On Pharma, Corruption, and Psychiatric Drugs

“My studies in this area lead me to a very uncomfortable conclusion: Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market, as doctors are unable to handle them. It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good.”

– Peter Gøtzsche, MD;  Co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration

Sources for Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Health Care: 

Amazon, Kindle Edition
Amazon, Paperback
Book Depository
Radcliffe

 

Of further interest:
Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Health Care (MadinAmerica)

47 COMMENTS

  1. I heard an add on the radio LAST NIGHT for this new drug to treat “Shift work sleep disorder” !!!

    This was at about 10:30 pm on a popular rock and roll FM RADIO station.

    Insomnia has already been a goldmine to Big Pharma. To goose the insomnia market, Pharma has created these subcategories of insomnia — chronic, acute, transient, initial, delayed-onset and middle-of-the-night as well as early-morning wakening non-restful sleep. Your insomnia is as unique as you are! It is also no coincidence that “wakefulness” medications cause insomnia and insomnia drugs, because of their hangover, create a market for wakefulness drugs.

    HOW IT WORKS:

    1. Patent a dangerous chemical as a “treatment” for the latest fad like “Shift work sleep disorder”.
    2. Invent fictitious trial results that prove the drug is effective in treating SWSD.
    3. Bribe FDA officials into approving the drug as safe for everyone! (Even if it kills people.)
    4. Submit to the American Psychiatric Association for inclusion in their DSM-IV
    5.Create an emotional TV and radio ads that promote unhappy, tired confused people being transformed into perfect beings after they take your drug.
    6.Issue press releases to mainstream media outlets who will run your propaganda as news with zero skepticism.
    7. Bribe doctors with vacations, extravagant meals and “consulting fees” in order to get them to prescribe your drug to as many patients as possible.
    8.Buy off politicians and legislators to block alternative medicine and enforce a pharmaceutical monopoly.
    9.Sit back and rake in the dough** while Americans and the world go broke buying your drug to treat SWSD!
    10.When the lawsuits roll in from the families of dead patients, simply use a small portion of your windfall profits to settle out of court, admitting no guilt.

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  2. Copy_cat usually I would agree with you, and I intensely dislike the trend towards ‘diagnosing normal’, however in this particular instance I think they have got it right. Not that all shift workers suffer from it, but it legitimises a real need that some shift workers will have, especially when shift changes are abrupt and work mandated.The horrors of going from 9am to 5pm to going to 9pm-5am in a few days is a real problem, and people dealing with such may need assistance. Many older doctors or even younger ones have forgotten what shift work is like, and may refuse a much needed prescription, causing suffering to the affected shift worker.
    I don’t think this particular diagnosis is likely to cause problems with followon ‘policing’ by psychiatric servies into forced inpatient admissions or any similar problems, it’s likely that 100% of the patients diagnosed with this will not beome entrenched within the forced mental health system.

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      • Thanks, I love this link on so called “insomnia”.

        In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.

        His book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern – in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.

        Much like the experience of Wehr’s subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.

        “It’s not just the number of references – it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge,” Ekirch says.

        Read alot more http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

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        • Copy_Cat,

          I agree that drugs are pushed way too much as a one size fits all solution for insomnia. But that doesn’t mean the diagnosis isn’t legitimate and in many causes such as mine which led to one of sleep apnea, it can be an indication of a serious problem.

          As one who feels my life was destroyed by psych meds, I am concerned that in our passion to speak out against these meds, we are adapting extremist positions such as thinking all diagnoses are a pharma conspiracy that may prevent people from seeking necessary treatment that could be life saving.

          AA

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      • Stephen,

        What if the shift worker can’t sleep and has no other job options, then what? What if he/she has tried all non drug remedies to no avail?

        Look, I shared your same concern about these meds and despise the pharmaceutical industry with a passion. Being on psych meds destroyed my life.

        But I have learned through personal experience because of difficulties with pap therapy that unfortunately, the issue of meds is not a black and white situation and that demonizing them just doesn’t feel right to me.

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    • My objection is not that this isn’t a real phenomenon, but that it is caused by being required to do shift work, not by something wrong with the person who has to mess with his/her sleep schedule in this way. Just like all pharma/psychiatric ploys, we take a condition that is a likely result of a stressful environment, and instead of modifying the environment or acknowledging its impact, we blame the person who is suffering for not adapting properly to the environmental expectations. It’s like they’re saying, “Everything is perfect as it is, and if you don’t like it or can’t adjust to it, there is something wrong with YOU.” This idea that the status quo is holy and unchangable and that humans have to adapt to whatever is thrown at them is a very nihilistic approach to life. Humans are inherently creative and want to adapt their environment to their needs, and get depressed and disturbed and upset when they have to just put up with adverse conditions. But those who want to change the status quo are demonized and pathologized, while those benefiting from it laugh all the way to the bank. It’s an evil system, and I feel bad for the shift worker, and don’t begrudge them a sleep aid if that what they feel they need, but let’s be honest about the real cause – it’s caused by the abnormal schedule they’re required to keep, not by a “disease” or “disorder” in the person who has trouble adapting to these abnormal requirements of our society.

      —- Steve

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    • As a firm believer in capitalism and free enterprise, it was very painful for me to reach the conclusion that Big Pharma’s business is a legal form of organized crime. But it certainly is. And, as Peter points out, the number of people killed by psychotropic drugs each year is way bigger than the number of people organize crime kills every year, at least in the Western World.

      In the defense of free market capitalism, I have to say that Big Pharma companies operate under the oligopoly, corporate welfare model, not true free market. They lobby and create front groups such as NAMI to make sure that no law is approved in Washington regulating the healthcare market that benefits them in one way or another. Crony capitalism is a cancer for the free market, and that Big Pharma can get away with the murderous practices that Peter denounces is the best example of why crony capitalism is bad.

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      • Did you say NAMI ? I seriously hate that organization. Damb phoneys.

        They go about posing as advocates for the mentally ill but say and do nothing about pharma fraud or the abuse of human rights in the name of help behind psychiatry’s locked doors.

        In 2004, NAMI opposed the placement of “black box” warnings on antidepressants determined to cause suicide in under-18 year olds, and in 2006 opposed black box warnings on ADHD drugs causing heart attack, stroke and sudden death in children in 2006. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Alliance_on_Mental_Illness

        These phoneys will do absolutely no advocacy for the mentally ill that hurts industry profits. I have looked on that site, NO CALL FOR SAFE DRUGS AND HONEST PHARMA MARKETING, NO CALL FOR RESPECTING HUMAN RIGHTS.

        Nothing. They are phoneys.

        I cant stand it when a famous persons kid finally commits suicide after years of drugging by psychiatry, like I almost did, and the famous or wealthy parents help NAMI push there poison on more kids.

        My mother read NAMI propaganda and when I was in the depth of psychiatric poisoning and she was thoroughly convinced I needed MORE psych poison just like NAMI-pharma sais.

        Much more work needs to be done to expose these phoneys, “NAMI FACTS” damb con artists.

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          • I was on the NAMI site again yesterday trying to find an example of them protesting the criminal and dishonest behavior from the pharma industry by typing all kinds of different things into the ‘search the site’ box so I would be ready if a supporter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness posted it in a web forum.

            Again I found nothing.

            The ‘mentally ill’ would be far better off if is there was no such thing as “NAMI” , all they do is promote the stigma that people with emotional problems are genetic defectives that can only be and must be fixed by a lifetime on psychiatric drugs !

            The National Alliance on Mental Illness makes unproven claims “NAMI FACTS” that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin. What they do in practice, lying in every instance, abrogating [revoking] the informed consent right of parents is nothing short of criminal.

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  3. Wow. I am very resistant to watching internet videos of more than a few minutes, but I am really glad I watched this. What an admirable man to speak out so directly!

    And he is probably putting his life in danger as well. I mean that quite literally.

    I have to get hold of that book. Can’t afford to buy it, and no local library has it. Looks as if it was published in the UK, maybe that’s why I can’t find it here.

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    • “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime”

      It’s scary. If I type in the name of ANY psychiatric drug followed by the word lawsuit into web search a whole laundry list of criminal stuff pharma did to make money on that drug and how it hurt and killed people comes up but none of these CEOs or anyone ever does prison time.

      And John Gotti thought he was the “The Teflon Don”, what a lightweight he was compared to these pharma guys !

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    • While i’m grateful for this book, I just wish the title of the book more innocuous, less extreme/radical, so that mainstream psychiatrists might be more inclined to pick it up without thinking that it’s eerily some extremist rants against drugs and them. I think this is such important work, and messaging and how its delivered is critical so as to get the facts out and change these practices, being marginalized as extremists and radicals, anti psychiatry and liberals doesn’t get the message out, but rather keeps us preaching to the choir

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      • I agree about preaching to the choir, but I really don’t believe that changing the minds of a few psychiatrists is going to make a lot of difference in what psychiatry does. It’s the general public we should be talking to. Not just to each other, yes, but not just within this little bubble of the mental illness system either.

        AS far as Gotsche calling the practices of drug companies “organized crime,” is that really much different from what the banks and other financial institutions have done? I think polls have shown that the public thinks more should be done, or at least SOMETHING should be done, to see to it that the fraud and other criminal behavior of the people running these institutions should be punished. And drug companies rank very low in public opinion right now.

        So I don’t think Dr.Gotsche is saying anything that the public won’t listen to. The problem is that few people are willing to speak out so directly. (How well I know this problem for myself.) And also, of course, the corporate media are not going to allow any discussion of real changes in our political system reach too many people.

        I frankly don’t care very much about what psychiatrists think, because no matter how decent they are, real change is not going to come from them. Things will only change when the public as a whole realizes that the psychiatric emperor has no clothes.

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        • I agree, Ted. The other issue is that most of our politicians are bought off by these same criminal corporations. So it’s hard to get any attention in the legislature, unless you’re talking about someone like foster kids or the elderly with Alzheimers, and even then, the only action is a warning label on the box, and not a real change in practice.

          I really think we need to work on getting legislators out of the influence of the corporations. We need to elect people of integrity, and to do something about campaign laws to prevent corporations from owning our legislators. Psychiatrists aren’t the ultimate powers in this situation – it’s the corporations that are calling the shots, and the psychiatrists are their compliant minions.

          —- Steve

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          • One of the senators from Iowa went after Joseph Biederman of Harvard when a 4-year old died of a psych med over-dose. It is easy to find information on this. It was Sen. Grassley I believe. There are a few who care about children, and the increased risk of suicide in children is serious and was reported out of Europe a few years ago. This is also the unacknowledged problem with public shooters and with returning veterans. It is getting much harder to hide these things.

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      • No, the time for being gentle about murder is done. Robert Whitaker’s book is tame, compared to this new one, but I got hissed announcing a discussion of it at a NAMI event. If we are gentle, we get bullied. These people must be spoken to directly, in the language they have used in selling harm. If you want to see a shocking case, check out Joseph Lieberman, of Harvard, but there are more, all around the country. The chief floggers are called Key Opinion Leaders (KOL’s).

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  4. My studies in this area lead me to a very uncomfortable conclusion: Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market…

    I agree and not just because I was injured by them and have a resentment.

    1. I have talked to so many people in addiction recovery who have told me there horror stories of spending there youth on medication just end up addicted to something and in rehab. No one I have talked to yet said they were helped by child psychiatry. I have talked to over 100 people, maybe my ‘study’ is somehow flawed for only talking to people in drug and alcohol recovery.

    What is scary is in drug and alcohol rehab the first thing they do is send you to the doctor or physicians assistant for meds ! Ya thanks but that’s the thing that made me sick in the first place so no thanks.

    2. Those online mental health forums, I see my story half way through over and over, 1000s of people looking for the ‘right meds’ , reports of awful side effects and trips to the hospital, all these ‘serotonin experts’ who read ‘Web MD’ or took an online quiz for (label goes here) and then “asked there doctor”.

    I am thoroughly convinced there is much more harm than good being done with psychotropic drugs. Its the big fat elephant in the room so few seem to see !

    One more thing , I confronted that physicians assistant at rehab over the Zoloft and she was defending it with “I am trying to help them with there anxiety” and a bit of “what do you know, your just a client”.

    I’m one of the clients in the minority, I’m one that recovered cause I read books critical of psychiatry and stopped making the same mistakes.

    Like Peter Gøtzsche said about these drugs “doctors are unable to handle them”.

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  5. Is Dr. Gotzsche still associated with the Cochrane Collaboration? Do any other board members or advisers from the Cochrane groups agree with him that these classes of drugs are dangerous, without scientific foundation and/or need to be pulled from the market? There are many reviews of these drugs in the Cochrane Collaboration and people still consult them to learn about the supposed scientific consensus for use. The reviews of these drugs and classes of drugs in Cochrane can be updated with adequate information about biases/limitations and competing priorities/conflicts of interest.

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  6. So now does this mean a class action legal thing can be put together to get reparations for victims and to make insurance companies pay for alternative options like Various Types of Energy Healing and bodywork ,Naturopathy, Homeopathy , psychiatrist free open dialog? Can we now prosecute the financiers of eugenics in its many guises ? Can we bring back Abraham Lincoln to make some kind of Gettysburg Address about this ? And most importantly can we get psychiatrists and psychiatry out of our lives and out of the lives of our children ? Undying Gratitude to Robert Whitaker and Peter Gotzsche.

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  7. Short and to the point. You can’t get any more clear about these toxic drugs and psychiatry than this. Psychiatry and the drug companies are killing thousands upon thousands of people across the world and absolutely nothing is being done about it.

    And yet, most of the people that I know that are on these drugs deny all of this and go rabid when you try to talk with them about all this.

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  8. wow, I’ve taken over 20 different medications for MILD anxiety…….I agree that these drugs CAUSE psychiatric problems if you take them too long. uhhh, SEXUAL side effects?!!!! Poor performance in school, memory problems….horrible!….Oh the weight gain!!

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  9. Excellent video. I was amazed to see doctors speak in a way that show they understand the severe problem and danger of psychiatric drugs. The disconnect is that they get paid primarily for prescribing drugs.

    As someone who works in a hospital setting, one of the most horrific abuses I have seen is pharmaceutical companies coming into the employee cafeteria setting to promote their drugs. I suppose the idea is that they will influence staff to promote their drugs to the doctors who will in turn prescribe them more regularly. They appear like car salesmen and come bringing lunch for all to entice people to attend. They then leave pens, cups watches, etc, to advertise their drugs. Abysmal.

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  10. “Affluenza” is about to enter the Psychiatrist’s Diagnostics and Standards Manual (DSM-5). It will appear in a special revision of the DSM-5 as soon as trials of the new drug to combat the awful scourge of Affluenza begin. Competing Pharma giants are rushing to market their versions first. One drug will sell under the name of Fallacyia and another will be called Malarkeyum. A third proposed name was Speciousum but research suggested that most doctors couldn’t spell it.

    An eventual generic will simply be named Bunkum.

    Needless to say, the polar opposite of Affluenza is already being exploited in TV commercials as Low-D, as in “Do you suffer from Low-D?” JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America appear to be behind the massive push to promote Low-D.

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    • I suppose this is a joke, but I believed in it for a few seconds. Seriously, the case where this rich kid was allowed to kill four people without any punishment was good for us, though it was mostly perceived as an example of rich people being allowed to get away with murder (and it was). But it also demonstrated the utter nonsense of the way psychiatry is used in the service of of the powerful with no consideration for anyone else.

      It’s pretty easy to satirize psychiatry, isn’t it? I write satires myself from time to time, and what psychiatrists and drug companies do is so far out you hardly have to write anything very far from what is actually going on.

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  11. gosh. i read this page and hardly understood much of it as i am not as well educated as it seems the people on this forum are. however i dont need to be educated to know that its not only the pharma industries that are trying to kill us. the same people who own/run them are the same ones who own/run the media the music industry the food industry the banks. and the ones who are leaving chem trails above our very heads. and as i have to breathe in the air, eat the food.(gmo) msgs. and all the other shit and chemicals in it. also the vaccines that are full of mercury. also im a victim of the psychiatics as well. so im being poisened in every way. what do i do.
    i try to live a good life. try to be the best person i can be and when i cant i pray to the lord and ask forgiveness. as i dont know what else i can do!!! does anyone.?
    copy-cat, i understand what you were saying about the sleep aids and totally agree with you. however people believe what they want to believe because if they believe what you have said then it means that they will have to change. i see this so much in my day to day life with people. i try to tell them and they dont want to know as its to hard to make a change. i know im not as clever as the people on this page. so please accept my humble post. robinaxxx

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