Posts Tagged ‘FDA’

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A Killing Rampage Without Guns

Tuesday, September 17th, 2019

An attacker killed eight students and injured two others with a cleaver (NOT a gun) at an elementary school in Chaoyangpo village of Enshi city in the Hubei province of central China on September 3, 2019.

“China tightly restricts private gun ownership, making knives and homemade explosives the most common weapons in violent crimes.”

The attacker was released in June, 2018, after serving more than eight years in jail for attempted murder. We aren’t sure about China, but in the U.S. prison inmates are regularly dosed with dangerous psychiatric drugs known to cause violence and suicide.

As of this writing, the case is still under investigation and no motive has been found for the attacks. Not much additional information is available, so speculation abounds. Our own speculation is that the attacker was most probably given psychiatric drugs while incarcerated, drugs which are known to cause violence and suicide.

We do know that China’s Ministry of Public Security uses psychiatric involuntary commitment to remove dissidents from society.

“Given the enormous increases in psychiatric drug sales in China, there is little doubt that the pharmaceutical industry has landed a lucrative market, driven by a psychiatric community willing to deliberately politicize psychiatric labeling.”

Under China’s current system of compulsory mental health treatment, people can be sent to asylums for treatment against their will by blood relatives or spouses, and forcibly given harmful psychiatric drugs.

It has also been well documented that psychiatric torture occurs inside Chinese prisons, often conducted with the goal of securing a confession, even though the Chinese government has officially made obtaining confessions through the use of torture illegal.

Let’s just aim for the right target and get the actual data, shall we? At least in the U.S. we can contact our government officials and urge them to hold legislative hearings to fully investigate the correlation between psychiatric drugs, violence, and suicide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, representing the U.S. government’s interest in protecting citizens from harmful drugs, already says that antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior; children and adolescents who are started on antidepressants should be observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, agitation, irritability, or unusual changes in behavior. And keep those meat cleavers away from kids on Prozac.

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Cratered by Kratom

Saturday, July 6th, 2019

Kratom is an increasingly popular drug of abuse and readily available on the “recreational” drug market. Between 3 million and 5 million people in the U.S. use kratom, and reported poisonings from people taking it have soared.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned against using Mitragyna Speciosa, commonly known as kratom, a tree in the coffee family which grows naturally in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea. The concern is that kratom leaves, which affect the same opioid brain receptors as morphine, appear to have properties that expose users to the risks of addiction, abuse, and dependence.

There are no FDA-approved uses for kratom because there is no scientific evidence to support its medical use, and the FDA urges consumers to report any adverse reactions to the FDA’s MedWatch program.

The race is on to get patents for synthetics and derivatives of Mitragyna Speciosa. Doctors and mental health workers need to be aware of the psychopathological effects of these substances.

Because kratom is still legal in the U.S., it has become a go-to drug for individuals with chronic pain, promoted anecdotally by some psychiatrists both to mitigate pain and to ease withdrawal from other opioids.

Some other psychiatrists are convinced of kratom’s mental health benefits as a potential therapeutic agent.

Here again we see psychiatry, with its long history of harmful drug pushing, justifying and promoting the latest in a long line of such harmful, addictive and psychedelic drugs.

Similar to the dose-dependent characteristics of any drug, in relatively small amounts kratom acts as a stimulant; in relatively larger amounts it causes sedation; and when overdosed it can cause death.

Kratom’s psychoactive compounds, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, are opioid-receptor agonists, which means they are chemicals that bind to the same receptors in the brain to which opioids bind, thus acting in the brain similar to other opioids like morphine and codeine.

Side effects of taking (or withdrawing from) kratom may include dependence, nausea, vomiting, aggression, hallucinations, delusions, psychosis, seizures, thyroid problems, increased risk of suicide, trouble breathing, brain swelling, seizures, liver damage, or death.

In spite of the American Kratom Association’s lobbying efforts to promote this harmful substance, and its repeated references to the American Psychiatric Association for support, we find that there is sufficient reason to be highly skeptical.

Click here for more information about kratom.

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Psychiatrists Anxious to Treat All Child-bearing Women for Post-Partum Depression

Saturday, June 15th, 2019

The FDA approved the first drug treatment for post-partum depression (PPD) on March 19, 2019. Psychiatrists call this “peripartum depression”, which means depressive symptoms during pregnancy or after childbirth. While there is no  actual diagnostic test for this, the current revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) labels this with various alternative wordings of “depressive disorder” or “bipolar disorder” or “anxiety disorder” or “stress disorder,” sometimes with the specifier “with peripartum onset“, depending on the circumstances.

The diagnosis is totally subjective, and is a justification for making money for prescribing an antidepressant. Psychiatrists do not typically perform any clinical tests to find out if there is a real medical reason for the symptoms, such as thyroid problems or vitamin deficiencies. Research suggests that rapid changes in hormones and thyroid levels during and after delivery have a strong effect on moods, yet this is mostly ignored by the psychiatric industry since it is easier and more profitable to prescribe a psychotropic drug.

The drug is Zulresso (generic brexanolone), an intravenous infusion administered continuously over 60 hours (2.5 days) and requiring constant monitoring. There is a risk of serious harm due to a sudden loss of consciousness during the treatment, the appearance of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, or hypoxia (loss of oxygen in the blood). The drug passes into breast milk, but there is no data on the safety of brexanolone while breastfeeding. The cost has currently been set at $34,000 per course of treatment.

Sage Therapeutics says that this neurosteroid, a derivative of allopregnanolone, affects GABAA (Type-A gamma-Aminobutyric acid) neurotransmitter receptors in the brain, although the actual mechanism of action of this drug with respect to PPD (or any other condition) is unknown.

Many people think that post-partum depression is a mental illness. However, this is very misleading for a mother who has experienced the trauma of just giving birth. To have them think the emotional roller coaster they may be experiencing is the result of a “chemical imbalance in the brain,” requiring mind-altering medication, is false and potentially very harmful.

This does not mean that serious emotional difficulties do not exist. But it does mean that psychiatrists and psychologists have used such difficulties to their advantage, promoting powerful drugs as a “solution” for vulnerable individuals. This has been for the sake of profit, often at the expense of people’s lives.

Quite apart from such drugs causing harm, they are also unnecessary. Any competent medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of someone exhibiting signs of what psychiatrists say are “mental disorders,” including post-partum depression, can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions.

Instead, psychiatrists prefer to tell young mothers that their condition is an “illness,” requiring “medication,” potentially endangering the life of the mother and her child.

Women may experience drastic drops in hormone levels after the birth of a child that can deliver a major shock to the woman’s body. Nutritional and mineral depletion or deficiencies as well as a lack of sleep while caring for a baby can also cause the symptoms psychiatrists say are a “mental disorder.” It can be treated nutritionally.

For more information, download and read the CCHR booklet “The Drugging of ‘Post Partum Depression’ – Clearing up Misconceptions About ‘Chemical Imbalances,’ Antidepressant Drugs and Non-Drug Solutions“.

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FDA Reclassification of Electroconvulsive Therapy Devices

Thursday, May 23rd, 2019

A new rule by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) went into effect on 12/26/2018 that reclassifies certain uses of ECT machines from Class III (high risk) to Class II (moderate risk).

Although the FDA solicited comments regarding the use of ECT, many of which described the harm done by ECT and were against the reclassification of ECT devices, the FDA does not consider such comments to be valid scientific evidence, and basically ignored them.
Contrary to the psychiatric community’s position, the FDA is supposed to recognize “reports of significant human experience with a marketed device” as a form of valid scientific evidence.

The new rule is somewhat complicated, and has some “ifs, ands and buts” that require some explanation. Here is the actual rule:

The FDA reclassifies the electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) device from Class III to Class II for use in treating catatonia or a severe major depressive episode associated with major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder in patients age 13 years and older who are treatment-resistant or who require a rapid response due to the severity of their psychiatric or medical condition; and requires the filing of a premarket approval (PMA) application or a notice of completion of a product development protocol (PDP) for all other uses of ECT.

Practically speaking, Class III means that a device presents a high risk of illness or injury to the patient and requires a premarket approval or product development protocol. A PMA is documentation which demonstrates the safety and effectiveness of the device before it can be sold and used. A PDP is documentation which demonstrates the clinical evaluation of a device and the development of necessary information for marketing approval; it may not involve actual clinical testing.

Practically speaking, Class II means that a device presents a moderate risk of illness or injury to the patient, and may require special labeling. Powered wheelchairs, x-ray machines and condoms fall under this category. Special labeling for ECT machines includes warnings that “ECT device use may be associated with: Disorientation, confusion, and memory problems” and “When used as intended this device provides short-term relief of symptoms. The long-term safety and effectiveness of ECT treatment has not been demonstrated.”

While the FDA acknowledges that the individuals for whom ECT therapy may be prescribed are at significant risk for complications, they are effectively ignoring these complications at the urging of the psychiatric industry, and doing so with a lot of psychobabble and pseudoscience, and the expectation that putting warning labels on the devices is protection enough.

Here are some facts which the FDA does not want you to know

In the forty years that the ECT device manufacturers have had the device on the market they have never conducted a clinical trial to support its safety and efficacy from which they have profited.

The procedure administers up to 460 volts of electricity through the brain causing a grand mal seizure.

Adverse effects from ECT include: irregular heartbeat; heart attack; stroke; cognition and memory impairment [sometimes permanent]; dental or oral trauma and physical trauma; manic symptoms; prolonged seizures; worsening of psychiatric symptoms and death.

Based on a 0.3% death rate found with ECT administered in Texas, an estimated 300 people receiving ECT may die each year in the U.S. and 3,000 worldwide.

Claims that ECT is safe and effective are not supported by clinical science and its use remains a theoretical practice with no conclusive mechanism determined to prove how ECT works. We have repeatedly suggested that psychiatrists stick their finger into an electric wall socket to see how well that works. So far, we have no takers.

ECT is not a cure. There is a high failure (relapse) rate within six months of receiving ECT, requiring more electroshock that creates more damage. Called “continuation” and “maintenance ECT,” antidepressants and/or other psychotropic drugs continue to be administered — the very drugs said to have failed, “requiring” ECT. A person might as well smack their thumb with a hammer, since this will take their mind off their mental troubles with less permanent damage than smacking their brain with electricity. (We’re not actually recommending this! Please do not try this at home!)

We do, however, recommend that a person consult a competent, non-psychiatric medical doctor for a thorough physical examination to determine whether an underlying, undiagnosed and untreated physical problem is causing the mental condition.

Pregnant women are electroshocked as late as their third trimester, despite adverse events that include miscarriage, premature labor, stillbirth, fetal heart problems and malformations.

In some countries children aged six and younger (U.S., Australia, and Canada) are electroshocked, damaging their developing brain and body. Psychiatrists are continually pushing the boundaries on whom they can shock. One of the current efforts is called external Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation (eTNS), where an electric current is sent into the brains of children as young as 7 years old.

A 2017 published review of more than 90 ECT studies since 2009 showed they remain “methodologically flawed” and “Given the well-documented high risk of persistent memory dysfunction, the cost-benefit analysis for ECT remains so poor that its use cannot be scientifically, or ethically, justified.”

In 2005 and again in 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned against electroshocking children, and reported: “In addition to inappropriate use of medication, children with psychosocial disabilities in institutions around the world are subjected to other severe forms of inappropriate treatment such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, also known as electric shock therapy). WHO has stated that there are no indications for the use of ECT on minors, and hence this should be prohibited. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has remarked that ECT without anaesthesia, muscle relaxant or oxygenation amounts to torture. However, monitoring efforts worldwide continue to uncover instances of ECT being administered to children and adolescents.”

The FDA and state and federal legislators must put patient protection above the financial interests of companies that have failed to conduct clinical trials and provide a PMA for 40 years.

Write your state and federal legislators and tell them to ban ECT. For more information go to http://www.cchrstl.org/ect.shtml.

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Shock and Awe – the Latest Psychiatric Abuse of Children

Monday, May 13th, 2019

Shock and Awe is a tactic based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze an enemy.

Now the psychiatric industry is introducing electrical “stimulation” of children’s brains as a socially acceptable gradient to just plain shocking them into good behavior.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved on April 19, 2019 a medical device for so-called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The prescription-only device, called the Monarch external Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation (eTNS) System from NeuroSigma, is for patients ages 7 to 12 years old who are not currently taking prescription ADHD drugs. It was originally developed at the University of California, Los Angeles, to reduce epileptic seizures. Research continues on using eTNS for epilepsy, depression, migraine, PTSD, and ADHD.

This device delivers an electric current to the brain (through the V1 branch of the 5th cranial nerve) with an electrode taped to the forehead. It costs about $900 to start, with additional costs for more of the electrode patches which are only used once each. It is not currently reimbursed by insurance.

While the exact mechanism of how eTNS is supposed to work is not known, one physical effect is apparently to increase blood flow in certain areas of the brain and decrease it in others. They recommend using it daily for up to four weeks before any significant changes are observed; we could not find any information about long-term effects or whether any changes are observed after treatment is stopped. It was clinically tested in 2017 in the U.S. for this FDA approval, paid for by a grant from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, on 62 children for four weeks. The most common side effects observed were drowsiness, an increase in appetite, trouble sleeping, teeth clenching, headache and fatigue.

Results were recorded during clinical testing by asking the child to answer questions on the ADHD Rating Scale (ADHD-RS) such as whether they have difficulty paying attention or regularly interrupt others. Ratings of ADHD symptoms on various rating scales are entirely subjective, as are the diagnostic criteria for ADHD.

A prior feasibility study in 2015 was performed with 24 children for 8 weeks, using the ADHD-IV Rating Scale. It did not establish the durability of treatment effects following discontinuation of treatment, either.

To be blunt, ADHD is a fraudulent “disease.” In 1987, ADHD was literally voted into existence by a show of hands of American Psychiatric Association members and included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). Within a year, 500,000 children in America alone were diagnosed with this, and to expand the client base it has also been associated with Asperger syndrome and Autism spectrum disorder.

ADHD actually represents the spontaneous behaviors of normal children. When these behaviors become age-inappropriate, excessive or disruptive, the potential causes are limitless, including: boredom, poor teaching, inconsistent discipline at home, reading difficulty, tiredness, street drugs, nutritional deficiency, toxic overload, bullying, abuse, stress, and many kinds of underlying physical illness.

By making an ADHD diagnosis, we ignore and stop looking for what is really going on with the child. These children need the adults in their lives to give them additional attention and to find and treat the actual causes, rather than shock their brains to see if that “works.”

There are no workable ADHD drugs, either for children or for adults. This new “treatment” is supposed to be appealing because it does not use drugs, but guess what? They don’t know how it is supposed to work, either; and they haven’t tested it long enough to know the consequences of running an electric current into a child’s brain.

Aw shucks, no one denies that children can have difficult problems in their lives. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen them by restoring personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatric treatments are not workable; they are designed, with shock and awe, to overwhelm.

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Chanting the Chantix Mantra

Monday, May 6th, 2019

Recently there has been a gross increase in the TV ad campaign for Chantix, promoting this deadly drug for smoking cessation.

We’ve written about Chantix before, but we thought a repeat was in order due to this massive ad campaign.

In 2008 the Federal Aviation Administration banned Chantix for pilots and air traffic controllers, and reissued that decision in 2013.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) slapped a “Black Box” warning on Chantix (varenicline tartrate, made by Pfizer) in 2009 after receiving thousands of reports linking the drug to mental health issues, including suicidal thoughts, hostility and agitation.

In 2015, the FDA expanded the warning to note that the drug had also been linked to reduced alcohol tolerance leading to seizures.

However, in 2016 the FDA removed the Black Box warning, after heavy lobbying from Pfizer claiming that additional data showed that the benefits of Chantix outweighed its adverse side effects (oh, and since its sales had significantly dropped.)

But the adverse side effects did not go away; only the Black Box warning went away. One study found that Chantix had more cases of suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and homicidal thoughts than any other drug, by a more than three-fold margin. Pfizer’s prescribing information still warns about new or worsening mental health problems such as changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, or suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping Chantix.

We suspect that the recent spate of TV ads is related to the removal of the Black Box warning and the prior drop in sales. Also, the price of Chantix more than doubled between 2013 and 2018. In 2013, Pfizer paid out $273 million to settle a majority of the 2,700 state and federal lawsuits that had been filed over adverse side effects. Now the company is trying to grow the market with clinical studies for smokers age 12 to 19.

What is Chantix?

Chantix is a psychiatric drug — a benzodiazepine-based anti-anxiety drug, also called a minor tranquilizer or sedative hypnotic. Daily use of therapeutic doses of benzodiazepines are associated with physical dependence, and addiction can occur after 14 days of regular use. Typical consequences of withdrawal are anxiety, depression, sweating, cramps, nausea, psychotic reactions and seizures. There is also a “rebound effect” where the individual experiences even worse symptoms than they started with as a result of chemical dependency.

The exact mechanism of action of benzodiazepines is not known, but they affect neurotransmitters in the brain and suppress the activity of nerves, under the unproven theory that excessive activity of nerves may be the cause of anxiety. Chantix was developed to specifically affect nicotinic receptors in the brain, under the theory that this would reduce nicotine craving and block the rewarding effects of smoking. Messing with neurotransmitters in the brain is playing Russian Roulette with your mind.

Benzodiazepines are metabolized by cytochrome P450 enzymes, so a genetic lack of these enzymes can cause a buildup of harmful toxins and increase the severity of adverse side effects.

Psychiatric “best practices” consider that smoking is an addiction and recommend that psychiatrists assess tobacco use at every patient visit, since tobacco addiction is covered in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) as a “mental illness” under eight separate items, and disorders related to inhalant use have 33 entries. Smoking is not a mental illness and addiction cannot be fixed with psychiatric drugs.

The psychiatric industry considers that smoking cessation therapies are their territory, however this drug masks the real cause of problems in life and debilitates the individual, thus denying one the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future. Treating substance abuse with drugs is a major policy blunder; contact your state and federal representatives and let them know you disapprove of this trend.

Recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior like smoking as a “disease.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax — unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

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The Psychiatric Scientific Double Standard

Saturday, March 30th, 2019

When it comes to psychiatric scientific research, there is a double standard that favors what makes money and disavows what does not make money. When we say “double standard” we mean some rule or principle which is unfairly applied in different ways to different groups or situations, or that favors one group or situation over another. The actual principle in question here is called “evidence-based science.”

Many scientists, particularly those in the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry, mouth that they favor “evidence-based science” when in fact they favor what can make the most money regardless of the evidence.

A recent Scientific American editorial (“The WHO Takes a Reckless Step“, April, 2019) denigrates Traditional Chinese Medicine because it is purportedly not “evidence-based.”

Yet Scientific American promotes psychiatry and psychiatric drugs, when it knows that every psychiatric drug on the market has somewhere in its fine print a statement to the effect that “we don’t know how it works,” while the FDA approves these drugs based on so-called “evidence.”

Here are some representative quotes:

  • The fine print for Rexulti (brexpiprazole, an antipsychotic) says, “the exact way REXULTI works is unknown”.
  • The fine print for Latuda (lurasidone, an antipsychotic) says, “It’s not known exactly how LATUDA works, and the precise way antipsychotics work is also unknown”.
  • The fine print for Xanax (alprazolam, a benzodiazepine anti-anxiety drug) says, “Their exact mechanism of action is unknown”.

So much for evidence-based practice! The actual evidence is, they don’t have a clue how these drugs are supposed to work — it’s all conjecture!

As we continue to examine the actual evidence, we come up against the adverse reactions, or side effects, of these drugs. This is hard evidence, not conjecture.

What is a Side Effect?

Side effects (also called “adverse reactions”) are the body’s natural response to having a chemical disrupt its normal functioning.

One could also say that there are no drug side effects, these adverse reactions are actually the drug’s real effects; some of these effects just happen to be unwanted.

The FDA takes the adverse side effect of suicide seriously by placing a Black Box Warning on certain psychiatric drugs. For example, the FDA says that “Antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children and adolescents with MDD [Major Depressive Disorder] and other psychiatric disorders.”

What about those who say psychotropic drugs really did make them feel better? Psychotropic drugs may relieve the pressure that an underlying physical problem could be causing but they do not treat, correct or cure any physical disease or condition. This relief may have the person thinking he is better but the relief is not evidence that a psychiatric disorder exists. Ask an illicit drug user whether he feels better when snorting cocaine or smoking dope and he’ll believe that he is, even while the drugs are actually damaging him. Some drugs that are prescribed to treat depression can have a “damping down” effect. They suppress the physical feelings associated with “depression” but they are not alleviating the condition or targeting what is causing it.

Once the drug has worn off, the original problem remains. As a solution or cure to life’s problems, psychotropic drugs do not work.

For the first time the side effects of psychiatric drugs that have been reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by doctors, pharmacists, other health care providers and consumers have been decrypted from the FDA’s MedWatch reporting system and been made available to the public in an easy to search psychiatric drug side effects database and search engine. This database is provided as a free public service by the mental health watchdog, Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR).

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Hear This — Zone Out on Zonisamide

Saturday, March 23rd, 2019

The March 15-21, 2019 issue of the St. Louis Business Journal noted a $10.5 million Army grant to the Washington University in St. Louis Medical School to study the epilepsy drug Zonisamide to see if it could prevent hearing loss from loud noises. This seemed like such an imaginative stretch that we decided to look into it in more detail.

The justification given is that Zonisamide is conjectured to protect hearing loss when given ahead of exposure to loud noises. We wondered how this came about. We also note that other epilepsy drugs are psych-related, so we wondered if there was a psych drug connection here as well.

In a rat study, researchers proposed using a substance that blocks calcium channels to see if it could prevent hearing loss against loud noises. Zonisamide also blocks calcium channels. Gee, maybe Zonisamide can prevent hearing loss.

Zonisamide is the generic name used in the United States for a seizure drug whose common brand name is Zonegran. It was first used in Japan in the early 1970’s to treat so-called psychiatric disorders, and has been used off-label by psychiatrists in the U.S. as a mood stabilizer. The FDA approved it for seizures in 2000, although it is totally unknown as to how it works to prevent seizures. The FDA notes that taking this drug may increase the risk of depression, psychosis and suicidal thoughts or actions.

Using Zonisamide during pregnancy may present a significant risk to the fetus due to the possibility of birth defects.

Zonisamide was first studied in Japan in the 1970’s during exploratory research on drugs for psychiatric disorders. The drug alters the concentration of dopamine in the brain, but is apparently dosage dependent — that is, different dosages can increase or decrease dopamine concentrations, leading to unpredictable results.

Zonisamide is metabolized in the liver by Cytochrome P450 enzymes, so its side effects can be magnified in those persons with a genetic lack of these enzymes.

Typically we see that the psychiatric research community makes a guess about re-purposing some old drug so it can be re-used for a new patient population, guesses how it might work in the rat brain, then guesses how it might work in the human brain, each time asking for more funding to make further guesses, eventually leading to the FDA approving a new use for an old drug even though they still don’t know how it “works.”

While medicine has advanced on a scientific path to major discoveries and cures, psychiatry has never evolved scientifically and is no closer to understanding or curing mental problems, thus must continually seek to find new uses for old treatments.

While medicine has nurtured an enviable record of achievements and general popular acceptance, the public still links psychiatry to snake pits, straitjackets, and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Psychiatry continues to foster that valid impression with its development of such brutal treatments as ECT, psychosurgery, the chemical straitjacket caused by antipsychotic drugs, and its long record of treatment failures including Zonisamide as a mood stabilizer.

In over 40 years, “biological psychiatry” has yet to validate a single psychiatric condition/diagnosis as an abnormality/disease, or as anything neurological, biological, chemically imbalanced or genetic.

The drugs prescribed for psychiatric conditions, such as using Zonisamide as a mood stabilizer, only exacerbate the conditions they are supposed to treat. And when these drugs are used for other non-psychiatric conditions, they continue having the same adverse reactions, such as depression and suicide when Zonisamide is used for epilepsy. It will have the same adverse reactions if it is ever used for hearing loss. And they will still not know how it “works.”

We suggest that funding only be provided for workable medical treatments that dramatically improve and cure health and mental health problems. For more information, download and read the CCHR booklet “Psychiatric Hoax – The Subversion of Medicine – Report and recommendations on psychiatry’s destructive impact on health care.”

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Knock Yourself Out with Spravato (Esketamine)

Monday, March 18th, 2019

A nasal spray version of the anesthetic drug ketamine was approved by the FDA on March 5, 2019 for treatment-resistant depression.

Janssen Pharmaceuticals says that the cost for a one-month course of treatment for Spravato (generic esketamine) will be between $4,720 and $6,785.

Esketamine is the S-enantiomer of ketamine, which means that it is one of the two mirror images of the chemical structure of ketamine, S (for the Latin sinister) being the left image. It enhances glutamine release in the brain. Glutamine is an amino acid used in the synthesis of proteins, among other things. In the brain, glutamine is used in the production of neurotransmitters. It is believed that glutamine plays a role in raising or lowering aggression levels.

Treatment requires that doses be taken, in conjunction with an oral antidepressant, in a doctor’s office or clinic, with patients monitored for at least two hours, and their experience entered in a registry.

Because of the risk of serious adverse outcomes and the potential for abuse and misuse of the drug, it is only available through a restricted distribution system. At least you can’t take it home with you.

The Spravato labeling contains a Boxed Warning that cautions that patients are at risk for sedation and difficulty with attention, judgment and thinking (dissociation), abuse and misuse, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors after administration of the drug.

Basically, it knocks you out so you don’t feel so depressed anymore. You don’t feel much of anything, actually, since you’ve just taken an anesthetic in the snout.

There were four phase 3 clinical trials; two of them failed to show any statistical improvement, but the drug was approved anyway because it was on the Fast Track and Breakthrough Therapy paths.

A 9/5/2018 update from Consumer Reports said, “All these drugs [Ketamine, Phenylbutazone, Chloramphenicol] are prohibited in beef, poultry, and pork consumed in the U.S. Yet government data obtained by Consumer Reports suggest that trace amounts of these and other banned or severely restricted drugs may appear in the U.S. meat supply more often than was previously known.”

Note that “depression” is not an actual medical illness; it is simply a symptom of some undiagnosed and untreated condition. A diagnosis of depression is a prime example of psychiatric fraud.

Any form of ketamine used to treat so-called depression is unethical and harmful, since it precludes the patient from finding out what is actually wrong and getting that treated. Psychiatrists pushing ketamine or esketamine are shameful drug pushers who are making a buck off people’s misfortune.

Go here for more information about alternatives to drugs.

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Tranq Your Dog

Monday, January 14th, 2019

Paraphrasing a Lewis Carroll poem —

Speak roughly to your little dog.
And beat him when he seizes.
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.

Imepitoin, sold under the brand name Pexion from Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Inc. of St. Joseph, Missouri, is an anticonvulsant used in veterinary medicine to treat epilepsy in dogs. It was originally developed to treat epilepsy in humans, but clinical trials were terminated upon findings of unfavorable metabolic differences between smokers and non-smokers.

Anticonvulsants are also increasingly being used in the treatment of so-called bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, since many seem to act as mood stabilizers.

Pexion is similar to Valium and other benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety drugs or minor tranquilizers), acting as a low affinity partial agonist of the benzodiazepine receptor, which means that it acts in the brain similar to a benzodiazepine. It is very unusual for any dog with epilepsy to become completely seizure free even after they have begun taking this drug.

The theory is that the drug suppresses electrical activity in the brain.

On December 4, 2018, the U.S. FDA approved Pexion to treat anxiety in dogs freaked out by noises. In other words, it’s a tranquilizer for dogs.

Dog owners are cautioned to carefully monitor its use, since a side effect can be a change in the dog’s level of aggression. Well guess what, a side effect of these kinds of drugs in humans is also aggressive behavior. Some tranquilizer!

The FDA urges pet owners and veterinarians to report side effects.

It used to be only psychiatrists who prescribed tranquilizers; then family doctors became common prescribers; and now veterinarians have entered the psychiatric industry, ready to psychoanalyze your dog and prescribe a tranq.

Daily use of benzodiazepines in humans is associated with physical dependence. The withdrawal from drugs like these is more prolonged and often more difficult than withdrawal from heroin. Although dogs have not so far shown addiction to Pexion, physical dependence is a known side effect of other antiepileptic drugs in dogs.

The point we want to make is that the psychiatric industry makes a concerted effort to create new patient classes for their coercive and abusive treatments, and in this case that includes pets. We wrote about Prozac for pets way back in 2011, so this trend is continuing.

A primary care physician or family practitioner who refuses to prescribe a psychiatric drug can be accused of being unethical, or even charged and jailed for “criminal medical negligence” because they are not applying the current “standard of care.” Soon your veterinarian may find themselves criminally liable for not prescribing tranquilizers for your pet.

For more information, download and read the CCHR booklet, “Psychiatric Hoax – The Subversion of Medicine – Report and recommendations on psychiatry’s destructive impact on health care.“

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