This post is by Harriet Vogt.
Emmanuel Macron’s recent political right turn towards ‘Old France’ includes a renewed focus on stimulating French reproduction – a ‘réarmement démographique’. Free fertility checks for 25 year olds, and funding for research into ‘bodily chemicals than can hinder fertility’. Not, of course, the pharmaceutical chemicals that most IVF clinics recognise as obvious impediments to ‘fecundablity’, certainly not the products of France’s once dominant and still significant pharmaceutical industry (revenues est. Euros 60bn), but the fertility depleting petrochemicals that infuse our bodies and our lives. See Liberty, Equality & Fertility.
What was striking about Macron’s breeding pronouncement was how incredibly dated it sounded, how out of touch with a contemporary society that embraces a diverse social model and individual agency. As one feminist social media campaigner, username ‘jeneveuxpasdenfant’ (‘I don’t want children’), put it:
“A 46-year-old cisgender man with no children comes to give us lessons on how we should use our uteruses”.
Anyone trying to understand fertility – and its essential prerequisite fecundablity – needs to pay attention to the mindsets of the next generations of potential breeders – 18-35 year old Gen Z (Zoomers) and Millennials. A 2023 poll with these cohorts showed that only 55% currently envisage having children, and 25% have decided to live their lives entirely free of kids.
So what’s going on? Of course all the obvious social factors – time, including delayed parenthood with associated fecundity issues, and financial insecurity are key. The factors that anxious governments like the Japanese have been trying to manage since 1996 with incentivised pronatalist policies – to no avail. Even in this relatively conformist culture, or perhaps because of it, research shows that some young Japanese have firmly decided – NO to kids – forever.
It’s also true that the much publicised youthful pessimism about the state of the planet and the state of the world is another significant deterrent. Who wouldn’t be worried when, with wars raging, the leader of the free world describes Hamas as ‘the other team’ and can’t find his way off a stage? When our collective fates are decided by a bunch of the richest and most influential players on the planet, jetting off to Davos oblivious to trailing clouds of pollution in their wake and what it’s like to be a real person.
But, if you listen carefully to Z-Ms, as we have, there’s something deeper than these social factors driving their apparent indifference to reproduction – and it’s this something deeper that can be a pathway to the internal chemical pollution that risks disrupting fecundity, the alarm you sound in Medicine, Civilisation and Cradles.
Listening to these generations, what we are hearing is a worldview that might be described as Rational Hedonism – ‘it’s all so sh*t we might as well focus on having fun and avoiding pain.’ Their unenthusiastic mindset towards having children is unsurprising:
- ‘You’ve got to make the decision not to have fun.’
- ‘What’s the point (of having children)? – ‘It’s very rewarding’ – I’d rather just get a cat’.
- ‘No real upside to it. -‘ It’s fulfilling’ – But, it’s such a loss’.
- ‘You get something fulfilling’ – Some do follow the old steps, you get the house, have the kids. But you see these parents and they seem exhausted and miserable’.
- ‘Having children used to be fairly easy – one of you gives up work for five years. Now both parents have to work their arses off to cover the cost of a family – it’s not worth it, a financial bad choice, a high-risk solution’.
- The whole social model has changed, it’s broken
When this Rational Hedonistic worldview collides with decades of pharmaceutical marketing, the promise of ‘better than well’, happier than happy, funner than fun, some find it irresistible. Couple this with Zoomers and Millennials being the most pathologised generations in the history of life – not a day passes without ‘marketing’ headlines shrieking about the ‘mental health crisis in young people’, raging diagnostic inflation for ‘ADHD’, ‘Anxiety’, ‘Depression’ – and we have the perfect storm for an internal pollution that puts sensuality and fecundity at risk. That’s before we even think about the very real deleterious effects of microplastics.
Tribalism
There are tribal positions amongst Zoomers and Millennials about consuming prescribed psychotropics – a sort of drug identity politics. Some define themselves by their psychotropic consumption and ‘psychiatric’ diagnoses – the proud ‘Lexahoes’.
Others don’t – whether less susceptible to marketing or more self-reliant, or something else is less clear.:
- “’The solution to most people’s ‘depression’ is to go outside and eat properly’.
- “The snake oil dream, instead of having to do something, can’t they just have something that does it for me’
- ‘You go to the doc, I’m depressed I’ve got no money, I can’t afford to live. Here, just take these you’ll be fine’.
- ‘Docs are just going to fix everyone with a pill, without understanding the problems – or the consequences’’
The tragedy of all this is that beautiful young people like Rosie and Roy – after taking, respectively, Lexapro and Citalopram for a matter of a few months, have ended up robbed of their sensuality, struggling with the daily torture of PSSD, with parenthood not even an option.
‘I can’t have a relationship in this state, and knowing that others can experience pleasure in their life while I feel stuck behind a glass jar is torture.
How has PSSD actually been allowed? I genuinely do not know how I’m supposed to live in the next few years. I’ve got friends entering new relationships, having babies, getting married, travelling the world, going to festivals, and all I’m doing is fighting for my life.’
Roy has been abandoned in this parlous state for 16 years.
‘You’re just stuck in this body that can’t feel any sexual pleasure and can’t feel emotions – you can’t interact with the world like you use to. You try and tell people about it and no one believes you – not only the medical community like the doctors, but your family, often your friends don’t understand. It can be very isolating’.
There is a lot more from Rosie and Roy in PSSD Podcast 1 and PSSD Podcast 2, which are among the most extra-ordinary accounts of a medical condition you are likely to find anywhere.
Fertility or Sensuality
Should we be worried about falling birth rates? Well, Elon Musk seems to be having a Cassandra moment and says we should. Emmanuel Macron continues the EM theme and is making patriotic political play of ‘France remaining France’. Most demographers, however, aren’t bothered. For them the global population is still a long way from its projected peak, any rate of decline in the West will have a negligible effect on this, and there are clear advantages to smaller populations.
This completely misses the fact that parties are abandoning their Green agendas because they no longer have the tax base to pay for them. As things stand, tax income can no longer sustain current levels of government borrowing and will force a privatization health, education and social care services and perhaps lead some of us to opt for Medical Assistance in Dying – see TAiL Wags God.
At present Z-Ms are not concerned about issues like Fertility. As mentioned above – their view is the social model is broken. In a biochemical quest for a life that’s funner than fun, they are more likely to respond to a message that tells them they risk being deprived not of the chance to breed, but of their sensuality – the feelings and sensations that give depth and dimension to our lives – without so much as a by your leave, let alone informed consent.
Without a By Your Leave
Every generation moans about or claims they can’t understand the younger generation. It is common to hear doctors complain about trainee doctors – first it was millennial trainees but likely zoomers now or pretty soon. They somehow it seems feel entitled in a way we didn’t and seek guidance or are risk averse rather than learning by experience and making mistakes the way we did.
The idea that Zoomers or Millennials are genetically different to their parents is a non-starter. The differences must come from differences in their situation – they live GAiL lives – Google Assistance in Living – see Efficiency is not the Supreme Virtue.
It’s not just aging doctors who notice the effects of this. Lawyers do too, as do grandparents who see their children turn to Google to handle their babies – literally ‘how do I hold a baby’. Mothers and mothers-in-law have always interfered and got things wrong but up till now they haven’t been pushed aside by Google. The surveilled childhood that an increasing number of technologies now support, indeed all but demand, is something new.
The Deep Mind that intervenes in the way Z-Ms learn or don’t learn to do science or law or parenting is new. Propaganda is probably the most effective technique modern companies have – more effective than the technologies they sell us, certainly far more effective than any drug technologies. Companies now deploy all the resources developed in and once used by militaries in the Cold War – and more – to get us to consume drugs that are more likely to disable than enable us.
Companies can now achieve the ultimate goal of propaganda – invisibility. In the case of drug technologies, the propaganda takes on the appearances of medical articles in medical journals, which Google puts at our fingertips.
When injured by their drugs, and Z-Ms are forced to do science, the PSSD Podcasts show they come up with initiatives their parents are unlikely to think of. They are up against a Galactic Empire, some of the worst people in which are some of us, who see ourselves as Good Guys keeping order, wondering what’s up with this new Generation. Can the Resistance find a way to get Darth Vader to see the score?
See Star Wars
annie says
Great article, Harriet.
Addressing the blasé, is no easy feat. Star Wars – A New Hope
I hope your article will attract the young people you are discussing.
Emmanuel Macron’s own foray in to Affairs of the Heart, Affaires de cœur, doesn’t, as a rule, exemplify a normal scripture, when as a 15 year old he fell in love with his teacher.
‘they met when he was 15 and she was his married, private school teacher – with a daughter of the same age, in the same class.’
‘Now aged 69, Ms Macron is a grandmother-of-seven and 25 years her fresh-faced 44-year-old husband’s senior.’
Perhaps it is to Brigitte, we should be looking…
Harriet Vogt says
Thank you so much, Annie. I must credit my editor, DH, for the provocative coda, ‘Without a by your leave’.
Dead right re looking to Brigitte for insights on reproduction and human multiplying. You don’t need oratorical skills nor ferocious political ambition to do that.
Thought this Millennial research participant really nailed it:
“Docs are just going to fix everyone with a pill, without understanding the problems – or the consequences’’.
The currently high profile sodium valproate scandal – 30 years of activists campaigning before regulators acknowledged teratogenicity– seems to be having a bit of a ripple effect. 30 years before antidepressant withdrawal was recognised – 30 years and still counting for PSSD to remain unrecognised.
Why 30 years? Could this be something akin to the Max Planckism, ‘science progresses one funeral at a time’? It’s a puzzle for us all.
H
annie says
Perhaps young people will be looking to their parents, to do the right thing – Forever after…
Stunner of a letter
Response to the President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
https://romainschmitt.wordpress.com/2023/01/27/antidep-effects/
Antidep Effects
https://antidepeffects.wordpress.com/
Open Letters
Dear Drs Lade Smith and Adrian James
We are writing to Dr Smith, the current president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and Dr
James, the past president, to pursue an issue raised by Dr James following a paper by Dr John
Read on deaths by suicide at inquests in Great Britain.
Dr James said it was a mistake to publish this paper as it might deter people from getting the
benefit of antidepressant treatments.
We, the Morgan, Schmitt, Johnson, and Lynch families, have lost 25-year-old,16 year-old,
15-year-old, and 14-year-old sons to suicide caused by these drugs. We were shocked by Dr
James’ message.
In the case of people up to the age of 25, there is not only evidence that antidepressants cause suicide but clinical trial evidence that there is an excess of suicides on treatment – that is more people are killed by than are saved by these treatments. And there is no evidence for benefit in treatment of depression or anxiety, for which Samuel Morgan was given citalopram. This makes it difficult to justify an official position that says we should not talk about the hazards of these drugs.
Taking official positions on the basis of ghost-written company studies, which offer no access to the trial data, is even trickier. These are not science. Companies don’t do science.
The Royal College in contrast should be an authority on clinical science. Doctors who are
members of the College make scientific decisions every day when they decide a drug is not
working or is causing problems and they either increase the dose or stop the drug. We expect
they are mostly correct as otherwise too many people would die, but this effort to apply good
science can only be helped by accurate information.
If acting scientifically, rather than bureaucratically following guidelines, we would expect doctors to make these decisions by listening closely to a patient, where there has been continuity of care, so they have seen the person before starting treatment, and then after things begin to go wrong and they are in a position to find out more about what is actually happening with the person they are treating by interviewing them, and if need be families and friends. They can then opt to increase or reduce the dose of treatment and the outcome of doing this will often be enough to put them in a position to offer a reasonably confident view as to the best explanation for what is happening in the experiment taking place in front of them. We assume you will agree with us that this is the essence of good science – compared with which company trials really don’t qualify as science.
Our invitation to you is to appoint someone to look at Samuel Morgan’s medical record and
interview his family and to do the same for Romain Schmitt. Samuel’s case may be easier in
that he was only on treatment for a week and the records are all in English. Dexter Johnson’s
case is currently under review by the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Canada.
In Samuel’s case, his medical insurers told his doctor, Dr Adams, not to offer a view at the
inquest. We believe a doctor like Dr Adams was one of the people best placed to offer a view,
and found this advice from the medical protection society to be astonishing. This was pointed
out to Dr James as a matter he should look into, but we are not aware that he has.
When we say appoint someone we do not mean that you should appoint an expert to tell us
what is what. We expect a person who will do science – that is one who on the basis of the
records and testimony of family and treating physicians will attempt to come to a consensus as to the best explanation of what happened in the cases of these boys.
If you do not agree that this is the correct scientific procedure, please let us know what you think would be appropriate.
The families in these cases have a lot of scientific credentials between them and are as well
placed as anyone you ask to engage with these matters in deciding how the truth might best be established.
Yours sincerely,
Ian & Tania Morgan, Great Britain.
Yoko Motohama & Vincent Schmitt, France.
Dan L. Johnson, Alberta, Canada.
Stephanie & John Mcgill Lynch, Ireland.
Dr. David Healy says
Here is the response from Lade Smith. If anyone is aware of the research mentioned below perhaps they could forward details.
Dear Yoko, Vincent, Ian, Tania, Dan, Stephanie and John
Thank you for your email to myself and Dr James dated 27 August. Please accept my apologies for this delayed reply, I’m afraid since starting the role, 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.
I would firstly like to express my sincere condolences to you all for the tragic losses you have suffered, and I am sorry if this correspondence causes more hurt.
It is worth me clarifying that the College’s press release that quoted Dr James did not state that it was a mistake to publish the paper. I note in previous correspondence with some of you, Dr James noted that we issued this statement because of our concern that the media reporting about the newly published research on coroner inquests and antidepressants did not provide a balanced assessment of the overall association between antidepressants and suicide. The evidence shows that when antidepressants are prescribed in line with guidance there is not a clinically significant increase in the risk of completed suicides or suicidal behaviour. We believe it is important to ensure that there is clear public messaging on this aspect to ensure those who are taking this medication, or who are considering doing so, understand why they are recommended and the overall potential benefits to their health, as well as side effects that might occur with their use.
We recognise that there will be individual differences in sensitivity to antidepressants, and therefore cases where individuals, particularly those under 25, experience suicidal thoughts and a desire to self-harm when they first take antidepressants. We fully support the guidance set out by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence that all clinicians including GPs, psychiatrists and non-medical prescribers, should have a risk management strategy in place when prescribing medications, and should conduct regular reviews after starting the medication or when dosage is increased.
You asked if the College would appoint someone to review Samuel and Romain’s medical records, and about reviewing the advice given by a medical protection organisation. I’m afraid this is beyond the remit of the College, we are not a regulatory authority. This is an activity usually undertaken as part of a medicolegal process.
Once again, I am very sorry for your loss and the pain you are going through. A parent should never have to lose a child, especially in such circumstances.
I appreciate that you may not agree with the College’s position but thank you again for contacting myself and Dr James directly on this very important matter.
annie says
Collected some stuff, on le Grand kerfuffle, but tricky to find ‘the companion piece to the Read article’ but the two paras at the the bottom are a good sum up..
The Correspondence
‘the newly published research on coroner inquests and antidepressants’
https://antidepeffects.wordpress.com/royal-college-of-psychiatrists/
Dr John Read, Professor in Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, analysed media reports of around 8,000 coroners’ inquests into suicides in England and Wales between 2003 and 2020, in which anti-depressants were mentioned.
He found that 2,718 of people hanged themselves and 2,329 people overdosed – with 933 (40 per cent) of them overdosing on anti-depressants themselves.
Additionally, 2,083 people had been struck by a train, lorry of other vehicle had jumped or fallen to their death, drowned, shot themselves, or been involved in a fire or electrocution. Coroners reached a conclusive ‘suicide’ verdict in 3,543 cases.
https://uel.ac.uk/about-uel/news/2023/may/anti-depressants-link-suicide
Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry
| Volume 25, Issue 1
Antidepressants and Suicide: 7,829 Inquests in England and Wales, 2003–2020
Read, John, PhD
https://connect.springerpub.com/content/sgrehpp/25/1/8
Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Suicide Note
April 24, 2023 51 Comments
https://davidhealy.org/royal-college-of-psychiatrists-suicide-note/
‘I reviewed the paper by John Read for Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. I noted the care taken not to go beyond the data and how this was likely to mislead doctors, and the public. I offered Don Marks, the journal editor, an option to publish my review alongside the Read article, which might better inform readers. He accepted. I attach the companion piece to the Read article here.’
https://connect.springerpub.com/content/sgrehpp/early/2023/03/30/ehpp-2023-0001
Abstract
This article presents two clinical scenarios based on antidepressant-induced deaths, which make clear that there are a number of intervening processes in between the valuable data Read and colleagues present and the verdicts that come out of inquests. The manner in which inquests and court cases are structured means that it is very rare for even clearly-proven prescription drug induced deaths to result in a verdict that the drug has caused the death. Instead, a growing number of drug-induced deaths fuel perceptions of a need for more and better drugs.
Central to this situation is a question about how to determine causality in drug-induced injury cases. The idea that randomized controlled trials are the way to establish causality needs to be revisited. Unless there is reform, people caught in situations like the two described here would be better placed holding their own inquests, and finding ways to promulgate the resulting verdicts, rather than “trusting” in a process that is biased against them.
susanne says
‘We recognise that there will be individual differences in sensitivity to antidepressants, and therefore cases where individuals, particularly those under 25, experience suicidal thoughts and a desire to self-harm when they first take antidepressants. ‘
David Is she right in saying this? I thought that there are reports of people who have committed suicide after being on anti- depressants for a while and on repeat prescriptions so it’s not a case of ‘when they first take ADs.’
Dr. David Healy says
She’s not right – there is very little that is right about this letter
D
susanne says
It would be great if researchers like these were encouraged and funded to spread their great work even further . But it’s predictable that that they are already being watched and undermining strategies being set up Again politicians, the chemical industry ,the sellers, the regulators , medics will let the youngsters down.
TikTok: Teens educating themselves on skincare trends
1 day ago
BBC News
A skincare-obsessed 13-year-old is using social media to educate herself on the best products to use.
Martha is part of a growing trend of teens using skincare, which has seen children as young as eight wanting to use products meant for adults.
It comes after the British Association for Dermatologists warned potentially harmful active ingredients found in some of these products made for adults, such as exfoliating acids, can provoke allergies or eczema in younger skin.
Warning over children using viral skincare products
Martha, who lives in south Wales, was nine when she started using skincare products after watching videos on YouTube and TikTok during the Covid lockdowns.
She started with simple, cheap skincare products that are good for young skin, but when she saw products like Drunk Elephant and Glow Recipe being used by influencers and her friends, she wanted those.
A lot of the products in these brands contain ingredients intended for older skin, like retinol or acids.
Drunk Elephant’s particular popularity with tweens and teens meant that founder Tiffany Masterson had to tell “kids and tweens stay away from our more potent products that include acids and retinols” on social media.
“Their skin does not need these ingredients quite yet,” she said.
TikTok driving trend
The #deinfluencing trend has more than 1.3 billion views on TikTok alone and is being driven by increasing concerns about the impact of over-consumerism and targeted ads.
Martha says she checks ingredients in skincare before buying it
In Martha’s case, she did some research and discovered products she was using were not necessarily the best for her sensitive skin.
“I see these 10-year-old girls at Sephora getting things they don’t need,” she said.
“I’d say read the ingredients. They are important because some things you see, you can’t trust.”
“If someone’s child is coming to them and says, ‘I wanna buy this’ and it’s a retinoid or a vitamin A, or an acid, my first question would be, ‘why? Can they tell you what problem they’re trying to fix?’.
Thirteen-year-old Elsa, also from south Wales, uses social media sites to educate herself on skincare.
She said many of her friends started using skincare products after seeing them on TikTok so she asked for similar brands for her birthday and Christmas.
But one of the products she used caused her skin to be irritated and red and she now researches what to buy.
Lauren Josie Thomas, a marketing and events lecturer at the University of South Wales, warned the de-influencing trend could risk giving brands further marketing.
“You can almost guarantee that their year-on-year sales will continue to go up,” she said.
Dr. David Healy says
I don’t think teens are going to change the world but people like Rosie and Roy and Simon are changing it in ways that its impossible not to admire. The issue to take a line from a poem that appeared here a few posts back is this:
What will she (or he) make of a world of which she is made?
Most of us now live in an older generation that hasn’t been made in this way so we are less likely to spot where the vulnerability in the Death Star might be
D
Harriet Vogt says
Confession – know nothing specific about the tax base requirements to fund Green programmes. Nowt.
But, harnessing essential Green investment to maintaining historic population size and tax contribution feels a bit politically retrofit – ignoring the possibility of human adaption. For example, take a shrinking population like Japan, 14 years of population decline, but they’ve developed technological means of building a more sustainable society.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markminevich/2023/07/18/japans-green-it-a-game-changer-in-environmental-sustainability/?sh=22b596d277d7
Ofc if this IT/AI driven Green game changer also comes in a banded pack with the Deep Mind(set) you evoke in ‘Efficiency is not the Supreme Virtue’ – then we’re all poisoned and doomed anyway.
Dr. David Healy says
Here’s the retrofit problem. Everyone from the leaders of all major countries and religions for several centuries have assumed that our gang needs a steady supply of new members and they were pretty confident that the interest of young people to have sex would keep the supply going. We are now facing a crisis which at first we were relaxed about – an aging population – but we could manage that with young folk paying taxes. That is now collapsing.
The machines that replace missing workers won’t pay taxes. Older folk like us will use up all our money on places in homes or in hospitals now run by Hedge Funds – so we will hand over our money to people like Elon.
The ability of new machines to do things we never imagined is outstripped by the ability of company propaganda to persuade us – especially if we have any illness or disability – that we’ve had a good life and the fitting and dignified way is to end it now. We have never been in a situation like this before – except in so far as our parents or grandparents learnt that countries are quite capable of getting rid of people whose lives are not worth living with religious figureheads (i nearly said leaders) saying nothing.
Part of the problem is we now have medical figureheads saying nothing and a new generation of healthcare personnel only willing to say what the guidelines let them say.
It will likely be down to those who come after us to work a way around the ‘Resistance is Futile’ message.
D
Harriet Vogt says
Agree, of course, the ‘retrofit problem’ is in plain sight. As you observe, MAID is a glaring example, seemingly disposing of some socially inconvenient citizens rather than caring for them.
What I baulk at is ‘retrofit thinking vis-à-vis solutions – like Macron’s breeding programme, ‘réarmement démographique. Let’s recreate the past to solve the problems of the future.
Personally would reframe the ‘retrofit problem’ as – Most of our political (and medical) figureheads are bureaucrats and beancounters, with neither the vision nor imagination to solve the ‘retrofit problem’. That’s the real issue – as you know too well.
Perhaps educational for them to look at Israel, OK, many different cultural influences – religion, state building, war footing, young population, no fertility pipeline issues etc. But still delivering (oops, slipped into ‘beancounterese’ there) highly developed but not high cost ways of supporting their older people to flourish rather than simply wither.
‘Israel has been ahead of its time in terms of developing various long-standing social programs and a robust network of support for community centers and caregivers to accommodate a healthier, and more productive and engaged older population. This is partly thanks to cultural values focused on social inclusivity, as well as honouring the generations who founded and built the country..’
https://www.aarpinternational.org/initiatives/aging-readiness-competitiveness-arc/israel
I’m sure most of us would prefer to end our days earthing potatoes – rather than drugged insensible for the benefit of the private equity owners of the ‘care home’ industry.
How do we do this?