Harming in the Name of Healthcare: Miracle Psychosurgery And Wonder Drugs

[Guest guest]

http://www.cchr.org/doctors/eng/page21.htm

 

" We are going in there [the brain] with the equivalent of a bulldozer

to knock down roads and tear up rail lines and pull down telegraph

exchanges. You have to ask, do we know enough to play these kinds of

games with other people's brains. "

 

— Paul Mullen, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry, Australia, 1999

 

 

 

Psychosurgery: In the 1930s, Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz,

inspired by an experiment in which the frontal lobes of two

chimpanzees were removed, conducted the same operation on humans.

Moniz asserted that seven of his 20 patients had been cured; seven had

significantly improved and six were unchanged.

 

 

 

" We pop 532 million tranquilizers, 463 million sleeping pills and 823

million anti-depressants every year (in the UK). All of these work to

some extent, but at what cost, in terms of side effects and dependence? "

 

— Patrick Holford M.D. Optimum Nutrition for the Mind, United Kingdom,

2002

 

 

In 1936, American psychiatrist Walter Freeman developed the prefrontal

lobotomy. Using electric shock as an anesthetic, he forced an ice pick

beneath the eye socket bone into the brain using a surgical mallet.

Movement of the instrument then severed the fibers of the frontal

brain lobes. Freeman even dubbed his procedure as " surgery of the soul. "

 

Freeman claimed that patients were " less anxious, less concerned about

their inner experiences, and more responsive to the environment, "

adding, " the patient was enabled to face disability and death with

equanimity. " 99

 

Meanwhile, The New York Times wrote that Freeman's " new operation

marked a turning point of procedure in treating mental cases " , and

would likely " go down in medical history as another shining example of

therapeutic courage. "

 

A 12-year follow-up study later concluded that Moniz's patients

suffered relapses, seizures, and deaths. By 1948, the death rate from

Freeman's lobotomies was 3%. Postoperative death and suicide mortality

rates were as high as 10%. There were also epileptic seizures in more

than 50% of the patients, and other undesirable side effects included

weight gain and obesity, loss of bowel control and loss of bladder

control.100

 

 

 

From Miracle Drugs to Snake Oil

THEN: ANTI-PSYCHOTIC DRUGS WERE TOUTED AS A TREATMENT " BREAKTHROUGH "

 

The side effects with antipsychotics are " mild and infrequent... more

of a matter of patient comfort than of safety. "

 

— National Institute of Mental Health, 1964

[Picture] LATER: RECOGNIZED AS A PSYCHIATRIC FAILURE

 

" A dangerous but little known complication (neuroleptic malignant

syndrome) of antipsychotics drug use appears to be more common than

previously thought... In some cases, a patient takes only a few hours

to go from symptoms without serious illness to an inability to

swallow, coma, kidney failure or brain damage... about 20% of the

time, NMS is fatal. "

 

— Science News, 1986

 

 

 

 

Antipsychotic Drugs: Chlorpromazine was the first " antipsychotic " drug

to be developed. Within days of the drug's FDA approval, a national

television show aired— " The March of Medicine " —promoting the drug as

" safe for human administration " , and promising that it would

" revolutionize the treatment of mental disease. " 101

 

 

 

" These are scientists who... praise the drugs but forget that they are

filled with side effects. You are not yourself, you don't think

properly and you don't feel properly. You become a zombie. "

 

— Dr. Jytte Willadsen Retired Consultant Psychiatrist, , Denmark, 1998

 

 

A Time Magazine article posed the question, " Wonder Drug of 1954? " and

The New York Times reported on chlorpromazine at least eleven times,

with headlines such as " New Cure Sought for Mentally Ill " and " Drug

Use Hailed in Mental Cases. "

 

Again, psychiatry offered more salesmanship than substance. In the

1990s, researchers admitted that neuroleptics did not control

delusions or hallucinations; that two-thirds of the drugged patients

had " persistent psychotic symptoms a year after their first psychotic

break " ; and that 30% of patients didn't respond to the drugs at

all.102 As if that were not enough, " Silent coronary death due to a

phenothiazine-induced... deterioration of the heart's conduction

system may be one of the most serious threats of prolonged drug use, "

wrote William H. Philpott, M.D. and Dwight K. Kalita, Ph.D., in Brain

Allergies.103

 

Ugo Cerletti

 

1938: ECT was invented by Italian psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti, seen here

with the electrical instrument used in slaughterhouses to stun pigs

prior to slitting their throats. Their reaction to the electric shock

inspired Cerletti's development of ECT, first used on a prisoner who

pleaded with Cerletti, " Not another one! It's deadly! " Cerletti

himself ended up renouncing electroshock before he died.

 

 

Newer Antipsychotics: In the 1990s, atypical antipsychotics were

promoted as able to reduce hospital stays, improve a patient's ability

to function socially, lessen hostility and reduce the incidence of

extrapyramidal symptoms.

 

The Washington Post reported that one atypical represented " a glimmer

of hope for a disease that until recently had been considered hopeless. "

 

Back to non-psychiatric reality, Whitaker calls the newer

antipsychotics " a story of science marred by greed, deaths, and the

deliberate deception of the American public. " 104 One in every 145

patients who entered the clinical trials for four atypical drugs died,

yet those deaths were never mentioned in the scientific literature.105

Thirty-six patients involved in the clinical trials committed

suicide.106 Eighty-four patients had experienced a " serious adverse

event " of some type, which the FDA defined as a life-threatening

event, or one that required hospitalization; 9% of the patients had to

drop out of the clinical trials because of adverse events, compared to

10% of patients treated with one of the older antipsychotics.107

 

 

 

" Wonder Drugs " Not So Wonderful

THEN: SSRI DRUGS WERE TOUTED AS A TREATMENT " BREAKTHROUGH "

 

The SSRI " represents a new class of antidepressants [which]

effectively relieves depression [and has] fewer side effects to

disrupt therapy. Side effects are generally mild and manageable.... "

 

— Psychiatric Times, 1989

[Picture] LATER: RECOGNIZED AS A PSYCHIATRIC FAILURE

 

The SSRI " has been linked to the development of extrapyramidal

symptoms, akathisia, seizures... sexual dysfunction, stuttering, tics,

hearing loss, manic episodes, paranoid reactions, and intense suicidal

ideation. "

 

— The Annals of Pharmacology, 1991

 

 

 

 

SSRIs: The new generation of antidepressants, called Selective

Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), were promoted as a dramatic new

type of mood-altering drug, " a designer medical bullet targeting

[chemical] serotonin, " says Glenmullen.108

 

Newsweek introduced SSRIs as, " How Science Will Let You Change Your

Personality with a Pill. " New York magazine proclaimed a " wonder

drug. " They were reported to be safe and virtually side effect-free.

 

 

 

ECT advocates claim the memory loss caused by electroshock is helpful

because patients no longer recall events that had caused them anguish.

ECT has been found so ineffective at ridding patients of their

depression that nearly all of those who receive it relapse within six

months of stopping treatment.

 

 

More false claims, more troubling outcomes. In 2001, Professor Ralph

Edwards, the head of WHO's unit monitoring drug side-effects, warned

that SSRIs have produced far more complaints from patients than

old-fashioned tranquilizers prescribed by doctors in the 1970s. He

also reports that " the issue of dependence and withdrawal has become

much more serious. " 109

 

Withdrawal syndromes are estimated to affect up to 50% of patients,

depending on the particular SSRI drug. Sexual dysfunction affects 60%

of patients.110 On their much-vaunted chemical capabilities,

Glenmullen is emphatic: " No one has anything but the vaguest idea of

the chemical effects of these drugs on the living human brain. " 111 The

history of psychiatric treatment methodologies is not an evolution

from the clumsy and ignorant beginnings of a novice discipline to the

sharp, knowledgeable and beneficial maturity of a true science.

Rather, it is the story of a sly and arrogant neighborhood bully that

learned to hurt but never to heal.