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Psychiatric Drug Researcher Bob Whitaker on Free Radio Sunday
Former Boston Globe reporter Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America, will speak by phone on Bathrobespierre's Broadsides, FRSC's late Sunday morning talk show 10 AM - 11:30 AM, May 27th. Whitaker has done recent research on the 24-fold increase in diagnosis of youth "requiring" psychiatric medication and its devastating impact.
Whitaker will update his book Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill in America
This will be a phone interview. Questions can be e-mailed in to the show at rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com
Questions can also be called in at 831-427-3772 during the show or no later than 8 hours before the show at 423-4833. You may also leave them in the comment section in indybay.org/santacruz.
Whitaker's book is also available at the Santa Cruz Public Library.
Here's a partial Chapter Outline of Whitaker's book:
Preface
The World Health Organization has repeatedly found that people diagnosed with schizophrenia in the U.S. and other developed countries fare much worse than schizophrenia patients in poor countries. In the poor countries, a high percentage of patients recover and lead active social lives. In the U.S. and other developed countries, most patients so diagnosed become chronically ill. An understanding of this failure of modern medicine can be found by tracing the history of medical treatments for madness to the present day.
Part One: The Original Bedlam (1750-1900)
1. Bedlam in Medicine
A look at early medical therapies for madness in Europe and the colonial U.S., and why those therapies were at times viewed as curative. The early therapies included bleeding patients, putting them in "tranquilizer chairs," spinning them, dunking them in water, and even holding them underwater until they lost consciousness. Such therapies arose, in part, because of a belief that "reason" was the highest human faculty, and thus the mad, having lost their reason, were "brutes" and needed to be treated as such.
2. The Healing Hand of Kindness
In the early 1800s, there arose a form of care in England and France known as moral treatment, which emphasized treating the insane with kindness and empathy, and avoiding medical remedies that "worked" by weakening the patient. Moral treatment emphasized that mental patients should be seen as part of the human family. This form of care produced good outcomes for more than 30 years.
Part Two: The Darkest Era (1900-1950)
3. Unfit to Breed
The eugenics movement took hold in the U.S. in the early years of the 20th century. This "science" preached that insanity was a genetic disorder, and that a gene for insanity was spreading throughout the U.S. population at alarming rates. As a result, the humanitarian attitudes common to moral treatment gave way to a belief, said to be grounded in science, that the mentally ill were a threat to the general well-being of the country. To counter this threat, eugenicists argued that the mentally ill should be segregated in asylums and forcibly sterilized. By the end of the 1920s, American society had embraced involuntary sterilization of the mentally ill as a progressive health measure, with the New York Times and numerous other newspapers editorializing in support of it. The asylums were also run on bare-bones budgets, a fiscal policy that was consistent with eugenic notions that devalued the mentally ill.
4. Too Much Intelligence
After the fall of moral treatment in the late 1800s, American psychiatry once again devoted itself to finding physical remedies for psychotic disorders. Therapies of every kind were tried. These ranged from water therapies like the continuous bath, in which patients were kept in bathtubs for days on end, to gastrointestinal surgery. Doctors also tried fever, sleep and referigeration therapies (this last one involving cooling patients to the point they lost consciousness.) Finally, in the 1930s, there arose a trio of therapies--insulin coma therapy, metrazole convulsive therapy, and electroshock--that all worked, as was freely acknowledged at the time, by damaging the brain.
5. Brain Damage as Miracle Therapy
The fourth "brain-damaging" therapeutic that was embraced in asylum medicine in the 1930s and early 1940s was prefrontal lobotomy. This operation was pronounced safe and effective in numerous trials, and in 1949 its inventor, Portuguese neurosurgeon Egas Moniz, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Many physicians who tried it concluded that the operation could not possible harm the mentally ill, and during the 1940s newspapers and magazines regularly wrote about this "miracle" therapy for curing mental disorders. Today, this operation is viewed as a mutilating surgery, and its rise and fall provides a cautionary tale about the capacity of a society to delude itself about the merits of its medical treatments for the mentally ill.
Part Three: Back to Bedlam (1950-1990s)
6. Modern-Day Alchemy
In the early 1950s, chlorpromazine--marketed as Thorazine--was introduced for the treatment of psychotic disorders. Initially, physicians praised it for producing a "chemical lobotomy," and noted that it also produced symptoms similar in kind to the encephalitis lethargic virus. It was seen as a drug useful for quieting asylum patients, and not as a "cure" for psychosis. However, over the next decade, the drug underwent an image makeover (which was driven by the pharmaceutical companies), and by the early 1960s chlorpromazine and other newly introduced neuroleptics were hailed as "safe, antischizophrenic" medications.
The outline continues with comments from the public at http://santacruz.indymedia.org/newswire/display/11206/index.php
Street Spirit editor Terry Messman reviews Whitaker's book and interviews Whitaker;
http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2003/Mad-In-AmericaJun03.htm
This interview is reprinted in the May 2007 edition of Street Spirit, available on the streets of Santa Cruz from homeless vendors, from Master Vendor Thomas Leavitt at 295-3917, or at the Main Branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library.
This will be a phone interview. Questions can be e-mailed in to the show at rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com
Questions can also be called in at 831-427-3772 during the show or no later than 8 hours before the show at 423-4833. You may also leave them in the comment section in indybay.org/santacruz.
Whitaker's book is also available at the Santa Cruz Public Library.
Here's a partial Chapter Outline of Whitaker's book:
Preface
The World Health Organization has repeatedly found that people diagnosed with schizophrenia in the U.S. and other developed countries fare much worse than schizophrenia patients in poor countries. In the poor countries, a high percentage of patients recover and lead active social lives. In the U.S. and other developed countries, most patients so diagnosed become chronically ill. An understanding of this failure of modern medicine can be found by tracing the history of medical treatments for madness to the present day.
Part One: The Original Bedlam (1750-1900)
1. Bedlam in Medicine
A look at early medical therapies for madness in Europe and the colonial U.S., and why those therapies were at times viewed as curative. The early therapies included bleeding patients, putting them in "tranquilizer chairs," spinning them, dunking them in water, and even holding them underwater until they lost consciousness. Such therapies arose, in part, because of a belief that "reason" was the highest human faculty, and thus the mad, having lost their reason, were "brutes" and needed to be treated as such.
2. The Healing Hand of Kindness
In the early 1800s, there arose a form of care in England and France known as moral treatment, which emphasized treating the insane with kindness and empathy, and avoiding medical remedies that "worked" by weakening the patient. Moral treatment emphasized that mental patients should be seen as part of the human family. This form of care produced good outcomes for more than 30 years.
Part Two: The Darkest Era (1900-1950)
3. Unfit to Breed
The eugenics movement took hold in the U.S. in the early years of the 20th century. This "science" preached that insanity was a genetic disorder, and that a gene for insanity was spreading throughout the U.S. population at alarming rates. As a result, the humanitarian attitudes common to moral treatment gave way to a belief, said to be grounded in science, that the mentally ill were a threat to the general well-being of the country. To counter this threat, eugenicists argued that the mentally ill should be segregated in asylums and forcibly sterilized. By the end of the 1920s, American society had embraced involuntary sterilization of the mentally ill as a progressive health measure, with the New York Times and numerous other newspapers editorializing in support of it. The asylums were also run on bare-bones budgets, a fiscal policy that was consistent with eugenic notions that devalued the mentally ill.
4. Too Much Intelligence
After the fall of moral treatment in the late 1800s, American psychiatry once again devoted itself to finding physical remedies for psychotic disorders. Therapies of every kind were tried. These ranged from water therapies like the continuous bath, in which patients were kept in bathtubs for days on end, to gastrointestinal surgery. Doctors also tried fever, sleep and referigeration therapies (this last one involving cooling patients to the point they lost consciousness.) Finally, in the 1930s, there arose a trio of therapies--insulin coma therapy, metrazole convulsive therapy, and electroshock--that all worked, as was freely acknowledged at the time, by damaging the brain.
5. Brain Damage as Miracle Therapy
The fourth "brain-damaging" therapeutic that was embraced in asylum medicine in the 1930s and early 1940s was prefrontal lobotomy. This operation was pronounced safe and effective in numerous trials, and in 1949 its inventor, Portuguese neurosurgeon Egas Moniz, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Many physicians who tried it concluded that the operation could not possible harm the mentally ill, and during the 1940s newspapers and magazines regularly wrote about this "miracle" therapy for curing mental disorders. Today, this operation is viewed as a mutilating surgery, and its rise and fall provides a cautionary tale about the capacity of a society to delude itself about the merits of its medical treatments for the mentally ill.
Part Three: Back to Bedlam (1950-1990s)
6. Modern-Day Alchemy
In the early 1950s, chlorpromazine--marketed as Thorazine--was introduced for the treatment of psychotic disorders. Initially, physicians praised it for producing a "chemical lobotomy," and noted that it also produced symptoms similar in kind to the encephalitis lethargic virus. It was seen as a drug useful for quieting asylum patients, and not as a "cure" for psychosis. However, over the next decade, the drug underwent an image makeover (which was driven by the pharmaceutical companies), and by the early 1960s chlorpromazine and other newly introduced neuroleptics were hailed as "safe, antischizophrenic" medications.
The outline continues with comments from the public at http://santacruz.indymedia.org/newswire/display/11206/index.php
Street Spirit editor Terry Messman reviews Whitaker's book and interviews Whitaker;
http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2003/Mad-In-AmericaJun03.htm
This interview is reprinted in the May 2007 edition of Street Spirit, available on the streets of Santa Cruz from homeless vendors, from Master Vendor Thomas Leavitt at 295-3917, or at the Main Branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library.
Add Your Comments
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take this SERIOUSLY , they have damaged and killed people who simply had some terrible stress due to blatant favoritism in ''american society'', not to mention ASSAULTS by ''authorities''!
Robert Norse wrote;
"However, over the next decade, the drug underwent an image makeover (which was driven by the pharmaceutical companies), and by the early 1960s chlorpromazine and other newly introduced neuroleptics were hailed as "safe, antischizophrenic" medications."
This is just the tip of the iceberg with pharmaceutical corporations and their business of disease, especially the profit driven arm of psychiatry and their so-called chemical PHARMA treatments of chronic mental illness..
Dr. Rath Health Foundation follows the history of big PHARMA's business with disease from IG Farben's death camps of Nazi Germany to modern day US pharma-psychiatry;
"The most powerful German economic corporate emporium in the first half of this century was the Interessengemeinschaft Farben or IG Farben, for short. Interessengemeinschaft stands for "Association of Common Interests" and was nothing more than a powerful cartel of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. IG Farben was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolph Hitler. One year before Hitler seized power, IG Farben donated 400,000 marks to Hitler and his Nazi party. Accordingly, after Hitler's seizure of power, IG Farben was the single largest profiteer of the German conquest of the world, the Second World War."
article @;
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/history_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm
also see;
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/index.html
Early experiments with fluoride compounds on human behavior were begun by the Nazi scientists of IG Farben, amplified and refined in modern day "Fluoextipine" aka Prozac, a favorite psychiatric med product of US pharma corporation Eli Lilly. Why would GW Bush, a major shareholder of Eli Lilly stock, want to implement a nationwide depression screening that exclusively recommends pharma products to "treat" symptoms of mental illness??
"This dubious, government sponsored and massive screening initiative was formulated by a panel of "experts" assembled to carry out the requirements of President Bush's "New Freedom Commission on Mental Health" in April 2002 and it will implement the "TMAP formula" nationally.
[The "TMAP formula" is co-developed by Dr. Graham Emslie, who recently tried to deceive the public again with a selfmade "study" (see article) promoting Prozac (Sarafem, fluoxetine) and other SSRI's as perfectly safe to use. And this all in the midst of federal investigations into the marketing & safety of antidepressants. Dr. Graham Emslie receives research grants from Eli Lilly & Company, the maker of Prozac and Cymbalta (duloxetine).]
The "TMAP formula" practice guidelines designate antidepressants & antipsychotics as the treatment of choice for mental illness, not on the basis of evidence, but on the basis of a consensus panel. A panel under the direct influence of Big Pharma. It is the culmination of a series of dubious federally sponsored, "mental health" initiatives - that began during the Clinton Administration- and which focus especially on children.
The Bush administration US Screen Program, deceptively titled the "New Freedom Initiative for People with Disabilities", hides it's secrets way down deep in Chapter 4, under the section "Promoting Full Access to Community Life." The full 2004 progress report can be found at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html
An extract from chapter 4:
"The Commission also concluded that the roles played by states must be central to the transformation process, but states must rely heavily upon the involvement of consumers in research, planning, and evaluation activities. At the same time, the coordinated efforts of more than 25 Federal agencies must undergird and reinforce the states' processes. Every adult with a serious mental illness or child with a serious emotional disturbance must have an individualized plan of care coordinating services among programs and across agencies. Every state must have a comprehensive mental health plan, the ownership of which is shared by all state agencies impacting the care of persons with serious mental illnesses."
So, according to this plan, EVERY man, woman and child in the United States is to be screened, analyzed and monitored by the US government and legal enforceable personalized "care" regimes WILL BE applied to those exhibiting signs of "mental illness."
According to the DSM-IV manual (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association), mild depression (cyclothymia), sadness, sorrow, grief & boredom and even anger (bereavement), shyness (avoidant personality disorder), forgetfulness (Amnesia), sleep problems, math problems, bedwetting, to name a few, are all categorized as "mental illnesses."
"
above info @;
http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/protect-your-children.htm
also visit Eli Lilly article database @;
http://www.oralchelation.net/data/Lilly/data6.htm
There are of course other methods of treating people who exhibit emotional or mental disturbances. The time tested treatment of nature, rest, excersize and a healthy diet remain unchallenged except by the very psychiatrists who benefit from PHARMA kickdowns. Gary Null PhD has exposed the hidden side of psychiatry, PHARMA & the FDA;
"The Medical Industrial Complex
Why did Eli Lilly and the FDA use trickery to approve a drug it knew to be ineffective and unsafe? Breggin says this happened because psychiatry is part of the medical industrial complex, which, like any industry, is looking to sell products:
"One way to look at this is to consider the industrialization of suffering. Getting Prozac from a doctor is very similar to getting a Ford or a Toyota from a car dealer. We are at the end point of an industrialized process with a product. Now, psychiatrists are like salesmen in the car showroom. We go to a psychiatrist and he's going to try and sell us a car, only the car in this case is a psychiatric drug, and very frequently it's going to be Prozac.... The FDA is influenced by what the manufacturers do and what the manufacturer tells them."14
Prozac is not the first pharmaceutical to be questioned after FDA authorization. Hundreds of drugs that initially pass their tests end up having major label changes - i.e., a major new warning has to be made - or wind up being withdrawn. In the field of psychiatry, the rate is especially high. During the time Prozac was approved, about 16 other psychiatric drugs passed inspection, and nine of these have since had major label changes. Breggin says that the FDA reveals the truth of the matter to physicians, but not to the public: "A few months ago," he reports, "I attended a full day's seminar put on by the FDA where they were openly admitting this.... They had a black poster there that said, 'Once a drug is approved, is it safe? No, it's not!' They were making the point that many drugs turn out to be very dangerous after approval."14
There are a number of reasons why dangerous effects of medications are not known early on. One is that the individual studies performed by the FDA usually have a hundred patients or less. Four thousand patients may be tested as 40 groups of 100. According to Breggin, this means that scientists are less likely to notice a reaction in one patient:
"They may think, Jane got depressed when she took Prozac but she was probably going to get more depressed anyway. In 40 different studies, 40 or more people may be missed. Perhaps a fatal reaction shows up once in 5,000,000. That's a lot of fatalities but it may not show up at all in a group of 5000. Or it may be missed. Eli Lilly was developing a drug for the treatment of a liver disorder. A couple of people died from this drug but it was missed in the early stages of the study. So, it's very easy for things to get through."14
In addition, FDA doctors have close affiliations with drug companies. Paul Leiber, who approves psycho-pharmacological drugs at the FDA, is known to have friendly communication with Lilly. Breggin states, "This guy is a friend to Prozac. One statement I found in the Lilly material even says so. You have some real issues here having to do with the collaborative kind of relationship. "14
There are always doctors who can be easily bought. When violence and suicide were related to Prozac at FDA-held hearings, Breggin reports that "most of the doctors who were making the judgment at the hearing were taking money from drug companies." One consultant, who supported Prozac in court, was getting paid huge sums by Lilly to write a paper on the subject. Another doctor who voted in favor of the drug was paid by Lilly to tour the country and make speeches on its safety and benefits. "Dozens of them are getting paid by Lilly and doing clinical research for them. Nonetheless, they think they can sit fairly in judgment about whether Prozac is harmful or not."14
Breggin stresses that it all comes back to the fact that organized psychiatry is part of a medical industrial complex. "It is out to push drugs, not ethics," he feels. "It's not science but a myth. They're part of industry. They're no more objective than doctors who work for tobacco companies and say tobacco doesn't cause cancer."14"
please visit Gary Null @;
http://www.garynull.com/documents/hidden-psychiatry.htm
"However, over the next decade, the drug underwent an image makeover (which was driven by the pharmaceutical companies), and by the early 1960s chlorpromazine and other newly introduced neuroleptics were hailed as "safe, antischizophrenic" medications."
This is just the tip of the iceberg with pharmaceutical corporations and their business of disease, especially the profit driven arm of psychiatry and their so-called chemical PHARMA treatments of chronic mental illness..
Dr. Rath Health Foundation follows the history of big PHARMA's business with disease from IG Farben's death camps of Nazi Germany to modern day US pharma-psychiatry;
"The most powerful German economic corporate emporium in the first half of this century was the Interessengemeinschaft Farben or IG Farben, for short. Interessengemeinschaft stands for "Association of Common Interests" and was nothing more than a powerful cartel of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. IG Farben was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolph Hitler. One year before Hitler seized power, IG Farben donated 400,000 marks to Hitler and his Nazi party. Accordingly, after Hitler's seizure of power, IG Farben was the single largest profiteer of the German conquest of the world, the Second World War."
article @;
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/history_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm
also see;
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/index.html
Early experiments with fluoride compounds on human behavior were begun by the Nazi scientists of IG Farben, amplified and refined in modern day "Fluoextipine" aka Prozac, a favorite psychiatric med product of US pharma corporation Eli Lilly. Why would GW Bush, a major shareholder of Eli Lilly stock, want to implement a nationwide depression screening that exclusively recommends pharma products to "treat" symptoms of mental illness??
"This dubious, government sponsored and massive screening initiative was formulated by a panel of "experts" assembled to carry out the requirements of President Bush's "New Freedom Commission on Mental Health" in April 2002 and it will implement the "TMAP formula" nationally.
[The "TMAP formula" is co-developed by Dr. Graham Emslie, who recently tried to deceive the public again with a selfmade "study" (see article) promoting Prozac (Sarafem, fluoxetine) and other SSRI's as perfectly safe to use. And this all in the midst of federal investigations into the marketing & safety of antidepressants. Dr. Graham Emslie receives research grants from Eli Lilly & Company, the maker of Prozac and Cymbalta (duloxetine).]
The "TMAP formula" practice guidelines designate antidepressants & antipsychotics as the treatment of choice for mental illness, not on the basis of evidence, but on the basis of a consensus panel. A panel under the direct influence of Big Pharma. It is the culmination of a series of dubious federally sponsored, "mental health" initiatives - that began during the Clinton Administration- and which focus especially on children.
The Bush administration US Screen Program, deceptively titled the "New Freedom Initiative for People with Disabilities", hides it's secrets way down deep in Chapter 4, under the section "Promoting Full Access to Community Life." The full 2004 progress report can be found at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html
An extract from chapter 4:
"The Commission also concluded that the roles played by states must be central to the transformation process, but states must rely heavily upon the involvement of consumers in research, planning, and evaluation activities. At the same time, the coordinated efforts of more than 25 Federal agencies must undergird and reinforce the states' processes. Every adult with a serious mental illness or child with a serious emotional disturbance must have an individualized plan of care coordinating services among programs and across agencies. Every state must have a comprehensive mental health plan, the ownership of which is shared by all state agencies impacting the care of persons with serious mental illnesses."
So, according to this plan, EVERY man, woman and child in the United States is to be screened, analyzed and monitored by the US government and legal enforceable personalized "care" regimes WILL BE applied to those exhibiting signs of "mental illness."
According to the DSM-IV manual (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association), mild depression (cyclothymia), sadness, sorrow, grief & boredom and even anger (bereavement), shyness (avoidant personality disorder), forgetfulness (Amnesia), sleep problems, math problems, bedwetting, to name a few, are all categorized as "mental illnesses."
"
above info @;
http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/protect-your-children.htm
also visit Eli Lilly article database @;
http://www.oralchelation.net/data/Lilly/data6.htm
There are of course other methods of treating people who exhibit emotional or mental disturbances. The time tested treatment of nature, rest, excersize and a healthy diet remain unchallenged except by the very psychiatrists who benefit from PHARMA kickdowns. Gary Null PhD has exposed the hidden side of psychiatry, PHARMA & the FDA;
"The Medical Industrial Complex
Why did Eli Lilly and the FDA use trickery to approve a drug it knew to be ineffective and unsafe? Breggin says this happened because psychiatry is part of the medical industrial complex, which, like any industry, is looking to sell products:
"One way to look at this is to consider the industrialization of suffering. Getting Prozac from a doctor is very similar to getting a Ford or a Toyota from a car dealer. We are at the end point of an industrialized process with a product. Now, psychiatrists are like salesmen in the car showroom. We go to a psychiatrist and he's going to try and sell us a car, only the car in this case is a psychiatric drug, and very frequently it's going to be Prozac.... The FDA is influenced by what the manufacturers do and what the manufacturer tells them."14
Prozac is not the first pharmaceutical to be questioned after FDA authorization. Hundreds of drugs that initially pass their tests end up having major label changes - i.e., a major new warning has to be made - or wind up being withdrawn. In the field of psychiatry, the rate is especially high. During the time Prozac was approved, about 16 other psychiatric drugs passed inspection, and nine of these have since had major label changes. Breggin says that the FDA reveals the truth of the matter to physicians, but not to the public: "A few months ago," he reports, "I attended a full day's seminar put on by the FDA where they were openly admitting this.... They had a black poster there that said, 'Once a drug is approved, is it safe? No, it's not!' They were making the point that many drugs turn out to be very dangerous after approval."14
There are a number of reasons why dangerous effects of medications are not known early on. One is that the individual studies performed by the FDA usually have a hundred patients or less. Four thousand patients may be tested as 40 groups of 100. According to Breggin, this means that scientists are less likely to notice a reaction in one patient:
"They may think, Jane got depressed when she took Prozac but she was probably going to get more depressed anyway. In 40 different studies, 40 or more people may be missed. Perhaps a fatal reaction shows up once in 5,000,000. That's a lot of fatalities but it may not show up at all in a group of 5000. Or it may be missed. Eli Lilly was developing a drug for the treatment of a liver disorder. A couple of people died from this drug but it was missed in the early stages of the study. So, it's very easy for things to get through."14
In addition, FDA doctors have close affiliations with drug companies. Paul Leiber, who approves psycho-pharmacological drugs at the FDA, is known to have friendly communication with Lilly. Breggin states, "This guy is a friend to Prozac. One statement I found in the Lilly material even says so. You have some real issues here having to do with the collaborative kind of relationship. "14
There are always doctors who can be easily bought. When violence and suicide were related to Prozac at FDA-held hearings, Breggin reports that "most of the doctors who were making the judgment at the hearing were taking money from drug companies." One consultant, who supported Prozac in court, was getting paid huge sums by Lilly to write a paper on the subject. Another doctor who voted in favor of the drug was paid by Lilly to tour the country and make speeches on its safety and benefits. "Dozens of them are getting paid by Lilly and doing clinical research for them. Nonetheless, they think they can sit fairly in judgment about whether Prozac is harmful or not."14
Breggin stresses that it all comes back to the fact that organized psychiatry is part of a medical industrial complex. "It is out to push drugs, not ethics," he feels. "It's not science but a myth. They're part of industry. They're no more objective than doctors who work for tobacco companies and say tobacco doesn't cause cancer."14"
please visit Gary Null @;
http://www.garynull.com/documents/hidden-psychiatry.htm
Interested folks can review a prior interview with Whitaker on FRSC at http://www.huffsantacruz.org/brb/brb090504.mp3 .
Whitaker updates his book, discusses his work on a sequel, and clarifies that he came to his critical position on psychiatric medication while beginning with a pro-psychiatry bias.
Whitaker updates his book, discusses his work on a sequel, and clarifies that he came to his critical position on psychiatric medication while beginning with a pro-psychiatry bias.
I very much enjoyed the Sunday edition of Bathrobespierre's Broadsides on Free Radio Santa Cruz. Robert Whitaker makes a strong case that US mental health patients are guinee pigs for the Pharmaceutical industry. Also telling, are the NIH studies which show that in poor countries which lack access to the new "miracle" psychiatric drugs, they have far fewer mental health problems and experience much quicker recoveries despite living in situations of high stress with few options.
This show is an indictment of the pharmaceutical industry which increasingly is working with legislators to provide for mandatory use of their products---be it forced psychiatric drugs in this case, forced immunizations (another scam, not supported by their own data) or this new push to mandate young girls to take a medication which supposedly prevents cervical cancer ( a pretty tall claim!!).
Add in parents who opt not to treat their children suffering from cancer with horribly toxic "chemotherapy."
then there is the whole testing industry----mandating testing people's blood for the presence of forbidden chemicals--all at public expense.
Just say "no" to mandatory drug treatment.
Cut the testing industry off at the knees.
This show is an indictment of the pharmaceutical industry which increasingly is working with legislators to provide for mandatory use of their products---be it forced psychiatric drugs in this case, forced immunizations (another scam, not supported by their own data) or this new push to mandate young girls to take a medication which supposedly prevents cervical cancer ( a pretty tall claim!!).
Add in parents who opt not to treat their children suffering from cancer with horribly toxic "chemotherapy."
then there is the whole testing industry----mandating testing people's blood for the presence of forbidden chemicals--all at public expense.
Just say "no" to mandatory drug treatment.
Cut the testing industry off at the knees.
The Whitaker interview is archived at http://www.radiolibre.org/brb/brb070527.mp3 Download it and scroll past the first 1/3 of the show to find the full 2 1/2 hour interview and subsequent discussion.
If anyone knows someone who would like to defend the psychiatric and medical establishment in its current "drug 'en to death" policies (as I see them), please contact me.
Robert Whitaker has agreed to return for a debate in a future show.
If anyone knows someone who would like to defend the psychiatric and medical establishment in its current "drug 'en to death" policies (as I see them), please contact me.
Robert Whitaker has agreed to return for a debate in a future show.
For more information:
http://www.huffsantacruz.org
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey declined an invitation to debate author Robert Whitaker on Free Radio Santa Cruz around the question of the general efficacy of psychiatric drugs.
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Norse [mailto:rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 9:07 PM
To: info
Subject: Debate Proposal
Free Radio Santa Cruz recently did a lengthy interview with author Robert Whitaker on his book Mad in America. We understand Dr. E Fuller Torrey is a well-regarded author and critic of Whitaker's book. Would he be interested in a radio debate with Mr. Whitaker?
Please pass on the invitation to Dr. Torrey and let us know.
Thanks, Robert Norse
Free Radio Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA
From: Corey Thornton <thorntonc [at] treatmentadvocacycenter.org>
To: Robert Norse <rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: Debate Proposal
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 16:39:10 -0400
Dear Mr. Norse,
Dr. Torrey asked me to let you know that he will be unable to do this.
Sincerely,
Corey Thornton
Treatment Advocacy Center
200 North Glebe Road, Suite 730
Arlington, VA 22203
703 294 6001 - phone
703 294 6010 - fax
thorntonc [at] treatmentadvocacycenter.org - email
http://psychlaws.blogspot.com - blog
The Treatment Advocacy Center (http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org) is a
national nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental illnesses. TAC promotes laws, policies, and practices for the delivery of psychiatric care and supports the development of innovative treatments for and research into
the causes of severe and persistent psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Some years ago, Torrey wrote the following critique of Whitaker's Mad in America:
Nurse Ratched with Footnotes
A review of Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, by Robert Whitaker (New York: Perseus Publishing, 2002, $27.00)
Reviewed by E. Fuller Torrey, president, Treatment Advocacy Center
"...given Whitaker's writing skills, it is unfortunate that he did not turn his attention to one of the many real problems in American psychiatry, such as for-profit managed care, Medicaid rip-off, the excess influence and profits of the pharmaceutical industry, or the tragedy of untreated seriously mentally ill individuals on the streets and in jails."
"Histrionic" is perhaps the kindest adjective that can be used to describe Robert Whitaker's new book on American psychiatry. "Deeply disappointing" would also be appropriate, since Whitaker has heretofore been known as a serious medical writer for the Boston Globe. Mad in America, however, rarely ascends to the level of that newspaper; rather, it mostly descends to the level of the tabloid Globe, available at supermarket check-out counters.
The first half of the book recounts the history of psychiatric treatment in America until 1950. This was the era of Benjamin Rush's spinning chair, eugenics, forced sterilization, the removal of teeth, and lobotomies. It is a sad history that has been described in less overwrought tones in books such as Daniel Kevles's In the Name of Eugenics, Sander Gilman's Seeing the Insane, and Gerald Grob's Mental Illness and American Society 1875-1940.
Whitaker, by contrast, approaches his subject as did Ken Kesey in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the result is Nurse Ratched with footnotes. Nowhere does Whitaker acknowledge that these approaches to treatment were measures of desperation in desperate times. The nation's overcrowded psychiatric wards were filled with continuously increasing numbers of very psychiatrically ill patients for whom no effective treatments were available.
The second half of the book describes the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia. Whitaker, however, appears unsure whether schizophrenia even exists, describing it as a term "loosely applied to people with widely disparate emotional problems."
At some points in the book, he appears to have even bought Thomas Szasz's myth-of-mental-illness nonsense: "American medicine, in essence, had developed a process for minting 'schizophrenics' from a troubled cast of people…"
Nowhere does Whitaker include references to the many studies showing structural brain abnormalities, neurological abnormalities, and neuropsychological deficits in individuals with schizophrenia who had never been treated with any medication.
Whitaker has nothing good to say about antipsychotic medications. He calls them "not just therapeutically neutral, but clearly harmful over the long term" and claims that the drugs themselves cause many of the symptoms of schizophrenia.
Like Scientologists and other antipsychiatry groups, Whitaker exaggerates the adverse effects of antipsychotic drugs, saying, for example, that tardive dyskinesia occurs "in a high percentage of patients." He also includes statements that are patently erroneous. For example, he claims that "even moderately high doses of haloperidol were linked to violent behavior," when, in fact, studies have shown that haloperidol and other antipsychotics decrease violent behavior in individuals with schizophrenia.
Many of Whitaker's errors originate in his liberal footnoting of Dr. Peter Breggin, who has acknowledged having received support from Scientology, as a source.
In place of antipsychotic drugs, Whitaker extols the virtues of "love and food and understanding, not drugs." Like many antipsychiatry advocates, Whitaker romanticizes the early eighteenth-century era of "moral treatment" in which psychiatric patients were humanely treated.
At that time, claims were made for impressive cure rates, culminating in 1843, when Dr. William Awl, director of an Ohio asylum, announced that he had achieved 100 percent recoveries; thereafter he was known as "Dr. Cure-Awl." The failure of "moral treatment" alone as a cure for insanity was clearly established in 1876 by Dr. Pliny Earle, who showed that the prior claims had been highly exaggerated.
Whitaker highly praises the more recent version of "moral treatment," Soteria House, started by Dr. Loren Mosher. Mosher was a protégé of Dr. Ronald Laing's, and Mosher's experiments, like Laing's along these lines, have all passed into history because they failed.
In a similar vein, Whitaker discusses at length the WHO multi-center schizophrenia study that reported that individuals from developing countries (Nigeria, Colombia, India), "where such medications are less frequently used," had a better outcome than did individuals in developed countries.
In fact, the study reported that the percentage of chronically disabled patients was similar in all the countries. What did differ was the percentage of complete cures-40 percent in developing versus 25 percent in developed countries. As has been widely discussed, the fact that morepatients in the developing countries had a very acute onset of their illness suggests that many of them probably had a reversible viral encephalitis or other organic cause of their schizophrenia- like symptoms and thus had better outcomes.
Despite its major shortcomings, Mad in America is not without merit. Chapter 11, on the problems in the clinical trials industry, reflects the author's considerable prior expertise in this area. Indeed, he could have profitably written the entire book about this.
And given Whitaker's writing skills, it is unfortunate that he did not turn his attention to one of the many real problems in American psychiatry, such as for-profit managed care, Medicaid rip-off, the excess influence and profits of the pharmaceutical industry, or the tragedy of untreated seriously mentally ill individuals on the streets and in jails. Instead, Whitaker chose to return to the sixties, revisiting Ken Kesey's mythical psychiatric ward. The ghost of Nurse Ratched lives on.
[review archived at http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/bookreviewWhitaker.htm]
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Norse [mailto:rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 9:07 PM
To: info
Subject: Debate Proposal
Free Radio Santa Cruz recently did a lengthy interview with author Robert Whitaker on his book Mad in America. We understand Dr. E Fuller Torrey is a well-regarded author and critic of Whitaker's book. Would he be interested in a radio debate with Mr. Whitaker?
Please pass on the invitation to Dr. Torrey and let us know.
Thanks, Robert Norse
Free Radio Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA
From: Corey Thornton <thorntonc [at] treatmentadvocacycenter.org>
To: Robert Norse <rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: Debate Proposal
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 16:39:10 -0400
Dear Mr. Norse,
Dr. Torrey asked me to let you know that he will be unable to do this.
Sincerely,
Corey Thornton
Treatment Advocacy Center
200 North Glebe Road, Suite 730
Arlington, VA 22203
703 294 6001 - phone
703 294 6010 - fax
thorntonc [at] treatmentadvocacycenter.org - email
http://psychlaws.blogspot.com - blog
The Treatment Advocacy Center (http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org) is a
national nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental illnesses. TAC promotes laws, policies, and practices for the delivery of psychiatric care and supports the development of innovative treatments for and research into
the causes of severe and persistent psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Some years ago, Torrey wrote the following critique of Whitaker's Mad in America:
Nurse Ratched with Footnotes
A review of Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, by Robert Whitaker (New York: Perseus Publishing, 2002, $27.00)
Reviewed by E. Fuller Torrey, president, Treatment Advocacy Center
"...given Whitaker's writing skills, it is unfortunate that he did not turn his attention to one of the many real problems in American psychiatry, such as for-profit managed care, Medicaid rip-off, the excess influence and profits of the pharmaceutical industry, or the tragedy of untreated seriously mentally ill individuals on the streets and in jails."
"Histrionic" is perhaps the kindest adjective that can be used to describe Robert Whitaker's new book on American psychiatry. "Deeply disappointing" would also be appropriate, since Whitaker has heretofore been known as a serious medical writer for the Boston Globe. Mad in America, however, rarely ascends to the level of that newspaper; rather, it mostly descends to the level of the tabloid Globe, available at supermarket check-out counters.
The first half of the book recounts the history of psychiatric treatment in America until 1950. This was the era of Benjamin Rush's spinning chair, eugenics, forced sterilization, the removal of teeth, and lobotomies. It is a sad history that has been described in less overwrought tones in books such as Daniel Kevles's In the Name of Eugenics, Sander Gilman's Seeing the Insane, and Gerald Grob's Mental Illness and American Society 1875-1940.
Whitaker, by contrast, approaches his subject as did Ken Kesey in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the result is Nurse Ratched with footnotes. Nowhere does Whitaker acknowledge that these approaches to treatment were measures of desperation in desperate times. The nation's overcrowded psychiatric wards were filled with continuously increasing numbers of very psychiatrically ill patients for whom no effective treatments were available.
The second half of the book describes the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia. Whitaker, however, appears unsure whether schizophrenia even exists, describing it as a term "loosely applied to people with widely disparate emotional problems."
At some points in the book, he appears to have even bought Thomas Szasz's myth-of-mental-illness nonsense: "American medicine, in essence, had developed a process for minting 'schizophrenics' from a troubled cast of people…"
Nowhere does Whitaker include references to the many studies showing structural brain abnormalities, neurological abnormalities, and neuropsychological deficits in individuals with schizophrenia who had never been treated with any medication.
Whitaker has nothing good to say about antipsychotic medications. He calls them "not just therapeutically neutral, but clearly harmful over the long term" and claims that the drugs themselves cause many of the symptoms of schizophrenia.
Like Scientologists and other antipsychiatry groups, Whitaker exaggerates the adverse effects of antipsychotic drugs, saying, for example, that tardive dyskinesia occurs "in a high percentage of patients." He also includes statements that are patently erroneous. For example, he claims that "even moderately high doses of haloperidol were linked to violent behavior," when, in fact, studies have shown that haloperidol and other antipsychotics decrease violent behavior in individuals with schizophrenia.
Many of Whitaker's errors originate in his liberal footnoting of Dr. Peter Breggin, who has acknowledged having received support from Scientology, as a source.
In place of antipsychotic drugs, Whitaker extols the virtues of "love and food and understanding, not drugs." Like many antipsychiatry advocates, Whitaker romanticizes the early eighteenth-century era of "moral treatment" in which psychiatric patients were humanely treated.
At that time, claims were made for impressive cure rates, culminating in 1843, when Dr. William Awl, director of an Ohio asylum, announced that he had achieved 100 percent recoveries; thereafter he was known as "Dr. Cure-Awl." The failure of "moral treatment" alone as a cure for insanity was clearly established in 1876 by Dr. Pliny Earle, who showed that the prior claims had been highly exaggerated.
Whitaker highly praises the more recent version of "moral treatment," Soteria House, started by Dr. Loren Mosher. Mosher was a protégé of Dr. Ronald Laing's, and Mosher's experiments, like Laing's along these lines, have all passed into history because they failed.
In a similar vein, Whitaker discusses at length the WHO multi-center schizophrenia study that reported that individuals from developing countries (Nigeria, Colombia, India), "where such medications are less frequently used," had a better outcome than did individuals in developed countries.
In fact, the study reported that the percentage of chronically disabled patients was similar in all the countries. What did differ was the percentage of complete cures-40 percent in developing versus 25 percent in developed countries. As has been widely discussed, the fact that morepatients in the developing countries had a very acute onset of their illness suggests that many of them probably had a reversible viral encephalitis or other organic cause of their schizophrenia- like symptoms and thus had better outcomes.
Despite its major shortcomings, Mad in America is not without merit. Chapter 11, on the problems in the clinical trials industry, reflects the author's considerable prior expertise in this area. Indeed, he could have profitably written the entire book about this.
And given Whitaker's writing skills, it is unfortunate that he did not turn his attention to one of the many real problems in American psychiatry, such as for-profit managed care, Medicaid rip-off, the excess influence and profits of the pharmaceutical industry, or the tragedy of untreated seriously mentally ill individuals on the streets and in jails. Instead, Whitaker chose to return to the sixties, revisiting Ken Kesey's mythical psychiatric ward. The ghost of Nurse Ratched lives on.
[review archived at http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/bookreviewWhitaker.htm]
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