The FDA Is Hiding Reports Linking Psych Drugs to Homicides

55
9745

In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined being drawn into a story of intrigue involving my own government’s efforts to hide, from the public, reports of psychiatric drugs associated with cases of murder, including homicides committed by youth on the drugs. But that is precisely the intrigue I now find myself enmeshed in.

The saga began several years ago. My child had the misfortune of being born during the last month of eligibility for kindergarten, and was subsequently labeled with A.D.H.D. – which stands for August Date Hikes Diagnosis. While other Americans with the same chronological impairment such as Man Ray and Robert Ringling managed to make something of themselves despite being born in the month of August, it seemed my child was doomed to failure from the get-go, unless provided lifesaving stimulant medication.

With an abiding uneasiness about both the alleged disorder and its miracle remedy, as they were presented to me, I set out to understand as much as I could about stimulant medications, prescribed disproportionately to the youngest children in the class.

It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), also referred to as MedWatch. The FDA publishes quarterly FAERS data files on its website containing hundreds of thousands of reports of various drug adverse events. Though unencrypted, the FAERS files might as well be, as the data appear hieroglyphic to the average person who is not a database expert, including myself at the time.

With the aid of the internet and with a lot of trial and error, I taught myself to write Structured Query Language (SQL) code to decipher the FAERS files. I first plumbed the depths of the adverse event data searching for reports of pediatric fatalities associated with stimulant medications, and found hundreds of them. Expanding my queries to include all psychotropic medications, I eventually identified nearly 2,000 pediatric fatalities. (More on the pediatric psychotropic fatalities in a future post.)

As I contemplated the gravity and the scale of the human tragedy, I began to wonder what drug side effects these children experienced at the time of their deaths. The FAERS data files yielded answers: cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, hepatoxicity, multi-organ failure, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis, Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, completed suicide, homicide . . . Wait, what?  Homicide, as a drug side effect? Then I saw it again: Murder.

The light bulb went off. I performed a query for homicide or murder as a drug side effect. To my astonishment, there were over 700 reports in FAERS of homicides linked to psychotropic medications.

In October 2014, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FDA to obtain copies of the FAERS homicide reports. After ten months of “Foot Dragging and Alibis,” which is what Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) once suggested the agency’s acronym stood for, the FDA still had not produced a single report. Frustrated with the FDA’s stonewalling, I filed a federal lawsuit in August 2015. Within three months of filing the FOIA lawsuit, the FDA coughed up over 3,000 pages of FAERS reports.

However, hundreds of pages were completely redacted, while many hundreds more were heavily redacted. A letter from Deputy Director of Information Disclosure Policy Howard Philips attested that the records were redacted in accordance with the FOIA statute, and other applicable laws. The FDA claimed that the redaction of information was justified under FOIA’s privacy exemption.

To add some perspective, according to the HHS Freedom of Information Annual Report, among 10,145 FOIA requests the FDA processed during fiscal year 2015, the privacy exemption was applied only 24 times. Federal regulations require the FDA to “make the fullest possible disclosure of records to the public” in response to FOIA requests.

All but the case numbers were redacted in 47 of the FAERS homicide reports that the FDA released. The FDA had suppressed all of the report information for these cases: age, gender, drug name(s), reported drug reaction(s), case narrative, etc. The wholesale censorship of entire FAERS reports turned out to be an untenable action on the part of the FDA.

Pursuant to 21 CFR 20.81, the FDA cannot properly withhold any record that contains data or information that have been previously disclosed in a lawful manner to a member of the public. The age, gender, drug name(s), and reported drug reaction(s) had already been publicly disclosed in FAERS data files available on the FDA’s website. It was based on this publicly available information that I was able to ascertain and request the case reports involving homicide in the first place.

I fired off a letter to then-Acting Commissioner Stephen Ostroff, protesting the FDA’s improper withholding of public information, citing the federal regulation prohibiting such conduct. A month later, I received a second production of records totaling over 3,000 pages. The agency did not acknowledge any wrongdoing, or even explain what was different about the new document dump. This time around, though, the FDA had not redacted age, gender, drug name(s), and reported drug reaction(s), but the case narratives remained entirely redacted.

Insofar as the FDA had released the case narratives of hundreds of the other FAERS homicide reports, albeit heavily redacted at times, I surmised that the case narratives of these 47 reports in particular must contain information that was damaging either to the pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, or both.

Here are four examples of medication-linked homicide case narratives that were being withheld.

Case 10213469

The narrative in this case report, when it was initially sent to me, was completely redacted by the FDA. This is what I received:

10213469

However,  I knew from the FAERS data files that the case involved a 10-year-old taking Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine), a stimulant drug prescribed to a million children in the U.S. for ADHD. The girl had reportedly experienced a drug reaction that led her to commit homicide. The FDA would eventually send me a lesser-redacted version of the report, confirming the information in the FAERS data files, but the case narrative was still completely redacted.

Then, on April 12th of this year, the FDA presented a Vyvanse pediatric safety review to the Pediatric Advisory Committee. In advance of the meeting, the FDA’s “Pediatric Postmarketing Pharmacovigilance and Drug Utilization Review” was made public as part of the briefing materials posted on the agency’s website. The safety review contained a bombshell case narrative summary.

Homicide (n=1) 

Case # 10213468, USA, 2014: A 3-month-old female infant was left alone with a babysitter’s 10-year-old daughter. Lisdexamfetamine was prescribed to the 10-year-old daughter of the babysitter; the 10-year old girl had ADHD, ODD, and attachment disorder. The infant sustained various injuries. The autopsy reported the cause of death was “asphyxia and suffocation,” as the result of “homicide.” Additionally, the infant’s blood contained traces of amphetamine (lisdexamfetamine).

In an appendix, I noticed that one of  the FAERS reports that I had requested (10213469), which had been completely redacted, was only one digit off from the FAERS report quoted in the Vyvanse pediatric safety review, and was also listed as a duplicate report.  And then I put one and one together:  The FDA had represented to the Court handling my FOIA lawsuit that the case narrative of the FAERS homicide report I had requested—number 10213469—was exempt from disclosure under a FOI request for privacy reasons, yet now the FDA had publicly disclosed the case!

On April 13th, the day after the Pediatric Advisory Committee met and considered the FDA’s Vyvanse pediatric safety and drug utilization review, I fired off an email to the Assistant U.S. Attorney on the case, copying the FDA’s Assistant Chief Counsel, demanding a lesser-redacted version of FAERS report 10213469, pursuant to 21 CFR 20.81, since the agency had publicly released a summary of the case narrative of a duplicate report.

I figured that the FDA would now have to cough up the report.

The next day, on April 14th, Shire submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) for a chewable formulation of Vyvanse, as if following a script written long before the Pediatric Advisory Committee meeting. The company wrote in its press release that the Vyvanse chewable tablets are intended for patients “who may have difficulty swallowing or opening a capsule,” which is likely targeting very young children.

A day later, on April 15th, the Assistant U.S. attorney sent me an email, indicating that rather than provide me a lesser-redacted version of FAERS report 10213469, the FDA had instead decided to remove the case summary detailing the homicide from its drug safety review on its website.   Just like that, Uncle Sam had covered up the homicide of a 3-month-old infant girl, by an amphetamine-addled child, as if the baby had never existed. Now you see the homicide, now you don’t.

Apparently, we can’t have a story made public about a 10-year-old girl on Vyvanse who forced the ADHD drug down a baby girl’s throat before suffocating her to death. That would be bad for business. Especially even as Vyvanse chewable tablets are being approved for the market.

There is one more part to this story of homicide linked to ADHD drugs. Earlier, after I had filed my FOIA lawsuit concerning the FAERS homicide cases, the FDA approved Adzenys XR-ODT, the first orally disintegrating amphetamine tablet approved for kids with ADHD.  Without fanfare, a homicidal ideation warning was added to the label of Adzenys XR-ODT: “Anxiety, psychosis, hostility, aggression, suicidal or homicidal ideation have also been observed.”

Adzenys XR-ODT was approved as a bioequivalent of Adderall XR, another Shire-manufactured amphetamine drug that was formerly the most prescribed drug for ADHD prior to Vyvanse. Oddly, at this writing, Adderall XR does not have a homicidal ideation warning on its label, whereas its bioequivalent Adzenys XR-ODT does. I’ve emailed the FDA Division of Drug Information for an explanation of the inconsistent homicidal ideation label warnings for these bioequivalent drugs, and was told that a Subject Matter Expert (SME) had to be consulted before the agency could respond. Of similar interest, a homicidal ideation warning was added to the Vyvanse label as well.

Case 7979016

This case involves a 16-year-old male from Canada taking Prozac, who experienced the reported drug reaction of “homicide.”  The FDA initially released a completely redacted version of this report, claiming in effect that public disclosure of any information whatsoever would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Once I reminded the FDA of 21 CFR 20.81, the agency produced a lesser-redacted version. This time, the FDA did not redact age, gender, nationality, drug name, or drug reactions disclosed in the FAERS data files, yet persisted with the redaction of the entire case narrative.

As it so happens, I had requested FAERS 7979016 twice, so the FDA produced yet another version of the report. This time, much of the case narrative could be read, and it contained a bombshell:

The reporting psychiatrist assessed the homicide, self-injurious behavior, manic symptoms, and worsening of his condition as related to fluoxetine, it drove him over the edge and it contributed to his actions.

Under the pretext of a phony privacy claim, the FDA had, in its previous redactions,  deliberately kept hidden a psychiatrist’s damaging causality assessment linking a popular antidepressant to homicide.

Case 8464514

This case involves a 35-year-old female from Australia, who took the antidepressant nortriptyline and killed her daughter. In one version of the report, the FDA as I subsequently learned, had completely redacted the following narrative:

My husband was drinking. I took small doses of valerian for a month and had weird dreams and premonitions. When I took nortriptyline, I immediately wanted to kill myself, talked myself out of it. I’d never had thoughts like that before. My husband was angry, shouting. I walked outside a lot, with palpitations, trouble breathing, and became more depressed. My smoking went up to 25 a day, no alcohol. I didn’t sleep for two nights, dreamt, then slept maybe three hours, felt awful. I dreamt that my daughter had dark teeth and I saw a black halo around her head, a spear hanging over it. I felt like a zombie. I believed I had to help my daughter, that a bad spirit possessed her. I picked up a knife and stabbed her and woke up. I was not myself. I was looking on from the outside, controlled by dark forces. She said, “Mum, what are you doing here?” I realized what I’d done. I asked my husband to kill me. He called the police. I felt better in the police cells without the pills, but the pills started again, and thoughts of killing myself returned.

The FDA–and this is almost hard to believe–had redacted signs or symptoms of medication-induced suicidal ideation (“When I took nortriptyline, I immediately wanted to kill myself. I’d never had thoughts like that before” and “I asked my husband to kill me”); parasomnia or hallucinations (“I dreamt that my daughter had dark teeth and I saw a black halo around her head, a spear hanging over it”); delusions (“I believed I had to help my daughter, that a bad spirit possessed her); automatism: (“I felt like a zombie”); homicide, somnambulism, and parasomnia (“I picked up a knife and stabbed her and woke up”); dissociation (“I was not myself”); depersonalization (“I was looking on from the outside”); paranoia (“controlled by dark forces”); as well as positive dechallenge (“I felt better in the police cells without the pills”); and positive rechallenge – considered the gold standard with regard to causality (“but the pills started again and thoughts of killing myself returned.”)

The FDA then provided another version of the report to me, this time with bits and pieces of the above testimonial unredacted, yet with much of the passage still missing. However, this version contained another gem:

Ranbaxy medical reviewers comment: The case is deemed serious. Medical Reviewer considered the case to be possibly related to suspect drug due to its temporal association as per WHO UMC system for standardized causality assessment.

The FDA understood that there was likely a causal link to homicide. This was the finding that the FDA did not want to make public.

Case 6179785

This case report describes a 47-year-old male prescribed Prozac (fluoxetine), lithium, temazepam, and trazodone who committed homicide. The FDA redacted the type of place he entered, as well as whom or what he shot, but did reveal that the subject ultimately shot himself.  Only the report cited a BMJ article  entitled “FDA to review ‘missing’ drug company documents,” which contained the following passage:

The documents received by the BMJ reportedly went missing during the 1994 Wesbecker case that grew out of a lawsuit filed on behalf of victims of a work-place shooting in 1989. Joseph Wesbecker, armed with an AK-47, shot eight people dead and wounded another 12. He then shot and killed himself. Mr Wesbecker, who had a long history of depression, had been placed on fluoxetine one month before the shootings.

This is a well-known case, dating back to 1989, which has been the subject of a book, The Power to Harm, by John Cornwall. The survivors and relatives of the dead sued Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of Prozac. The jury ruled in favor of Eli Lilly, which–as this was the first such case to be tried in court over whether an SSRI could stir homicidal actions–proved to be a boon to the company. Its drug had been cleared, and Lilly’s stock price soared. However, as Cornwall later revealed, Eli Lilly had made a secret deal with the plaintiffs during the trial, paying them a huge sum of money to deliberately lose the case.

So here it is twenty-five years later, and the FDA, in its case report of this fluoxetine-related homicide, which was the subject of a book, redacted some of the pertinent information. And this leads to the obvious question: has the FDA attempted to hide, from the public, links between psychotropic medications and mass shootings? More on that subject in a future post.

Now the FDA Wants Some Case Reports Back

Besides antidepressants and homicide, the three preceding FAERS reports and many others like them share two additional commonalities: 1) The cases were widely publicized in news and scholarly publications; and 2) The FDA now wants the versions that spilled some of the narrative details back from me. Much like the FDA removed the evidence of a 3-month-old girl murdered by a ten-year-old on Vyvanse from its Vyvanse pediatric safety review, the FDA, in its efforts to get these documents back, apparently wants to conceal the details about other homicides linked to psychotropics.

It is doubtful that the legislators who passed the Freedom of Information Act intended for government redactors to be censoring media reports and scholarly publications.

Last week, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen also sued the FDA, alleging the agency has arbitrarily and capriciously redacted public information from the curricula vitae of advisory committee members, thus obscuring their ties to pharmaceutical companies. It seems as though the FDA views the redaction process as thwarting the intentions of the FOIA act, and keeping secret information that might damage commercial interests.

I’ll end with a prediction: more homicidal ideation warnings are coming to psychotropic drug labels. Pharmaceutical companies will need to protect themselves from failure-to-warn lawsuits, and the FDA will no longer stand in their way from doing so, like when they wouldn’t allow Wyeth to place a suicidal ideation warning on Effexor. Tellingly, a homicidal ideation warning was also added to the Effexor label in the premarketing evaluation adverse events section, i.e.,  the company received reports of homicidal ideation before the drug was even approved.

More reports linking psychotropic drugs to homicides can be found here.

55 COMMENTS

  1. Definitely some of the most important research to be publicized by MIA this year.

    hundreds of pages were completely redacted, while many hundreds more were heavily redacted

    This is business as usual, especially for people have been under surveillance who request their FOIA records.

    It looks like the dam may be about to break. I look forward to the followup regarding mass shootings. Thanks for doing this work. It borders on heroic.

    Report comment

    • “Definitely some of the most important research to be publicized by MIA this year.”

      I’d actually disagree – I’d say it is potentially some of the most important research to be publicized by MIA this DECADE.

      That the FDA has knowingly approved such dangerous substances and/or actively and knowingly concealed the truth about them once they found out…and there is physical evidence…. is momentous.

      It has already been shown that the drugs are, for the most part, ineffective, but now they are being shown to cause murder.

      People were KNOWN to have committed murder as a result of taking the drugs and no-one was warned – and in the US they were likely advertised direct to the public. Cripey.

      Report comment

  2. I could type a long string of hateful words to describe what I think of the practice of child drugging,

    I was addicted to Adderal and Dexadrine for years, the high is awesome but if you don’t take it in the morning your such a depressed slug you can hardly move.

    And that new crap Vyvance, that delivery system is flawed, peak high hits and its almost too much and the only thing long lasting is the anxiety I can’t eat crash. The crooked trials say its “effective” for like 12 hours only cause it showed up in blood tests for 12 hours at a level know to alter the mind.

    The child drugging debate should be over and the practice should be outlawed. If I worked at 7-11 I could be arrested for selling a beer to a 20 year old but these “doctors” are handing out high powered Amphetamines in our elementary schools.

    Report comment

  3. Trying to get the records back in an effort to hide is about as brilliant, no, less brilliant in the effort to obfuscate them in the first place. Apparently the FDA has never heard of copiers, unless the records will self-destruct if scanned.

    Report comment

  4. I know how the FDA works, and even I find this disturbing! This is not negligence or minimization, this is overt and intentional suppression of knowledge that they already have. This should be a scandal of monumental proportions. Any way to get 20/20 or 60 minutes interested? You’ve done all the research – they have their story and just have to tell it.

    Thanks for all the research. This is INCREDIBLY valuable!

    —- Steve

    Report comment

  5. This seems to be a common practice across the board.
    I am reminded of how hard it was to get info on gabapentin trials after my son had an anaphylactic reaction to it. Death was not listed as a side effect because the percentage of people that died was .98%. Of course the deaths of the people that occurred before 30 days were not included. No statistics for drop outs of under 31 days were. Now I can’t find the info anywhere.
    At least the V.A. stopped prescribing it as a mood stabilizer for my husband, a use that was eventual flagged by a whistle-blower.

    Report comment

  6. Thank you so much. My son was Asperger/Autistic. Between the ages of 4 and 11 he was raised by his father. At 4 he was put on ADHD medications. At 11 I was able to get him back. I got him off the medications. At 16 he was taken again and I did not see him till he was 19. He was on 5 medications for pshchyatric disorders. He had threatened to burn down his parents house. They begged me to take him. He is 26 now. On no medication and the most loving, kind, compassionate person youw ould ever want to know,
    . Everyone who encounters him are always remarking what a wonderful cheerful person he is. Please continue to expose this terrible injustice thrust upon children. My son could have been a statistic. After a year of being detoxed my son explained his anger like this ” it was like I was so angry but I couldn’t express it because I was like a zombie”. So when it got to the point I could not take the abuse any more I just couldn’t stop how angry I was.” I truly believe the many years my son was drugged deterred his growth. I see him maturing now. Since getting off all medications he is a happy healthy individual. Please continue to fight for those who have no voice.

    Report comment

  7. Absolutely FANTASTIC!!! Well done! I hope people are aware that Shire Pharmaceuticals had a new mental disorder added to DSM in 2014, called “binge eating disorder”, four months later it applied to have vyvanse passed by FDA to treat this disorder, the FDA fast tracked it, ie no testing AT ALL, as it was the only drug to treat this new “disorder””. Illegal to market diet drugs. Then set up all the on line charities, and lots of stuff in womens mags, and an old down an out ex tennis player, became the face of Vyvanse, and apparently had suffered this disorder for life? Well odd, as it only got invented in 2014. Now it makes sense, if it gets banned because it causes children to murder other children, well lets market it to obese women, who have no idea, they are taking a psych drug. As for Brian his page http://antidepaware.co.uk/homicides/ is fantastic. On a personal note, while in a mental institution (bad reaction to valium) and so many near deaths, and drugs, by week three, I actually had my baby in mother and baby ward, Graylands Mental Hospital Perth. I have never, ever been suicidal nor homicidal, yet that moment, I had my baby, three months old in the bath with me, and I could see was me pushing his face under the water……….. blaming him, for what? a horrific drug addled mental health system, and my horror reaction to valium? He is 21 now, I am so glad I still had an ounce of real brain left.

    Report comment

  8. I suggest a title change, FDA is hiding reports linking prescription drugs to homicides. I have had negative things from friends, as soon as they see psych drugs, they back off. These pills are prescribed to stop smoking, or as diet pills, most people do not know they are psych drugs.

    Report comment

  9. They asked for the documents back? Wow.

    After releasing documents to me demonstrating that I had been drugged with benzos and kidnapped by a Community Nurse the hospital after a ‘formal investigation” wanted some of their documents back too. But they and the police weren’t so nice about it and weren’t prepared to ask but take. In the belief that they had retrieved the documents they then sent a set of fraudulent documents (authorised by the Clinical Director) to lawyers.
    Thing is in my State turning up at a police station with proof of such crimes means mental health are called because your “hallucinating” (referral failed because MHS had seen the proof), that you can be arrested for having the documents, and well we will find something to charge you with.

    So I’m impressed that they would be so nice as to ask. I got chased half way around the State by police to get documents back so they could change a legal narrative and turn a victim of crimes into a paranoid delusional in need of ‘treatment’.

    Good luck with your research Andrew.

    Report comment

    • New definition of “hallucination:” instead of “Seeing things that aren’t there,” it is now redefined as “Seeing things you’re not supposed to have seen and talking about it.”

      Way to stand up and speak truth to power!

      —- Steve

      Report comment

      • New definition of “formal investigation”.

        As an ex public officer I have done these types of investigations. I had one situation where as a result of an old toilet pan I had 12 people inside a toilet block (OSH, union rep. managers, facilities officers, complainant, etc) and approx. 120 documents resulting from that investigation and outcome.
        As a result of my complaint about being unlawfully deprived of my liberty and kidnapped? Formal investigation resulting in 1 document which consisted of a letter stating that they found the Community Nurse had a duty (and no answer to the question as to whether that duty had been performed).
        Formal investigation is code for finding out how to conceal the evidence of any criminal activity, and releasing information given in good faith to slander the victim of said criminal activity.
        These people are not worthy of the trust placed in them.

        Report comment

        • Goffman wrote a short paper entitled “On cooling the Mark” in which he explained that the street hustler used poise and the white collar criminal position.
          Interesting that in these types of situations the offer of a formal investigation is used as bait to lure the victim into a false belief that something may be done. They document nothing, and identify witnesses who require silencing through intimidation and threats.
          Police refuse to examine the proof of the crimes on the grounds that Doc says the person is a ‘nutjob’, and the victim is then handed back to the criminals to be treated in the manner of Garth Daniels under the guise of ‘medicine’.

          Report comment

  10. The fraud and crimes being perpetrated against humanity by today’s psycho / pharmaceutical industries, with the help of our own government officials, is almost unbelievable once one starts researching into it, isn’t it, Andrew? Definitely, we are living in the times, which Thomas Jefferson forewarned us about:

    “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered…. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

    And the pharmaceutical corporations should be broken up, as should all the oligopolistic industries, and we should bring back an actual competitive market system.

    Thanks for sharing your research, Andrew. I hope your child is doing well now. After doing about ten years of research into the psycho / pharmaceutical industries, I decided to have lunch with a pastor who heads up the local child drugging / “pastoral care” center, since I’m appalled and disgusted at the mass drugging of the children in this country. I gave him a copy of “Anatomy.” And also pointed out that the “bipolar” drug cocktails, particularly combining the antidepressants and antipsychotics, are medically known to create “psychosis,” not via “bipolar,” but via anticholinergic toxidrome. And I pointed out that the neuroleptics alone can create the negative symptoms of “schizophrenia,” via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome, and the positive symptom of “schizophrenia,” via neuroleptic induced anticholinergic intoxication syndrome. The DSM is a “bible” describing the illnesses created with the psychiatric drugs, IMHO.

    I know the pastor was embarrassed by the end of the conversation, he quickly paid for lunch, and ran away. I hope pointing out the truth to him will assist in reducing the drugging of children in my area, but I do not know. It’s all so heart breaking to me. Thanks again for sharing your research. I, too, am “an extremely curious, inconvenient parent.” But when we’re living in a time when school social workers think a polite, well behaved child needs psychiatric drugs, merely because he surprised the school social worker by getting 100% on his state standardized tests, we’re living in a sick society.

    Report comment

  11. Huge kudos to the author. Horrifying. I made my kids read it and we discussed it. One son receives pro-pharma propaganda at high school, and one son had coincidentally just read a glowing piece about the FDA in his science workbook.

    Also for anyone interested, FDA ex-commissioner David Kessler has written a self-serving, golly-gee Op-Ed about opioids in the New York Times today: http://nyti.ms/1TwIiwP

    Liz Sydney

    Report comment

  12. WOW! This is stunning as it is appalling! THANK YOU for uncovering this astonishing coverup and the race is surely on now on how to neutralize this bombshell. Dont let them!

    However there is also a race on whose truth gets to be the accepted truth as right now there is a massive push by psychiatry to blame the “mental disease” that the person is “suffering” from as the reason patients become violent and potentially murderous, not the drugs. From my perspective psychiatry has been succeeding quite well in convincing the public that there is a connection, so this massive FDA coverup could put a huge chink in that psychiatric lie!

    We (thats all of us!) must not let this coverup which Andrew uncovered get covered up!!

    Report comment

  13. Thanks! This is something we patients with lived experience who have felt the effect of these drugs inside our bodies already knew and have been TRYING to tell people. We shouldn’t need facts and figures to back up our lived experience. Unfortunately, we aren’t taken seriously, for the most part, nor even listened to. We are told we are sick, disgruntled, or “lacking insight.” But shouldn’t our word should stand on its own? Still, to be backed by data of actual FDA cover-up, which we’ve suspected all along, is priceless. I sit here knowing I have one more link to send to anyone who is asking me if we can trust the FDA and psychiatry as a whole.

    You guys know I google eating disorders frequently and am always reading articles and anything I can find. This means ads pop up now and then. The other day, I saw an ad saying, “Click here for an answer to binge eating.” Then, the ad flashed Vyvanse. Wow, so they’re giving THAT now? It seems that they give these drugs out at random, any drug for any problem, rather willy-nilly. Just put the red pills on the red squares and make it easy. What’s next? Tag mental patients to make us easier to round up (how about chipped insurance cards promising benzo coverage?), put us in a ghetto, and give us all Kool Aid.

    Report comment

    • I heard last year that there was a county in California that proposed making everyone who’d received “services” from the “mental health” system carry a card identifying them as a “mental patient”. This is why I’m trying to disappear from the system as much as possible. I was ordered to go to the community mental health clinic when I was released from the “hospital” but I said that I had to find a job and never went. I worry about my friends who trust the system and go to the clinic every time that they’re ordered to do so by their quack psychiatrists.

      Report comment

  14. Be sure to check out this research done a few years ago – Prescription Drugs Associated with Reports of Violence Towards Others – the link provides a number of drugs associated with high levels of violence – By Thomas J. Moore , Joseph Glenmullen, Curt D. Furberg, Published: December 15, 2010
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0015337
    (excerpts)
    Abstract
    Context
    Violence towards others is a seldom-studied adverse drug event and an atypical one because the risk of injury extends to others.
    Objective
    To identify the primary suspects in adverse drug event reports describing thoughts or acts of violence towards others, and assess the strength of the association.
    Methodology
    From the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) data, we extracted all serious adverse event reports for drugs with 200 or more cases received from 2004 through September 2009. We identified any case report indicating homicide, homicidal ideation, physical assault, physical abuse or violence related symptoms.
    Main Outcome Measures
    Disproportionality in reporting was defined as a) 5 or more violence case reports, b) at least twice the number of reports expected given the volume of overall reports for that drug, c) a χ2 statistic indicating the violence cases were unlikely to have occurred by chance (p<0.01).
    Results
    We identified 1527 cases of violence disproportionally reported for 31 drugs. Primary suspect drugs included varenicline (an aid to smoking cessation), 11 antidepressants, 6 sedative/hypnotics and 3 drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The evidence of an association was weaker and mixed for antipsychotic drugs and absent for all but 1 anticonvulsant/mood stabilizer. Two or fewer violence cases were reported for 435/484 (84.7%) of all evaluable drugs suggesting that an association with this adverse event is unlikely for these drugs.
    Conclusions
    Acts of violence towards others are a genuine and serious adverse drug event associated with a relatively small group of drugs. Varenicline, which increases the availability of dopamine, and antidepressants with serotonergic effects were the most strongly and consistently implicated drugs. Prospective studies to evaluate systematically this side effect are needed to establish the incidence, confirm differences among drugs and identify additional common features.

    Report comment

  15. As a trained journalist (back in the 80’s when “mainstream” journalism still seemed to have a few honest, respectable reporters), I appreciated this well-written, engaging article. As the mother of a teenager whose torture and death was caused by legally prescribed poison, it makes me livid to realize the extent our government will go to put profits before people. This article highlights the real terrorism threat to U.S. citizens. The perpetrators are largely domestic. They wear suits and carry briefcases, not backpacks. Instead of writing individual manifestos, they systemically suppress information to cause harm. And their random beheadings of innocent people require no sharp knives, just chemicals that seldom leave a trail…

    I hope one day Americans will understand we don’t need to look far to see a government’s weapons of mass destruction.

    Report comment

      • Thanks for your condolences, Olga. By adeptly sharing our personal “stories,” we can shine a spotlight on these well-worn, but systemically hidden trails.

        I appreciate Mad in America for chipping away the thin layers of government and corporate deceit. Erosion takes time, but just as Mother Nature is a powerful force, so, too, are devoted moms.

        Report comment

  16. Stephen Gilbert, you mentioned card-carrying for mental patients. This is already happening for Massachusetts. It’s called the OneCard. I tried to tell my so-called friends, but they claimed I was “delusional and paranoid.” I’m not. This is how it works. MA combined Medicaid and Medicare Parts B, C, and D. into one card. They told patients the card was optional, but they said that you HAD to have this “service” in order to get the drugs Klonopin, Xanax, etc and other controlled drugs such as Oxy and Percoset. So they all enrolled. One, two, three. Now right on the card are these pharmacy bin numbers. Each bin number you can easily look up. This didn’t take rocket science on my part to figure out. These aren’t state-specific, they are universal nationwide, so these number are uniformly used in pharmacies as codes. What do they mean? Well, they are indicators of WHY YOU GOT ON DISABILITY in the first place, way back when!!!!! So if you were a druggie, some 20 years ago, or an ex-heroin addict, or an ex-con, or schiz….All this is right there on the card. Yep suckers, they’re hooked on the benzos and they’re card-carrying mental patients, too! Now, all they’ve got to do is wait till they’re rounded up and put into the camps, then….the showers….. That should be easy to do, given all the pills they’re on.

    Report comment

  17. Andrew- Yes, it’s as bad as you know, and WORSE. If I wasn’t 20+ years off psych drugs, i’D be more hesitant to write this…. Thank God I never actually attacked any persons, but yes, psych drugs made me violent. I destroyed my share of property, and was truly suicidal, BECAUSE of the DRUGS THEY GAVE ME. You’ll find a lot of support here. It still goes on….
    For years now, the local “system” has done everything it can, to paint me as a “crazy, dangerous person”. It’s very disheartening. There are 2 words that we all need to do a better job linking.
    PSYCHIATRY = GENOCIDE
    PSYCHIATRY = GENOCIDE
    Let everybody know….
    Thank-you, Andrew

    Report comment

  18. What a pile of sensationalistic bullshit…what’s the homicide risk for the mentally ill who AREN’T on medications? My schizophrenic cousin attacked my aunt out of the blue and almost killed her. He has since been medicated and does very well in society. Save your punditry for someone looking to lie to themselves…that’s your target audience.

    I also note the lack of the title “Doctor” before your given and surname…this isn’t surprising.

    Report comment

    • The fact that you can share one anecdote that contradicts the author’s premise, without us even knowing the actual case details, has zero value in answering the question at hand. The author is collecting data, not anecdotes, and when that much data is assembled, it tells a story. It appears that there are some people who are made manic or even homicidal by these drugs, even if it doesn’t happen to most people. Let’s say it happens to one in 200, or one in 500 – does that not still merit concern? Should people not be informed about this? And why is the FDA, who is supposed to be sharing this information, trying to keep it under wraps? Doesn’t tha bother you at all?

      As to the title of “Doctor,” remember that Doctors brought us insulin coma therapy, frontal lobotomies, thalidomide, a 20-year or longer suppression of nursing, 4-hour feeding schedules, the Juvenile Bipolar Disorder hoax, telling us not to pick up our crying little babies for fear of spoiling, lying about the addictive properties of Benzedrine, and later Valium – I could go on. Having an MD after one’s name does not prevent one from being corrupted by big money.

      —- Steve

      Report comment

    • One anecdote about a violent psychotic cousin off drugs proves absolutely nothing. It’s good that they stopped hurting others, but so what if one single person got on drugs and stopped being violent?

      If you are going to make an argument, bring actual scientific evidence to make that argument. Where is your data about the homicide risk of people who aren’t on drugs?

      Comparisons between behavior of people on and off meds been made in dozens of other articles on this site.

      Lacking the title Doctor before your surname could be considered an asset, since it means a person is less likely to be beset by conflicts of interest such as payments from drug companies.

      And perhaps you don’t know that schizophrenia is no longer considered a valid diagnosis by many:

      https://www.schizofreniebestaatniet.nl/english/

      http://www.arafmi.org/2015/03/dutch-experts-say-schizophrenia-does-not-exist-but-psychosis-does-and-is-very-treatable/

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/schizophrenia-reclassification_us_56b20834e4b01d80b2449334

      Psychotic states are real, and these people can be violent (although, not much more than most people at a group level), but there is no one unitary schizophrenia out there.

      Report comment

      • Dear Candreae,

        I assure you, my daughter’s fatal reaction to unnecessarily prescribed psychotropic drugs was not, to borrow your phrase, “sensationalistic bullshit.” Neither were her documented adverse drug reactions to include loss of balance and memory, coughing up blood, extreme sensitivity to light, skin crawling, and, after the misguided doctor doubled the dose, psychosis and death. I wish very much this wasn’t the truth. But such adverse drug reactions are supported by continuous data. If corpses could talk, you’d hear similar experiences of thousands of others–experiences that vividly bring data to life.

        Should you desire “sensationalistic bullshit,” perhaps spend a few hours reading pharmaceutical advertisements and glossy pamphlets, the info many doctors rely on to “treat” their customers. Then compare this info to data as reported by thousands of people who actually consumed the product. Doing so requires dedication, intellectual curiosity, and the skills to identify and decipher data. Should you have such interest and/or abilities, I sincerely wish you all the best on your research.

        Report comment

    • Sounds like you’ve drank the Kool-Aid and are a true believer. I must watch hundreds of people every day out of my office window whose lives are being destroyed by the wonderful toxic drugs that you so wonderfully defend. And they have no choice in taking them and are not given any kind of informed consent. Why do you even come to MIA if you don’t like what you read here? Oh yes, I also watched my grandmother destroyed by shock treatments and the damned so-called “antipsychotics”. the psychiatrists destroyed a vibrant and talented woman so that they could call themselves “real doctors”.

      Report comment

  19. Hmmm….I’m off drugs and I haven’t killed anyone. As a matter of fact, I’m healthier now than when I saw MD’s. Measurably so. My kidney levels got higher.

    Ah, I’d say it was a carrot a day keeps the doc away. But often, I give them to my dog. I cheat. Shh….

    Report comment

    • Well, Julie, OBVIOUSLY, you must have been misdiagnosed. The drugs don’t do those things to people who NEED them. If you’d REALLY been sick, you’d have killed someone for sure by now. Although aren’t most of those ones killing people TAKING the drugs at the time they started killing people? I guess they were misdiagnosed, too…

      Way to get out and stay away from the trap. Too bad more people don’t know about “dangerous” folks like you who seem to magically improve once they stop being “helped” by their “treatment.”

      — Steve

      Report comment

      • Steve, I love hearing comments such as what you just said. I hope that over the past two years, living completely without Mental Health in my life I have made my point loud and clear. I have a few ex-friends who are STILL desperately looking for signs of any “illness” in me. Apparently they cannot accept me the way I am! So any time I show strong emotion, anything but generic “happy,” or any mention of human rights, or point out that maybe their doctors aren’t the gods, my ex-pals claim I’m paranoid and desperately “ill.” I do notice these brainwashed folks I used to hang with dislike reading, knowledge, and science, which they claim is exclusively the realm of their beloved “experts.”

        Sadly, one of the most hurtful things ever said to me recently was said to me by one such ex-friend. She told me I wasn’t an “expert.” I was so shocked to hear this. Thirty-four years of enduring first-hand experience with an eating disorder, mostly entirely alone and having no one to speak to about it, no one to confide in…And I am still alive! How many people with ED are still alive at 58? They don’t do research on older people with ED, not my age, since we’ve all died out!!!! I’m supposed to be dead. The simple fact that I am alive demonstrates that I possess plenty of expertise, more than enough to take care of myself and keep myself healthy and thriving. I sure do not need “doctors” running my life. That, in fact, would be a step back into the Dark Ages.

        To anyone out there: You Are the Expert on Your Own Experience. No therapist or doctor knows you better than you know yourself. You own yourself and you are your best and wisest guide.

        Report comment

  20. BTW, I attended a public showing-off of “successful” “mentally ill” people who had “made it” in life. These people publicly advertised just how terrible their “illnesses” had been prior to “treatment” and just how “wonderful” their lives were with “treatment.” I was saddened that almost all of the stories followed this one simple “Mental illness sucks but you can be better just like me if you get treatment” formula. I am saddened that for many of these speakers, in a few years, reality will sink in, which may including which may include waking up to damaged organs or not waking up at all. I was older than all of the speakers. I know, simply because of my age, that the mental health kiddie play date is time-limited. Suddenly, the party’s over.

    I looked around me. In the audience I saw a mom and her son. Clearly, the son was the psychiatry victim and the mom had brought him to show him “good” examples that perhaps he would see as inspiration. I thought, “Oh no, he’s going to see more of the same ole.” Now we all know how I knew he was the “ill” one and she was the mom. Was he violent? No. Was he acting weird? No. He sat there bouncing one leg up and down, a clear sign that he took antipsychotics. Most likely, I was guessing, Clozaril, because I thought I also saw excessive salivation and he was certainly overweight. I wanted to walk straight up to him and say, “Hey kid, I been there, too. When did you get out? Wanna hear something new?” But I didn’t.

    Report comment

  21. Julie Greene, that sounds like a NAMI meeting. Some people call it NAMI dearest because it is always an “adult child” who is sitting there all drugged and drooling with no job and no hope for the future.
    Yet the parent will defend the drugged state saying how much “better” the adult child is on drugs, even if they gain 100 pounds and just sleep and watch tv all day.
    They get disability, but it isn’t enough to be independent or live on their own. I believe these parents want the “child” to stay a child.
    These are the hardest people to crack with truth, having sold out to the Big Rx.
    As I say now, the farther I get from psychiatry the better I feel.

    Donate and support MIA

    Report comment

  22. I don’t believe this was NAMI-related, but academically-related. However, it’s possible that the project was in part pharma-funded. I am keeping mum on precisely what this project was. I know who did it and it is not a medical society nor mental health organization, but the particular project may have had Pharma roots. I’ll check, since there was mention of “next year we will do it again if we can get the money.” Where did this year’s big money come from? Clearly, the underlying message was there. And clearly, the selection of examples of what they wanted to put on display as “successful mentally ill” (these were chosen from the many who applied) appeared to be wealthy, not suffering side effects such as TD, and not one had an ending such as organ failure or broken family. Well, none were dead, either. Had they really portrayed “real people diagnosed with mental illness,” they would have had a relative of a dead person, which they could have done, since I heard one relative speak of her “mentally ill” husband, a psychosurgery victim. I was cringing over that one. Oh, BTW, I made my cringes very visible as I sat there in the audience. Couldn’t resist. ha ha.

    Report comment

  23. Thanks for doing the research and posting this Andrew. This is a real and frightening eye opener. I knew it didn’t take much for the FDA to approve a drug (only one or two positive test results) and that a drug didn’t even have to be proven effective. I had no idea that the FDA was covering up findings! Thanks again for posting.

    Report comment

  24. I was given Nortriptyline as a young woman. For the first week or two I was okay. Then, some unfathomable rage. I went off the Nortriptyline and the rage lessened but did not go away. I was still angry, brutally so. I flipped people off in traffic, lost my temper constantly. I think it is because something was knocked out of balance. Think of hitting the wheel of a car on a curb and knocking your car out of alignment. Just because you stop hitting curbs doesn’t mean your car goes back into alignment.

    I got better when I did macrobiotics and did a brown rice fast but if I go off the diet, the rage returns. Part of it is that the drug influences oxytocin, which is involved in the female menstrual cycle. Ever since I took the Nortriptyline, I have had an agonizing level of depression for the week before and during menstruation. I was suicidal for two weeks each month. Before I took the N. I never had problems with menstruation.

    The effects of this drug can be lifelong and do not necessarily go away just because you stop the drug. Something knocked out of balance does not automatically return to balance.

    Young women should not take Nortriptyline.

    Report comment

LEAVE A REPLY