Pringle - TeenScreen - New York Times - Danger Signs

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Sun, 18 Dec 2005 13:41:55 -0500

[sSRI-Research] Pringle - TeenScreen - New York Times -

Danger Signs

 

 

 

 

[-- great article... so true]

 

TeenScreen - New York Times - Danger Signs

http://www.sierratimes.com/05/12/17/70_224_240_217_81288.htm

 

 

Maybe my expectations are too high. All of my life I've put a lot of

stock in a story if I read it in the New York Times. In hindsight,

I must admit that I found the whole saga of the planted WMD stories,

that in large part helped the administration push the country into an

unnecessary and senseless war in Iraq, troubling to say the least.

However, to its credit the Times did give Judith Miller the boot and

thus, restored my confidence in the legitimacy of the paper at least

somewhat.

 

That said, my expectation were shattered again on December 4, 2005,

when I read the article, " Danger Signs, " which paints a totally

inaccurate picture of a pharma-backed marketing scheme, billed as a

suicide prevention tool, under the name, " TeenScreen. "

 

This profiteering scheme was actually hatched by several front groups

in concert with the industry, with the ultimate goal of getting a foot

in the door of the nation's public school system to recruit the 52

millions students as life-long customers in he sale of a new

generation of useless, dangerous, and expensive psychiatric drugs.

 

In Danger Signs, the Times talks about how in the mid-1980's, Dr David

Shaffer, a psychiatrist employed by Columbia University, became

concerned about an increase in teen suicide which motivated the good

doctor to develop the TeenScreen survey.

 

The truth is that in 1987, Prozac, the first in a stream of SSRI

antidepressants, hit the market which necessitated a heavy-duty plan

for legal drug pushing. Pharma needed an expanded customer base, so

they put their heads together and came up with the bright idea for

Shaffer to develop the ridiculous survey and play on the nation's soft

side when it was passed off as a prevention tool to save poor suicidal

teens.

 

In reality, TeenScreen is one of the slickest, and sickest, marketing

schemes that I've run across in my 2 years of investigating the

world's most profitable drug cartel better known as the pharmaceutical

industry.

 

It's certainly no secret that certain officials in the nation's

regulatory agencies are members of the cartel so it's no wonder that I

got a little suspicious when I read the comment in the Times about a

CDC survey that claimed about 8% of high school students answered yes

when asked if they had attempted suicide during the past year. The

Times did not say 8% thought about suicide, it said 8% of the kids

attempted suicide.

 

Now don't get me wrong, I am not insinuating that the CDC is

exaggerating, or that it ginned up a survey, not at all. I'm saying

that the CDC official who presented the Times with the 8% story is a liar.

 

If they did a survey and found 8 kids out of a 100 who actually

attempted suicide in the past year, they either surveyed kids in

substance abuse treatment, or a homeless shelter, which is the

favorite hunting grounds of the bandits running TeenScreen when they

go out trolling for potential suicide statistics to inflate their numbers.

 

Case on point for manipulating statistics, here is what TeenScreen's

Executive Director, Laurie Flynn, wrote in a promotional article

titled, Before Their Time: Preventing Teen Suicide.

 

" Since 1960 the suicide rates for males 15-19 years old has tripled.

More alarming, suicide is increasingly claiming its victims at younger

ages. From 1980-1996, suicide rates among children 10-14 years old

increased 100 percent. "

 

Imagine that, an increase of 100%. I am shocked, just shocked!

 

Experts find the deliberate inflation of numbers appalling. " They are

pulling numbers out of thin air - falsely presuming that this crisis

is about lack of access to drugs and calling for government to provide

more and more of what many of us believe is the wrong kind of

treatment, " according to Robert Whitaker in an interview with Kelly

O'Meara on May 16, 2003, published by Insight News.

 

The truth is, that although the class of antidepressants called

selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), marketed to children

via TeenScreen, have been prescribed to tens of millions of people

over the past decade and they have not lowered suicide rates an iota.

 

A government sponsored study published in the Journal of the American

Association surveyed 9708 people aged 18 to 54, and compared the

suicide data from the 1990-1992 National Comorbidity Survey and the

2001-2003 National Comorbidity Survey Replication and found: " Despite

a dramatic increase in treatment, no significant decrease occurred in

suicidal thoughts, plans, gestures, or attempts in the United States

during the 1990s, " Trends in Suicide Ideation, Plans, Gestures, and

Attempts in the United States, 1990-1992 to 2001-2003, JAMA.

2005;293:2487-2495

The study's authors also note that their findings are corroborated by

" other information " which " argues against the possibility that the

increase in treatment prevented an increase that would otherwise have

occurred in suicide-related behaviors. Specifically, randomized

controlled trials find only modest effects of treatment in reducing

suicidality, even with optimal regimens. "

 

Not only do SSRIs not prevent suicide, on July 21, 2004, the Journal

of the American Medical Association reported that during treatment

with SSRIs, there was a " significantly higher risk of suicide and

suicidal thoughts ... during the first nine days of treatment " and

that children first starting treatment were 4 times more likely to

think about suicide, and 38 times more likely to commit suicide.

Children as young as five have committed suicide while taking these

drugs, the study found.

 

When discussing the number of child suicides, the Time's Danger Signs

article says about " 1,500 succeed annually, making suicide the

third-leading cause of death in teenagers after accidents and homicides. "

 

I don't know where those statistics came from, or whether they are

accurate. But think about it, there are 52 million kids in the

nation's public school system, not counting the kids aged 0 to 5. And

according to the CDC, in 2004, there were over 4,000,000 births in the US.

 

A statistically low number of 1,500 suicides is hardly worth

subjecting millions of kids to an intrusive mental heath screening

that is going to label a third with mental health disorders, after

which they will be drugged with medications that carry a black box

warning against their use with children because they can cause kids to

commit suicide.

 

There is also absolutely no evidence to support the theory that

TeenScreen can prevent suicide. In fact, in March 2004, the United

States Preventive Special Task Force found no evidence that screening

for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality.

 

It also noted that there is limited evidence on the accuracy of

screening tools to identify suicide risk in the primary care setting,

including tools to identify those at high risk The task force also

found no studies that addressed the potential harm of screening for

suicide risks.

 

And finally, the USPSTF found insufficient evidence that treatment of

those at high risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality. As a result,

the task force said it could not determine the balance of benefits and

harms of screening for suicide risk.

 

According Danger Signs, Shaffer went public with TeenScreen four years

ago, offering it to schools at no charge. That assertion is another

blatant misrepresentation. When TeenScreen went public in Ohio, tax

payers in 3 counties were billed $15,000 each, to implement the scheme

in Ohio schools.

 

In Tennessee, a drug company financed the first program at a Nashville

High School, in which a third of the kids screened were steered to a

mental health clinic.

 

And while testifying before Congress, Flynn, asked lawmakers to take

funds earmarked for alcohol and drug abuse treatment programs and

allow those tax dollars to be used to set up this drug profiteering

scheme in public schools.

 

The Times should have done a bit of fact checking before it wrote: " It

is given to students with their parents' consent. " The reporter

responsible for the article should ask Chelsea Rhodes and her parents

in Indiana if the school had consent to test Chelsea and send her home

diagnosed with 2 mental illnesses.

 

Telling an impressionable and vulnerable young girl that she is

mentally ill is child abuse and school officials involved should be

arrested. Chelsea will likely be affected by this labeling for life.

 

This next comment that indicates a serious deficiency in fact checkers

at the Times states: " With only word-of-mouth marketing, the

questionnaire has spread to 461 sites in 43 states. "

 

Here again, the reporter might want to check and see how much money

was funneled through TeenScreen to the PR firm that marketed the

survey. The same firm that lists many of the major drug companies as

clients on its web site.

 

Rabin Strategic Partners is one of the PR companies, that put together

a publication called, " Catch Them Before They Fall; How to Implement

Mental Health Screening Programs for Youth as Recommended by the

President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, " according to Sue

Weibert, The Genesis of President Bush's New Freedom Commission on

Mental Health, OpEd News, December 15, 2005.

 

Only word-of-mouth? According to Flynn at that 2004 AACAP Meeting,

they mailed a copy of, Catch Them Before They Fall, " to people who

were on key committees " in all 50 states, " Weibert reports.

 

Also the Times might want to check out the $180,000 that was funneled

through TeenScreen to Florida officials to try to sell the survey to

schools that state.

 

The Times said TeenScreen's aim is merely to identify kids at risk,

not to encourage use of antidepressants. Then I'd like to know what

Shaffer meant at the February 2004, FDA hearing, after hearing all the

other professionals testify about the reports and studies documenting

the serious adverse reactions in children while on SSRIs, when he said:

 

" There have been no direct studies with frequent and careful

measurement examining whether SSRIs increase, decrease, or have no

effect on suicidal ideation and behavior, so that we are dependent

very much on inference, but maybe that is always the case. "

 

" I just would like to conclude with the following, " Shaffer told the

panel. " After increasing for years, teen suicide rates have been

declining consistently in many countries. During this period, there

has been a marked increase in exposure of teens to SSRI

antidepressants, " he claimed.

 

" We have nothing to do with providing recommendations for treatment, "

Flynn told the Times reporter, who evidently bought it hook, line and

sinker.

 

People temped to believe that claim ought to watch TeenScreen's

video-taped presentation at the annual convention of the National

Association for Mental Illness, where the TeenScreen crew tells the

army of NAMI members that helping TeenScreen might require them to

contact a child's insurance company to check on coverage or drive a

child to an appointment with a shrink.

 

The video also shows the TeenScreen crew passing around a pad of paper

for NAMI members from all across the country to sign on as volunteers

and agree to rise up against anyone who speaks out against TeenScreen

when it tries to move into a new community.

 

In the video, the presenter also explains the importance of tricking

kids into agreeing to take the survey first, by bribing them with

pizza or movie coupons or other perks, because according TeenScreen,

the parent won't agree to the survey so they need to win the kids over

first and then send them home to talk the parents into it.

 

The Times reporter might want to check and see how much drug money has

actually been funneled through NAMI, the nation's number-one front

group of all time, to set up this marketing scheme in schools all over

the country.

 

Its actually comical to watch Flynn change her talking points

depending on the audience. On March 2, 2004, she testified at a

congressional hearing and said that in the screening process, " youth

complete a 10-minute self-administered questionnaire that screens for

social phobia, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, major

depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicidality. "

 

 

After the school tells parents that TeenScreen determined that their

child has one or more of the mental health disorders she listed for

Congress, what is Flynn inferring will happen to the kids, if they are

not put on drugs?

 

I read one meaningful statement in Danger Signs which said: " Other

critics worry that TeenScreen will funnel too many kids into treatment

and lead to overuse of medication, with possibly dangerous results. "

 

However, even that comment is an understatement. The concern about the

overuse of drugs with children is far more than a " worry. "

 

According to an on-going investigation of Pinellas County, Florida, by

expert records researcher, Ken Kramer, a review of relevant

information for 2002 and 2003, revealed that 81% of the teens who

committed suicide were either on psychotropic drugs or had received

psychiatric treatment.

 

Dedicated anti-child-drugging advocate, Doyle Mills, made a good point

about teen suicide when he said, " try to find a suicide victim who has

not already received some form of psychiatric treatment, usually drugs. "

 

Shaffer and Flynn, the self-proclaimed prevention " experts, " forgot to

tell the reporter that the majority of kids who have committed

suicide, or other violent acts, in recent years were already on the

lethal SSRIs.

 

When discussing the issue, Flynn suggests that school violence is

caused by a lack of drugs. " While national awareness of the pressures

our kids face today has been raised in the wake of recent school

violence, " she said in NAMI E-News, July 6, 1999, Vol 00-1, " the far

greater difficulties children with serious mental illnesses and their

families confront each day, every year, are being overlooked. They

are trapped inside a system of horrors. "

 

 

The children who went on out of character killing sprees were trapped

inside a system of horrors all right but not due to lack of drugs. The

FDA's warning about SSRI behaviors " known to be associated with these

drugs, " include " anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia,

irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness),

hypomania, and mania, " according to court-certified expert on SSRIs,

Dr Peter Breggin, on PBS Frontline.

 

" Each of these reactions, " Breggin advises, " can worsen the

individual's mental condition and can result in suicidality, violence,

and other forms of extreme abnormal behavior. "

 

Evidence from many sources confirms that SSRIs commonly cause or

exacerbate a wide range of abnormal mental and behavioral conditions,

according to Breggin, International Journal of Risk & Safety in

Medicine 16 (2003/2004).

 

At the FDA hearings in February 2004, dozens of devastated parents

testified that their children had committed suicide, or other violent

acts, as a direct result of being prescribed the same drugs that

TeenScreen is pushing.

 

A factor that stands out when reviewing the testimony is that the

conduct by children on these drugs is extremely violent, regardless of

whether the behavior involves homicide or suicide. A bizarre pattern

emerges when listening to parents describe the acts of their children

that is totally unheard of.

 

For instance, Sara Bostock described how her daughter, Cecily, a

recent Stanford University graduate, stabbed herself to death in the

chest with a kitchen knife two weeks after she was prescribed Paxil,

while her mother slept in the next room.

 

" The only noise was a slight yelp and a thump when she fell on the

floor, " Sara said. " To die in this violent, unusual fashion without

making a sound ... Paxil must have put her over the edge, " she pointed

out.

 

Glenn McIntosh told the panel, " I would like to introduce you to my

daughter, Caitlin Elizabeth McIntosh, " he said, " it is actually only a

two-dimensional image of her, but it is all I have left. "

 

" She died of suicide at age 12 years, 3 months, " her father explained,

" just eight weeks after being put on Paxil and then Zoloft. " On

January 5, 2000, Caitlin hung herself in the bathroom at school, Glenn

said.

 

Mark and Cheryl Miller described the strange suicide method of their

son Matt after he was put on Zoloft. Matt was told to take the pills

for a week and then call the doctor back, but he never made it a week,

he hung himself from a bedroom closet hook, barely higher than he was

tall.

 

'To commit this unthinkable act, " his father said, " he was actually

able to pull his legs up off the floor and hold himself that way until

he lost consciousness. "

 

Lisa Van Syckel told how her daughter, Michelle, was placed on Paxil

after being diagnosed with depression and anorexia nervosa, when as it

turns out, Michelle actually had Lymes Disease.

 

" My daughter self-mutilated, became psychotic, became violent,

attempted suicide twice, " Lisa told the panel.

 

Her friends at school call Michelle Psycho, Lisa said, " all because

she was misdiagnosed and all because everyone has withheld from the

public the adverse effects of Paxil. "

 

" Please, " Lisa asked the panel, " have respect for our children, make

sure that you put proper warnings on these medications. "

 

 

" Our children's lives are at stake here, because not only does it

cause suicide, it also causes them to become violent, very, very

violent, " she added.

 

Tom and Kathy Woodward's daughter, Julie, hung herself after being on

Zoloft for a short time, even though she had no history of self-harm

or suicide.

 

They explained that the doctor had said Zoloft was safe and had very

few side effects and had never discussed the possibility of violence,

self-harm, or suicidal acts and that the two and a half pages of

information that came with the drug never mentioned self-harm or

suicide either.

 

" We are here because we believe the system we have in place is

flawed, " Tom told the panel. " It is clear that the FDA is a political

entity and its leadership has protected the economic interests of the

drug industry. "

 

Grieving mother, Shannon Baker said, " I am here today, because I am

representing the love that my daughter had for life and to be her

voice and the voice of all the other children who their voices have

been silenced by these drugs. "

 

" Their deaths have been so senseless and needless, " Shannon continued,

" I am here speaking in front of you, hoping that you will go in the

right direction and ban these drugs for children. "

 

" There needs to be no more senseless and needless deaths because of

these drugs, " she added.

 

Christopher Pittman's father testified that 12 year-old Chris had shot

his grandfather and grandmother while they slept, and then set the

house on fire, and fled in the family car within a few weeks of being

prescribed Zoloft, and 2 days after the dose had been doubled. Before

Zoloft, Christopher had been on Paxil.

 

His maternal grandmother said Christopher adored the grandparents he

killed and had never been violent before in his life. Chris himself

describes the event as like being in a dream watching a movie where

you can see what is happening but you can do nothing to stop it.

 

In the criminal trial, Christopher was tried as an adult and sentenced

to 30 years in an adult prison.

 

Joyce Storey told the panel how her 17-year-old son Brian was

diagnosed with depression, given Zoloft pills and told to come back in

two weeks. " Five days later, my son killed a woman, " Joyce said.

 

The psychiatrist that examined Brian, Dr. James Merkangis, testified

at trial that Brian had a manic reaction to Zoloft. And similar to

Christopher Pittman, Brian testified that it was just like being in a

dream. Brian is now serving life without parole.

 

Brian's mother told the panel of another boy at Brian's school who 6

months after Brian's crimes, took an ax to both of his parents and his

thee brothers and sisters while on Prozac. That child is now serving 2

life sentences, Joyce said.

 

" This is not a coincidence, " she warned. " There is a common

denominator, teenager, severely depressed, on an SSRI antidepressant. "

 

" What is scary, " Joyce said, " is that you are only hearing from a few

of us that this has happened to, and there are a lot more out there. "

 

Young Mark Taylor was shot between 6 and 13 times, by Eric Harris

during the Columbine shooting spree, while Harris while on SSRIs.

 

When testifying Mark told the panel: " The measure of a man is not his

strength or how much money he has, or how good he looks or how strong

he is, or how powerful he is. The measure of the man is how noble he is. "

 

" I want to ask you guys, " he said, " are you really being noble with

your choices, or are you just allowing the drug companies to squeeze

by you just because they have a big pocketbook? "

 

" I am amazed that you guys are even standing here supporting these

drug companies, " he told the panel. " I mean this has never happened in

the history of America, " Mark said, " this is a shame and it ought to

be stopped today, not next week. "

 

Mark is right, most of the children involved in violent events in

recent years have been on SSRIs. Eighteen-year-old, Jason Hoffman, was

on Celexa and Effexor when he shot three students and one teacher at a

California High School.

 

" I want people to know that what happened was not the real me, " Jason

wrote in a letter from his jail cell. " I was just angry, maybe my

medication. It was a fluke of the moment, " he said. " The person was

not the true Jason Hoffman. "

 

On Oct 29, 2001, deputies found Jason dead, hanging from a vent screen

in his jail cell.

 

Kip Kinkel, was 15 and on Prozac, when he killed his parents and then

drove to school where he shot and killed two of his classmates and

injured 22 others.

 

Sixteen-year-old, Jeff Weise, was on Prozac when he shot his

grandfather and his female companion, and then went and shot 5

students, a teacher, and a security guard at a school in Minnesota,

before killing himself, according to school employee, Gayle Downwind.

 

What most people don't realize is that the experiences of these

children don't represent unknown behaviors. The drug companies and the

FDA have known about many of these side effects since before the drugs

came on the market.

 

The British Medical Journal recently received a series of in-house Eli

Lilly documents and studies concerning Prozac from an anonymous

source. The BMJ forwarded the documents to other authorities,

including Congressman Maurice Hinchey and the FDA.

 

Congressman Hinchey distributed the materials to others, including Dr

Breggin, who reviewed the documents and issued the January 12, 2005,

report, An Examination of Eli Lilly and Company's Contentions that the

BMJ Prozac Documents were Never Missing and Have No Significance.

 

The first study Breggin reviewed, " Activation and Sedation in

Fluoxetine Clinical Trials, " dated November 8, 1988, reported a 38%

rate of stimulation in the patients, even though many of the patients

were sedated and even though many parameters of stimulation were not

counted. This study was requested by the German regulatory agency but

Lilly never gave it to the German agency or to the FDA.

 

The second set of documents Breggin examined related to a July 1985

in-house analysis by Lilly in which the company found a large

statistically significant increase in suicide attempts for patients

taking Prozac during their placebo controlled clinical trials.

 

Breggin discovered that there were 12 suicide attempts found in the

Prozac group and only one in each of the control group and comparison

drug, a tricyclic antidepressant.

 

According to Breggin, " even after the company winnowed out six of the

suicide attempts, the remaining 6:1 ratio was alarming. " Furthermore,

Lilly hid many of the suicide attempts under false categories and did

not turn this study over to the FDA either.

 

One study was conducted by the FDA concerning increased spontaneous

post- marketing reports of " hostility " and " intentional injury " on

Prozac and was generated shortly before the 1991 FDA meeting that

evaluated antidepressant-induced suicidality.

 

In this study, the FDA used a comparison antidepressant, trazodone, as

a control and found a 20-fold increase in reports of hostility and

intentional injury per prescription of Prozac compared to trazodone.

 

Breggin had repeatedly attempted to obtain the FDA study through FOIA

requests. The FDA finally wrote and said the documents could not be found.

 

The rise in Prozac reports occurred before any controversy arose

concerning Prozac and violence, and the studies include graphs showing

a 40-fold relative increase in reports of suicide attempts, overdose

and psychotic depression with Prozac compared to trazodone.

 

Other documents reviewed by Breggin, included an in-house Lilly

memoranda by Claude Bouchy written in November 1990, showing that the

firm consciously hid Prozac-induced suicidal acts under misleading

categories, such as " no drug effect, " and remained undisclosed to the FDA.

 

" In one memo, " Breggein said, " a Lilly employee expresses shame and

regret about hiding this data. "

 

According to Breggin, Lilly had completed all of the above studies by

the time of the 1991 FDA hearing to evaluate the risk of

antidepressant-induced suicidality.

 

In fact, the company continued to hide the data during the 2004 FDA

hearings on suicides related to SSRIs. At the hearings, Tom Laughren

of the FDA said that he knew of no data linking SSRIs to suicide or

hostility.

 

Breggin openly contradicted Laughren and told him that suicide data

did exist in regard toLilly's Prozac, but the FDA continued to act

unaware of the existence of any such documents in 2004 and did not ask

Breggin any details about the data.

 

In addition, Breggin reports that Lilly has secretly settled every

lawsuit, and until now has been successful in keeping the documents

sealed.

 

On top of the serious risks of placing kids on SSRIs, study after

study has shown that they do not work. Irving Kirsch and his

associates at the University of Connecticut used a FOIA request to

obtain the studies submitted to the FDA for the purpose of gaining

approval of SSRIs, and found that the difference between the response

to a placebo verses an SSRI was statistically insignificant.

 

Their findings were published in Prevention and Treatment, where they

explained that the miniscule difference between a placebo and

medication is commonly referred to by researchers, FDA reviewers, and

critics, as the " dirty little secret. "

 

According to Robert Whitaker, author of Mad In America, a " question

that has to be asked is why it has taken 15 years to find out about

this data, " he told Insight News. " Why are we learning about these

increased suicides in clinical trials 15 years after the drugs were

approved? "

 

The way things are going, that question might be answered at some

point. The hidden studies are drawing the attention of all kinds of

regulatory officials. On September 27, 2004, the Boston Globe reported

that evidence showing that drug manufacturers and the FDA concealed

negative clinical trial data and deceived physicians, consumers, and

shareholders about failure to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness

of SSRI antidepressant drugs has caught the interest of the Securities

and Exchange Commission.

 

The FDA is as secretive as their partners in crime. " The FDA is as

obstructionist as the drug companies, if not more so, " says CBS

reporter Sharly Attkisson, according to Judy Lieberman, in the

July-August 2005, Columbia Journalism Review. " That may be the biggest

scandal behind these drug stories, " Attkisson said.

 

On another front, last summer, New York Attorney General, Eliot

Spitzer, charged GlaxoSmithKline, with " repeated and persistent

fraud, " for failing to disclose clinical trials about Paxil, and

specifically that it suppressed trials showing Paxil ineffective in

treating depression in children. The lawsuit said that in 2002, over 2

million prescriptions for Paxil were written for children in the US.

 

 

According to the results of the report, Pediatric and Adolescent

Antidepressant Drug Use in the US, presented at a February 18, 2004

FDA hearing by Dr. Gianna Rigoni from the Office of Drug Safety of the

FDA, in 2002, Zoloft was the most commonly prescribed product,

accounting for about 31% of dispensed antidepressants, followed by

Paxil and then Prozac. The adolescent population accounted for

approximately " 8.1 million prescriptions dispensed " in 2002, Rigoni

told the panel.

 

Dr Donald Marks, MD, Ph D, testified at the hearing as a prescribing

physician, a father, and as a former director of clinical research for

two multinational pharmaceutical companies.

 

" The seriousness and severe adverse event effects of SSRI drugs, "

Marks said, " makes their use hardly justified in the majority of cases

because SSRIs are well known to have limited efficacy over placebo and

against non-pharmacologic treatments. "

 

" There are many studies in the peer reviewed medical literature,

supporting the causal role of serotonin in disinhibition and

violence, " he said.

 

" My own prescribing experience with SSRI drugs and evaluation of

numerous cases referred to me, " Marks advised, " has revealed

significant agitation and aggression, akathisia, activation of mania

and hypomania, increased depression, serious dependency and withdrawal

difficulties, suicidal ideation, and toxic interactions with other drugs. "

 

" It is important to be aware, " the doctor warned, " that these symptoms

of SSRI toxicity can be mistaken for the progression of the underlying

mental state being treated, leading to use of more of the same and

other offending SSRI drugs rather than to withdrawal of the causative

SSRI agent. "

 

 

" Danger Signs, " does not mention that Dr Shaffer has testified as an

expert witness in civil and criminal trials, on behalf of the drug

companies and against patients and families who had endured horrendous

experiences caused by SSRIs.

 

Despite the widely publicized evidence of adverse affects, Shaffer

continues to urge the use of SSRIs with children, illustrating his

willingness to place drug maker profits over the proven risks of

suicidal and violent behavior committed by children on these drugs.

 

The Time's article fails to mention his lengthily history of pushing

these dangerous drugs on kids whenever a protective barrier is

erected. Two years ago, the New York Times itself noted that Shaffer,

at the request of a drug maker, attempted to block the recommendation

to ban the drugs from use in children in the UK by sending a letter to

the British regulatory agency claiming there was insufficient data to

restrict the use of the drugs in adolescents, on December 11, 2003.

 

Dr Marks discussed the potential resistance that would arise in

response to banning the use of the drugs on children in the US, when

he told the panel that SSRI manufacturing and sales is " serious

business with tens of millions of patients in the U.S. and a market in

the tens of billions of dollars. "

 

In his experience working for drug companies Marks warned, any attempt

to decrease sales by increasing warnings will be met with severe

organized resistance.

 

However, the pharmaceutical industry has nothing to worry about when

it comes to blocking attempts to decrease the sale of SSRIs to kids.

As the article in the Times indicates, the " severe organized

resistance " of Shaffer, Flynn, NAMI, and TeenScreen are up to the task

 

Evelyn Pringle

 

evelyn.pringle

 

(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an

investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government)