Paxil, Zoloft, Xantax - Drug Induced Violence

[Guest guest]

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/08/26/paxil_zoloft_xantax_drug_induced\

_violence.htm

 

August 26, 2004

 

Paxil, Zoloft, Xantax - Drug Induced Violence

 

 

23 August 2004 - The New York Times reports on the

Murder case of Christopher Pittman coming up for

trial. The 12-year-old has shot his grandparents and

put their house on fire, but he says it was the effect

of the drug he was on at the time - the antidepressant

Zoloft.

 

The case comes amid widespread allegations that

antidepressant drugs cause many to commit suicide, a

charge hotly denied by the pharma companies producing

them.

 

But what's more, a recent " mental health

initiative " that includes widespread testing for

mental illness in American schools is expected to lead

to the prescription of just these kinds of drugs to

hundreds of thousands more children like Chris

Pittman.

 

Ann Tracy, an activist who investigates cases of

unexplained violence and suicide, argues that

antidepressants are dangerous and should be banned.

Tracy argues that the perpetrators of some of Utah's

famous violent crimes — Margaret Kastanis, who stabbed

herself and her three children in 1991; Sergei

Babarin, who shot five people at the LDS Family

History Library in 1999; Lenny Gall, who killed his

mother with an axe in 2001 — were violent because they

were either on antidepressants or had gone off them

too abruptly.

 

Tryptophan is an aminoacid that in the body

transforms into niacin, also known as vitamin B 3 and

into serotonin, both helping to maintain a positive

outlook and mood. Dr. Andrew Saul calls tryptophan a

prozac alternative. Vitamin D has been found to ease

depression if given in supplement form.

 

With plenty of nutritional alternatives, why do we

insist on using drugs as the first line treatment?

 

Boy's Murder Case Entangled in Fight Over

Antidepressants

 

By BARRY MEIER

 

Published: August 23, 2004

(go to original)

 

Christopher Pittman said he remembered everything

about that night in late 2001 when he killed his

grandparents: the blood, the shotgun blasts, the

voices urging him on, even the smoke detectors that

screamed as he drove away from their rural South

Carolina home after setting it on fire.

 

" Something kept telling me to do it, " he later

told a forensic psychiatrist.

 

Now, Christopher, who was 12 years old at the time

of the killings, faces charges of first-degree murder.

The decision by a local prosecutor to try him as an

adult could send him to prison for life. While

prosecutors portray him as a troubled killer, his

defenders say the killings occurred for a reason

beyond the boy's control - a reaction to the

antidepressant Zoloft, a drug he had started taking

for depression not long before the slayings.

 

Such defenses, which have been used before, have

rarely succeeded. And most medical experts do not

believe there is a link between antidepressants and

acts of extreme violence.

 

But the Pittman case has attracted special

attention because it is among the first to arise amid

a national debate over the safety of antidepressant

use in children and teenagers. Depression is a complex

condition, and antidepressants like Zoloft have helped

countless children and adults.

 

In recent months, however, the federal Food and

Drug Administration has been examining data from

clinical trials indicating that some depressed

children and adolescents taking antidepressants think

more about suicide and attempt it more often than

patients given placebos. The findings varied between

drugs. The F.D.A. is scheduled to hold an advisory

committee meeting on the issue next month.

 

Against that backdrop, the case of Christopher

Pittman - an otherwise obscure small-town murder case

that may go to trial this fall - has become a

battleground, where the scientific threads of the

F.D.A. debate have become entangled with courtroom

arguments and a family's tragedy.

 

Pfizer, the maker of Zoloft, has helped the county

solicitor who is prosecuting Christopher Pittman.

Plaintiffs' lawyers from Houston and Los Angeles, who

between them have brought numerous civil lawsuits

against Pfizer and other antidepressant makers, have

signed onto the defense team. Groups opposed to

pediatric antidepressant use have also championed the

boy's case, which is being played out in Chester,

S.C., a small town near the North Carolina border.

 

Locally, some people involved in the Pittman case

said they have been stunned by the rush of outsiders.

Even a forensic psychiatrist, who testified at a

hearing that she believed that Christopher committed

the murders while in a psychotic state induced by

Zoloft, said she worried that the publicity may

frighten parents whose children could benefit from

Zoloft and similar drugs.

 

" I wished it could be staying in Chester, S.C.,

with this one kid, " said the psychiatrist, Dr. Lanette

Atkins of nearby Columbia, S.C., who has been retained

by Christopher's public defender.

 

While the pediatric antidepressant debate has

focused on potential suicide risks, aggressive

behavior can be a side effect of antidepressants.

There have also been case reports of adults and

children on antidepressants acting violently. But only

a handful of psychiatrists have ever argued that such

medications can unleash rages so uncontrollable as to

overwhelm a person's ability to distinguish between

right and wrong and commit murder.

 

With the Pittman case pending, Pfizer, based in

New York, declined to make company executives or

lawyers available to be interviewed for this article.

The company has previously said that no regulatory

agency has ever found a connection between Zoloft and

suicidal or homicidal behavior.

 

Zoloft belongs to a class of medications known as

selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or

S.S.R.I.'s, which also includes other popular drugs

like Paxil and Prozac. In the last year, federal drug

regulators have issued cautionary statements about

most S.S.R.I.'s and similar medications prescribed for

the treatment of pediatric depression. The one

exception has been Prozac, the only S.S.R.I. formally

approved for pediatric use after it was shown to be

effective in tests with children and adolescents.

 

Regulators issued their advisories after a

re-examination of drug makers' test data, much of

which had not been publicly released. The disclosure

of the test results has spurred demands by doctors'

groups and others that drug companies be required to

list all drug tests publicly, and a few producers have

announced plans to do so.

 

If for some doctors such controversies seemed to

have sprung up suddenly, the issues behind them were

already stirring about three years ago - right around

the time that Christopher Pittman fired four shotgun

blasts into his grandparents as they slept.

 

 

A Last Chance Goes Wrong

 

When Christopher Pittman arrived in Chester in

October 2001 to live with his paternal grandparents,

Joe and Joy Pittman, the move seemed like his last,

best chance to find stability.

 

He felt abandoned by his mother, according to

medical reports. And his relationship with his father,

who raised him in Florida, was troubled. " I haven't

had that good a life; my real mom left when I was 2, "

Christopher Pittman told a forensic psychiatrist with

the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice.

 

Psychiatric reports suggest that Christopher's

tailspin began when his parents revived their

relationship in 2001, only to end it yet again. After

his mother left this time, he threatened to kill

himself and was hospitalized. His diagnosis, records

show, was mild chronic depression accompanied by

defiant and negative behavior. He was put on Paxil.

 

But after about a week, his father, also named

Joe, decided to remove him from the hospital and send

him to live with his grandparents. There, a doctor put

Christopher on Zoloft, the most widely prescribed

S.S.R.I. antidepressant for pediatric patients and

adults alike.

 

Initially, Christopher Pittman appeared to thrive.

After a few weeks in Chester, though, he got into a

dispute on a school bus and his grandparents

threatened to send him back to his father. By the next

morning, they were dead.

 

Dr. Pamela M. Crawford, a forensic psychiatrist

who was asked by the case's prosecutor to examine the

boy, concluded in her report that Christopher knew

what he was doing when he took his grandparents'

lives.

 

He provided " nonpsychotic reasons " for killing his

grandparents, setting fire to the house, taking money

from his grandparents and then stealing their car, Dr.

Crawford's report states. " Following his detention by

police, Christopher made self-protective statements to

avoid arrest prior to admitting his actions. "

 

Citing the continuing case, both Dr. Crawford and

Dr. Atkins, the other forensic psychiatrist, declined

to answer questions about their reports or court

testimony.

 

At the time of the murders, questions about the

safety of antidepressants were focused on adults, not

youngsters. Just a few months earlier, a plaintiff's

lawyer, Arnold Vickery, who is known as Andy, had

convinced a federal jury hearing a lawsuit in

Cheyenne, Wyo., that Paxil had caused a man to go on a

murderous rampage.

 

In June 2001, that jury ordered GlaxoSmithKline,

the maker of Paxil, to pay $6.5 million to the

relatives of Donald Schell, who, two days after

starting on the drug, murdered his wife, his daughter

and his granddaughter before killing himself. The

company appealed, before settling the case, for

undisclosed terms.

 

It is hard to draw comparisons between civil

lawsuits and criminal cases like the one involving

Christopher Pittman. Still, the Wyoming verdict was

significant because it was the first time, after more

than a decade of litigation, that a jury had concluded

that an S.S.R.I.-type antidepressant could make users

so agitated and unbalanced that they could kill others

or themselves.

 

The Wyoming award has not led to similar verdicts,

and drug makers like Pfizer take the position that

antidepressants do not cause suicide or homicide.

 

Contradictory Reports

 

Little is known about Christopher Pittman's

response to Paxil, because he took the drug for only a

few days. And reports about his reactions to Zoloft

vary sharply.

 

He later told a psychiatrist that his mood changed

on the medication, to the extent that he " didn't have

any feelings. "

 

The notes of the local doctor who prescribed the

medication for Christopher paint a different picture,

according to court records.

 

That physician, who saw Christopher just a few

days before the killings, described him this way:

" Lots of energy. No plans to harm self. Not flying off

the handle.

 

Psychiatrists have long known that adult patients

might experience increased suicidal thinking or

agitation during the first weeks of treatment with

S.S.R.I.-type antidepressants. But in May 2003

GlaxoSmithKline made a disclosure related to pediatric

use of the drug, which would set off a cascade of

events that are still in motion.

 

That month, the drug maker told the federal Food

and Drug Administration and its British counterpart

agency that its re-examination of published and

unpublished test data showed that adolescents who took

Paxil during clinical trials had more suicidal

thoughts or attempted suicide more often than those

who received a placebo. About six months earlier, a

curious F.D.A. analyst had contacted the company

seeking more safety information.

 

Within weeks, British drug regulators told doctors

not to prescribe Paxil to new patients younger than

18. In June 2003, the F.D.A followed suit, and a month

later the agency asked all antidepressant makers for

more safety data about their pediatric tests. In the

weeks leading up to an emotionally charged F.D.A.

hearing this past February on antidepressant safety,

doctors learned that the drug industry had not

published all the data gathered during pediatric

trials of the medications.

 

Dr. David G. Fassler, a child and adolescent

psychiatrist in Burlington, Vt., who attended the

meeting, recalled being struck by the number of

pediatric studies he had never known about although he

followed medical journals.

 

" This was a lot more data than I knew existed, "

said Dr. Fassler, who is an official of the American

Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, a

professional group. That hearing also served as a

public forum for grieving parents to testify about

children who had committed suicide soon after they had

started on antidepressants. Joe Pittman, Christopher's

father, was there, reading a letter written by his son

in prison, in which he blamed Zoloft for his

grandparents' deaths.

 

" Through the whole thing, it was like watching

your favorite TV show, " wrote Christopher, who is now

15. " You know what is going to happen but you can't do

anything to stop it. "

 

A Gathering of Lawyers

 

By then, his case had become the center of a

pitched legal struggle. Mr. Vickery, the plaintiffs'

lawyer who had won the Wyoming trial, was contacted

about the Pittman case by the International Coalition

for Drug Awareness, a group based in Utah opposed to

antidepressant use.

 

Over the past decade, the group's director, Ann

Blake Tracy, has become involved in several murder

cases in which a defendant has been on antidepressants

or other drugs. Ms. Tracy maintains that

antidepressants " overstimulate the brain stem and

cause you to go into a sleep-walk state where you can

act out the nightmares you have. " Mr. Vickery, who has

been suing antidepressant makers since the mid-1990's,

soon joined the defense team, offering his services

for free. So did another plaintiffs' lawyer who has

filed similar lawsuits, Karen Barth Menzies of Los

Angeles.

 

Lawyers for Pfizer have also gotten involved. The

case's prosecutor, Chester County Solicitor John R.

Justice, was recently hospitalized with a serious

illness and has not been available to comment. But he

stated at a court hearing that Pfizer had provided

information to him last year to help him prepare for

the trial, according to a published report in The

Herald, a newspaper in Rock Hill, S.C.

 

Christopher Taylor, an assistant country

solicitor, said he thought that Pfizer had contacted

Mr. Justice. The material provided by Pfizer, the

article reported, included F.D.A. reports about Zoloft

and previous court testimony by a psychiatrist, Dr.

Peter R. Breggin, who is scheduled to testify on

Christopher Pittman's behalf. Dr. Breggin, who has

campaigned against the use of psychotropic drugs in

children, has testified in numerous lawsuits and

criminal trials that a link exists between

S.S.R.I.-type antidepressants and both suicide and

violence - positions rejected by drug makers like

Pfizer and by many other experts.

 

" I have been given advice on how to cross

Breggin, " Mr. Justice was quoted as saying, adding

that he had " been schooled on how these drugs are

supposed to work. "

 

See also related articles:

 

FDA Covers Up Report - Mosholder: 'Antidepressants

Double Suicides in Children'

 

Pfizer Sued in California: Covering up Zoloft Side

Effects

 

Tryptophan, Niacin Protect Against Alzheimer's

 

Kruszewski: Fired 'For Digging Up Dirt'

Psychiatrist Sues Employers, Pharma Companies

 

Bush To Impose Psychiatric Drug Regime

 

Pharma Promotion Dishonest - Slanted Reporting of

Paxil, Prozac Studies

 

Report decried giving drugs to kids

 

SHUT UP AND TAKE YOUR DRUGS - News with views

 

Posted at August 26, 2004 02:29 AM | TrackBack