Lawmakers Want to End Big Pharma Recruitment Schemes - Part 1 News
May 29, 2007. By Evelyn Pringle
Washington, DC: Federal lawmakers are stepping up the pace to put a stop to the pharmaceutical industry's customer recruitment schemes used to boost the sale of psychiatric drugs by tugging at heartstrings in promoting mental health screening programs as suicide prevention tools.
On May 18, 2007, US House of Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), a physician by calling, introduced a federal legislative bill HR 2387 that would block federal funding for any mandatory mental health screening programs. At last count, 12 other members of the House were listed as co-sponsors of the bill.
First of all, contrary to the lie that the industry is trying to sell the pubic, there is no epidemic of child suicides. There are roughly 50 million school-age children in this country, and according to the June 16, 2006, Washington Post, there were only 1,737 suicides by children and adolescents in 2003, the last year for which national statistics are available.
In addition, experts have said over and over that screenings do not work. A March 28, 2002 paper, "Suicide in the United States," by Jane Pearson, PhD, chairman of the National Institute of Mental Health Suicide Research Consortium at the
time, states: "[W]hen researchers have tried to predict suicide using as many known risk factors as possible, they are still unable to predict who will and who will not commit this act."
In the paper, she also verifies a real danger that screening critics are concerned about, in stating that, "a prevention program for high-school aged youth found that participants were more likely to consider suicide a solution to a problem after the program than prior to the program."
According to Dr Nathaniel Lehrman, former clinical director of Kingsboro Psychiatric Center, in Brooklyn NY, in the paper, The Dangers of Mental Health Screening, "No matter how we define mental illness in children or adults, it cannot be found by simple screening."
"Nobody can, by merely looking at someone else, or even on the basis of a pen and pencil questionnaire," he says, "differentiate the transient emotional disturbances we all have from those which last longer."
Dr Lehrman also says screenings won't prevent suicide because those who are contemplating it usually won't tell. "Only when gross insanity exists can "mental illness" be recognized on inspection - and then we need neither experts nor screening," he states.
"There are as many causes of depression as there are people suffering from it," he explains
"Troubled people can indeed benefit from good mental health care," he advises, "But good treatment requires addressing voluntarily a patient's unique individual problems."
"For this, screenings are unnecessary," he adds.
The drugs marketed with the screening programs are the new generation of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants (SSRIs), including Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, Celexa, Lexapro and Luvox, which were falsely promoted as more effective than the older class of drugs in treating depression while the increased risk of suicide by patients taking the drugs was concealed.
The other drugs are the new class of atypical antipsychotics with brand names of Zyprexa, Risperdal, Clozaril, Abilify, Seroquel and Geodon. It should be noted that the atypicals were FDA approved for the limited use of treating adults with schizophrenia and manic episodes of bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depression, the most serious of all mental illnesses.
These new drugs obviously do not work. A June 2005 study lead by researchers from Harvard Medical School, funded mostly by the National Institute of Mental Health, found that although there has been a dramatic rise in the treatment of mental disorders over the past decade, there had been no corresponding drop in the rate of suicidal thought and behaviors in adults.
The study pointed out that there had been a huge increase in the use of antidepressants during the 10-year period studied, but the rate of suicidal ideation, gestures and attempts has not changed at all.
Dr Barry Duncan, author of "What's Right With You," also says, "rates of depression have not changed for thirty years," and, "suicide rates, despite the millions taking antidepressants, have not reduced."
Dr Duncan points out that more than 150 million prescriptions worth $14 billion were written for antidepressants in 2003 alone.
However, evidence continues to mount that shows SSRIs are linked to suicide. On May 25, 2007, MedPage Today reported a study that found young suicide victims were significantly more likely to have SSRIs in their bloodstream than were young homicide or accident victims.
"In an analysis of 'unnatural' deaths recorded by the Virginia Medical Examiner's Office for 1987 through 2003," MedPage wrote, "Antony Fernandez, MD, and colleagues, found that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or the serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor venlafaxine appeared significantly more often in post-mortem toxicology of suicides than of accident or murder victims."
This latest study echoes a report by records researcher Ken Kramer that found most child suicides in Florida were by children who are already on psychotropic drugs. Mr Kramer analyzed every autopsy and toxicology report on every child suicide in the state of Florida from 2000 to 2004.
"The majority," Mr Kramer says, "had already received psychiatric drug treatment even with the FDA warnings that say these drugs can cause mania, suicide, psychosis, worsening depression and even homicidal thoughts."
A recent March 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office on Pediatric Drug Research states: "About two-thirds of drugs that are prescribed for children have not been studied and labeled for pediatric use, placing children at risk of being exposed to ineffective treatment or incorrect dosing."
Off-label refers to prescribing drugs to treat conditions other than those approved by the FDA and listed on the label. It can include prescribing drugs to unapproved populations, such as children or the elderly, or in higher doses than specified on the label.
It is illegal for a drug maker to promote off-label uses, but doctors are allowed to prescribe a drug for any use they choose. However, almost without exception, the lawsuits now pending against psychotropic drug makers accuse the companies of influencing doctors to prescribe the medications for off-label uses.
Critics say this profit-driven drugging of patients recruited with screening programs has got to stop, because a whole generation of Americans are becoming disabled right before our eyes, and lawmakers should realize that the government is going to have to pay to care for these disabled people for life and not just their medical care, but for their very existence.
Linda Hurcombe, author of "Losing a Child: Explorations in Grief," admits that her concerns about mental health screening programs arise from a personal tragedy. She is a US citizen living in the UK where prescription drug advertising is illegal, but her daughter fell victim to drug advertising while she was visiting the US.
"A few years ago my undepressed teenage daughter saw an antidepressant ad on American television," Linda explains, "and on her return to our rural home she went to her doctor and asked for the drug."
"It took her about eight minutes to persuade the doctor," Linda says, "followed by 63 days of descent into chaos which ended in her suicide by hanging."
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