ensure they make an informed decision. This is good medical practice and is in line with NICE guidance and a matter we have raised with our GP colleagues. I should also note that the need to do this is regularly assessed during psychiatrists’ training and they are expected to continuously update their knowledge throughout their career, undertaking training as needed to ensure they are offering evidence based clinical care.
Once again, I am sorry to hear about your experiences. I really hope that you feel able to seek appropriate help. It is available and I feel sure that with the right support things could improve for you.
Finally, I appreciate that you may not agree with the College’s position but thank you again for contacting me directly on this very important matter.
With best wishes, Yours sincerely,
Lade
Dr Shubulade Smith CBE
President Royal College of Psychiatrists
October 10, 2023
Dear Lade
Apologies for a lengthy letter. I am responding to a recent reply you sent Simon W.
Let me start by saying I believe in the medical model and physical treatments. I have run an ECT service, use no treatments other than drugs, and have made this clear in forums that many psychiatrists would view as antipsychiatry, and where the College or other professional bodies have had no input for decades.
I have concerns for the survival of psychiatry as a profession when you suggest to Simon:
- The sexual side effects of antidepressants are mild and transient.
- He will almost certainly be helped by psychiatric input.
- Doctors are trained to recognize and manage side effects.
- Antidepressants help severe cases of depression.
Simon has Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD). This has been known about for nearly 40 years. In some of SmithKline Beecham’s heathy volunteer trials of paroxetine in the mid-1980s, more than half of the young men involved complained bitterly of sexual side effects – rating them as by far the worst problem an SSRI can induce. These continued throughout the trial and in some cases persisted after the exposure of a few weeks to the drug.
Clinicians like me, however, when later running trials for GSK were told not to ask about sex leaving GSK and other companies able to claim that less than 5% of those on SSRIs had sexual dysfunction and hinting things would be fine if you stopped them for a romantic weekend – when companies knew there was a real chance you would not be able to stop at all and if you could your sexual function might deteriorate dramatically.
When someone like Simon consults what you might expect to be a responsible information provider like NHS Digital, about an SSRI they have been prescribed, there is nothing there about sexual side effects, even though NHS Digital claim to be listing the common side effects and the sexual side effects are by far the most common. If a doctor like me asks NHS Digital why this is, I get told it’s to avoid deterring people from seeking the far less common benefit SSRIs can offer.
In taking this line, NHS Digital, along with MHRA, NICE and other bodies, de facto seduce people into living the lives companies want them to live. Our job as professionals should be to help people use these products to live the life they want to live. People with mild and transient conditions, that lead to 75% of SSRI scripts, would likely be slow to have their love life terminated by a condition like PSSD – or the functional version of PSSD created by an inability to stop an SSRI.
This situation calls to mind the famous aphorism of Philippe Pinel, a creator of the medical model and medical professionalism, who told us that it is a great art to be able to deploy a treatment that might work for a patient but an even greater art to know when not to use it.
When PSSD supervenes the often debilitating sexual dysfunction that happens on SSRIs gets dramatically worse. Many never recover. I’ve been in contact with several people who have committed suicide. Some enquire about euthanasia as Simon did.
There were reports to regulators about PSSD from the early 1990s. The regulators did nothing saying it was impossible for them to work out whether it was the illness or the drug causing the problem. These disingenuous responses accidentally draw attention to the dog that isn’t barking – doctors. We, who are primarily responsible for keeping people safe on treatment, have gone missing.
There is no psychiatric disorder that I know of that can leave someone able to say they can rub a hard-bristled brush up and down their genitals or rub chili paste into their genitals and feel nothing. The reason regulators cannot work out if an SSRI is causing PSSD is because, unlike doctors, they never interview patients and never get faced with details like this.
Shamefully, we haven’t put this condition on the map. Instead, we have detained people for their crazy ideas, diagnosed them with somatic delusions, or accused them of being abused in childhood and unable to remember it. GPs have laughed at patients.
Standard procedure for the media when covering issues like PSSD is to end with advice not do anything on the basis of the information being provided without consulting a medical practitioner. Much as I would like to be able to echo this, I tell people that consulting a doctor about PSSD or dependence on psychotropic drugs now carries a substantial risk of making things worse.
In respect of PSSD, the College has gotten away with a lot because for 3 decades those affected have preferred anonymity. Simon and others now figure they have no option but to follow the precedent set ty AIDS activists when they created ACT-UP.
They have created groups, some of whose podcasts tell us and the public more about the failings in modern healthcare than professional bodies like the College seem capable of doing. I strongly encourage you to watch the podcast linked here, which features Simon and two others.
Far from being trained to recognize side effects, most doctors it seems have bought Eli Lilly’s marketing line that our views about harms are anecdotal. I regularly meet senior academic colleagues, good researchers, sceptical of pharma, who believe they do not have the expertise to write a legal report or a journal article about a drug hazard. If this were the case, not a single member of the College should be in clinical practice, as making judgement calls about hazards is central to safe practice.
It’s not just individual doctors who fail to step up to the plate. Our journals and professional associations have also lost their nerve. Advised by lawyers, journals from the BMJ to the BJP do not feature case reports of drug induced problems. PSSD, protracted withdrawal, SSRI induced vision problems, SSRI induced PPPD (Persistent Postural Perceptual Dizziness), along with SSRI induced doubling of miscarriages, voluntary terminations and birth defects, and a significant collapse in sperm counts for men are the kinds of problem the BJP should have featured but hasn’t.
You may quibble about the idea of SSRIs causing birth defects and miscarriages. This raises another point. Over a decade ago, GSK lost legal cases on these issues, costing them roughly $1 billion. But few of our colleagues are aware of this because companies are expert at closing down messages they don’t want you or me to hear.
Genital numbing is the single commonest thing to happen on an SSRI but doesn’t feature in the label of these drugs or anywhere.
Allowing ourselves to be shut out on matters like this points to a failure of nerve for which the College has to be held in part responsible. A good medical assessment of a harm encountered in practice and written up for a journal or legal report – Evident Based Medicine – is more scientific than company trials reported in our journals claiming a drug works well and is free of harms. These get badged as Evidence Based Medicine even though in many instances, the company has told regulators the positively reported trials were negative and there were harms.
Regulators and guideline makers will tell you, as they have told me in print, that it is not their job to police the medical literature. They are right – it is our job. We have tolerated a transformation of medical professionals into technicians and bureaucrats, expensive technicians.
If the drugs work wonderfully well and the only problems are mild and transient as your letter suggests, health service managers, will figure there are cheaper prescribers than us – nurses and pharmacists. In recent legal cases involving suicides, familicides and other problems I’ve dealt with, the prescribers have been nursing staff or physician assistants.
It’s in our professional interests to stand together. As mentioned in a letter to Adrian James an ‘Antidepressants Save Lives’ message is not only not evidence based – it’s a professional suicide note. We should be telling people that Psychiatrists Save Lives.
For that to happen doctors would need to be trained to recognize side effects. You tell Simon that they are trained but how can this be possible when close to the entire literature on the drugs we use is ghostwritten, regularly portraying negative trials showing lethal treatment hazards as demonstrating both efficacy and safety?
No company trials of psychotropic drugs have shown lives saved or function restored. These studies produce average rating scale changes that are pretty minimal. Average changes tell us nothing about what to do for the person in front of us. These trials are also the gold standard way to hide adverse effects.
In the case of the antidepressants, not only are the average benefits minimal, but companies, knowing that SSRIs did not work for melancholia or severe depression, put them into trials of mild to moderate depression. Tricyclics can help melancholia and severe depression, but most people will read your letter to Simon as saying SSRIs can too which is plain wrong..
When we attend inquests, medical insurers advise us not to blame the drug even though this may be the obvious cause of death. How against this background can trainees be trained to recognize adverse effects? Why does the College tolerate this?
Approval as an ‘antidepressant’ means most psychiatrists prescribe these drugs on that basis without realizing there are different therapeutic principles involved – SSRIs being more serenic, noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors more energizing, drugs like mirtazapine act more like tonics (improving appetite and sleep), while tricyclics are effective for melancholia.
In trying several proven to work SSRIs and leaving them in place when the person fails to respond, as we add other drugs to the mix, we create treatment resistant depressions – a condition we didn’t have until recently.
We are not uniquely guilty on this front. Most drugs approved as antihypertensives, laxatives, or hypoglycaemics embody different therapeutic principles and people with minimal hypertension or constipation can end up as treatment resistant hypertension or constipation on 4 different drugs.
A narrative that views all antidepressants as magic bullets that ‘work’ hands the narrative over to industry. Our only job is to prescribe. The idea of therapeutic principles restores control to us and our patients, which is not something industry want.
Unlike other treatment resistant conditions, however, from Canada to Belgium, treatment resistant depression provides young people with a basis to apply for and receive Medical Assistance in Dying. Simon and others with PSSD have explored this option.
Psychiatry led medicine in creating specialist hospitals, journals, and associations but we now lead in another way. The literature reporting the results on paediatric antidepressants has been comprehensively ghostwritten and may offer the greatest mismatch in science, between what the academic literature claims and what the raw data says when accessed. How could we not now have a children’s mental health crisis? I’m ashamed when we blame this on the pandemic.
My concern is not just for these young folk but for us as a profession. Trust is being lost. We have a public health crisis with 15% of the population taking antidepressants chronically when initially we advised taking them for no more than 6 months. It means 20% of the population, or more in some areas, are not able to make love the way they might wish. This is going to rebound on us.
A few months ago, the 2020 fertility rate in the UK was reported as 1.56 children per woman. This is partly driven by an aging population, but SSRIs must also have a role. One third of the births were to women born outside the UK and two thirds of London births were to a parent born outside the UK. Immigrant populations are less likely to on SSRIs than the native population. They are more likely to turn to their communities than take pills. As an Irish immigrant to the UK, I think we Irish greatly improved the UK and that’s my view of immigration in general. My point is that with the SSRIs and sex, as with SSRIs and homicide, these drugs can have significant effects on individuals not on the drugs and in this case significant effects on everyone in the UK.
Our future as medical professionals lies in deprescribing. Medication burdens are increasing rapidly and correlate with falling life expectancies (in the native population). Neither RCTs nor Guidelines can ever inform clinical practice when it comes to Reducing Medication Burdens. We will be forced to practice a Relationship Based Medicine rather than EBM, helping people to live the lives they want to live rather than manoeuvring them into living the lives companies want them to live.
Psychiatry will have a key role in this as many of our drugs are impossible to get off, cause clear neuropathies like PSSD, and in many instances offer minimal if any benefits. We will need to insist on one hand that acting judiciously we can save lives, while accepting that our current practices have put many patients, including pregnant women, in a close to impossible position.
I chaired a BAP satellite symposium for Pfizer in 1992 marking the launch of sertraline in the UK. My published talk stressed that serotonin was one of the most primitive neurotransmitters and modulating it with SSRIs was likely to reveal novel phenomena that might be useful in the treatment of other conditions.
Research on PSSD, a novel phenomenon 30 years ago, suggests sertraline acts on p63 regulatory proteins, which thalidomide also acts on. Understanding what is happening here has the potential to open a door to better antiviral and anti-cancer agents.
If the College embraced PSSD, it might be capable of contributing in this area, in addition to keeping people like Simon alive if only because you offered some hope of a cure and sense that their suffering was not all in vain. Is the College capable of rising to a challenge like this?
Yours sincerely
David Healy MD FRCPsych
Notes
Five months later, there has been no reply from Lade to this letter apart from College acknowledgement of receipt. This non-responsiveness echoes a similar position adopted by Adrian James, the previous president, following a letter I sent him – See Royal College of Psychiatrists Suicide Note.
These days Universities and Colleges and all sorts of bodies take institutional positions on the Ukraine War, Gaza, Racism and all sort of things that is none of their business. In this case, I am not asking them even to take a position on specific hazards drugs might have – which you might think is part of their business.
Despite the words Royal and College, RCP is a trade association – a trade union for professionals. Looking after the interests of their members is their business. I am asking them to engage with a ghost-writing of the medical literature that means much of it is fraudulent, with information important for doctors deliberately hidden by companies and the hiding assisted by a capture of regulatory and other government bodies.
Who if not a professional body is going to lead on grappling with this? Not grappling with it reduces doctors, including Lade, to the status of bureaucrats ticking boxes in response to dictates from above. Lade’s response is one any bureaucrat would be proud of, but pretty soon won’t be needed to write as it will be auto-generated by CHATGPT or Googles BARD.
In contrast to Lade’s response, the podcast by Simon, Bryn and Roy, and everything by Rosie shows extraordinary leadership. Can psychiatrists, or doctors more generally complain if they are replaced come the Revolution? They continue in existence at present primarily because as learned intermediaries they are useful to pharmaceutical companies.
Since writing, some colleagues working on PSSD, have compiled a list of 18 people they have known with PSSD who are confirmed as having opted for suicide and/or Euthanasia/MAiD over the past 2 years. One more was added last week.
annie says
How do we save Simon, Bryn, Roy, Rosie and so many other PSSD folk…
Dr David Cox
@DrDavidACox
Totally – a lot of people fail to realise that the best journalism is covering topics which people don’t necessarily want to be covered
We don’t save lives this way :
Having completed a research degree in the sexual and reproductive side effects of psychotropic medication
I really hope that you feel able to seek appropriate help. It is available
they are expected to continuously update their knowledge throughout their career, undertaking training as needed to ensure they are offering evidence based clinical care.
you may not agree with the College’s position
Her letter to Simon, was so deprecating, so full of the usual ‘things to do to help himself’ it beggars belief.
PSSD Scotland reposted
rosie @ROSIE_PSSD Mar 2 Replying to @ProfRobHoward
Maybe it’s because you’re seeing it as “delusional disorder”? The psychiatrist I saw about my PSSD is probably adamant that he hasn’t seen it before and has completely forgotten that the girl he sectioned actually had PSSD and not delusional disorder
rosie reposted
Roy @Roy_PSSD
Eighteen suicides because of PSSD in the last two years. Many of them young people in their teens, 20’s, and 30’s. How many more people have to lose their lives, before the world wakes up to the reality of this condition!
Roy @Roy_PSSD Mar 2
I can’t even remember the person who I was in 2007, before I took Citalopram. That person died with the first Citalopram tablet, and seems lost forever. My emotions and sexuality were annihilated, and my personality changed irrevocably from that point on.
@PSSDNetwork
This is PSSD – in the words of those who suffer from it. Although awareness among the medical profession and general public is rapidly building, there are currently no treatments for this condition. Please share this video so our voices can be heard! #SSRI #SSRIs #SNRI #SNRIs #Antidepressants
https://twitter.com/PSSDNetwork/status/1761962548411433384
Roy says
Rosie was told she had “delusional disorder” when she complained about her PSSD symptoms, and she was sectioned for complaining about, and trying to get help for her PSSD symptoms.
I was told I might have a personality disorder by a psychiatrist, after refusing to accept the mental health teams view; that my persisting genital numbness, zero libido, and pleasureless orgasms were caused by depression, and not the SSRI Citalopram.
They saw me repeatedly disagreeing with their opinion on this, as evidence of a personality disorder.
Daryl was told he had “somatic symptoms disorder” to explain away his genital numbness, and other PSSD symptoms, and his family initialled sided with the psychiatrist about this.
Another PSSD sufferer was diagnosed with “conversion disorder”, in response to her complained about her long lasting PSSD symptoms.
It is never the drug responsible, and the blame is almost always placed back onto the patient.
Also often the families of the patient, side with the “medical professionals”, in saying that what has happened to you, isn’t really happening, when you know that it definitely is.
It is a horrible form of gaslighting, that has driven some PSSD sufferers to suicide; and it is an abuse of power, over some of the most vulnerable people in society!
Dr. David Healy says
Roy
This is a fabulous comment. Thanks
David
Harriet Vogt says
Fabulous work from both of you. Great follow up to Saturday’s hugely successful Guardian piece.
Truly perverse how psychiatrists, including the head of the trade association, are always banging on about their biopsychosocial model. Kind of fair enough, you might think, pretty simple-mindedly, bleedin’ obvious. And yet, when it comes to adverse events – toxic drug reactions that to most of us are self-evidently caused by the bio – they attribute them to the psycho.
Hard to fathom. Is it that the cognitive dissonance of inadvertently harming patients is too much to bear? Automatons unable to think beyond dodgy RCA ‘findings’? Is it an actual inability to understand that mind may be enabled by body but is not the same? Pharmacological ignorance on an intergalactic scale? All of the above? Something else?
How can patients ever feel safe when regulators don’t regulate and the dogs aren’t barking – doctors. And the ones who are – appear to be barking?
Dr. David Healy says
Just for non-English speakers and that means non-English people who speak English, Harriet has left out one word at the end there – she is saying Barking Mad.
She might also have said, the only barking they do is barking at patients – where barking means speak angrily, loudly or even shout
David
Johanna says
Being diagnosed with Somatic Symptom Disorder — a second psychiatric diagnosis — for complaining of unbearable physical effects of the meds you were prescribed for your first psychiatric diagnosis? You’re right, Roy: That truly is a “horrible form of gaslighting.”
An earlier RxISK column took up the sad case of Adam Maier-Clayton, a young Canadian campaigning for the right to assisted suicide for those with a severe mental-health disorder. It turned out that Adam had been treated for depression and anxiety since childhood, but his problems had not become unbearable until age 23,, when he received a new “mental health diagnosis” after an emergency hospital stay.
What was the new diagnosis that broke his will to live? You guessed it: Somatic Symptom Disorder. Here’s what it looked like:
“Adam began experiencing crippling physical pain throughout his body. He described the experience as akin to being “burned with acid”. Any kind of cognitive activity, such as reading, writing or even talking for more than a short time, made the pain worse and left him incapacitated for hours afterwards.”
It seened painfully obvious that these were physical symptoms, quite plausibly caused by the latest additions to his lifelong cascade of psychotropic medication. But because his prescribing doctors would not consider that, Adam’s physical suffering was defined as an unbearable psychiatric disease.
Here’s the blog, and a BBC article explaining Adam’s condition:
https://rxisk.org/m-a-d-and-treatment-resistant-depression/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40546632
John says
Dear Johanna
I wonder what David Healy thinks about this one: Was it benzos or TCAs that delivered the deadly blow in Adam’s case? Because just after this, they started giving him anticonvulsants like Gabapentin and Carbamazepine, probably to ease the nerve pain of drug damage a.k.a. “somatic symptoms”
Thank you for drawing the attention back on his story. You are absolutely right about it. If you look at Adam’s drug trajectory, which he shared on his FB wall, he followed a typical course of: An SSRI -> Another SSRI -> Abilify -> SSRI + SNRI combo -> Wellbutrin…. Now at this very step of this ladder down to hell, I stopped myself, which probably saved me from the extreme “somatic symptoms” that Adam developed. But I have severe protracted withdrawal symptoms too, despite 28 months of abstinence…
The thing is, Adam went further: They gave him further benzos and then finally they put him on TCAs. Based on everything that I’ve learnt so far and what I could conclude on my own efforts: TCAs, though effective for melancholia’s like David says, can wreck up the nervous system if initiated at the end of a severe drug trajectory like Adam’s. Again, maybe it was the benzos that destroyed him. The type of pain which he had described to his father: “Dad, it’s as if they are washing my whole body and my face with acid” is simply a wrecked up nervous system and fried nerve endings in my opinion. This sort of pain is more or less in the same category as Akathisia according to me.
Strangely, I got PSSD from Wellbutrin on my own trajectory, which eased after initiating my Venlafaxine + Sertraline combo back for a second time. But this second period of Venlafaxine + Sertraline left me with a severe form of IBS, fibromyalgia-like pain, temperature dysregulation, itching that won’t go away with any drugs whatsoever, restless legs (this might be due to occasional try-outs with antipsychotics in the past). I have a feeling that my itching is a lighter version of Adam’s “acid bath” symptom. Itching is also very common among ex-users of Venlafaxine (Effexor).
By the way, they were almost going to move me further on to benzos and then TCAs in 2019 as well, because “I had treatment-resistant depression”. But I finally woke up after 6 years, to the fact that there was something off. I started tapering off my Venla + Sertra combo. This gave me a second chance in life, though painful, but Adam didn’t even get that…
Now, you know what was going to happen if I were to follow the psychiatrists further and went on benzos and TCAs right? The country where I live now is famous for putting young people who are injured by psychotropics, to death.
It shouldn’t have been SO easy and available for some stupid doctor to put me on these drugs that are according to the witnesses of some PSSD-victims: “More harmful, addictive and devastating than some hard street drugs that they consumed before”
All things aside, I found ways of keeping protracted withdrawal symptoms under control. But for the rest, I had to accept that there is no going back from this injury.
PS: As David says, treatment-resistant depression is a product of psychiatry.
John
DW says
I have experienced these same symptoms following treatment for Tourette’s syndrome.
The Tourette’s went away upon adulthood as it usually does.
Something never discussed by my doctor.
But the effects of the SERI’s are permanent more than 20 years later.
susanne says
I don’t think we are going to be rid of the colleges for a long time. They paradoxically get the message that they are not trusted and so increase their survival budget with media appointments and PR Their way of adapting to survive is as the expense of those who are in need of trustworty use of science and practitioners. The college doesn’t do science the Inst of Psych does and look what goes on there with Simon Wessley and co. hand in hand with another college – of GPs. Lade should not be in charge of a service dealing with people at all. She lacks empathy. From the 1st ‘me, me, me para to this patronisingly insulting advice regarding potential suicides from what she calls her ‘team’ Notably she probably knows that none of these avenues would ‘help’ but she has ‘done something ‘ (useless) on paper. No.s 1-5 Morality is a dirty word used by the naive.
‘even though NHS Digital claim to be listing the common side effects and the sexual side effects are by far the most common. If a doctor like me asks NHS Digital why this is, I get told it’s to avoid deterring people from seeking the far less common benefit SSRIs can offer. ‘ That is a profound misunderstanding of their job.
In my opinion from watching what goes on for past decades the college should be disbanded as causing a threat to the health of the nation(s), all potential prescribers should be obliged to take exams on pharmaceuticals and include the history of the pharma industry and how it operates presently. Pie in the sky as they are being encouraged by the coll of psychs to get into tech psych . I imagine much of misleading data and corruption will then be even more difficult to trace. Would love to find something positive to say but can’t.
annie says
Some of the Bonkers stuff…
Royal College of Psychiatrists leaders accused of ‘dangerous’ and ‘misleading’ comments on antidepressant withdraw
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16077230.royal-college-psychiatrists-leaders-accused-dangerous-misleading-comments-antidepressant-withdraw/
MENTAL health experts have accused the Royal College of Psychiatrists of misleading the public with “potentially dangerous” claims that the vast majority of patients experience no withdrawal effects within two weeks of stopping antidepressants.
A formal letter of complaint signed by dozens of psychiatrists, academics and patients – including some in Scotland – has called on the president and chair of the UK professional body issue an urgent correction.
They said the goal of their complaint “is to correct a potentially dangerous misleading public statement”.
It comes after Professor Wendy Burn, president of RCPsych, and Professor David Baldwin, chair of the college’s psycho-pharmacology committee, stated in a letter to the Times newspaper on February 24 that “in the vast majority of patients, any unpleasant symptoms experienced on discontinuing antidepressants have resolved within two weeks of stopping treatment”.
Within 48 hours of this letter being published the college’s own report, ‘Coming Off Antidepressants’ – which contradicted this claim – had been pulled from the RCPsych website.
This document, based on a survey of 800 antidepressant users carried out by the college, stated that withdrawal symptoms were experienced by the majority (63 per cent) of patients, generally lasted for up to six weeks and that a quarter reported anxiety lasting more than 12 weeks.
Critics said the college had suddenly deleted the report to “prevent the public seeing evidence that contradicts your claim”.
Marion Brown, a psychotherapist from Helensburgh who has been petitioning the Scottish Parliament to improve the support available to patients harmed by dependence on prescription pills including antidepressants, said professors’ letter was “absolutely shocking”. Her petition has been backed by organisations including the BMA.
She added: “The Royal College of Psychiatrists either have no idea of the problems these drugs, and antidepressants in particular, are causing, or they do know and they’re trying to not know – a wilful blindness.”
The letter of complaint, submitted by Dr John Read, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of East London, is signed by another 29 psychiatrists, academics and patients who have suffered years of withdrawal symptoms after coming off antidepressants.
The signatories include Dr Peter Gordon, a psychiatrist from Stirlingshire, and Ann Kelly, from West Dunbartonshire, who previously spoke to the Herald about being permanently crippled by severe pain, mobility problems and visual disturbance despite taking two and a half years to taper herself gradually off antidepressants.
The letter of complaint states that the two-week claim “is not evidence-based, is incorrect and has misled the public on an important matter of public safety, with potentially hazardous consequences”.
They add that “people may be misled by the false statement into thinking that it is easy to withdraw and may therefore try to do so too quickly or without support from the prescriber, other professionals or loved ones”.
The row over antidepressants was reignited following a Lancet study on February 22 which concluded that the drugs were always more effective than a placebo at reducing acute depression.
However, critics pointed out that the researchers had based their findings on the results after no more than 12 weeks’ use, when most people are on antidepressants much longer.
Dr Andy Docherty, a member of the Critical-Psychiatry Network, a group of psychiatrists and clinicians concerned that patients are being harmed by long-term use of antidepressants, said under-reporting of side effects and withdrawal problems was an “elephant in the room”.
He said too many patients end up in a never-ending cycle of treatment.
He said: “If you’ve got anxiety and depression, then withdrawal symptoms will be put down to a re-emergence of your depression and anxiety. So you end up getting prescribed new pills, and it just becomes a vicious circle.”
In January, Dr John Mitchell, the Scottish Government’s psychiatric advisor, told Holyrood’s petitions committee that the number of people suffering severe and life-limiting side effects as a result of withdrawal from prescription drugs such as antidepressants, sleeping tablets and painkillers was “very rare”.
However, he also admitted that it was “difficult” to gather accurate data on the problem.
A spokesman for the Royal College of Psychiatrists said: “We received a formal complaint from Professor John Read on March 9 and we are currently investigating this.
“In line with our College policy, we are treating the complaint as confidential.”
The Horrific Effects of Not Being Believed
April 18, 2018 38 Comments
https://davidhealy.org/the-horrific-effects-of-not-being-believed/
The injury caused by being dismissed even ridiculed by a doctor when you know full well you are right and he is wrong is often a more difficult injury to bear than the difficulties caused by withdrawal from an antidepressant or other drug – debilitating though these injuries can be, lasting in some cases for decades.
The injury caused by being dismissed even ridiculed by a priest, or a bishop or even a pope when you know full well that you are right and he is wrong is often a much more difficult injury to bear than the difficulties caused by an original abuse.
Man Up?
The New York Times recently ran an article on Antidepressant Dependence and Withdrawal. This was dissed by British College of Psychiatrist figures from Wendy Burn to Simon Wessely.
Time for Wendy, Simon, Dinesh and others to Man Up? They can’t say this is news. Successive presidents of the British Psychiatric College have been told about this problem for over 20 years since Charles Medawar first wrote to them. They are in great part personally responsible for ongoing injuries from disbelief to thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people.
If anyone knows of any psychiatric church that has behaved differently please let us know.
Peter J Scott-Gordon says
Dear David,
Thank you for writing this and sharing these communications. Simon is far from being alone in his experience.
Before I retired as an NHS psychiatrist I engaged with the Royal College of Psychiatrists about issues related to psychiatric drug prescribing. As President, Professor Sir Simon Wessely communicated with me directly and I was grateful for this [even though he used metaphors to suggest I was a ‘pest’ to the College]. I later was told [from a range of sources] that as President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Simon Wessely had issued some sort of circular stating that members of the College should not engage with me. Following this, when I occasionally met senior members of the College and introduced myself, I received the same reply “Oh, you are the one who writes to the College!”
aye
Dr Peter Scott-Gordon
[Retired NHS psychiatrist]
I have just written this post:
DENIAL: https://holeousia.com/2024/03/04/denial/
The word denial is defined in our family dictionary as: ‘the act of denying or disowning; contradiction, refusal.‘
This definition fits with a pattern of responses made by psychiatrists in relation to population-wide experience of prescribed psychiatric drugs. For decades the psychiatric profession has disowned the very idea of dependence or withdrawal related issues associated with psychiatric drugs. Simply put, such lived experience of these drugs was disbelieved. This denial was exhibited top-to-bottom in my former profession. This only began to change following the public outcry in relation to this letter published in the Times.
However, it seems that this pattern of denial by psychiatrists [a refusal to believe patient experience] is once again repeating. This time in relation to distressing, and sometimes persistent, sexual and urinary dysfunction related to antidepressant use [so-called “side-effects”] .
Denying patient experience is at the very root of stigma.
Psychiatry needs to do better. Much better. Short-term, largely pharma-based-studies, cannot provide overall evidence on prescribing. If science stops listening to lived experience [in relation to any intervention] then evidence will never be properly ‘based’.
Sarah says
Mad in America published the following piece on Anniek Lemmens who died by euthanasia because of the unbearable suffering from protracted withdrawal.
“Monique: Would it have made any difference to you if you hadn’t had to fight so hard to find help for your symptoms?
Anniek: Yes indeed… People regularly talk about my euthanasia wish. But it’s not a wish. It’s an alternative to me doing it myself one unbearable day because, in the end, I can’t sustain this. Since I know I am going to die, I was more concerned with how to end my life properly than with wishing that I want my old life back. Recently when a spiritual caregiver asked how it came to be this way, I did feel that it would have made a huge difference if doctors had believed me and convincingly done their best for me. Now I wasted so much energy trying to convince them.
That is why I think it is very important to let people know that discontinuation complaints, as well as the patient, should be taken seriously.” https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/03/post-acute-withdrawal-syndrome-paws-how-the-last-step-to-recovery-became-the-final-step-in-life/
Dr. David Healy says
Sarah
Thanks for this link -its a truly extraordinary interview. Everyone reading this post and these comments should click on the link you sent and read it. I doubt if Lade will comment on it any time soon.
David
annie says
Kim Witczak
@woodymatters
I still can’t believe that the @US_FDA hasn’t added post sexual dysfunction to the label of antidepressants in US. I can’t wait to listen to this podcast.
Thanks @joerogan for having interesting guests on your show.
4:09 AM · Mar 5, 2024 from Minneapolis, MN
PSSD Network | Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction
@PSSDNetwork
Thank you @AbigailShrier for bringing up this extremely important topic on the
@joeroganpodcast.
Prescribing a child medication that may permanently inhibit their sexual function is a major ethical concern.
#PSSD #SSRI #SSRIs
https://twitter.com/PSSDNetwork/status/1764849048971030871
Patrick D Hahn says
I was in graduate school when the ballyhoo about Prozac began. I remember saying to a drinking chum, “What is going to happen to all these people making random alterations in their brains twenty years down the road?”
Well, the results are in, and they are worse than anyone could have imagined.
annie says
Hanna_PSSD
@hanna_pssd
SSRIs and all other SRI antidepressants can permanently destroy a patient’s sexual function (PSSD). The pharmaceutical companies knew this was possible back in 1987 and chose to hide it from doctors and patients. There are still no warnings in the US.
https://twitter.com/PSSDNetwork/status/1657440394932527110
Mark Horowitz
@markhoro
There are two clinics that see people with PSSD in London (that I am aware of): one a neuro-urology clinic at Queen’s Square and a sexual medicine clinic at St Mary’s Hospital. I suspect that is more helpful than the schoolboy sniggering of some of esteemed colleagues.
12:04 AM · Mar 5, 2024
6,452 Views
susanne says
Thanks for all the books Patrick , I think most are on Samizdat -Health. The latest i spotted although focussing on Covid carries a message applicable to all medicine as one reviewer says
The Day the Science Died by Patrick Hahn
‘ The book outlines so many reasons as to why we need a ‘reset’ for biomedical science and the practice of medicine. A must-read.”
Aditi Bhargava, Ph.D., Prof. Emeritus, UCSF
susanne says
I am hopeful this will be good news for us all?
Subscribe
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Mandatory data and code sharing for research published by The BMJ
BMJ 2024; 384 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q324 (Published 05 March 2024)
Cite this as: BMJ 2024;384:q324
Elizabeth Loder, head of research, Helen Macdonald, publication ethics and integrity editor, Theodora Bloom, executive editor, Kamran Abbasi, editor in chief
Correspondence to: E Loder eloder@bmj.com
New policy requires authors to share analytic codes from all studies and data from all trials
The case for sharing data from clinical research is strong.12 Clinical study data include all information collected during a study, which is then analysed using computer codes to generate results. Unimpeded access to both data and code across the research community maximises the value of each research project. It shows respect for the efforts of research participants and the economic contributions of the public. It enables data scrutiny and re-analyses, which are essential for the self-correcting activities that contribute to good science and better patient and population outcomes.
Code sharing, in particular, makes it possible to evaluate analytical decisions that cannot easily be described in the methods section of a paper but have an important effect on results. It is plausible, for example, that requirements for code sharing might have deterred submission, or prevented publication of, the fraudulent Surgisphere papers published during the pandemic.3 Although there are practical challenges and potential harms associated with data sharing, we believe they are outweighed by the benefits. There are fewer such concerns when sharing code.
The BMJ is committed to transparency in research. In 2013, we required authors of drug and device trials published in the journal to agree to share relevant trial data on reasonable request.4 In 2015, this requirement was extended to all clinical trials published in the journal.5 Sadly, not all authors honoured this promise, and sharing of trial data remains disappointingly low.67 Barriers include the time and effort required to ensure that data are organised and useable, and fears among some researchers that competitors might gain unfair academic or commercial advantages or misuse or misinterpret the data.
It is time for the next step. From 1 May 2024, The BMJ will require authors of all submitted trials to post relevant trial data in an enduring, publicly accessible repository such as Vivli8 before publication. Repositories organise and store study data so that they can be retrieved and used by other researchers. We encourage authors of trials currently accepted for publication to voluntarily adhere to this policy. A link to the trial data will be included in the data sharing statement on every research paper published in The BMJ. Data sharing should not be confined to trials, and The BMJ intends to broaden its data sharing policy to non-trial research in future. But practical problems remain for observational studies and other non-trial research, such as permissions and privacy of data held in registries.
We will also require submission of relevant analytical code in a supplementary file that will be permanently accessible alongside each paper.9 Our new policy on code sharing applies to all research we publish, and a new code availability statement will be included in research papers. Other journals are moving in this direction as well. Springer Nature has announced a policy to require code availability statements in articles in its journals, and to encourage authors to share code publicly and cite code they have used.10
Details about this new policy, acceptable data repositories, and requirements for code sharing can be found on bmj.com in our advice to contributors (https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-types). We hope that you will support us in enhancing transparency and scrutiny of medical research. It is important to put the public good ahead of personal, academic, and corporate interests. We welcome your views.
Footnotes Are open to all readers Its free to make comments on TheBmj -responses to article
Dr. David Healy says
S
It looks good but it likely isn’t. Liz Loder is linked to Boston-NEJM Pfizer supported operations like Vivli – as is or was Fiona Godlee. There are lots of DH posts about all this linked to a post called Harmatology in June 2022. Just before it was Mark and Barb, Eric and Carole end of May 2022.
These outline an operation called MRCT and finger Mark Barnes as the moving force behind it. It all seems very clear to me but the problem is that it may seem incomprehensible or irrelevant or boring to people who haven’t been eating, breathing and sleeping these issues for 30 years.
Where company trials are concerned the BMJ proposal will likely mean there is access the the data if you submit a proposal which industry proxies will vet and provided your statistical analysis plan means you will only find what Pfizer or some other company found in their trial, you will be able to get access – to the figures not the people behind the fingers. You will see there was a death by burns but be unable to get with this person’s family about what happened – and get old he poured gasoline on himself and set fire to himself intending to kill himself because Pfizer’s drug made him feel so uncomfortable suicide seemed a more comfortable option.
They will find drop outs for intercurrent illness, or other unrevealing codes, but be unable to chase these cases which oddly are all on active drug or vaccine to find out what really happened
I don’t think there is anyone in BMJ other than Peter Doshi who has any sense of the scale of the problems
David
susanne says
David re Gatekeeping and Obstruction
Mandatory data and code sharing for research published by The BMJ
BMJ 2024; 384 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q324 (Published 05 March 2024)
Cite this as: BMJ 2024;384:q324
Re: Mandatory data and code sharing for research published by The BMJ
Susanne Stevens raises an excellent point in the first rapid response. The announcement of the policy of mandatory depositing of data in a “publicly accessible depository” makes it sound like the public will have unconditional access to the data, as it should. But the example given of the Vivli platform raises the worry that access may in fact be subject to all manner of gatekeeping and obstruction.
Can the editors clarify whether unconditional public access *to the data* will be mandatory or not? If not, what restrictions on access will be permitted? And then, if restrictions are not regulated, how is this new policy progress?
Competing interests: No competing interests
08 March 2024
Boris Barbour
Researcher and PubPeer organiser
CNRS, ENS, IBENS, PubPeer
Paris, France
Susanne said
Re: Mandatory data and code sharing for research published by The BMJ
Dear Editor
It has been a tortuous route to get to this stage and, although there are still hurdles as you describe, at last there are reasons to be hopeful. I am wondering will access be available to all regardless of any or no credentials?
annie says
Maybe ‘Off-Piste’ but may be On-Piste
The mounting deaths, an A-Zee
AstraZeneca to invest 650 million pounds in UK to boost ‘pandemic preparedness’
(Reuters) – AstraZeneca plans to invest 650 million pounds ($826.80 million) in Britain to boost research, development and manufacturing of vaccines, the government announced on Wednesday as part of Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt’s spring budget.
AstraZeneca’s planned investment includes 450 million pounds to research, develop and manufacture vaccines at its manufacturing site in Speke, Liverpool, and another 200 million pounds to expand its existing presence in Cambridge, where its global headquarters are located.
“AstraZeneca’s planned investment would enhance the UK’s pandemic preparedness and demonstrates our ongoing confidence in UK life sciences,” the drugmaker’s chief Pascal Soriot said in a statement.
The investment is a step change after Soriot shifted a planned new manufacturing plant to Ireland last year, saying that Britain’s business climate had deterred biopharma firms from investing in the country.
“AstraZeneca’s investment plans are a vote of confidence,” Hunt said.
Britain, in December 2020, was the first country to approve the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.
Why Countries Around the World Are Suspending Use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 Vaccine
It’s the last thing public health officials want to see in the midst of a pandemic: more than two months after pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and Oxford University scientists released their COVID-19 vaccine, countries in Europe and elsewhere are pausing its use amid disconcerting reports that a small number of recipients have experienced blood clots, some of them fatal.
https://time.com/5947134/astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-stopped/
LONDON, Aug 23 (Reuters) – AstraZeneca (AZN.L) is facing two London lawsuits, including one from the husband of a woman who died after receiving the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker’s COVID-19 vaccine, in the first of potentially dozens of cases brought in England.
Britain was the first country to roll out the at-cost AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in early 2021, although it later restricted the use of it among under 40s due to the small risk of blood clots.
Deaths
https://antidepeffects.wordpress.com/
A competitor for GSK, on UK soil; GSK has not been sued in the UK, plenty in the US and the fine for $3 Billion.
Maybe Astra Zeneca might change all that…
susanne says
David I will read yours above re above of course but in the meantime this has just been published in thebmj Nancy O well known to you of course
Whistleblower’s decades long fight to save patients from dangerous research
BMJ 2024; 384 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q526 (Published 06 March 2024)
Cite this as: BMJ 2024;384:q526
mlooi@bmj.com
Nancy Olivieri chose to safeguard patients rather than protect her career when she blew the whistle on a drug trial she was leading. She tells The BMJ of her near 30 year fight for transparency and safety and why it will probably never be over
Biography
Nancy Olivieri, an internist and haematologist, graduated from McMaster University Medical School in Ontario and holds a masters degree in medical ethics and law from King’s College London and a masters of fine art in creative non-fiction from the University of King’s College, Halifax, Canada. She is a senior scientist at Toronto General Hospital and professor of paediatrics, medicine, and public health sciences at the University of Toronto.
In 1982, while still a research fellow at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, Nancy Olivieri began working with children with the common inherited blood disorder thalassaemia major, who are at risk of toxic iron overload as a result of monthly transfusions. In 1988 and 1992 Olivieri launched two clinical trials supported by the Medical Research Council of Canada to evaluate the effectiveness of a new drug, deferiprone, in removing body iron. Early results were promising,1 but during extended exposure to the drug concerns arose of ineffectiveness and toxicity.
Raising her concerns with her funders, Olivieri wanted to help protect the patients by informing them of the findings. But she was threatened with legal action by Barry Sherman, then chief executive of the Canadian drug company Apotex, which makes deferiprone and which had recently begun to provide partial funding for her second trial. Both trials were also abruptly terminated, after invocation of a “confidentiality clause” in the trial contract that had been approved by the hospital’s research institute.2 Olivieri published her findings in the New England Journal of Medicine.3
Thus began a near 30 …
View Full Text
annie says
Royal College of Psychiatrists
@rcpsych
·
29m
Our #ADHD in adults patient information resource has been ‘Highly Commended’ by the BMA PLG patient information awards 2023.
You can find out more about the resource and the award on our website
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/news-and-features/latest-news/detail/2024/03/06/adhd-resource-highly-commended-at-bma-awards
Professor Burn said:
“We are delighted to have had this important resource acknowledged by the BMA’s Patient Liaison Group. We are so pleased that the panel pointed out how useful the resource will be, and to know we have created something that will contribute positively to people’s lives and care.
“We are very grateful to the psychiatrists, patients and carers who co-produce high-quality, up-to-date information for the general public.”
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and-mental-health-problems/adhd-in-adults
Psychological therapies
Medication
The medication needs to be built up gradually to minimise any side-effects and to find the right dose for you. Most people get noticeable benefits from the first medication they try. Other people might need to try a different medication to get the best results.
Ben Fogle reveals disorder diagnosis after ‘mental health storm’
https://metro.co.uk/2024/02/09/ben-fogle-reveals-adhd-diagnosis-mental-health-storm-20250675/
Ben Fogle, our hero adventurer, sounds like he has been well and truly therapeuticalised…
“we have created something”
Too True…
Harriet Vogt says
How could any psychiatrist, a human doctor, and one who has apparently studied sexual medicine, suggest to Simon – who is effectively dying from a self-evidently physical iatrogenic injury ,PSSD – ‘You would benefit from review by a psychiatrist. I suspect that a comprehensive biopsychosocial holistic review with formulation including a full medication review would help to ascertain your needs and what might help you…’
How could they? It’s a question that has been rattling round in the back of the mind all week.
Yes, of course, there are some clear contextual drivers of this odd clinical behaviour that we’ve touched on:
Denial – on which Peter has written eloquently – driven by cognitive dissonance, healer not harmer, political self-interest, and likely legal advice
Abject pharmacological ignorance.
Missing out on the philosophy of mind module
But that’s not it.
Applying a Laingian insight out of its intended context: ‘if one doesn’t see the obvious, then one is liable to trip over it’.
David often says, ‘I believe the person in front of me’. And therein lies part of the answer. David is seeing, hearing and responding to the whole person, the whole integrated human being. Whereas once you play by traditional psychiatry’s rules and atomise them into their bio-psycho-social elements, despite labelling this analysis ‘holistic’, that whole is easily lost. We don’t exist in bits. Maybe that’s why some cannot see PSSD?
Is this also why psychiatry has taken until now to recognise officially what everyone else has known for decades – yesterday’s great announcement to coincide with ‘International Woman’s Day’. (So weary of these ‘Days’ – I’m still very much a woman today), ‘Abuse is main driver of mental ill health in women and girls, say psychiatrists.’ The only new and concerning finding from this anodyne research was, “Clinicians often do not realise that violence, abuse and coercive behaviour can have serious mental health implications’. Is it possible to be more disconnected from humanity?
All this begs a more fundamental question – why does mainstream psychiatry atomise’? Why does it persist in failing to relate to the ‘whole ones’?
Richard Lewis, a therapist with a wonderfully subtle mind, answered my question:
‘The urge to try to understand a whole one is a journey worth the effort and confusion. A certain kind of person calms their terror of the unknown with numbers, scalars, vectors and says science will save us from the great yawning void.’
That’s the insight – fear.
annie says
The howls of despair grow ever louder
rosie
@ROSIE_PSSD
I can’t keep going on like this
This is hell on earth and I’m so happy for anyone who experienced a benefit from these drugs that literally killed me
11:22 AM · Mar 10, 2024
Hanna_PSSD reposted
Expose big pharma
@Pharmageddon24
I wonder what she thinks of Dr. Anita Clayton negating the experience of PSSD sufferers by telling the
@nytimes “I think it’s depression recurring. Until proven otherwise, that’s what it is,”.
https://twitter.com/Pharmageddon24/status/1766703479412625624
“things could improve for you.”
Nothing will improve until they respond,
They don’t respond; none of them.
They don’t respond ever; David has written to so many who should respond.
They don’t realise that by not responding, the deaths accumulate; it is not only unbearable cowardice, it projects an abuse that is measurable.
For the drug harmed, there is an insidious declaration, from the nineties, that everyone speaking up about damage is damaged.
Hang in there, Rosie.
The system is systematically abusive, by default, no getting away from it…
susanne says
Re above susanne says
March 6, 2024 at 5:43 pm
Whistleblower’s decades long fight to save patients from dangerous research
BMJ 2024; 384 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q526 (Published 06 March 2024)
Cite this as: BMJ 2024;384:6
Only one response from Peter Selley so far – how seriously are the generality of the medical profession taking the issue even now after decades of exposures.
Rapid Response:
Research Misconduct
Dear Editor
It is a pity, although totally understandable, that Professor Nancy Olivieri’s interview is restricted to subscribers to your Journal.
May I unlock one key paragraph for a wider readership?
It contains a quote from a recent blog article by one of your predecessors as editor.
When asked, “If you could change one thing to make things better, what would it be?”
Nancy Olivieri answered,
“To put a doorstop in that old revolving door between FDA and big pharma. That wouldn’t, of course, get around the problem of people who falsify data. Should those who are proved guilty of research misconduct be punished definitively, possibly by jail? I’d agree with that. Research misconduct has wide reaching effects on innocent people. Many are harmed and die. And it’s common. Richard Smith, a former editor of The BMJ, wrote, ‘The time may have come to stop assuming that research actually happened and is honestly reported and assume that the research is fraudulent until there is some evidence to support it having happened and been honestly reported.’ The failure to report accurately and truthfully in clinical trials is a huge problem. Almost all aspects of almost all clinical trials are now ghost managed by pharma.
1) Smith R. Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proved otherwise? 2021. https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2021/07/02/time-to-assume-that-heal…
Competing interests: No competing
susanne says
Re: Whistleblower’s decades long fight to save patients from dangerous research Mun-Keat Looi. 384:doi 10.1136/bmj.q526
Dear Editor
In 2005, The Drug Trial: Nancy Olivieri and the Science Scandal that Rocked the Hospital for Sick Children was published in The BMJ almost twenty years ago by the then Associate Editor Christopher Martyn (BMJ 2005; 331 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.331.7508.115 (Published 07 July 2005))
Now it surfaces again and I wonder why now?
Nancy Oliviera says twenty years later that the consequences of whistleblowing are almost never ending. And neither is the constant exposures of the same kind of corruption and brutal treatment of those who do speak out. They may not always be proven right but when is there going to ever be any possibility of true scientific debate that we as ‘the public’ can rely on.
In 2024 in Whistleblower’s decades long fight to save patients from dangerous research (BMJ 2024; 384 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q526 (Published 06 March 2024) she tells The BMJ of her near 30 year fight for transparency and safety and why it will probably never be over.
Competing interests: No competing interests
11 March 2024
susanne