In 1939, in the laboratories of Geigy pharmaceuticals, Paul Mueller discovered that DichloroDiphenylTrichlorethane ā DDT ā killed insects more effectively that anything else then available.
Robert Domenjoz, later the creator of imipramine, had the job ofĀ evaluating it. He did the testing on lice that was to make DDT one of the best-selling pharmaceuticals in the world. He asked the Salvation Army to bring him two of the paupers who slept there and he bought their shirts ā for their lice. He put the lice in small boxes which could be sealed with a sieve so that the lice could breathe. He attached the boxes to his arms so that they could live off his blood. Over weeks, they multiplied. When he had enough, they started testing DDT on them. It worked a treat.
Lice carried typhus, a disease which, since Napoleon, has killed more people during wars than wartime combat itself. Domenjoz headed straight to theĀ Swiss army, whichĀ started using it and then presented the results at the American embassy in Bern. When the Americans invaded Italy soon after, the troops were all sprayed with DDT and pretty soon everyone who was liberated from the Germans was liberated from lice also.
After the War was Over
After the war, it became common to spray the public in cinema queues and at football games across Europe and America, as the photo above shows. Mueller won the Nobel Prize in 1948. Domenjoz might have thought at the time he should have shared it.
As almost every ghostwritten article about all of the drugs in current use now says, DDT was very clearly “safe and effective.”
The use of DDT spread. The image most of us have now is of planes dusting crops with plumes trailing behind them.
Then, in the early 1960s, the wheels came off the bandwagon. By the time Rachel Carsonās Silent Spring was published, DDT was on the road to oblivion, with most of us thankful we had been saved from oblivion. DDT, it became clear, accumulated in the food chain, with small doses in some insects and crops ending up as larger doses in the predators living on them, and larger and lethal doses in the birds, fish and other mammals living on them ā or in their eggs or milk.
And larger doses in us.
We had learnt that the acute effects of a drug given in a particular way might be dramatically different fromĀ the effect that came with chronic exposure or from unexpected routes of administration.
Wasnāt this what we learnt?
Geek Tragedy
Controlled trials (RCTs) are all about establishing the acute effects of a drug given in a standardized way, by drug companies who hope the verdict will be that their chemical is safe and effective, so that they can head out and put it in the drinking water (metaphorically). People will end up on these chemicals chronically and they will be mixed with lots of other chemicals in ways never imagined when the drug was first tested.
The result is biphosphonate drugs marketed to reduce the risk of fractures, but which increase the risk of serious fractures. Antidepressants marketed to reduce suicide risk, alcoholism, substance misuse, marriage breakdown, etc., which increase the risk of all these things, as well as causing Autistic Spectrum Disorder and birth defects. Statins marketed to reduce risks linked to diabetes which increase rates of diabetes, and to reduce the cognitive problems stemming from strokes but cause cognitive problems in their own right. RCTs miss all of these things ā and when they donāt miss them, as in the case of the antidepressants and suicide, the data is fudged, sometimes fraudulently.
Far from recognizing the role of RCTs in producing a new Silent Spring, RCT enthusiasts are spreading the word that we need more of them. No one should be on a treatment who isnāt in an RCT. This is the script for a Geek Tragedy.
RCTs do more than miss the long term injuries a drug might do us. They get used to building standards of care to which doctors are obliged to adhere. Anyone who figures it might not be wise to add a sixth drug into the mix a person is on, or that thinks that maybe adolescent crises are not something that need medicating, will find themselves up against these standards of care facing managers who say, “Who are you to go against the Standard of Care? Sorry, we have to let you go.”
Part of the tragedy is that we would, in fact, save vast amounts of money by giving the pharmaceutical companies ten times the inflated prices they currently receive for drugs as part of a bargain that ensures that only 10% of those currently taking lipid-lowering drugs, antidepressants, biphosphonate and other drugs, end up on them ā and perhaps slightly higher proportions for hypoglycemic drugs, antihypertensives and antibiotics. The savings would come from shutting down osteoporosis screening services. From the savings on not having to treat treatment-induced disabilities. From elective patients (patients on cancer chemotherapy) not having their bed blocked by an antidepressant induced suicide attempt or biphosphonate triggered fracture of the femur, or a hypoglycemic episode (the biggest cause of brain damage) triggered by the use of extra hypogylcemic drugs being used to lower blood sugars elevated by the use of Statins that current standards of care mandate in diabetes.
Thankfully, most of usĀ wonāt get tangled up in these elements of the tragedy ā the final scenes where, as in King Lear, the corpses are strewn around the stage. For most of us the ending will be more like the ending of a play by Samuel Beckett āĀ The Algorithm will See You Now.
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Editor’s Note: This blog first appeared on David Healy’s website.
Thanks, David
The real tragedy is that when long term studies come out that do show the deleterious effects of drugs compared to placebo, they are ignored by both the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession. For example the outstanding work of Martin Harrow, see: http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/5/962.full#sec-6
Thank you
Rick Fearn
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They’re trying to keep their patients from taking dangerous niacinamide- dangerous because pharmaceutical companies won’t make any money and because patients can stay on it and its cousin niacin for years, ignoring new profit-making drugs. Niacin is even more dangerous, because it normalizes your cholesterol, depriving companies of even more revenue from cholesterol-lowering agents. After all, isn’t medicine supposed to be around to provide money for providers and manufacturers? Certainly you should be willing to sacrifice your health and well-being to help the economy.
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Nikola Tesla said, āIf you wish you understand the Universe, think of energy, frequency, and vibration.ā
Reading this article, Iād say what is mirrored here is a world reflecting the energy of extreme chaos at the frequency of sinister sabotage of humanity, and, as highlighted even in the title, vibrating at, and therefore creating, tragedy. What a mess of a world, is all I can say. And it has been for way too long.
Good place for another quote, here, by Albert Einstein, āA new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.ā
From Shakespeare to Beckett to….? Can’t wait to find out.
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I was administered a medication from a small bottle. It was a pink and treacly liquid. I remember the day the GP suggested it and the day he said to discontinue it. I was told it was for bed-wetting but the bed-wetting continued regardless. Every single night before bed. One sometimes two small plastic spoonfuls. Can’t pin down the ages but it went on I believe for a number of years during pre-adolescence. A pleasant tang on the tongue but it was quickly down the hatch as it soon turned bitter.
What was it? There are big gaps in my medical records. Haven’t a clue. There are conspiracy theorists in the UK that claim there were covert experiments going on throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s on children (particularly working class children), as part of this country’s contributions to the MKULTRA programme. Which remain to this day largely obfuscated, buried, ignored.
It doesn’t seem plausible or possible, which is why I don’t dismiss it outright.
Covert drug experiments (and in recent decades, overt drug experiments) have been a feature of the status quo for so long, it would now be more peculiar for it not to happen.
Life is so absurd, so often shrouded in multiple layers of deception and bullshit, that to point to the Truth is a seditious act — or an opportunity to accuse someone of paranoia.
Maybe I was being treated as a child with schizophrenia. It did happen back then. Just not so often and not so openly as now.
My apologies to David Healy for the self-indulgence. The road to medicated wellness is truly paved in absurdity.
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Scary, but informative! People should send this article to their psychiatrists – and anyone else who believes that psychiatrists want to or *can* set limits on their power to “treat” their patients to a date with the grim reaper.
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