The Phoenicians: Autism Recovery Denial, Drug Profits and the Media's Flat Earth

[Guest guest]

The Phoenicians: Autism Recovery Denial, Drug Profits and the Media’s Flat

Earth

Bonita Poulin

 

 

 

 

http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/02/the-phoenicians-autism-recovery-denial-drug-p\

rofits-and-the-medias-flat-earth.html

 

 

 

What if the pharmaceutical industry had a formula for projected drug profits

from a massive rise in autism? A formula such as:  PY=P×Y

 

And what if the same industry simultaneously rewarded scientists, media

companies and organizations which disseminate the concept that there is no

autism epidemic, that the rise is “falseâ€, that the numbers have always been

with us, but that there’s just increased diagnosis due to increased clinical

and public recognition of autism? And what if this industry went on a massive

campaign to proselytize the dangers of any treatment method—or any scientific

authority— which threatened PY=P×Y?

 

 

Profiting from something while claiming it doesn’t exist isn’t anything new.

According to some historians, the myth of the flat earth was perpetuated by the

Phoenicians to prevent maritime trade rivals from voyaging to England to mine

tin. Tin, which seems to have been scarce in ancient Canaan, was an essential

ingredient to bronze; bronze was the essence of military power and trade at the

time. Advantage in the tin trade gave the Phoenicians untold power.  As long as

the lie held, Phoenician fleets regularly made mining expeditions north, trading

freely with the natives of the British Isles—while neighboring states feared

plummeting off the edge of the world if they dared to sail through the Straits

of Gibraltar.

 

  

 

The epidemic-based profit formula actually exists. It was published in a 2003

study for Eli Lilly by researchers Robert and Julia Gerlai (

 

The question whether the epidemic status of ASD is due to true increase of

incidence of the disease or simply its better detection and diagnosis is

debated. Nevertheless, according to a most recent report to the legislature on

the principal findings from the epidemiology of autism in California, the

M.I.N.D. institute has confirmed that the increase of incidence is real and

cannot be attributed to changes in diagnostic criteria or misclassification.

Autism was estimated to have a frequency of more than 1 in 500 children, while

more recent studies found its prevalence as high as 1 in 150 (for examples, see;

also see CDC website). Researchers, private (e.g., Alliance for Autism

Research), and government (e.g., National Institutes of Health, USA) agencies

have recognized the enormous need. As a result, funding for research has

significantly increased. Surprisingly, however, autism is still not among the

neurological or neuropsychiatric diseases onto which

large pharmaceutical research companies traditionally focus. This is

unfortunate as ASD represents a significant unmet medical need with an enormous

market size. Consider the following: ASD may be diagnosed as early as 2–3

years of age. Some even argue that successful diagnosis may be made at 8-12

months). Autistic persons can live a normal life span. The market size can thus

be calculated as follows: 

 

 PY=P×Y

 

where PY is the number of “patient years,†P is the number of patients and Y

is the number of years for which patients live after diagnosis. Calculating with

the conservative prevalence estimate of 1 in 500, there may be approximately

600,000 ASD patients in the USA alone. These persons may live for an average of

76 years. Using the conservative age of 3 years for the time of diagnosis, PY

may be calculated as follows.

 

PY=600,000×73=43,800,000, i.e., almost 44 million patient years.

 

To put this number into perspective, let us consider Alzheimer's disease, a

disorder that is considered to represent the largest market by big

pharmaceutical research companies. Calculating with P=9 million (say 15% of

people above 65 years of age will have Alzheimer's disease in the Unites States)

and Y=6 (Alzheimer's disease patients live, on average, for 6 years after first

diagnosis), PY=54 million for Alzheimer's disease. The actual numbers may

slightly vary. The number of Alzheimer's disease patients is actually smaller

than 9 million but the disease may be diagnosed earlier and patients may live

longer than for 6 years after diagnosis. On the other hand, the number of ASD

patients can easily be twice or even three times higher than the presently

estimated 600 thousand. Thus, it is clear ASD represents an unmet medical need

that is comparable in order of magnitude to the largest neurological disease

market, that of Alzheimer's disease. Thus, ASD

should be of major interest to pharmaceutical research companies even when the

17-year patent expiration rule is considered.

 

 

The study abstract was sent to me by Ben Hansen, a Michigan mental health

activist and satirical blogger (Bonkers Institute). Hansen was covered by the

New York Times when his Freedom of Information Act inquiry of Michigan Medicaid

turned up evidence that an Eli Lilly account executive may have influenced drug

prescribing within the program, which had generated a 100% rise in child drug

prescriptions in just 10 months. 

 

Just as  PY=P×Y denotes profit potential, for every child whose DAN-type

biomedical treatments result in recovery or significant behavioral improvements

and supplant the justification for psychoactive drugs, the formula also

represents potential financial loss.

 

An email written by a friend and tireless warrior mother sums up precisely why

non-psychopharmaceutical treatments for autism represent such a threat to

industry:

 

 

As the original manufacturer of the mercury-based vaccine preservative

thimerosal and the force behind Dick Armey’s addition of the “Lilly Riderâ€

to the Homeland Security bill barring lawsuits against vaccine makers, Eli Lilly

and Company is not exactly neutral on the issue of environmental causation for

autism. Though the drug maker doesn’t currently manufacture vaccines, it

maintains public lock step with vaccine manufacturers in terms of defending the

“perfect safety†of vaccines and the “genetic†nature of autism. Eli

Lilly funds such individuals as Dr. Bennett Leventhal (

Eli Lilly certainly has an interest in presenting the “increased

recognition†theories, like those championed by GlaxoSmithKline grantee Eric

Fombonne, for public consumption. If there’s an epidemic, and no epidemic can

be solely genetic, then autism is environmental and this brings the magnifying

glass too close to Eli Lilly’s ethylmercury-tainted door. 

 

 

Also, if there’s an epidemic and the condition is not genetic, then there’s

hope for prevention and perhaps recovery.  As far as treatment is concerned,

why would hopeful families tolerate the side effect profiles for certain

psychiatric drugs when other, far safer remedies targeting or preventing the

underlying mechanisms of autism and related conditions are available? Imagine

another marketing formula in which H is the value of “effective treatment†+

“prevention†and the sum is future autism drug profits. 

 

   

   HPY= goose egg

 

 

In terms of protecting industry’s interests, that just wouldn’t do. It would

be better if the public were led to believe the “increased

recognition/genetic†model of the disease. This is obviously for a host of

reasons— a central reason being to protect vaccine manufacturers from

litigation, and to protect their freedom to continue piling new combination

shots and shots for diseases no one ever heard of onto an already overburdened

schedule as old patents run out.

 

But, in the delicate words of Ronan Gannon, GlaxoSmithKline’s executive

director of US marketing and member of the National Vaccine Advisory

Committee’s financing working group, the pharmaceutical drug market

“dwarfs†the vaccine market. The global vaccine market was estimated at more

than $20 billion last year with surges from Gardasil and the H1N1 scare.

Psychiatric drugs top $40 billion in annual sales in the US alone.

 

 

Bearing in mind that vaccine litigation potentially represents a

corporate-wrecking proverbial last straw, we have our pick of motives for

industry’s perpetuation of the “genes-only/always been with us/no cure/no

epidemic†rhetoric.

 

 

But the “bend sinister†is that, at the same time, acknowledgement of an

epidemic in certain circles could enliven the psychopharmaceutical drug market.

While some people might have thought that National Institute of Mental Health

director Thomas Insel’s recent softening on environmental contributions to

autism and admission that the rise is real (here

Thomas Insel, brother of a vaccine maker, chairman of the Interagency Autism

Coordinating Committee (IACC) who stealthily voted vaccine safety research off

the agenda and, under whose oversight, the NIMH’s website on autism went from

mentioning a few drugs by generic name in 2006 to presently promoting 15

psychiatric drugs by brand and five more by generic name—the man under whose

direction IACC consistently leads all its published recommendations with

promises to create more psychopharmaceutical drug algorithms for autism—is not

interested in holding pharmaceutical companies to account. He’s unlikely to be

interested in promoting non-psychotrope treatments for the underlying causes of

autism.  If anything, we may see him cheerleading research for—God forbid—

an “autism vaccineâ€. 

 

 

Thomas Insel is merely following the tradition of his post. For decades, the

National Institute of Mental Health has been under heavy criticism for being a

“captured†agency which acts chiefly as PR wing to psychopharmaceutical

manufacturers. Several NIMH leaders have gone on to either lucrative industry

careers or lucrative symbiosis. Frederick Goodwin, former head of the NIMH (and

industry think tank advisory board colleague of Paul Offit and Steven Novella,

It’s not a matter of whether Thomas Insel will land at a pharmaceutical

company once he leaves his agency, but a question of which one.

 

 

It would be a different story and we’d be living in a different world (one in

which childhood vaccines in the US would have been safer and fewer; maybe one in

which the epidemic never happened) if the “autism remedies†being presented

by pharmaceutical companies were in any way effective towards underlying disease

mechanisms. But the idea that psychiatric drugs correct anything in the brain

has been repeatedly debunked. In fact, to date, other than dabbling in prenatal

vitamins, etc., Big Pharma simply can’t compete with recovery treatment

models—not fairly, in any case.  They won’t try either. Developing

treatments which work by targeting vaccine injuries is out of the question. And

research and development costs for such treatments go far beyond pharma’s

traditional investment bounds.   

 

 

Antipsychotics—the main drug class being pushed for autism— were originally

brought to the American market for a mere $30,000 research investment. Far more

funds were spent on heavy lobbying of government agencies and the press to

promote the drugs as a miracle cure which would liberate mental patients from

institutions once and for all. Instead the opposite happened. As journalist

Robert Whitaker documented in his book, “Mad in Americaâ€, an eight year

World Health Organization study performed in the 1960s and 70s (the

International Pilot Study, HERE) found that outcomes for schizophrenia were

three times worse in developed countries which relied primarily on the use of

neuroleptics to treat the condition when compared to outcomes in a range of

culturally heterogeneous underdeveloped countries which rarely employed the

drugs.

 

 

In other words, in underdeveloped/developing countries, schizophrenia was

known—as impossible as that may seem in the US— as a disease with more than

a 60% chance of recovery. In developed countries, the reverse was true. The WHO

conducted a more surgical follow-up study in response to protests by organized

psychiatry, but the original findings were only reiterated.

 

 

Although— unlike autism—schizophrenia is sometimes distinguished as a

grab-bag diagnosis (misdiagnosed due to racism, or out of cultural or medical

incompetence), the degree to which schizophrenia shows itself to be, like

autism, an environmentally or toxically mediated condition affecting a subset of

susceptible individuals may account for the lower incidence of schizophrenia (at

least in the 1960s and 70s) in less industrialized countries. But the WHO five

year follow-up to the International Pilot study firmly demonstrated that

severity of onset within agreed-upon parameters of the condition was not the

determining factor in recovery rates. This hints that, whereas non-drug

environmental factors could have triggered the condition in some, drugging rates

almost certainly effected outcomes. The rates of relapse and direness of

outcomes were in direct proportion to the percentage of patients in developed

countries who were chronically exposed to the

drugs, with the Soviet Union “winning†the distinction of worst outcomes

with a drugging rate of 85%.

 

 

The US now drugs the growing population of patients with schizophrenia at a rate

of more than 93%; outcomes and relapse rates have worsened accordingly. Other

countries have been catching up as well, so that the pool of undrugged

schizophrenics is shrinking globally (HERE). In fact, schizophrenic patients

have been drugged at such a pace in the past fifty years that most clinical and

public concepts of symptoms and outcomes reflect the drugged condition, not the

condition itself. For instance, schizophrenia’s clinical association with

violence—which was not strictly associated with the disease process 100 years

ago— increased with drugging rates. The same may prove true for autism.

 

 

The toxicity of the drugs and their capacity to induce or worsen environmental

brain injuries shouldn’t be that surprising. Early psychiatric drugs were

often derived from various industrial pigments and solvents (imipramine, for

example, was once an industrial dye called “Summer Blueâ€). Neuroleptics in

particular have a questionable history. The drugs were originally used to

deliberately induce Parkinsonism, under the idea that Parkinson’s was somehow

antithetical to psychosis. Those with advanced Parkinson’s disease—so the

thinking went— generally don’t show any emotion at all, much less the throws

of psychosis.

 

Few are aware that neuroleptics are often used as solely physical painkillers

for certain conditions. It’s been speculated that the drugs initially

“reduce disruptive behavior†in some (not all) in the “honeymoon†phase

of drug treatment by partly acting as global, emotional-physical painkillers.

Sadly, the very painkilling properties of many psychiatric drugs could partly

hinge on their capacity to kill brain cells: the sensation that apparently comes

with mass brain cell death, as in glue sniffing, is euphoria. This is relevant

to autism in that many children with autism, for instance, live with chronic

pain from inflamed GI tracts and other physiological injuries which can affect

behavior, socialization, cognition. Within reason and depending on the health

costs of using certain agents, temporary painkilling could be viewed as having

at least partial clinical value.

 

 

But doctors can not only lose their licenses for overprescribing painkillers,

they can go to jail, so the painkiller distinction does not serve the industry

financial platforms of overprescription, overmarketing and “polypharmacy—the

practice of adding new drugs to quell side effects of previous drugs,  ad

infinitum (ad nauseum, ad mortem). This leads to the need for false clinical

“correction†theories for certain drugs.

 

 

Painkillers also can’t be mandated. Does anyone wonder what happens to the

scores of children with autism who are currently being arrested in schools for

exhibiting behaviors associated with the disability?  Many are routed to

“psychiatric courts†where treatments are decided by judges (HERE). Those

“treatments†tend to fall in line with National Institute of Mental Health

guidelines. The mandated drugging of people in institutions and correctional

facilities, and among children in foster care (those drugged against parental

consent) and remanded juvenile offenders represents a good slice of drug

profits.

 

In any event, the distinction of “neuroleptics as painkillers†only holds

until the side effects kick in.  The current generation of antipsychotics—

the “atypicals†once marketed as an improvement over the “oldâ€,

“bad†drugs like Thorazine—are nearly identical to older neuroleptics in

terms of side effect profiles. Atypicals, like the older generation of drugs,

have the capacity to induce agonizing and lethal conditions such as tardive

dyskinesia, respiratory dyskinesia (often labeled “asthmaâ€, “COPDâ€,

etc.), tardive dementia, tardive psychosis, lethal cardiometabolic disorder,

organ failure, GI disorders, mass brain cell death, diabetes, dystonia, suicide,

gynecomastia, violence (especially on withdrawal) and much more. Current

antipsychotics still induce Parkinsonism: the “flat†emotional affect—a

primary, not “sideâ€, effect of the drugs—is merely a “larval†phase of

the condition.

 

Antipsychotics—old and new—also induce lipid metabolism, demyelinating and

mitochondrial disorders which either mimic various genetic conditions (like

Neimann-Pick’s), or which fully add up to conditions previously thought to be

solely genetic such as MELAS (Mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis,

and stroke-like episodes). MELAS shows certain lab findings which overlap with

autism.

 

 

In patients who take them, regardless of observable manifestation of side

effects, neuroleptics induce or increase the appearance of certain proteins in

cerebrospinal fluid which are markers for Alzheimer’s and dementia. These

proteins— APO-D or apolipoprotein D— are abnormally elevated to some degree

in those with autism and Alzheimer’s who were never exposed to neuroleptic

drugs. But after treatment with antipsychotics, the levels rise considerably. So

here is evidence that neuroleptics actually make some of the clinical

dysfunction underlying autism and Alzheimer’s worse.

 

 

Making conditions worse isn’t a great PR tagline for drug corporations.

Insofar as industry does not wish for its drugs’ side effects to be widely

understood, it also won’t tolerate the compounded menace of autism recovery

science. Autism recovery science doesn’t just point to vaccine/environmental

cause or pose safer and actually effective treatment options which result in

direct treatment competition for pharma’s blockbuster drugs. Autism recovery

science also—by incidentally corroborating the overlaps in types of brain

damage induced by both vaccines and psychopharmaceuticals—potentially

threatens PY for every cognitive, behavioral or psychiatric condition targeted

by drug makers.

 

 

 

The fact that children within the autism recovery community have such low

psychiatric drugging rates when compared to the 70% of developmentally disabled

children in the general population is a threat that won’t be allowed to stand

without a fight. As psychopharmaceutical expert Dr. Grace Jackson argues in her

most recent book, “Drug Induced Dementia: The Perfect Crime†(

Dr. Jackson, not incidentally, describes herself as a “big fan†of Dr.

Andrew Wakefield’s “elegant†theory. Her book is the source for the above

information on drug-induced mitochondrial dysfunction, lipid storage disorders

and biomarkers for dementia. In 2007, I saw her present a case study of a

typical seven year old boy who developed severe symptoms of autism when exposure

to the drug Depakote compounded specific brain damage and mitochondrial

dysfunction from chemotherapy treatment several years earlier. For an example of

evidence-skewing, according to Dr. Jackson’s research, valproic acid

apparently has a dozen or so overlaps with the effects of thimerosal and other

vaccine toxins on the brain, including elevated serum ammonia, lipid metabolism

damage, evidence of Alzheimer’s Type II astrocytosis; tubulin, glutamate,

glutamine and carnitine disruption; myelin damage, alteration of cytokine

activity and mitochondrial damage.  During

the Autism Omnibus, a government attorney admitted that pre or neonatal

exposure to Depakote could cause autism. Aside from his excessive confidence in

stating age limits of exposure, the attorney’s statement was backed up by a

2008 study (HERE).

 

 

As long as independent researchers can still differentiate the source of damage

from one agent to another, the crime will not be perfect. The FDA helps to

obfuscate these imperfections by making the statistical evidence of damage from

drugs—which is supposed to be readily available through its Medwatch

database—notoriously difficult to access. Add this to the fact that only about

10% of all adverse drug events are ever reported to Medwatch, and any search for

injury and death statistics is a miserable procedure.

Fortunately, an activist and database programmer named Steven Helgeson figured

out how to untangle the FDA Adverse Events Reporting System. He created a

searchable site for the purpose of consumer education (HERE). 

 

 

A quick search of the database by drug class, brand or generic drug name brings

up the question of whether “death†is a particularly good selling point for

drug corporations. As the autism recovery community finds itself, its doctors

and information resources under increasing attacks by media and industry for

advocating “dangerous†non-psychoactive treatments for autism,  it’s

interesting to note that the full dangers of the most common mainstream

“treatments†for autism—the very drugs frequently recommended by the

industry “experts†these media sources quote— are never mentioned. 

 

 

In fact, while the mainstream media in the UK and US might protest the excessive

drugging of certain populations deemed not to “need†the drugs (note the

title of the Chicago Tribune article: “Psychotropic Drugs Given to Nursing

Home Patients Without Causeâ€, here HERE), the same outrage is absent when it

comes to the deadly drugging of more “disturbing†populations, such as those

with autism and schizophrenia. This disconnect on drugs is a media tradition: in

the 1970s, the same publications which decried the use of neuroleptics as a form

of torture against Soviet dissidents showed only contempt for the struggle of

the “Mad Rights†movement to ban forced drugging in institutions. That

members of the media may love grandma and despise designated foes of Democracy

is not proof of principled reporting—only that the shape of reality may vary

according to agenda and the perceived expendability of certain human beings. 

 

 

We’ve all seen the repeated coverage of the tragic and avoidable death of

Tariq Nadama in news items denouncing the dangers of autism recovery treatments.

Tariq was given the wrong chelator (here HERE), for which his parents rightfully

sued the physician responsible. There have been two other reported deaths from

hypocalcemia as a result of the same medical mistake in the past seven years,

though only the Nadama case involved a child with autism.

 

 

Using Steve Helgeson’s Medwatch-decrypting database, below is a list of US

deaths due to just some of the drugs promoted on the NIMH autism website within

a four year period. Helgeson reports that some of the cases of death associated

with individual drugs were left out due to being listed irregularly on Medwatch,

therefore the numbers below are conservative. 

 

 

Number of deaths by drug between 2004 and 2008:

 

Risperdal : 308:

Abilify: 213:

Zyprexa: 417;

Geodon: 140; 

Haldol: 46;

Prozac: 371;

Celexa: 411;

Zoloft: 356;

Luvox: 15;

Anafranil: 16;

Valium: 269;

Ativan: 109;

Ritalin: 76

 

 

The above death statistics include death by suicide, homicide, prenatal/neonatal

death and “otherâ€, such as drug-induced cardiac arrest, stroke, organ

failure, etc.

 

 

Some might take exception to the use of suicide stats in the overall numbers,

even though suicide statistics are far higher for those on the drugs than among

unexposed patients with the same conditions. Objections are usually based on yet

another goofy industry theory which sounds like something extemporized by a

tween. It’s called “roll-backâ€. The idea goes something like this: people

who are depressed don’t have enough energy to kill themselves but, when first

taking antidepressants or other psychotropes—before the supposed “antiâ€

part kicks in—the drugs perk them up enough to carry out their preexisting

suicide plans.

 

 

The roll-back hypothesis doesn’t explain the sudden mania, violence and

suicides among people given the wrong drug by pharmacy mistake (i.e., Xanax

instead of Zantac; Celexa instead of Celebrex), and those without psychiatric or

violent histories who take the drugs for nonpsychiatric purposes (temporary

insomnia, etc.). And, as Grace Jackson asks rhetorically in her first book,

“Rethinking Psychiatric Drugsâ€, how much energy does it take to perform the

easiest form of suicide going—the intentional overdose?  The theory is

stupid, really, and the drugs are known to induce a condition called akathisia,

which can range from “restlessness†to a sense of profound inner torture

(HERE). Anything which potentially induces akathisia-like psychosis— such as

the antibiotic Lariam, the anti-viral Tamiflu, and all classes of psychoactives

to varying degrees— can induce violence and suicide. Many of the suicides and

homicides we hear about in the news

involving children in general and children with autism also involved

psychiatric drugs (HERE).

 

 

Though he says he’s working on it, deaths by anticonvulsants and “mood

stabilizers†are not included in Helgeson’s database yet.  According to

another breakdown of the FDA AERS website, a total of 1,601 deaths are listed

for “other†psychoactive drugs between 2004 and 2006 (two years less than

the software’s search period), among 6,907 reported deaths from all classes of

psychopharmaceuticals.

 

 

6,907 in two years. That’s two 9/11’s or the equivalent of 27 to 28

fully-loaded Boeing 737s dropping out of the sky every year. Since the reported

statistics are estimated to be only one-tenth of the actual toll, imagine 69,070

deaths every two years—that’s 278.5  737s fatally crashing to the ground

year in, year out.  

 

 

Every drug war has its casualties. For another analogy, pharma makes Ciudad

Juarez look like a resort town. This seems more the case now that the Supreme

Court has approved unlimited campaign contributions by what are frequently

international corporate conglomerates. The cartels control everything. 

 

 

In response to my emailed remarks over the Chicago Tribune’s pre-Thanksgiving

hit piece on autism recovery proponents, scientists and treatments (“Autism

treatments: Risky alternative therapies have little basis in scienceâ€), Trine

Tsouderos sent me the stock reply that everyone else got, except for one little

addendum:

 

Thank you for your note.

I am sorry we cannot agree on the issue, but we stand by our conclusions,

which  are based on exhaustive research and talking with some of the most

highly regarded, best-credentialed experts in the field. I can assure you

GlaxoSmithKline did not have anything to do with these articles.

Best wishes and hope you and your family have a lovely Thanksgiving, Trine

 

 

She can’t fool me. There’s no Thanksgiving in Juarez. My initial email to

Tsouderos remarked on the two Glaxo ads which appeared next to her online

article.

 

 

Now can anyone guess which psych drug wins the distinction of highest death

count according to the FDA’s Medwatch database? GSK’s antidepressant Paxil.

With a once-a-day price tag of over $1,500 a year, Paxil racked up 1,139

reported deaths in a four year period. GSK also has a glutamate-targeting

antipsychotic in the pipeline, and is the maker of Tagamet and other “tummyâ€

meds that children within the vaccine injury movement no longer seem to use to

any great degree.

 

 

GlaxoSmithKline is the maker of the British MMR and more than 25 other vaccines

for the global market, including H1N1, seasonal flu, human papillomavirus and

the Engerix B vaccine which contained thimerosal up to 2007 and which—when

compared to other Hepatitis B vaccines— was associated with the highest

incidence of CNS inflammatory demyelination (HERE). 

 

 

GSK also makes the anticonvulsants Keppra, and the blockbuster dual

anticonvulsant/sixth-highest-selling antipsychotic Lamictal, with a once-a-day

price tag of $1,883 a year. Since Lamictal is not yet listed on Steve

Helgeson’s search site, we can only wonder how many of the 1,601 deaths from

“other drugs†indicated on Medwatch were due to the use of Lamictal as an

antipsychotic. I have to differentiate this from Lamictal’s use as an

antiepilepsy drug, both because deaths of children who suffer from seizure

disorders would generally not make the FDA drug-death roster (seizures become

the alibi for almost any cause of death); and because I know that parents who

give these drugs to children for severe seizures have no choice. The death toll

among children with seizures and autism is generally attributable to

“autism†itself as the rate of deadly seizure disorders among vaccine

injured children rise every year.

 

 

This obviously wasn’t factored into Eli Lilly’s profit formula. Many

children with autism don’t make it to age 9, much less age 76. Add to this the

predictable death toll from psychopharmaceuticals, and it looks like PY=P×Y

might need retooling.

 

 

I think it’s as cruel to judge parents cornered into drugging children who try

to gouge out their own eyes and gnaw off their fingers as it is to judge parents

forced to use anticonvulsants to keep vaccine-induced seizures from killing

their children. For one, once in, it’s murder to get out: withdrawal from

these drugs is often extraordinarily dangerous. And though the drugs themselves

can induce self injury, obsessive behaviors and violence, some children with

autism intractably self mutilate prior to drug exposure.  I have friends who

live under these shadows and I sometimes open emails from them like I’m

pulling crime scene tape off their doors. I never know when the worst of all

possible news might come. But no one hates these medications more than those

forced to use them at gunpoint, and who know perfectly well that these drugs are

often manufactured by the very companies marketing the vaccines which robbed

them of their once healthy

children.  

 

 

In any case, Paul Offit—eight figure vaccine profiteer, PR capo, epidemic

denier— put it well when he said that hope is “dangerousâ€.  He’s right,

it is. He actually indicated “false hopeâ€, but false to him is real enough

to many and the meaning is clear considering what’s at stake for all

concerned.  It’s politically dangerous for scientists and families to provide

or pursue hope because this can only be done by exposing cause. Even success

brings home the horror of what’s been lost by showing that it never had to

happen to begin with. And hope undeniably represents dire straits for

unregulated industry. 

 

 

Because industry can’t and won’t compete with this (HERE), they give us

this:  

 

 

 

 Adriana Gamondes lives in Massachusetts with her husband and is the mother of

twins who are currently recovering from vaccine-induced GI disorders.

 

 HERE), distinguishing what underlies certain forms of behavioral

disorders—whether these conditions are genetic or environmental, preventable

or treatable— becomes more and more difficult as drug exposure increases and

skews the evidence. 

 

Furthermore, just as the existence of an unvaccinated population is threatening

to industry because it provides the study “control†for comparison of injury

rates, a drug-naïve population of children with autism provides a clearer

picture of just which cellular processes are being disrupted and what might be

causing the disruptions to begin with. Just as important, the existence of a

drug-naïve population also spoils the pretense that adverse drug effects are

attributable to autism itself—a “misattribution of contingency†that’s

been played with nearly every drug side effect since “mental health†drugs

were first marketed.The dopamine theory still used in marketing antipsychotics

was concocted after the drugs had been put into wide use in institutions, and

has about as much basis as the “genetic brain chemical imbalance correctionâ€

theories  used to market antidepressants today (here HERE). It was originally

thought that

neuroleptics “worked†(at least initially and only when they did) to reduce

psychotic episodes by inhibiting dopamine in the brain on the theory that

dopamine levels “flared†during psychotic episodes. That concept never bore

out in actual research though: measured dopamine levels could be high, low or

indifferent in patients enduring psychotic incidents. Even according to

industry’s own dopamine theory, neuroleptics don’t “work†in the end

because the brain swelling unilaterally seen within weeks of exposure to

antipsychotics turned out to be caused by drug-induced mass  generation of

dopamine receptors, causing the brain to become super-sensitive to the very

brain chemical that was assumed to be inducing psychosis to begin with.

 

HERE), lost his NPR show “The Infinite Mind†when he was caught taking $1.3

million in supposedly undeclared fees from GlaxoSmithKline to promote drugs like

Paxil and Lamictal on the air. Other examples of the “NIMH-Big Pharma

revolving doorâ€, as clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine put it (HERE ),

include Lewis Judd, former NIMH director, who joined the scientific advisory

board of Roche Pharmaceutical in 2001 (Klonopin, Valium, Tamiflu); and Steven

Paul, scientific director of NIMH, who left to become vice president of Eli

Lilly in 1993 (Prozac, Zyprexa, Cymbalta, Strattera, Symbyax).

 

HERE) meant he might eventually concede to vaccine causation, I just assumed he

was boosting investor confidence.

As far as autism’s impact on the psychopharm market, considering the

following:

 

•  Psychopharmaceutical sales for the treatment of autism are currently at

$3.5 billion a year, largely for the US market.

 

• The Lilly study enthusiastically projects that autism could eventually

reach “Alzheimer’s†rates. Alzheimer’s rates are reported to be doubling

every twenty years. 

 

• A significant percent of the 40 fold rise in pediatric bipolar disorder

could be due to sub-autistic toxic injuries (another portion would be due to the

drugs being prescribed to children themselves: mania is a listed side effect of

all classes of psychotropes. See Sharna Olfman’s “Bipolar Childrenâ€,

chapters by Healy, Whitaker and Landrigan respectively, here:  HERE ).

 

• Children diagnosed with bipolar disorder are frequently prescribed the same

drugs as children with autism, particularly the newer, on-patent antipsychotics,

though many are being treated with autism recovery methods.

 

• Sales of atypical antipsychotics went from $0 to $16 billion a year since

the start of the epidemic. 

HERE), whose response to the claim that the rise in autism rates represents a

true increase was once  “Rubbish!†(HERE). 

“The medication nightmare began when we were so desperate to keep our son in a

mainstream situation…we did not even have a computer.  He had no real

functional language and was a runner. God help me I want a do over...We started

down the psych. drug path— I can't even remember some of them, he reacted so

badly to many and then he ended up on Risperdal, and the side effects from that

led to the use of Cogentin, Lamictal, Prozac. I can't believe he could even

stand up.  We honestly believed that these were going to fix the Autism. We

were so uninformed. He is left with what is probably a permanent movement or tic

disorder. We thought that Prozac was keeping this under some control but we

backed him off of this as well.  The tic is no worse without it. Plus when we

got him off of the Risperdal and all of the other crap, his language and

cognitive awareness exploded! All the drugs were doing was sedating him Being

off of the Prozac has given him a

sense of humor! It doesn’t just dull anger, or mood. It dulls ALL EMOTION!

Once I was connected by a computer, to other parents and ARI in San Diego,

things slowly began to change for us. Dr.Rimland actually spoke to me personally

at least 4 times. We started the mega dose B vitamins, and fish oil,  and over

[three year’s] time we got him off [all the drugs].There have been a few

supplements that we have seen real change with. CoQ10 gave him curiosity!

Magnesium, probiotics, zinc, VitC and epsom salt soaks have helped (but not

eliminated) his constipation.â€

HERE). From the study:

 

 

For the analogy, imagine the existence of the epidemic as “Englandâ€; autism

recovery treatments as the “Straits of Gibraltarâ€; and maybe

psychopharmaceutical drug profits as “tinâ€.