The Cochrane Collaboration Has Failed Us All

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I remember well when I first met Peter Gøtzsche. I was giving a talk in Copenhagen related to my book Anatomy of an Epidemic, in 2012, and during the question-and-answer period, a tall man stood up and spoke about wanting to further investigate this question of the long-term effects of psychiatric drugs. He then introduced himself, and I left that night feeling pleased about what had just occurred.

Peter Gøtzsche, the director of the Nordic Cochrane Center—and one of about 80 scientists who had founded the Cochrane Collaboration—was going to take a closer look at the “evidence base” for psychiatric drugs. This was precisely what I had hoped would happen when I wrote Anatomy of an Epidemic. In that book, I had set forth the argument that a thorough review of the research literature, which was composed of “evidence” of many types, led to a conclusion that psychiatric drugs, on the whole, worsened long-term outcomes, and this was true even for schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

That was a controversial idea, and now here was a researcher, known for his skill and expertise in conducting systematic reviews of medical therapies, promising to turn his attention to this very topic. Perhaps he would find reason to dispute the conclusion I had drawn, but at least he had found the question worthy of his time.

In 2013, Gøtzsche published his book Deadly Medicine and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare. Part of this book focused on the corruption of psychiatry by big pharma, and in a concluding chapter, he wrote this about psychiatric medications:

“I know some excellent psychiatrists who help their patients a lot . . . I also know that some drugs can be helpful sometimes for some patients, and I am not antipsychiatry in any way. But 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.”

I felt vindicated by that statement, but more to the point, it made for a moment of hope. Now that Gøtzsche had come to this conclusion, it was certain to bring greater societal attention to this question of the long-term effects of psychiatric drugs, and how current use of these drugs has impacted public health at a societal level.

I also appreciated the nuances in his statement. He knew some excellent psychiatrists; he knew that the drugs can be helpful for some patients; and the conclusion he had come to made him “uncomfortable.” And his statement was not actually about whether the drugs were good or bad, but rather that doctors did not know how to properly use them, and that this improper use, at a societal level, “creates more harm than good.”

Since that time, I have spoken at conferences organized by Gøtzsche, and our paths have often crossed at conferences where we were both invited to speak. He often writes on Mad in America, and we are both on the board of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal. As such, I knew that for the past few years he had increasingly run into difficulties with some members of the leadership of the Cochrane Collaboration, and during the past year, he had often complained that the leadership was seeking to boot him from the organization. But I never thought that would actually happen.

The reason for my confidence that he would survive this turmoil was that the Cochrane Collaboration had a reputation for publishing systematic reviews that challenged conventional wisdom and practices. That was an organizational point of pride that would, I thought, ultimately make it protective of Gøtzsche. And when, in early 2017, he was elected to the collaboration’s governing board with the most votes of any candidate, I figured that he had the necessary political capital to survive whatever fight he may have been having with Cochrane CEO Mark Wilson and other organizational leaders.

But now that Gøtzsche has been “expelled” from the collaboration, removed from the governing board by a 6-5 vote, and ousted as a contributing member of the organization, I am slapping the side of my head, and wondering why I ever thought it would be otherwise. In his public statements about psychiatric practices and its treatments, Gøtzsche had publicly donned the cloth of the heretic, and there is a long history, at least in this discipline of psychiatry, of heretics being booted from the tribe, or at least sent out to pasture. Loren Mosher, Peter Breggin, and David Healy are some of the more familiar names that tell of such banishment.

The specific reason put forth by the Cochrane leadership is that its expulsion of Peter resulted from complaints about his “behavior.” Peter is a strong personality, and I am sure he can rub some colleagues the wrong way, which I suppose gets collected into a complaint about his “behavior.” Yet, irritating his colleagues is not an offense that, under Cochrane rules, could get him expelled, and thus the official complaint by the Cochrane leadership is that Gøtzsche, in his public statements, had repeatedly failed to make it clear that his opinions were his own, and not the opinions of the Cochrane Collaboration.

Gøtzsche, as he has mounted his response, is not claiming that he was ousted because of his views about psychiatry. He is attributing his ouster to his criticisms of Cochrane CEO Mark Wilson and other leadership for the moral failure of their “business model” and the ties of many Cochrane reviewers to the pharmaceutical industry. However, if you read the report of the “independent person” appointed by the Cochrane collaboration to investigate this conflict, it’s clear that the complaints about Gøtzsche’s “behavior” were very much tied to his vocal criticisms of psychiatry. The Cochrane leadership wanted to distance itself from his criticisms, and, in essence, make it publicly known that it didn’t agree with him.

At least from this perspective, Gøtzsche’s ouster is a betrayal of what might be called the scientific enterprise, which is a collective social good. The Cochrane Collaboration, by failing to resolve this dispute in some other way, failed in its mission to serve as a collaboration of scientists that would, in their reviews, dare to challenge conventional medical wisdom. In order to stay true to that mission, the Collaboration needed to be protective of “heretics” in its midst.

The Cochrane Legal Review

The Cochrane Collaboration hired Thomas Grant to conduct a “formal legal review” of the complaints made against Gøtzsche, and to also review Gøtzsche’s complaint against the Cochrane CEO Mark Wilson. Grant completed his “preliminary report” on September 12, 2018.

Here is how Grant describes Gøtzsche’s work as a scientist:

“It is clear that Peter Gøtzsche is an academic of very considerable eminence who has published widely. He is known for the vigorous espousal of views which some might describe as controversial. (I do not mean this in any way pejoratively.) I do not believe that the sincerity of his views and the rigour and quality of his academic work is in issue.”

This is a critical point: The expulsion had nothing to do with Gøtzsche’s work as a scientist. The reviewer, in his report, praises Gøtzsche for the “rigour and quality of his academic work,” and as an “academic of very considerable eminence.” This is to say that his scientific work is of the very kind that burnishes the image of the Cochrane Collaboration as a first-rate scientific organization.

Grant states that the first time there was a complaint against Gøtzsche was in 2003 (ten years after Gøtzsche, along with 80 others, founded the Cochrane Collaboration). That complaint arose because he had published several papers critical of the quality of some Cochrane reviews, and while doing so, he had listed the Nordic Cochrane Center as “his professional address,” which, for some reason that isn’t made clear in the report, was deemed improper.

Thus, this first complaint arose because of Gøtzsche’s criticism of Cochrane itself, which ruffled some feathers. Moreover, the specific nature of the complaint posed an obvious Catch 22 dilemma for Gøtzsche. He had founded the Nordic Cochrane Center, and was its director. That was in fact his “professional address.” So if he wasn’t supposed to list this position when he published research articles and spoke to the public, what position could he give? Peter Gøtzsche, gadfly?

The next “behavioral” problem listed by Grant is the “2014 Book issue.” In a letter to Gøtzsche, Wilson and other Cochrane leaders complained that in his book Deadly Medicine and in a subsequent video, he had “appeared to advocate that every patient taking psychotropic medication should stop taking their psychotropic medication and that they would be healthier if they ceased to take the medicine.”

“You are aware this is a highly charged and sensitive issue,” Wilson and the others wrote. “We have had representations from individuals and organizations asking whether Cochrane supports your views on this matter.” They added that while Gøtzsche was free to express his opinions, in the future he needed to make it clear that “his personal views were not presented in any way such that they could be perceived to represent the Cochrane view.”

Here is what we can see at this moment: In his first twenty years with Cochrane, there were two times that complaints were made against Gøtzsche regarding his use of his professional title, and each time it was after he published criticisms that upset people within the organization. There apparently had never been an issue of his using his professional title, as director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, when his comments weren’t upsetting others within the organization.

After that book-related warning, Gøtzsche continued to speak critically of psychiatry, and the feud continued to escalate. On one occasion, the Cochrane leadership publicly declared that Gøtzsche’s views were his own and not those of the Cochrane group, a declaration that Gøtzsche rightly understood to be an attack on his credibility, raising the rancor another notch. Finally, in a letter dated June 9, 2015, CEO Wilson and others told Gøtzsche that he was “not to use his title of ‘Director, Nordic Cochrane Centre,’ unless speaking or writing directly about Cochrane projects.”

The “violation of rules” excuse for expelling Gøtzsche had been set. In his review, Grant cites a number of times that the Cochrane leadership was upset by Gøtzsche’s public comments about psychiatry that were made while he was using his title of Director of the Nordic Cochrane Center. To wit:

  • In January 2014, he wrote an article in a Danish newspaper, Politiken, about the “Ten Myths About Psychiatric Drugs,” which angered Danish psychiatrists and health professionals.
  • In a “Maudsley” debate in London over whether psychiatric drugs did more harm than good, Gøtzsche argued that, based on his review of mortality data, psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death; and that societies would have a “healthier and more long-lived population” if they only used 2% of the psychiatric drugs they currently used.
  • In September 2015, in conjunction with the publication of his new book, Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial, Gøtzsche published an article in the Mail Online that, according to the headline, told of how “side-effects of drugs taken for insomnia and anxiety kill thousands.”

The most “recent issue” related to psychiatry, Grant wrote, was a complaint from E. Fuller Torrey. Gøtzsche had written to Torrey requesting information about deaths in the Norwegian TIPS study, which had been funded in part by the Stanley Medical Research Institute, where Torrey is associate director of research, and Torrey responded by filing a formal complaint against Gøtzsche. Torrey stated that Gøtzsche had presented himself as a “Protector for the Hearing Voices Network in Denmark,” an organization that—according to Torrey—promoted numerous false beliefs. As a result of Gøtzsche’s relationship with this organization, Torrey wrote, “I would personally not find any Cochrane publication on mental illness to be credible.”

Finally, in his report, Grant noted that Gøtzsche had written a letter of complaint, on Cochrane Nordic letterhead, to the European Medicines Agency regarding its assessment of the safety of vaccines against the human papilloma virus, and that also may have violated the organization’s “Spokesperson policy.”

While the vaccine-related complaint may have been the final straw for the Cochrane leadership, at the heart of Grant’s review is this charge: Gøtzsche, while presenting himself as Director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, had made public comments about psychiatry that CEO Wilson and other leaders of the Cochrane Collaboration had found objectionable, and the fact that he had presented himself to the public as the director of the Nordic Cochrane Center while making such comments, which he had been asked not to do, became the Collaboration’s “reason” for expelling him.

The Heresy Deconstructed

Since publishing his book Deadly Medicine in 2013, Gøtzsche has published a number of peer-reviewed research articles on psychiatric drugs related to their efficacy (or lack of efficacy) and adverse effects (such as raising suicide risks and mortality risks). Those articles list his professional address as Nordic Cochrane Centre, but there was nothing in Grant’s review about this published research.

Here is a brief look at Gøtzsche’s public comments that were seen as objectionable.

  • He “appeared to advocate” that psychiatric patients stop taking their drugs.

The key phrase here is “appeared to advocate.” That “appeared” tells you that Gøtzsche actually never did advocate such a thing. In his book, he wrote that he knew that “some drugs can be helpful sometimes for some patients.” He said the harm came because “doctors don’t know how to handle the drugs,” and that because of that medical practice, society would be better off if the drugs were pulled from the market. He didn’t advocate that “every patient” stop taking the drugs; he was saying that the medical profession, in their use of the drugs, was causing harm.

  • He wrote “Ten Myths About Psychiatric Drugs.”

It is easy to see why this publication would anger many within psychiatry, as it basically describes psychiatry, as an institution, peddling a number of falsehoods—such as the chemical imbalance story—to sell its products. However, it is hard to find anything in this article that is scientifically inaccurate. Gøtzsche wrote that the drugs do not fix chemical imbalances; that they are not like insulin for diabetes; that SSRIs have been found to increase the risk of suicidal behaviors in children and adolescents; and so forth.

  • He wrote that “psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death.”

This statement was published in the BMJ, with Gøtzsche setting forth the evidence that supported his conclusion. He was making an argument within a scientific setting.

  • He stated that we would have healthier populations if we only used 2% of the total amount of psychiatric drugs used today.

This may have been seen by Cochrane’s leaders as Gøtzsche’s most outlandish statement, but it logically follows from a conclusion that, on the whole, psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good. Indeed, all the markers for the public health burden of psychiatric disorders have increased since 1987, when Prozac was introduced, and thus it makes sense to argue that reducing the use of these drugs would lead to better societal health. (In his 2015 book Deadly Psychiatry and Organized Denial, he provided a rationale for how he came to the 2% figure.)

In short, Gøtzsche’s comments did have a scientific foundation and logic. But taken together—and uttered in the declarative style that Gøtzsche is known for—they constituted a wholesale attack on psychiatry’s current practices, and this apparently was too much for Wilson and other leaders of the Cochrane Collaboration. Gøtzsche had gotten along well enough with the Cochrane Collaboration during his first 20 years as director of the Nordic Cochrane Center, but then he made these public comments, and suddenly the Cochrane Group was insistent that he stop listing his directorship of the Nordic Cochrane Center as his professional address.

That is a timeline that belies the claim that Gøtzsche’s expulsion was simply because of his behavior; instead, it shows that his “behavior” came to be perceived as a problem once he became a sharp critic of psychiatry. 

The E. Fuller Torrey Complaint

The complaint by E. Fuller Torrey is revealing, for it highlights this dynamic within psychiatry: You can be a leading figure who makes public statements that are belied by science but consistent with psychiatry’s disease model ideology, and you will suffer no harm or consequences; yet psychiatrists and other medical professionals who publicly prick holes in that story do so at great professional risk.

The TIPS study in Norway reported on the 10-year outcomes of 281 first-episode psychotic patients. In 2012, the researchers reported that 11% had died during this period. The precise number of deaths seemed to vary in three articles published about the study, but the 2012 article listed 31 deaths, and since the researchers lost track of 79 of the 281 people before the ten years were up, this meant that the death rate—among the cohort followed for 10 years—was actually 15% (31 out of 202). Given that the average age of the patients at study entry was 29 years, this was a very high death rate. Gøtzsche wrote the lead author of the study, Wenche ten Velden Hegelstad, asking for more information about the causes of these deaths, but the author did not provide it. Gøtzsche and I then submitted a letter to the editor of World Psychiatry, where the article had been published, asking for details about these deaths. The journal declined to publish our letter. At that point, Gøtzsche wrote E. Fuller Torrey, asking that the Stanley Medical Research Institute, as one of the funders of this study, provide detailed information about the deaths. Gøtzsche wrote:

“We believe funders have an ethical obligation to ensure that information, which is of great importance for public health, and which has been collected in the funded study, gets published. That would be a great service to psychiatry, the patients, and everyone else with an interest in this vitally important issue. When young people who are receiving antipsychotics die, we need to know why they died in order to reduce the risk of death in the future.”

Torrey responded not by providing such information, which would be the expected thing to do if you were following the dictates of good science, but by making a “complaint” about Gøtzsche to Cochrane CEO Mark Wilson. He said that Gøtzsche had identified himself as the Director of the Nordic Cochrane Center and as the “Protector of the Hearing Voices Network in Denmark.” This latter organization, Torrey wrote, promoted beliefs that were non-scientific:

  • Auditory hallucinations are merely one end of a normal behavior spectrum, thus casting doubt on whether schizophrenia actually exists as a disease.
  • Hearing voices are caused by trauma in childhood, for which there is no solid evidence.

The fact that Gøtzsche had a relationship with a group that promoted such ideas, Torrey wrote, showed a “clear lack of objectivity” by Gøtzsche, and for that reason he “personally would not find any Cochrane publication on mental illness to be credible.”

Torrey, with this complaint, was asserting that it was scientific malpractice to give credence to the beliefs of the Hearing Voices Network. Here is what a review of the science has to say about whether these beliefs have any merit:

There is now a scientific trail to follow in this exchange. The lead author of the TIPS study doesn’t respond to Gøtzsche’s inquiry (bad science); the editor of the journal that published the article won’t publish a letter raising the question about the deaths (bad science); and the research director for one of the funders doesn’t respond to the question either (more bad science). Instead, he writes a letter of complaint to Cochrane CEO Mark Wilson, stating that since Gøtzsche has a relationship with the Hearing Voices group, he isn’t going to believe anything that the Cochrane Collaboration publishes about mental illness!

Torrey’s letter was clearly unhinged, and hardly one that the CEO of the Cochrane Collaboration could be expected to treat as serious, but Wilson, in a letter to Torrey dated March 2, 2018, basically threw Gøtzsche under the bus, stating that Gøtzsche had been warned to “distinguish sufficiently in public between his own research and that of Cochrane—the organization to which he belongs.” Wilson advised Torrey that he would consider his letter a “formal complaint.”

This is the moment in this dispute that perhaps is the most embarrassing of all for the Cochrane Collaboration. A director of the Cochrane Center wants to find out more about the deaths in a long-term study of psychotic patients, and the CEO of the Collaboration, rather than finding that pursuit worthwhile, finds reason to think it might provide cause to expel the director from the collaboration, and all because he receives a letter from an American psychiatrist that, even if one viewed it charitably, could best be described as disrespectful toward a users’ group, ignorant of the science, and silly in its threat to now see all Cochrane reviews related to psychiatry as lacking “credibility.”

You would think that all members of the Cochrane Collaboration would be red-faced upon knowing of this exchange.

The Loss for the Public

There are many within the Cochrane Collaboration that have rallied to Gøtzsche’s defense. Four members of the governing board quit in protest after the vote to oust him, and the 31 directors of Cochrane centers in Spain and Latin America have all signed a letter questioning his ouster. This has now evolved into a significant political struggle within Cochrane, although it is hard to guess how this will all play out.

Regardless of how it does, I am sure Gøtzsche will continue to speak his mind about psychiatric drugs, and will find a way to continue to research this topic. He is not going to disappear.

However, the future of the Cochrane Collaboration is less clear. Its reputation as an organization that fosters critical thinking is now stained, and that is the public’s loss. The medical literature—and this is particularly true of the literature in psychiatry—is already seen as corrupted and biased due to the influence of pharmaceutical money and guild interests, and now the public will have reason to question whether the work of the Cochrane Collaboration is similarly untrustworthy.

One would hope that the Cochrane group, as it moves forward, will remember that the public needs a collaboration that will provide a home for the “scientific” heretic, and that this decision to oust Gøtzsche betrays that value. Perhaps the Cochrane members can dig into their medical history books and read about Ignaz Semmelweis and his efforts to get other doctors to wash their hands before operating, and let that story of the medical community’s treatment of Semmelweis serve as a reminder of why it is important to provide such protection to the heretics in medicine. The Cochrane Group needs to remember that it serves the public, and this decision to oust Gøtzsche fails to fulfill that obligation.

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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126 COMMENTS

  1. As long as the big tech monopoly doesn’t turn on critics of psychiatry, like for example how they attempted to wipe Alex Jones off the internet by deplatforming, we should be alright. The Golden age of online free speech really is over though.

    “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

    I believe he is correct, I have talked to hundreds of people exposed to psychiatric drugging and the vast majority say they were harmed.

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  2. This flap does provide some evidence for the idea expressed in the late Abram Hoffer’s radio interview, in which he said that transporting the world’s psychiatrists to Mars would be the best way to improve mental health on earth. It also provides evidence that the medical model big-time psychiatry says it’s following is contaminated by a moral position held by churches, in which they state that they alone are capable of evaluating morality (Osmond’s moral model par excellence).

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    • It may be true, “the medical model … psychiatry says it’s following is contaminated by a moral position held by churches, in which they state they alone are capable of evaluating morality….” The psychiatrists do seem to harbor such “delusions of grandeur.” However, the “mental health professionals” have been blaspheming the Holy Spirit, God, and Jesus – as well as millions who believe in the Triune God – in recent years. That’s illegal in the US, not to mention the “only unforgivable sin” in the entire Holy Bible, thus immorality at its grandest.

      And as to whether either the paternalistic religions or the psychiatrists should have the moral authority to be in charge of anything today … Well, both the religions and the “mental health professionals” have been, not just colluding to cover up child abuse on a massive scale, but also profiteering off of such crimes in the tune of billions, according to the “mental health” industry’s own medical literature, and the pope’s, bishops’, and other pastors’ confessions.

      I’d say the child abuse silencing “dirty little secret of the two original educated professions” has left neither the medical nor religious professions in a position of moral authority today.

      Bob, thank you for standing in support of Peter Gøtzsche, he is a wonderful speaker of the truth, which is much needed today. And best wishes to Peter in this time of great deceit, and injustice.

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      • They prefer to call it sanity or good mental hygiene rather than morality. That way they can condemn harmless eccentrics, dangerous criminals, and moral paragons (like Francis of Assisi or Joan of Arc) as hopelessly insane and a menace to society.

        Sanity is much harder to define than morality. Not only can they absolve the insane of their “disease” they also can serve as a faux pre-crime division.

        We don’t need Tom Cruise to advocate for us by praising Scientology while hopping up and down on the table. But he has made a great movie called The Minority Report which reminds me of how our culture perceives psychiatry.

        Not just as punitive legal enforcers who tell judges what sentences to pass but actually able to prevent violent crimes from occurring. Only in the movie it actually worked.

        Thinking you have psychic powers so you can foresee crimes before they occur is perfectly sane and normal. 😉

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  3. I appreciate this defense of Dr Gotzsche. However I just want to point out that it’s really not just psychiatry. Western medicine is inexorably intertwined with the capitalist pursuits of pharma. Going to a doctor for any reason other than life-threatening illness or injury is pretty dumb at this point. I find it rather remarkable that when many extraordinarily old people are asked the secret to their longevity, they will routinely say they avoid doctors. I suspect that a dig into the literature and history will find that it’s rather routine for doctors and researchers whom challenge the status quo to be hushed, ridiculed, and booted from their professional societies or positions. The doc who discovered the importance of gut bacteria first made that finding in the seventies and was literally poopooed for nearly 50 years – wasn’t even able to begin quietly researching it until the 90s. Just imagine the direction psychiatry could have taken if we had treated the whole person instead of just the “mind” via psychiatric drugging. And in all of medicine, it is the case that doctors are looking for symptoms to match to drugs. And frankly, I think a lot of doctors have given up trying to get their patients to maintain a healthy lifestyle. They know their patients likely can’t afford to eat nutritiously, manage their stress levels, get enough exercise, or even just get enough downtime in our current slave wage economy. So in come Prozac, Lipitor, Xanax, Ambien, propanolol, metformin/insulin, etc, etc, etc. Of everyone I know (in terra form), I am the only one not taking any daily maintenance medications. I also don’t know a single female in my larger social group not taking a psychiatric drug of some sort. No one seems to remember that just 30 years ago, widespread chronic illness and poly-drugging was not the norm. And I for one am at a complete loss as to how to convince people that their lifestyle and drugs are literally killing them. Frankly, if the big wigs like Dr Gotzsche find themselves targets for calling out bad research (and wrong conclusions) in medicine, how are any of the rest of us Earth walkers going to avoid becoming targets for this heresy other than keeping our heads down? So, props to the good doctor and hopefully he will survive this eventually, as you say, but it sure feels like this widespread polydrugging across all fields of medicine is a case of Pandora’s Box being opened and the powerful forces that be are going to target everyone trying to shut it.

    (P.S. it’s not just medicine we’re fighting. It’s the entertainment industry pumping cable TV into your living room. It’s the substance industry advertising to you how easy it is to drown your fears in some crown royal. It’s all the various products we’re supposed to go into debt to buy (at great expense to our natural resources) to keep the economy going (so the rich keep getting richer). It’s the soda industry kicking and screaming in court every time a politician grows a backbone and tries to lower sugar in drinks. It’s the fast easy lifestyle that means in some places like NYC homes are being built without dedicated kitchens because so few people have time or inclination to cook real food anymore. Yeah, we’re all screwed.)

    Sorry, Bob. I know you have to have a focus and it’s psychiatry in this case. But the real issues are entirely systemic and are going to take a systemic approach to a healthy society to be fixed, if they can be fixed at all. As long as money is king and what’s left of community and social connections continue to erode, I have little hope.

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  4. We all know who has a clear lack of objectivity and it isn’t Peter Gotzsche. It’s good ol’ E. Fuller Torrey. Wasn’t he the one who went around to conventions with buckets of cats’ brains because he had some far fetched theory about schizophrenia?

    Why is it that psychiatry keeps winning against anyone and everyone who speaks out against it? At least they don’t burn heretics at the stake these days!

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      • yep and that’s the only thing that’s gonna stop them too- you can argue till the cows come home- their just gonna play word games- mind games- cause their trapped by addiction just like we all are- 70% of the budget going down a drain- is the trap that’s keeping a sick system sick- and us along with it- every conversation we have is contingent on a response from the same people in the same trap no ones got answers for- no one can get out of including them- the only thing that’s gonna stop that trap, not for those in the trap now- but for those about to be trapped- the new victims- and the despair caused by that addiction trap- “is the Governments that allows for them, in law”, to create addictions in people”- without recall- free will for them- by its law- to forcefully drug people- – by stopping that law- and allowing any first episode psychotic or otherwise patient- to say no, for up to ten sleeps- will save at least 50% of new drug effected kids- becoming addicted adults- maybe even more.- asking them to do that, or even consider it, even though is the ethical way to treat people temporarily effected by drugs- is like asking a Mormon or a JW to not believe- or not pray, go to church, its virtually impossible- the only hope we’ve got is to appeal to the governments sucked in, but not quite in the congregation of the church of Psychiatry.

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      • Whitaker and Peter Gøtzsche may be heretics compared to psychiatry in general, but that’s not really much of a heresy. Any sober minded person can see that there are problems with psychiatry and psychotropic drugs. Unfortunately, the critical psychiatry “heretics” still argue for the logical equivalent of a geocentric universe in which “some drugs can be helpful sometimes for some patients.” Don’t get me wrong. Whitaker and Gøtzsche have done excellent and essential work in exposing the truth about psychiatry. But the real Copernicuses and Semmelweises are those who tell the full truth about psychiatry, namely, that it is a pseudo-scientific system of slavery that must be abolished. Thomas Szasz is still eons ahead of the conversation, and he died in 2012.

        As long as critical psychiatrists continue to argue that

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    • (To Kindred Spirit)

      Just imagine the direction psychiatry could have taken if we had treated the whole person instead of just the “mind” via psychiatric drugging.

      I shudder to imagine that actually. I know you hate my “nitpickiness” sometimes but…when you say “we,” are you equating “us” with psychiatry? I’m sure that’s not your intention, but it feels sort of like when people say things like “we” invaded Vietnam or Iraq, when it was actually the U.S. ruling class. Just sayin’.

      And I for one am at a complete loss as to how to convince people that their lifestyle and drugs are literally killing them.

      I don’t think that’s our job — but we can provide people with accurate information and analysis, and keep repeating the truth. Eventually it may register; with some it surely will.

      Good post to RW — it is a toxic culture to be sure, and allopathic medicine is a big part of the problem. Psychiatry is not THE problem either, it is an enforcement mechanism to keep the toxic apparatus in place. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t endeavor to expose and delegitimize it in the public consciousness, as it is a key support propping up the madness. Kick out the jams, motherfuckers! 🙂

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      • No, not equating psychiatric survivors with the oppressors. I mean “we” in the sense that humans are basically complex lemmings and we follow one another right off the cliff. So, in the societal sense, “we” have allowed this because too few are willing to question authority. Yes, absolutely, blame the owners, but they couldn’t have done it without the willing cooperation of the masses.

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        • I wouldn’t call it “willing”; more like too daunting to resist without losing everything, including one’s life.

          It’s definitely a fine line, though I think if people saw a way to defeat them that had a good chance of succeeding they would likely pursue it. It’s not out of the question anyway.

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  5. This is where the system is, was, and will be at, and so no surprise as far as I’m concerned. A belief in the great god “mental illness” requires the ritual sacrament of a periodic pill at the altar of devotion. It is not, and it never has been, health that drives people here. The driving principle is business interest and profitability. How do you sell drugs? If Johnny goes off his “meds”, he’s going to go loony, and that means, in the sensationalized media and industry propaganda, violence. If you don’t keep doctors with drug company ties off your boards and out of your organizations, this is the general direction in which things proceed. Science? Medical science, if it ever had anything to do with medical science, lost out a long time ago. This is all about appearance, not substance.

    I think you could improve outcomes, lessen harm, save lives, and so forth by eliminating drug use altogether, but 2 % instead of whatever excessive figure it is today would be a great improvement.

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    • You’re barking up the right tree, However, It’s not just the psychiatric drugs at this point. Some pharmacies will tattle on you if you fail to refill any type of medication. Patient non-compliance to medications or prescribed therapy is really a sin in the God/Doctor’s opinion, regardless of the medical specialty, it’s only those they can label as crazy that they can force to take medication. And now the God/Doctor is omniscient when your pharmacy tells your doctor you didn’t follow his orders. It’s all about compliance. The fact that psych patients are the easiest to target doesn’t change much.

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      • There you go with that non-compliance spiel. How can the drug companies lose when not taking your drug is deemed such a offense…against who?…humanity? medicine? What an advertising scheme, and, amazingly, it’s one that works.

        You’ve got a billion dollar industry doing what billion dollar industries do. If you were looking for Mr. Nice Guy. Try the cubicle on the ward. He’s probably either shuffling the halls, playing cards, or glued to the community TV set drooling all over hisself.

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    • “Mental illness” is the original sin. Psychiatrists are the high priests who provide absolution of this sin through confessions: owning the label they assign through the act of “insight,” and penance in the form of drugs, imprisonment, and shocks.

      Not only are the shrinks granted priestly status but they are gods too. And you had better fawn all over them with their due offering of praise and gratitude for the damage they inflict.

      The non labeled folks love psychiatry too. Know why? According to the gospel of psychiatry only some are capable of horrendous crimes. The “mentally ill” are the only ones who rape and murder according to television. Therefore everyone without a “diagnosis” is absolved of all sin, and also has someone they can sneer at, enhancing their self esteem and blaming all the evils committed on the “mentally ill” boogie men. 😛

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  7. I have a diagnosis of serious mental illness and I do not take psychiatric medications. I do not know if the treatments I have received have made me worse or better, of if the chemicals/drugs/medicines have a permanent (negative) effect on my brain-body.
    If magically I was declared healthy I would then have no income and shortly be homeless, so it is in my interest to keep the psychiatric diagnosis of SMI, until a universal basic income becomes standard.

    From the article
    He wrote “Ten Myths About Psychiatric Drugs.” this is the article https://www.madinamerica.com/2014/01/psychiatry-gone-astray/

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      • Mental health treatment and insurance fraud go together like a horse and carriage, etc.

        How do you differentiate between malingering and “illness”? How do you distinguish between disability and insurance fraud? Well, actually, given psycho-social disability, you don’t have to do so as both are pretty much the same thing.

        Guaranteed basic income, are you kidding!? How does such compare with minimum wage? Is it above or below average? You gonna get 15 $ an hour for doing nothing? Call it zazen or something. Your view seems to be that a guaranteed annual income and the nanny state are the same thing. If so, to quote Groucho Marx, ‘I’m against it’.

        Jobs over nonsense! I really don’t think the “sickness” pretense an improvement over a meaningful existence.

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          • I just think there might be a way to get non-“sick” people to start thinking and acting like non-“sick” people again, for the benefit of society as a whole. Of course, we don’t have to do that, do we? Not when we can scrap common sense altogether.

            For example, rather than rehabilitation in which people pretend to be working, how about some of these places contract some kind of real public works project that would lead somewhere and produce something that would be lasting. Instead of “Oh, no, we can’t do that. You see, these people are totally dysfunctional.” Sorry, they’re all through, are they? Totally useless? What WAS I thinking!

            I consider, you see, job programs an improvement over permanent vacation programs. Of course, all kinds of people could be permanently “out to lunch” as they say. Whaddya do? Shrug ’em off?

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          • Frank, you need to stop calling yourself a “leftist” if you are so concerned about people receiving/retrieving funds from the bourgeoisie’s bank accounts, whether you call it “disability,” guaranteed annual income, or simply reparations. It’s all stolen money to begin with, and it sure isn’t theirs.

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          • Excuse me, since when did leftists become advocates of not working. Nobody is stealing from the bourgeoisie if the bourgeoisie is stealing from everybody, and then laying aside this money to prevent trouble from the–what do we call it–not working class, maybe the dysfunctional class. Is THAT better than displaced class? I don’t think being dismissed from the labor force or significance, really, a good thing. In the case of such invalidation, re-validation can become difficult to achieve.

            I like to think people would like to be contributing to something besides the social burden, but, of course, I could be wrong. That national debt is growing all the time.

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          • My understanding of socialism is that each person contributes work based on their skills and abilities without concern for salary per se. “To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities.” Perhaps not the most realistic approach given human nature, but certainly not a call for people loafing around doing nothing.

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          • Basically, OldHead, you seem to think socialism consists in paying people to subsist, and I don’t think that is the case at all.

            If people work for themselves, they aren’t working for capitalists. If people don’t work, well, they aren’t working class, are they?

            I’m not saying capitalism is a good thing, it isn’t. I’m saying capitalism uses its under and unemployed for more than merely a reserve labor force. Opting out of the work force can be a way of serving capital as well. It certainly isn’t forming a union and going on strike for better wages and conditions.

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          • If they are working, they aren’t being paid not to work. Some people are paid not to work. The leisure class, more or less, has other people work for them. It’s like these buildings Donald Trump says he has built. He didn’t build any of them. Laborers built them.

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          • Yes, Steve, from each according to, and to each according to, the problem is, who decides this issue of “need” and “ability”? It is never so simple as it might seem on paper. For example, given discrimination and prejudice, do we call that “need” or “ability”? Doctors decide it on the basis of the DSM, and a lot of people have issues with their decisions there. You can trash people by not giving them a chance, or you can give them a chance. It’s just a number in the DSM, and that number means a lifetime of disability and disability payments. Hey, the label, the condition, comes with a bill of goods, and, frankly, I’m not buying it.

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          • If, OldHead, there is no “mental illness” as you keep claiming, then socialism cannot be a matter of the taxpayer subsidizing the “mental health” system.

            As for citizens and socialism, as most of us are required to pay taxes, it depends on who you ask, and here you get into those big government little government arguments that I am not going to get bogged down in.

            Corporations have received all sorts of tax breaks as business incentives under the theory that tax relief allows them to expand and build, and thus helps the economy, employment and all that. You’re not hurting big corporations, in other words, by taking government money. What do we keep hearing? Oh, yeah. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. So much for nanny state would be socialism.

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          • All of your arguments are being made from a perspective of operating within the capitalist system. Under socialism there would be no mega-corporations dominating our lives to begin with, thus no concerns about corporate tax breaks. And there’s already enough to go around to give everyone a satisfactory level of basic sustenance without interjecting “moral” arguments about how hard someone works and who “deserves” what.

            Plus the line between “business money” and “government money” is growing thinner every day.

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          • My arguments are not being made from the perspective of operating within capitalism. If “mental illness” is bogus, it’s not going to be any less bogus under socialism. I’m just saying that in both instances the government doesn’t need to be paying for it.

            As for corporations, we’re talking multi-national corporations, that’s how you get run away industries and hidden Swiss bank accounts. They’re still there, even after socialist revolutions, you just hope your socialist government will maintain more control over their business dealings locally.

            I suppose that last line concerns “privatization”. “Privatization” of schools, loony bins, and prisons. Yes, you’ve got collusion there between business and government, however, if people mattered more than profits, we wouldn’t be going there in the first place. When government is mainly a place for a greedy elite to line their pockets, well, that’s what you get. We’re a long way from direct democracy, and so, with representative democracy, the joke is that nobody is truly represented.

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        • Frank How do you differentiate between malingering and “illness”?

          You apparently do not consider the treatment that I and others have had from psychiatry have damaged us. I was involuntary, others are voluntary to psychiatry, believing that the doctors heal people. Are both groups worthy of mercy and compassion?

          To start the list of damages, in the scientific literature they do note the psychiatric drugs/chemicals/medicines have altered the brain. “You can’t fix stupid” is a well known saying, and I do not think the changes are beneficial.

          Today plaintiffs can not easily prove the obvious damages from electroshock, and the documented brain shrinkage is not attributed to the medicines. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/mad-in-america/201102/andreasen-drops-bombshell-antipsychotics-shrink-the-brain

          Other people who have been unjustly imprisoned can get financial compensation for damages.

          Tell me Frank do these people who spend years in prison, do they deserve compensation? or should they get back to work washing dishes in the local restaurant?

          https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-wrongfully-convicted-are-compensated/

          Frank you are arguing for taxpayers pocket are you not? the same taxpayers that finance and support the psychiatrists? Tell me Frank, who is going to stop the false science of psychiatry? ( as its pocket-book/finances are infinite).

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          • The false science of psychiatry supports this system of state subsidies. They are intimately linked. If you want to get rid of one, you’re going to have to get rid of the other.

            In the old days (the middle ages), you didn’t have so many ‘natural fools’ requiring ‘keepers’, but today, when the state is the official designated ‘keeper’, you’ve got ‘fools’ crawling out of the woodwork just to be ‘natural’.

            All I can say is, there has GOT to be a better way of doing things.

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          • I can barely cook and keep my place clean and perform basic hygiene. I went to shrinks in good faith. Too damaged to ever work again it seems. Those liars told me the drugs would help me function.

            Ideally those crippled by psychiatry wouldn’t live on tax dollars. Just pay us $1,000,000 apiece from Big Pharma and the wealthy Psych conglomerates. That would not only provide for our needs but bankrupt those Blights on western society rendering them impotent to hurt again. Plus their credibility would be shattered. Yay! 😀

            A win win!

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  8. Omg,
    this is a witch-hunt within the psychiatry itself, eliminating any alternative views and showing us quite clearly the power-play within the domain of science. Being a supporter of an alternative network ‘hearing voices’ is wrong? Asking for the results of a research is wrong? It isn’t just about what is wrong with mainstream psychiatry, it shows what can go wrong in terms of questioning authority in such a ‘liberal’ domain as scientific research.
    Of course, doctors themselves don’t understand what they are prescribing, they say themselves upon questioning that they don’t know how the medication works precisely (anti-psychotic, for instance). But the main matter is that psychiatry as an institution maintaining the functionalist approach of the society we have nowadays just totally discredited itself with this story in terms of its capacity to conduct interesting and challenging research, demonstrating lack of creativity, empathy and ‘insight’. Shame

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  9. Hi Bob,

    Peter Gøtzsche is a real doctor and a friend to decent medicine.

    He has said that people don’t generally get on well with neuroleptics, and that it wasn’t too hard to recover completely from “Schizophrenia” with basic human support. I think most genuinely recovered people would agree with this.

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  11. Thank you Robert for this gripping report about Peter Gotzsche and the injustices this man endured for being forthright and honest. I so appreciate your website, books and all your incredible work in helping so many. It is very empowering to those who have been downtrodden and harmed by psychiatry. I was naïve about psychiatry until becoming very physically ill from chemotherapy and developing severe tolerance/rebound insomnia after taking Imovane many months. I was told by the surgeon she was sending me to “someone” for “help with sleep meds”. I was not told this “someone” was a psychiatrist. It had been a very rough cancer ride to that point but the real horror story began after I saw this novice psychiatrist a few times on the pretense it was for “help with sleep meds”. (I was unaware the sleep meds she immediately prescribed were antipsychotics) Further, this psychiatrist was very deceitful and secretly and deliberately twisted the narrative to suit her goals and her ‘black and white’ thinking. What took place is so utterly bizarre and dishonest it clearly shows psychiatry is unregulated and totally out of control. Thanks again.

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    • Bob and All

      Rosalee said:
      “Thank you Robert for this gripping report about Peter Gotzsche and the injustices this man endured for being forthright and honest. I so appreciate your website, books and all your incredible work in helping so many. It is very empowering to those who have been downtrodden and harmed by psychiatry.”

      I SECOND this insightful summary and praise for the work and activism of Robert Whitaker and Peter Gotzsche, AND all the others who are exposing and challenging the oppressive nature of the Disease/Drug Based Medical Model.

      We should NOT be demoralized OR disheartened by the fact that the “powers that be” are striking back at those who have wounded the “beast.” The ruling class, and those institutions like psychiatry that prop up and help maintain this world wide system of exploitation, are acting exactly as we should expect them to.

      Modern psychiatry (as an institution of social control) is now SO deeply embedded within the fabric of the profit based/capitalist system, that both of their future on this planet has now become INSEPARABLY bound.

      For this reason (as we move forward in our work to end all forms of psychiatric abuse), we must continually find ways to link up with other human rights struggles AND (at the same time) expose the profit based/capitalist system as THE major impediment to human progress on this planet.

      All this means is that we have a long and complicated road ahead. “Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!”

      Carry on, Richard

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      • Bob

        I think there needs to be some organized way for people to express their opposition to this attack on Gotzsche and our entire movement.

        Is there an online petition or some effort to publish a large add (denouncing his removal from Cochrane) in some major paper or publication that is signed by professionals and survivors etc.?

        If so, I would definitely contribute some money and my signature for this to happen.

        Richard

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        • Good suggestion Richard, I also would donate and sign to fight this injustice. Agree, a BIG thanks is also needed to Peter Gotzsche, and all the amazing writers and bloggers on this site. There is so much incredible information provided here, including blogs, podcasts, research news, and many insightful commenters. I found this link interesting and validating when you consider that the “labelling” in someone’s records after seeing a psychiatrist is much more stigmatizing.
          https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/05/stigmatizing-language-affects-care/

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        • This is one of those areas where professionals and ex-professionals with integrity should take the lead. It’s their “turf.” If the “Collaboration” displays this sort of contempt for Dr. Gotzsche the opinions of survivors would be even more meaningless and irrelevant to them.

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          • Yeah, OldHead. Anybody who doesn’t think it’s alright to harm people with pharmaceutical products should get behind Peter Gotzsche. I was grateful to hear of him telling the truth about these substances in Europe, and now, the powers that be have done what you would expect them to do anyway. Hopefully they don’t succeed in suppressing that truth altogether. We know what is going on there, but resignation is not the answer.

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          • No arguments with Frank’s statement. But realistically some things are the domain of “professionals” to lead, for the reasons I described above. I don’t recall saying that no one else should support the effort.

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  12. It reminds me a bit of 1930s Europe.

    Homeless and Suicidal Deaths in America are very very sad but I think that this is more a society problem than a medication problem.

    I did act out myself during my psychiatric career of 1980 to 1984 – and this was in the form of self harm. But ALL of this stopped when I managed to stop taking drugs suitable for Severe Mental Illness.

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  13. Thank you for your defence of Peter Gøtzsche Bob, his deconstruction of contemporary psychiatry will become seminal documents in the history of psychiatry. Interestingly Fuller Torrey wrote a book called “The Death of Psychiatry” in 1974. The following summary is from the back of the book:

    “This revolutionary book shows why psychiatry in its present form is obsolete and why it must die. Dr. E. Fuller Torrey maintains that most of the so-called mentally ill are suffering from problems in social adaptation, not from diseases of the mind. Upholding his contentions with numerous case histories, he proposes that the few patients with real brain dysfunction be given back to neurology and that the others be taught to handle their difficulties through a new system of education and social support.”

    This makes his transformation to a psychiatric bioreductionist oracle is all the more surprising. Unlike St. Paul, clearly something sinister happened to Fuller Torrey on the road to Damascus.

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  14. I started questioning Cochrane’s objectivity after it supported the use of statins for primary prevention in 2013. Among other things, the Cochran Center did not address the fact that all the studies it used in its review were either partially or completely funded by the pharmaceutical industry. The removal of Gøtzsche from Cochrane further supports my belief that the organization has moved away from being unbiased and scientifically based.

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  16. “That is a timeline that belies the claim that Gøtzsche’s expulsion was simply because of his behavior; instead, it shows that his “behavior” came to be perceived as a problem once he became a sharp critic of psychiatry.”

    That’s typical.

    All this backstabbing, betrayal, and “ousting,” this reads like a chapter from the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Good for Dr. Gotzsche for being irritating to his colleagues. The truth always irritates unenlightened groups, like a signal that there is awakening to happen, should one choose to do so. Keyword: choose.

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  18. Thank you for this thoughtful, well written article Bob.

    Like many psych survivors I do not share your cautious optimism. But I believe psychiatry will collapse in the next 20 to 30 years under the weight of its own numerous deceptions and insatiable hunger for more people to “treat.” They want 25% of the population on at least one drug. (Some sources say 33%)

    One sixth or seventh of adults forced onto disability is economically unsustainable. If nothing else psychiatry will die when Western Civilization goes into its death throws.

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      • Oh, c’mon, no need for all this bloody optimism! Once the Blue Water Event occurs in a year or two and the Earth’s heat sink is lost, the solar gain will boil the seas and there won’t be any humans left to be harmed by Psychiatry.

        Love,
        The Pessimist

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        • Self-hate delights in being ‘right’?
          Fear runs a self-fulfilling prophecy?
          Don’t let truth get in the way of a good story?

          A consciousness that models its own ‘reality’ is a curious thing, but curiosity given to explore insanity loses the capacity to account for its own parameters.

          Harmlessness remains our true safety. But how can that not sound insane to those in grievance of the experience of pain and loss at the hand of another?

          The intent to murder the assigned ’cause’ of grievance works to kill or deny itself in others in ever shifting shadow roles. And by displacement and redistribution of psychic energy seem to have saved or made itself more powerful or vindicated in power.

          Max Plank – I think – said something like ‘science progresses one death at a time’, because old dogs cant or wont learn new tricks. But we – individually – do not have to wait for ‘official reality’ to leave the dead behind us and attend the living. Te attempt to reframe human consciousness by coercion and deceit illuminates the ‘frame up’ to a freedom to identify coercion and deceit as lack of substance – and therefore neglect relating or engaging with it as if it HAD any by virtue of engaging wholly in what does and is – and this is a life that is free of the perceived or believed need for coercion and deceit.
          Any moment of a true recognition is a New Beginning – and the willingness to be truly moved rather than mask in a sense of false presentation is a different basis that trying to survive as a the ability to maintain such a self.

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  19. While I expect to draw some flak from all sides for this, it might be a provocatively effective idea to start publicly comparing these deaths, in which rogue psychiatrist Torrey is clearly complicit, to the deaths of newborn infants and pregnant women for which rogue U.S. abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell has been give three life terms. (Especially now that there is a newly-released movie entitled “Gosnell.”)

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    • Bonnie, I agree. When I heard Dr. Gotzsche speak here in Australia (2015?) – I was stunned at what I was hearing.

      How did this guy have a job? How was he able to speak so freely these things which so angered the psychiatrists in the room? TO THEIR FACES! With his keen mind and rigorous application of scientific principles – well, I was stunned. And in awe. He was really doing this!

      This man was working, and his Collaboration gained the utmost of my respect. I learned to study their work before making any medical decisions.

      Sadly, the Collaboration has fallen away, but Dr. Gotzsche’s clear mind shines like a star.

      Hopefully he will transcend any other challenges put in his path.

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  21. Exactly bonnie it was just a matter of when i have been wondering for some time when they would go after him. i’m just glad torrey has stopped putting cats brains in buckets!and if its true about his sister i feel very sorry for her just imagine her drug regime….will be interesting to see how Cochrane power struggle plays out but i think we can all work it out personally i avoid all and any scientific articles purporting to give evidence on psych drugs as i see the horrific ‘results’ every day in front of my eyes and that is all the truth and evidence I need. thanks robert for your usual well written piece.

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  22. The framing is often missed when we enter the picture.

    The framing of the consciousness of the ‘ego’ of a sense of self control under or against threat works only to mask in the forms of true but never opens or yields to the acceptance of true because this framing IS the basis by which NOT to see, NOT know and NOT recognize anything that exposes a lack of substance or foundation – but moves immediately to deny or attack it, and does so automatically from beliefs and perceptions of a past learning overlaid or indeed pre-empting a truly present relation or communication.

    The ‘patient’ is engaged in a state of dissociation as a compulsive identity in masked fear operating as coercive and delusory control. This war upon the feared true inherently attacks and denies and disregards the true of others as of self, and results in hateful and coercive behaviours that operate under narrative assertions of justified ‘war’ – such as can elicit or attract sympathy for conformity and compliance while framing in terms that invalidate critical awareness and dictate by assertions backed up by plausible deniability, complex obfuscations and compartmentalised breakdowns of communication in terms of capacity to accept or embody responsibility for anything except its evasion.

    So an illusion of our society runs a wishful presentation and narrative of how we want or think life should be, overlaid upon a communication breakdown or denial, evasion and defence against awareness of what it is the embodying or enacting of.

    I thought a succinct example of cognitive dissonance as social norm was reported by Bruce Lipton, a researcher into gene science who discovered the presumptions and beliefs about the gene were false and essentially opened the now recognized field of epigenetic – as the field of influences – including environmental and emotional expression – that turn any genes or sets of gene expression on or off.
    When he delivered his findings he was met with stony silence but for one who began to slowly clap but stopped when everyone looked at them. They turned their back. After re-checking his science and finding no fault, he sought a mentor friend who was higher in the scientific establishment and explained his science and the reaction and of course his perplexity and no doubt his own sense of dissonance and conflict.
    “Well it’s just not what we’re thinking” was the answer.

    Insider dealing applies also to any leading edge with regard to its marketisation but beneath that to its weaponisation in terms of positioning and investment in terms of gaining and maintaining ‘power’ or rather a private agenda of possession and control.

    The development of scientific perspective has from the first become an extension of ‘power’ as the means to define in terms that serve or sanction a private agenda of corporate and thus a government investment not only of financial leverage but of institutional identity as the official ‘narrative’ reality of the day.

    This pattern of private masked agenda running under the masking of a collective good or against a collectively believed and perceived evil, DOES the thing it accuses and hates in the other and persists the cyclic re-enactment of its own separation trauma. Because the true recognition of the Good is not possessed in secret and apart – but naturally or automatically shines or shares out. And the true recognition of the false AS false is no basis from which to think or act or engage with. But we all embody and meet in complex patterns of already invested identity in the false that at the same time generating fear of the true.
    Everyone protects their investment or self as they see it and so seeing truly is the basis on which to re-evaluate choice we do not at first even recognize AS choice because our learned defence is to assign our behavioural response to being caused by the acts of others or conditions outside our control.

    Life is beyond our notion of control but not beyond our acceptance. Regardless what ‘happens’ our experience will be the result of the word or definition we are giving. We are never truly ‘trapped’ in thought that defines us in division and pain of conflict and loss, but our experience of such is our freedom to make a new choice or give a new word. This is in a sense steering into the skid of sense of loss of connection – but only momentarily as a the re-alignment within a larger communication. The mind in reaction can operate identity theft just like the phishing ruse. Balance within wholeness undoes the sense of self-lack as an expression OF wholeness. For this is the gift of a life that moves through us to recognize itself in the living instead of fixating in imaged forms of a sense of separating self-possession and control.
    Power struggle is already framed in terms that rule out wholeness.
    So the way to SEE what is being ‘framed out’ is to look AT the frame an NOT be seduced or fixated in the picture. It is the basis of our thinking that is recognisably foundational to our shared experience, and the mind that made such thinking is not the guide for its undoing.

    If we recognize our true need, we will make way for a a point of awareness from which to recognize our own delusions – else we ‘see’ BY them – but through a broken mind see only a broken world.

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      • Hi madmother13
        Everyone in this as in most issues is en-tranced into the ‘picture’ and no one looks at the ‘framing’.
        This is how the mind in hiding ‘works’.
        The personality structure is a masking from and a masking in.
        Who WANTS the mask will not accept its undoing – regardless the cost of what they then must accept instead. (Untruth made real and demanding sacrifice).
        Everyone makes an image of themselves and another for each one they meet.
        And justifies their self in image by invalidating or using others.

        Dr Peter Gøtzsche chose to speak out against a power-establishment that runs under masks of ‘protection’ or ‘service’ or ‘help’ under the belief and conviction that a false foundation is a lack of substance and a fraudulent criminal conspiracy. But he also projected moral outrage and anger in open personal judgement of such behaviours as a ‘jaccusĂŠ’ or declaration of war. Others at Cochrane were not willing to associate with Peter for their own reasons and he was pushed out.

        The uncovering of the situation is different from the apportioning of guilt as a determination of personal judgement. One lets truth in. The other pre-empts of short-circuits by assertion of a personal sense of vindication.
        Framing in guilt is always a way to protect against the uncovering and undoing of an ignorance – but every and all willingness to uncover and give true witness serves the release from a falsely framed and tyrannous mind.

        Dr Peter Gøtzsche is not bound or imprisoned, or denied freedom to undertake further endeavour along the lines of his calling or passion in life. But will he let a personal grievance frame a willingness to uncover the true?

        Do we?

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  24. Abortion is NOT murder, and to insist on such a position is to deny one half of humanity one of their most fundamental human rights.

    Abortion must be defended as an essential right of a woman to control her body and reproductive rights.

    Nobody can seriously say they are a feminist OR support women’s equality if they do not unequivocally support a women’s right to abortion.

    Anyone who fails to support a woman’s right to abortion ALSO fails to fully understand psychiatric oppression and all its connections to other human rights struggles.

    It is wrong of Dragon Slayer to misquote the content of Oldhead’s above comment, because I believe he also fully supports a women’s right to abortion.

    Richard

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  27. I have filed a Freedom of information law (FOI) request for TIPS anonymised raw data.

    Access was rejected:

    This research data consists of confidential information and researchers have a duty of confidentiality regarding the information that is processed in the research project. The legal basis for the rejection is FOI § 13, first paragraph: “Information that is subject to the obligation to impose law or in accordance with law is unsigned from access”.

    I filed a complaint:

    FOI § 13 prohibits access to information that is subject to a duty of confidentiality (“subject to the obligation of confidentiality”), among other things, applies in cases where the information relates to someone’s personal circumstances, cf. § 13, no. 1. If it is not possible to find out which person the information applies to, it will nor normally be a breach of the duty of confidentiality to
    pass on the information ”

    Katrine Ore responsible for Quality assurance system for health and medical research, Research ethics is a Cand.philol History of Religions which seems to fitt perfect for psychiatry based on the belief to find evidence in the future.

    I should mention that transparency is my hobby: I filed a Complaint to the Human Rights Committee Keim/Germany because of access was denied due to lack of a FOI law in Bavaria: http://wkeim.bplaced.net/files/Walter%20Keim%20v.%20Germany%20Communication%20to%20Human%20Rights%20Committee%2029%20June%202019.pdf

    Complaint in Norwegian: http://wkeim.bplaced.net/files/TIPS-innsyn2.html

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  28. Enormous thanks and kudos to RW for this excellent article, which I had previously only skimmed but read thoroughly today. Would that this had been published in the New York Times or the New Yorker or the Guardian or any large mainstream publication. Which is of course about as likely as Torrey suddenly admitting that he’s been lying all these decades.

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