299 Presidential advisors warn of Cancer-causing Chemicals. Drug paradigm fueling Mental Illness epidemic-

Presidential advisors warn of Cancer-causing Chemicals. Drug paradigm fueling Mental Illness epidemic

(1) Presidential cancer advisors warn of cancer-causing Chemicals; rebuffed by Industry
(2) Let the Buyer Beware of Certain FDA-Approved Drugs
(3) Drug-based paradigm fueling increase in Mental Illness diagnosis - Robert Whitaker
(4) The MOST Effective Treatment for Depression Isn't Drugs... But You'll Never Hear That From Your Psychiatrist

(1) Presidential cancer advisors warn of cancer-causing Chemicals; rebuffed by Industry

From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@harboursat.com.au> Date: 11.05.2010 08:31 PM

Presidential cancer advisors find courage to warn about environmental risks of cancer chemicals

Originally published May 11 2010

Presidential cancer advisors find courage to warn about environmental risks of cancer chemicals

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

http://www.naturalnews.com/028765_environmental_chemicals_cancer.html

(NaturalNews) When a government panel of experts finds the courage to tell the truth about cancer, it's an event so rare that it becomes newsworthy. Late last week, a report from the President's Cancer Panel (PCP) broke ranks with the sick-care cancer establishment and dared to say something that natural health advocates have been warning about for decades: That Americans are "bombarded" with cancer-causing chemicals and radiation, and if we hope to reduce cancer rates, we must eliminate cancer-causing chemicals in foods, medicines, personal care products and our work and home environments.

In a directive to President Obama, the report states, "The panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase healthcare costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."

When I first read that, I just about fell out of my chair. Government-appointed experts are really saying that there are cancer-causing chemicals in our food and water? That simple fact has been vehemently denied by the cancer industry, processed food giants, personal care product companies and of course the fluoride lobby -- all of which insist their chemicals are perfectly safe.

ACS attacks the report

The American Cancer Society, not surprisingly, was quick to bash the report. The ACS is one of the sick-care cancer industry front groups that reinforces consumer ignorance about both the causes and the solutions for cancer. The ACS has, for decades, engaged in what can only be called a "cancer chemical cover-up" with its denials that environmental chemicals cause cancer. (http://www.naturalnews.com/010244_A...) and (http://www.preventcancer.com/losing...)

Even as cancer experts like Dr Sam Epstein have been warning about carcinogens in cosmetics, personal care products and foods (http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers), the ACS has ridiculously pretended such threats don't exist. And just to top it off, the ACS has been warning people to stay away from sunlight and become more vitamin D deficient, thereby increasing cancer rates even further.

So it's no surprise that the ACS doesn't like this PCP report that dares to state the obvious: There are cancer-causing chemicals in our food and water! "The American people -- even before they are born -- are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures," the report writes.

The great chemical denial

Joining the ACS in criticizing the report is the American Chemistry Council, the trade group representing the very same chemical companies that are poisoning our world right now. Remarkably, the ACS and ACC are on the same side here, denying any link between chemicals and cancer. They insist that all those chemicals in your processed foods, cosmetics, antibacterial soaps, shampoos, fragrance products, home cleaning solvents, pesticides, herbicides and other similar products are all safe for you! Eat up, suckers!

Don't worry about the chemicals, they say. Cancer is just a matter of bad luck. There's nothing you can do about it. So stop trying.

That's their message, you see, and it's a message that plays right into the hands of the cancer industry: Don't prevent your cancer and when you get sick, they'll make a fortune off your disease and suffering.

The radiation threat from medical imaging

The PCP report also takes a strong stand on the cancer risks caused by medical imaging radiation. It actually says, "People who receive multiple scans or other tests that require radiation may accumulate doses equal to or exceeding that of Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors."

I remember receiving hate mail from cancer industry shills when I once made the same statement in an article about mammograms and CT scans. (http://www.naturalnews.com/026113_m...) And yet that statement was factually quite correct: If you undergo several medical imaging tests in a hospital today, you can very easily receive just as much radiation as a person standing a few miles away from the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshoma during World War II. This is not an exaggeration. It is a simple fact of physics and the law of inverse squares. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invers...)

The environmental dangers of pharmaceuticals

Here at NaturalNews, I've been talking about the environmental pollution of pharmaceuticals for years. The fact that pharmaceutical chemicals are flushed down the drain and end up in the water supply is the "dirty little secret" of the drug industry. The problem has gone virtually unrecognized by the entire mainstream medical system... they just pretend it doesn't exist.

Yet this PCP report takes aim at it by saying: "Pharmaceuticals have become a considerable source of environmental contamination. Drugs of all types enter the water supply when they are excreted or improperly disposed of; the health impact of long-term exposure to varying mixtures of these compounds is unknown."

It's about time somebody in Washington stood up and challenged the pharmaceutical industry on the environmental effects of its toxic chemicals. HRT drugs, antidepressants, painkillers and many other types of drugs are right now polluting our oceans and waterways. You can hardly catch a fish near any major U.S. city now that isn't contaminated with pharmaceuticals.

But don't expect anyone to give credence to this warning. This entire PCP report is being largely ignored in Washington (and attacked by Big Business).

What the report really says

The President's Cancer Panel is headed by:

LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr., M.D., F.A.C.S., Chair
Charles R. Drew Professor of Surgery
Howard University College of Medicine
Washington, DC 20059

Margaret L. Kripke, Ph.D.
Vivian L. Smith Chair and Professor Emerita
The University of Texas
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX 77030

These two people deserve your support for having the courage to publish a report that challenges the status quo of the corrupt cancer industry. So if you wish, send them a thank-you email for their work.

The report is entitled, "REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL CANCER RISK - What We Can Do Now"

Here are some of the highlights from the report:

• In 2009 alone, approximately 1.5 million American men, women, and children were diagnosed with cancer, and 562,000 died from the disease. Approximately 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent will die from cancer. The incidence of some cancers, including some most common among children, is increasing for unexplained reasons.

• The Panel was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread. One such ubiquitous chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), is still found in many consumer products and remains unregulated in the United States, despite the growing link between BPA and several diseases, including various cancers.

• However, the grievous harm from this group of carcinogens has not been addressed adequately by the National Cancer Program. The American people -- even before they are born -- are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures.

• Some scientists maintain that current toxicity testing and exposure limit-setting methods fail to accurately represent the nature of human exposure to potentially harmful chemicals. Current toxicity testing relies heavily on animal studies that utilize doses substantially higher than those likely to be encountered by humans. These data -- and the exposure limits extrapolated from them -- fail to take into account harmful effects that may occur only at very low doses.

• Only a few hundred of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the United States have been tested for safety.

• While all Americans now carry many foreign chemicals in their bodies, women often have higher levels of many toxic and hormone-disrupting substances than do men. Some of these chemicals have been found in maternal blood, placental tissue, and breast milk samples from pregnant women and mothers who recently gave birth. Thus, chemical contaminants are being passed on to the next generation, both prenatally and during breastfeeding.

• The entire U.S. population is exposed on a daily basis to numerous agricultural chemicals, some of which also are used in residential and commercial landscaping. Many of these chemicals have known or suspected carcinogenic or endocrine-disrupting properties. Pesticides (insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides) approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) contain nearly 900 active ingredients, many of which are toxic.

• Many of the solvents, fillers, and other chemicals listed as inert ingredients on pesticide labels also are toxic, but are not required to be tested for their potential to cause chronic diseases such as cancer. In addition to pesticides, agricultural fertilizers and veterinary pharmaceuticals are major contributors to water pollution, both directly and as a result of chemical processes that form toxic by-products when these substances enter the water supply.

• The use of cell phones and other wireless technology is of great concern, particularly since these devices are being used regularly by ever larger and younger segments of the population.

• Americans now are estimated to receive nearly half of their total radiation exposure from medical imaging and other medical sources, compared with only 15 percent in the early 1980s. The increase in medical radiation has nearly doubled the total average effective radiation dose per individual in the United States. Computed tomography (CT) and nuclear medicine tests alone now contribute 36 percent of the total radiation exposure and 75 percent of the medical radiation exposure of the U.S. population.

• Many referring physicians, radiology professionals, and the public are unaware of the radiation dose associated with various tests or the total radiation dose and related increased cancer risk individuals may accumulate over a lifetime. People who receive multiple scans or other tests that require radiation may accumulate doses equal to or exceeding that of Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors.

• Hundreds of thousands of military personnel and civilians in the United States received significant radiation doses as a result of their participation in nuclear weapons testing and supporting occupations and industries, including nuclear fuel and weapons production, and uranium mining, milling, and ore transport. Hundreds of thousands more were irradiated at levels sufficient to cause cancer and other diseases.

• Numerous environmental contaminants can cross the placental barrier; to a disturbing extent, babies are born "pre-polluted." There is a critical lack of knowledge and appreciation of environmental threats to children's health and a severe shortage of researchers and clinicians trained in children's environmental health.

• Single-agent toxicity testing and reliance on animal testing are inadequate to address the backlog of untested chemicals already in use and the plethora of new chemicals introduced every year.

• Many known or suspected carcinogens are completely unregulated. Enforcement of most existing regulations is poor. In virtually all cases, regulations fail to take multiple exposures and exposure interactions into account.

[Editor's note: In other words, people should read NaturalNews! We've been doing this for years!]

Read the report yourself right here:

http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/pcp08-09rpt/PCP_Report_08-09_508.pdf

(2) Let the Buyer Beware of Certain FDA-Approved Drugs

From: Gary Kohls <gkohls@cpinternet.com> Date: 11.05.2010 04:33 PM

By Gary G. Kohls, MD

As a physician who was involved in holistic (non-drug) mental health care for the last decade prior to my retirement, I eventually developed a deep skepticism for every so-called drug company-sponsored "scientific study" that made it sound like a new earth-shattering wonder drug or medical device had just been discovered. Sometimes the “study” simply stated that there was now a new FDA-approved medical indication for an old drug or perhaps there was a brand new disorder that had just been “discovered”, usually by entities of obscure origin. Many of these entities have been found to be drug company shills.

The excitement about these new (and usually unaffordable) products was always artificially generated by the cunning use of television and medical journal advertising but also, very effectively, by the up close and personal seductive persuasion by physically attractive pharmaceutical “reps” who had virtually unfettered access to every medical clinic in the nation. For those physicians who were “high prescribers” of a drug or device, drug companiesl often provided extra goodies such as fancy dinners, free continuing medical education opportunities or all expense-paid junkets to expensive resorts.

The well-hidden truth that I gradually became aware of was the fact that 90% or more of the research on pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices are funded by the big pharmaceutical companies or by closely related companies with financial ties to the companies. Thus one could honestly state that there is a serious conflict of interest in almost all pharmaceutical company-sponsored or funded research and development.

XXX Be Skeptical of BigPharma's "Blue Ribbon" Panels XXX

Every once in awhile there will be pronouncements from an entity usually called a “Blue Ribbon Panel” to announce new therapeutic guidelines for certain maladies, such as diabetes, high cholesterol or high blood pressure. Such expert panels are assembled in order to “study” and then announce new treatment protocols for old illnesses or even for new theoretical non-diseases such as, for example, the so-called “pre-diabetes”, “pre-hypertension” or “pre-schizophrenia” all of which are actually non-entities (with no diagnostic code numbers) that the drug industry is feverishly lobbying to create as real disorders. Of course these the drug therapy for such non-entities are guaranteed to enrich the drug companies by inventing new markets for their drugs.

These Blue Ribbon Panels are usually well-paid academic specialists who are, in one way or another, also being paid or otherwise subsidized by the drug companies through honoraria, stock ownership or by being wined, dined or gifted. Examples of the conflicts of interest in such activities are too numerous to mention but they infect most medical specialties.

XXX The Precautionary Principle Should Apply to Rx Drugs Too XXX

Thus any corporate-sponsored study involving a new treatment for an existing drug should be viewed with skepticism - and perhaps not prescribed - until truly independent investigators have confirmed, in long-term studies, the safety and efficacy of the device or drug. That is simply an application of the Precautionary Principle, which, in essence, says that

“an ethical business, governmental agency or culture should err on the side of caution before new chemicals, technologies, procedures, services, food additives, drugs, surgical procedures, etc are introduced into the marketplace (and the environment) – and only then when there is absolute proof that the substances are effective and not dangerous to the environment (which includes human/animal life, the water supply, the soil and the air – i e, the future of the planet).”

Unfortunately, there are virtually no academic physicians in the US that are not in a conflict of interest situation with big drug companies. What used to be a serious ethical issue, the heavy influence of the drug industry in medical decision-making, is no longer a problem!

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), along with many other traditionally respected peer-reviewed medical journals, has recently had to recant of its long-held principle of not publishing studies if there were authors with drug-company conflicts of interest. Publishable research articles authored by totally independent researchers had become so rare that the NEJM would have had trouble finding enough worthy journal articles to continue in the medical journal publishing business.

In the year 2000, Dr. Marcia Angell was fired from her job as editor-in-chief of the NEJM when, in an editorial, she exposed the unethical influences of the drug industry on her journal. Dr. Angell subsequently wrote a book about the vast adverse influence the pharmaceutical industry has over how medicine is practiced. Her title of the book is The Truth about Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It.

XXX Merck Inc, Vioxx and Gardisil XXX

A good example of why extreme caution about new drugs is called for is the highly lethal drug Vioxx, a now-banned blockbuster drug marketed by the infamous Merck, Inc. Vioxx was the aggressively-marketed anti-inflammatory drug that killed as many as 50,000 Vioxx users (and injured countless others, most of whom may still be unaware of their drug-induced disabilities) because it unexpectedly caused long-term cardiovascular disease and thus tens of thousands of myocardial infarctions.

Merck Inc is not behind bars, as would be any human person that had killed that many people, even if it was by an act of “involuntary manslaughter”. Indeed, Merck is performing quite well in the marketplace, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars they will pay out, money that is just a cost of doing business.

Merck Inc is still alive and well today because it is one of those companies in America that is too big to fail, and therefore it is too big to have been given the death sentence, despite its recently being granted corporate personhood.

Merck’s newest “financial blockbuster” Gardisil is a so far clinically-unproven new vaccine for young, pre-sexually active girls between the ages of 10 and 16. Gardisil is theorized to possibly prevent some sexually-transmitted infections of the uterine cervix, and by semi-logical inference, to prevent certain human papilloma virus (HPV)-associated cervical cancers by the time the young “vaccinees” are in their 30s and 40s. Obviously Merck has not done the long-term (decades-long) efficacy studies to substantiate their claim of cervical cancer prevention, but the (drug company co-opted) FDA approved the vaccine for marketing anyway.

The new vaccine's benefits are thus theoretical because the long-term efficacy and safety studies are in their very early stages, and, if and when they are completed, the drug will not be able to be recalled from those already injected. The other problem of course, is the fact that the researchers doing the studies will be controlled by Merck, and can be expected do everything possible to make sure the results are not damaging to the company’s bottom line. It should be obvious, because of the lack such efficacy studies, that the parents of children receiving these costly inoculations will be unable to give fully informed consent. 

Incredulously, Gardisil is now being marketed by Merck for little cervix-less boys. And now, perhaps predictably, Merck is suggesting that the initial $360 three-shot series may need to be repeated another time (or perhaps several times?) in order for immunity against the four strains of HPV to be maintained.

In the meantime Merck is aggressively trying to capitalize on its investment before the shots are actually shown to be safe, effective or ineffective – or, what is also likely to happen, unsafe, disastrous or even lethal, a la Vioxx.

In fairness to Merck the Vioxx and Gardisil examples are only a very tiny fraction of hundreds of similar issues in the pharmaceutical industry.

XXX How to Educate and Thus Protect Oneself From Unanticipated Drug-Induced Disease XXX

For those readers who would like confirmation of the statements above, I would strongly suggest, before criticizing the contents of this essay,  that they read this small sample of the hundreds of well-researched books on the topic: 1) Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning us all Into Patients, by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels, 2) The Hundred-Year Lie: How Food and Medicine are Destroying Your Health, by Randall Fitzgerald, or 3) The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying Our Brains and Harming our Children, by Carol Simontacchi, or 4) Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications, by Peter Breggin and David Cohen or 5) Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications, by Peter Breggin.

These books will present many more reasons to be skeptical of many of BigPharma’s promises. The powerful drug and food industries are all extremely well-financed, and they can afford to spend lavishly for their very clever, credible-sounding and quite often “false” advertising. But these products can make us sick and sicker, and possibly, in the case of many of the drugs that cross the blood-brain barrier, dumb and dumber.

XXX Molly Ivins’ Take on “Big Bidness” XXX

“Big Bidness” (the term used by the late, great Texas whistle-blower Molly Ivins when describing the ruling corporate elite) is mainly interested in 1) increasing shareholder value for its stocks and bonds, 2) creating and preserving a positive corporate image, 3) increasing next quarter's profits, 4) fooling most of the people most of the time, 5) covering up their mistakes and imposing gag orders on those plaintiffs with whom they have arranged out-of-court settlements for the damages their products have caused, 6) claiming innocence or blaming their victims in court and 7) selfishly pocketing the excess profits, as tax-free as possible, during the good times (predatory capitalism) and getting their nation’s taxpayers or government to foot the bill when disaster strikes (socialism).

The most profitable Big Bidness in America over the past decades has been BigPharma. Its products, whether injectables or orally-active synthetic chemicals, need to be intensively scrutinized by every consumer, prior to ingestion, not after, for short-term and long-term safety and efficacy. We physicians should be skeptical also, but we are all too often, in the effort to be maximally productive in our frantic, double-booked professional lives, unaware of the real dangers of the Vioxx’s we are pushed to prescribe.

Sadly, as is the case in the preservative- and carcinogen-laden (and often mal-nourishing) American food industry, the rule for drugs is: let the consumer beware.

 Dr, Kohls is a retired physician who writes about issues of health, not just about the mental, spiritual and physical health of humans, but also about the health of our increasingly poisoned planet as well. He cautions against making abrupt changes in existing prescription drug therapy without the counsel of a qualified physician who is fully aware of the multiple potential dangers of prescription drugs

(3) Drug-based paradigm fueling increase in Mental Illness diagnosis - Robert Whitaker

From: Keith Lampe <prez@usa-exile.org>  Date: 30.04.2010 02:14 PM

Are Prozac and Other Psychiatric Drugs Causing the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America?

An interview with investigative reporter Robert Whitaker, about the dramatic increase in mental illness disability and its surprising cause.

AlterNet / By Bruce E. Levine

April 28, 2010  | 

http://www.alternet.org/story/146659/are_prozac_and_other_psychiatric_drugs_causing_the_astonishing_rise_of_mental_illness_in_america?page=entire

In 1987, prior to Prozac hitting the market and the current ubiquitous use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, the U.S. mental illness disability rate was 1 in every 184 Americans, but by 2007 the mental illness disability rate had more than doubled to 1 in every 76 Americans. Robert Whitaker was curious as to what was causing this dramatic increase in mental illness disability. The answers are in his new book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (Crown Publishers, April 2010).

Whitaker’s findings will create a problem for both Big Pharma and establishment psychiatry, but his credentials and his craftsmanship will make it difficult to marginalize him. Whitaker is the author of four books including Mad in America, about the mistreatment of the mentally ill. As a reporter for the Boston Globe, he won a George Polk Award for medical writing, a National Association of Science Writers Award for best magazine article, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

Bruce Levine: So mental illness disability rates have doubled since 1987 and increased six-fold since 1955. And at the same time, psychiatric drug use greatly increased in the 1950s and 1960s, then skyrocketed after 1988 when Prozac hit the market, so now antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs alone gross more than $25 billion annually in the U.S. But as you know, correlation isn’t causation. What makes you feel that the increase in psychiatric drug use is a big part of the reason for the increase in mental illness?

Robert Whitaker: The rise in the disability rate due to mental illness is simply the starting point for the book. The disability numbers don’t prove anything, but, given that this astonishing increase has occurred in lockstep with our society’s increased use of psychiatric medications, the numbers do raise an obvious question. Could our drug-based paradigm of care, for some unforeseen reason, be fueling the increase in disability rates? And in order to investigate that question, you need to look at two things. First, do psychiatric medications alter the long-term course of mental disorders for the better, or for the worse? Do they increase the likelihood that a person will be able to function well over the long-term, or do they increase the likelihood that a person will end up on disability?

Second, is it possible that a person with a mild disorder may have a bad reaction to an initial drug, and that puts the person onto a path that can lead to long-term disability. For instance, a person with a mild bout of depression may have a manic reaction to an antidepressant, and then is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on a cocktail of medications. Does that happen with any frequency? Could that be an iatrogenic [physician-caused illness] pathway that is helping to fuel the increase in the disability rates?

So that’s the starting point for the book. What I then did was look at what the scientific literature -- a literature that now extends over 50 years -- has to say about those questions. And the literature is remarkably consistent in the story it tells. Although psychiatric medications may be effective over the short term, they increase the likelihood that a person will become chronically ill over the long term. I was startled to see this picture emerge over and over again as I traced the long-term outcomes literature for schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and bipolar illness.

In addition, the scientific literature shows that many patients treated for a milder problem will worsen in response to a drug-- say have a manic episode after taking an antidepressant -- and that can lead to a new and more severe diagnosis like bipolar disorder. That is a well-documented iatrogenic pathway that is helping to fuel the increase in the disability numbers.

Now there may be various cultural factors contributing to the increase in the number of disabled mentally ill in our society. But the outcomes literature -- and this really is a tragic story -- clearly shows that our drug-based paradigm of care is a primary cause.

BL: I have a clinical practice and I have seen several examples of what you are talking about, and I had previously read several of the scientific studies that you detail in Anatomy of an Epidemic, so I am not exactly a naïve reader. However, in reading your book and seeing the enormity of the problem and just how much overwhelming evidence there is for a horrible crisis, I started getting a little sick to my stomach. I wonder, as you got into the research, did you start drawing comparisons to Rachel Carson and Silent Spring? Specifically, this is such a huge unnecessary tragedy, affecting several million people including children, yet there is virtually no discussion of it in the mass media.

RW: A journalist friend of mine, who was a long-time reporter at the Washington Post and Newsday, said that he too was reminded of Silent Spring when he read Anatomy of an Epidemic. And, in fact, I was stunned by much of what I found when I was researching the book, and I did at times become overwhelmed by the magnitude of the tragedy. Let me give a specific example.

When you research the rise of juvenile bipolar illness in this country, you see that it appears in lockstep with the prescribing of stimulants for ADHD and antidepressants for depression. Prior to the use of those medications, you find that researchers reported that manic-depressive illness, which is what bipolar illness was called at the time, virtually never occurred in prepubertal children. But once psychiatrists started putting “hyperactive” children on Ritalin, they started to see prepubertal children with manic symptoms. Same thing happened when psychiatrists started prescribing antidepressants to children and teenagers. A significant percentage had manic or hypomanic reactions to the antidepressants. Thus, we see these two iatrogenic pathways to a juvenile bipolar diagnosis documented in the medical literature. And then what happens to the children and teenagers who end up with this diagnosis? They are now put on heavier-duty drugs and often on a drug cocktail, and you find that they do poorly on that treatment. You find that a high percentage end up “rapid cyclers,” which means they have severe “bipolar” symptoms, and that they can now be expected to be chronically ill throughout their lives.

We also know that the atypical antipsychotics [such as Risperdal and Zyprexa] prescribed to bipolar children cause a host of physical problems, and there is pretty good evidence that they cause cognitive decline over the long term. When you add up all this information, you end up documenting a story of how the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in the United States have been destroyed in this way. In fact, I think that the number of children and teenagers that have ended up “bipolar” after being treated with a stimulant or an antidepressant is now well over one million. This is a story of harm done on an unimaginable scale.

So why hasn’t the media reported on this? The answer is that the media, when it covers medicine, basically repeats the narrative fashioned by the academic doctors who are leaders in the particular discipline, and in this case, academic psychiatrists have told a story of new illnesses -- like juvenile bipolar illness -- being “discovered,” and of drugs for those treatments that are safe, effective and necessary. They tell this story to the public even as their own studies find that their juvenile bipolar patients -- who when they first came to a psychiatrist might simply have been “hyperactive” or struggling with a momentary bout of depression -- are ending up with severe bipolar symptoms and can now expect to be chronically ill for life. The problem is that our society trusts academic doctors to tell an honest story, and in this corner of medicine, it's quite easy to document -- and I did document this in Anatomy of an Epidemic -- that academic psychiatry has belied that trust.

BL: Let’s get to the issue of psychiatric medications fixing “chemical imbalances.” This idea was absolutely crucial in making Prozac and other antidepressants attractive to depressed patients. However, these days even much of the psychiatry establishment has backed off the idea that depressed people have too little serotonin between their synapses and that antidepressants fix this chemical imbalance. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but see the comparison between Big Pharma and the Bush Administration, which told Americans that the U.S. needed to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he was connected to Al Qaeda. Of course, the Saddam Hussein-Al Qaeda connection was simply a lie, and the WMD rationale proved to be false. Do you believe that Big Pharma and establishment psychiatry were lying about this chemical imbalance theory at the time Prozac hit the market in 1988, or do you believe that they had hoped this theory was true because it sold drugs -- and it just turned out to be wrong?

RW: The low-serotonin theory of depression was first investigated in the 1970s and early 1980s, and those studies did not find that people diagnosed with depression had “low serotonin.” As the NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health] noted in 1984 at the conclusion of such investigations: “Elevations or decrements in the functioning of serotonergic systems per se are not likely to be associated with depression.” So why was the public told differently?

The answer is a bit complicated. In the late 1970s, the market for psychiatric drugs declined and psychiatry suddenly saw itself as a profession under “siege,” having now to compete with a burgeoning number of psychologists and other non-physician therapists for patients. In response, the profession -- at its highest levels -- decided to sell the public on a biomedical model of mental disorders, as that model would naturally emphasize the importance of taking “medications” for a disease and it was only psychiatrists who could prescribe those drugs.

This storytelling began with the publication of DSM-III in 1980, which the American Psychiatric Association (APA) heralded as a grand “scientific achievement,” and then soon the APA was announcing that great discoveries were being made about the biology of mental disorders. And once psychiatry began to tell a story that wasn’t science based, but rather was best described as a marketing campaign, I think it began to believe its own marketing slogans. I don’t know this for a fact, but I am willing to bet that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and others began to believe their own public pronouncements about weapons of mass destruction and a Saddam Hussein-Al Qaeda connection, and I think something similar to that happened in American psychiatry when Prozac came to market. The field stopped looking at the science that showed that the low-serotonin theory of depression had basically already flamed out, and instead began to believe its own propaganda.

Moreover, the chemical-imbalance story did more than just spur sales of drugs. It provided psychiatrists with a desirable public image. They were now like doctors in infectious medicine and other respected specialties, their medications “like insulin for diabetes.” The chemical-imbalance story told of medical progress, of a discipline that was unlocking the mysteries of the brain. Indeed, when Prozac came to market, there were newspaper stories about how psychiatry now had a new reason to “feel proud,” and how its public image had improved. So in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the chemical imbalance story is not one that tells of how lying moved into the heart of the field, but rather how professional delusion did.

At some later point, however, as the chemical imbalance story repeatedly fell apart, psychiatrists in the research community understood that they were telling a “fib.” I can still remember -- this was the summer of 1998 -- when I questioned a prominent academic psychiatrist about whether the chemical imbalance story was really “true” and he replied by stating that it was a “useful metaphor” that “helped patients understand why they needed to take their medication.” This really is the tragedy of modern psychiatry -- it became a medical discipline devoted to telling a public story that made its drugs look good, as opposed to telling a story rooted in honest science.

BL: Big Pharma and their partners in establishment psychiatry would like the general public to believe that the only critics of psychiatry are Scientologists. In reality, most scientists who are critics of psychiatry are also critics of the pseudoscience of Scientology. It is my experience that serious critics of psychiatry are not anti-drug zealots. For example, I know that you have talked with “psychiatric survivors” -- ex-patients who want to reform mental health treatment. David Oaks, one of the leading activists in the psychiatric survivor movement, often repeats that some members of his MindFreedom organization continue to take their psychiatric drugs while many choose not to, and what MindFreedom and other psychiatric survivors are fighting for is truly informed choice and a wider range of treatment options. Do you think that David Oaks’ fight is the right one?

RW: Big Pharma and its partners in establishment psychiatry have smartly used Scientology to defuse criticism of their medications. I honestly believe that if Scientology weren't around, then our society could have a much more rational discussion about our drug-based paradigm of care. As for the position taken by MindFreedom and other psychiatric survivors, I basically do think that is the right one to take, with two caveats.

In order to make a “truly informed choice,” a person needs to know the long-term effects of a treatment. It’s not enough for people to be fully informed about the immediate “side effects” of a drug. People need to be presented with information about whether such treatment has been shown to better the long-term course of the disorder, or worsen it. They need to be told about long-term physical and cognitive problems that often arise with every day use of psychiatric drugs. So providing people with a “truly informed choice” is a tall order.

My second caveat is this: As a society, we expect the medical community to develop the best possible form of care. We do not expect a medical community to offer a therapy that regularly leads to a bad end. And so, if we were to draw up a blueprint for reforming the current paradigm of care, it would be nice if the psychiatric community would try to develop therapeutic approaches that involved using psychiatric medications in a selective, cautious way that best promoted good long-term outcomes. In other words, I think psychiatry does have a responsibility to develop a true evidence-based model for using its drugs, a model that incorporates the long-term outcomes data.

In the solution section of Anatomy of an Epidemic, I write of how doctors and psychologists in northern Finland use antipsychotics in a selective, cautious manner when treating first-episode psychotic patients, and their long-term outcomes are, by far, the best in the Western World. So if you believe in evidence-based medicine, then American psychiatry should look to the Finnish program as a model for reform. Doctors have a responsibility to lead, but I think that you see in David Oaks’ position a belief that establishment psychiatry in America cannot be trusted to provide such leadership. He’s right to believe that, of course, and that's what is so tragic about modern American psychiatry.

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and his latest book is Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net

(4) The MOST Effective Treatment for Depression Isn't Drugs... But You'll Never Hear That From Your Psychiatrist
Posted by Dr. Mercola

May 08 2010

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/05/08/robert-whitaker-interview.aspx

Depression is a very pervasive health issue today, and it can be a terminal illness. People commit suicide, caused by depression, each and every day.

The traditional approaches have sought to use drugs to address this problem, but I believe there are far better alternatives. But before I get into that, what does the scientific literature show, in terms of short- and long-term effectiveness of the conventional drug approach?

In this interview, Robert Whitaker, who is a medical journalist and author of two books on this important topic, shares what he’s found after tremendous amounts of research.

How Effective are Antidepressants in the Short- and Long-Term?

When looking at the research literature, short-term trials show that antidepressants do NOT provide any clinically significant benefits for mild to moderate depression, compared to a placebo.

And as you know, all drugs have benefit-to-risk ratios, so if a drug is as effective as a placebo in relieving symptoms, it really doesn’t make sense to use them as a first line of defense. And yet doctors all over America prescribe them as if they were indeed sugar pills!

But what about their long-term effectiveness?

According to Whitaker:

“… that’s one of the things I looked at in this book and there are really two things that you find.

You find that even with major depression, in the pre-antidepressant era – and this is depression so severe people were hospitalized – they could expect to get better. The episode would eventually pass.

… So when antidepressants were introduced, the thought was okay, we really can hope to improve on this sort of natural recovery, but maybe we can help people recover quicker? So that really was the rationale for the use of antidepressants.

But it’s really interesting if you follow this course through, forward in history. The minute they start using antidepressants in any sort of large numbers, doctors start saying, “Well, you know, my patients may be getting better, the depression maybe lifting faster, but then we’re noticing that they’re also relapsing more frequently than before, back into depression.”

So right away you get this question: Does the drug treatment actually put people on a more chronic course than before?”

Long-term studies now indicate that of people with major depression, only about 15 percent that are treated with an antidepressant go into remission and stay well for a long period of time.

The remaining 85 percent start having continuing relapses and become chronically depressed.

“By the 1990s, this change in the long term course of depression was so pronounced that finally it was addressed by researchers,” says Whitaker.

“Giovanni Fava from Italy said, “Hey, listen, the course is changing with antidepressants. We’re changing it from an episodic illness to a chronic illness, and we really need to address this.”

Not only that, but the depression is sinking into people [on antidepressants] in a deeper way than before.”

According to Whitaker’s research, this tendency to sensitize the brain to long-term depression appears to be the same both for the earlier tricyclic antidepressants and the newer SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).

Another famous psycho pharmacologist named Ross Baldessarini at the Harvard Medical School also began asking whether or not these drugs may in fact be depressogenic (causing depression).

Unfortunately, the evidence points that way, and the long-term prognosis when taking antidepressants is quite bleak, as this type of drug treatment has a whopping 85 percent chronic relapse rate.

It’s time for this trend to be broken.

Every year, 230 million prescriptions for antidepressants are filled, making them one of the most-prescribed drugs in the United States. Despite all of these prescription drugs being taken, more than one in 20 Americans are depressed, according to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The statistics alone should be a strong indication that what we’re doing is simply not working, and that instead, these drugs are contributing to other serious health problems.

Fortunately, there are other, safer, more effective ways, and some countries are starting to pay heed to the fact that  research is actually showing it to be beneficial, rather than bowing to the will of pharmaceutical companies.

What the Research Says about Alternative Treatments for Depression

One study conducted by Duke University in the late 1990’s divided depressed patients into three treatment groups:

1.Exercise only

2.Exercise plus antidepressant

3.Antidepressant drug only

After six weeks, the drug-only group was doing slightly better than the other two groups. However, after 10 months of follow-up, it was the exercise-only group that had the highest remission and stay-well rate.

Some countries are taking these types of research findings seriously, and are starting to base their treatments on the evidence at hand.

The UK, for example, does not routinely recommend antidepressants as the first line of therapy for mild to moderate depression anymore, and doctors there can write out a prescription to see an exercise counselor instead.

“With that prescription… you now get either a reduced rate or a free rate at a gym for six months,” Whitaker explains. “Part of the exercise might be “green gyms”… gardening outside, nature walks, repairing trails, hiking trails. And they are finding that people really like this. People comply with it…

People who have gone through this course and have been prescribed exercise, they say that rather than seeing themselves as a victim of depression, and helpless before it -- that they have this sort of biological problem they can’t do anything about -- they say, “Aha, I can make a change, I can do something. It’s in my willpower to do something that will help this problem lift.”

So it empowers the patient in a different way that drugs do not.”

Since 2007, when this new program was first introduced, the rate of British doctors prescribing exercise for depression has increased from about 4 percent to about 25 percent.

Studies on exercise as a treatment for depression are also showing that there is a strong correlation between improved mood and aerobic capacity. So there’s a growing acceptance that the mind-body connection is very real, and that maintaining good physical health can significantly lower your risk of developing depression in the first place.

Two Side Effects of Antidepressants You Need to Be Aware of

“There are two side effects or risks that really need to be addressed, and that everybody should be thinking about, that show up in the scientific literature,” Whitaker says.

“The first risk is that you’ll convert from unipolar depression to bipolar depression.

… One of the things we’ve seen with the use of the SSRIs is this incredible, extraordinary boom in bipolar diagnoses, and that is definitely tied to the widespread use of antidepressants.

Now, in kids, something like 25 to 50 percent of all kids placed on an antidepressant, who stay on that antidepressant for five years, will convert to bipolar illness. With adults, it seems like about 25 percent of long term of users that begin with a diagnosis of unipolar depression will convert to bipolar.

Bipolar used to be a fairly rare disorder but now it’s becoming much more common. Why is this so bad?

Well, when you convert from depression to bipolar, now you’re in a category where you’re often treated with a cocktail of medications including an antipsychotic medication, and long-term bipolar outcomes are really problematic in this country.

Only about 35 percent of bipolar patients are employed. So you see this risk of disability.

So my point is this, when you go on an antidepressant, you do have a risk of having a manic episode and that is a risk of becoming “a bipolar patient,” and at that moment you’re into a much more long-term problematic disorder that does not have a good outcome today.

The second real risk is that there is a lot of evidence compiling [showing] that if you stay on antidepressants for five, ten, fifteen years, there is some real worry with cognitive decline associated with that long term use.”

Most of you have probably heard that depression is due to a “chemical imbalance in your brain,” which these drugs are designed to correct.

Unfortunately for anyone who has ever swallowed this marketing ploy, this is NOT a scientific statement.

“The low serotonin theory arose because they understood how the drugs acted on the brain,” Whitaker explains.

“But it was just a hypothesis borne to try to explain why the drug might be fixing something. They investigated whether people had low serotonin…[But] in 1983, NIMH concluded that there is no evidence that there is anything wrong in the serotonergic system of depressed patients. And this was in 1983 before Prozac was released.

So there was never evidence that people with depression characteristically had low levels of serotonin.

As one doctor I interviewed about this who did some of this research said, “The serotonin theory of depression is comparable to the masturbatory theory of insanity.” It’s just not a scientific statement.”

Making matters worse, if you do not have low serotonin levels when you’re depressed, but you start taking an SSRI drug that blocks the normal reuptake of serotonin, you end up with the very physiological problem the drug is designed to treat –low serotonin levels. Which, ironically, is the state hypothesized to bring on depression in the first place.

In 1996, neuroscientist Steven Hyman, who was head of the NIMH at the time, and is today Provost of Harvard University, published the paper Initiation and Adaptation: A Paradigm for Understanding Psychotropic Drugs, in which he explains this chain of events.

According to Dr. Hyman, once your brain has undergone these compensatory adaptations to the drug, your brain operates in a manner that is “both qualitatively and quantitatively different than normal.”

“So these are not normalizing agents, from a scientific point of view,” Whitaker says.

Really they are abnormalizing agents, and once you understand that, you can understand why maybe they might provoke a manic episode; why they might be associated with sexual dysfunction or violence, acathisia, etcetera.

It’s because they in fact are abnormalizing agents.”

Whitaker discusses numerous other areas of confusion and shares many additional facts about the treatments for depression in this interview, so please, if you or anyone you know suffers from depression, do listen to the entire interview, or read through the transcript.

This is vital information that could very well save your life, or the life of someone close to your heart.

Finding an effective treatment for depression is not something to approach lightly, and having the facts about what actually works, and what doesn’t, is imperative.

In addition, below you will find the four cornerstones of healthy living that would be part of any successful treatment plan.

Other Key Factors to Overcoming Depression

Address your stress -- Depression is a very serious condition, however it is not a “disease.” Rather, it’s a sign that your body and your life are out of balance.

This is so important to remember, because as soon as you start to view depression as an “illness,” you think you need to take a drug to fix it. In reality, all you need to do is return balance to your life, and one of the key ways to doing this is addressing stress.

Meditation or yoga can help. Sometimes all you need to do is get outside for a walk. But in addition to that, I also recommend using a system that can help you address emotional issues that you may not even be consciously aware of. For this, my favorite is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). However, if you have depression or serious stress, I believe it would be best to consult with a mental health professional who is also an EFT practitioner to guide you.

Eat a healthy diet -- Another factor that cannot be overlooked is your diet. Foods have an immense impact on your mood and ability to cope and be happy, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan will best support your mental health. Avoiding sugar and grains will help normalize your insulin and leptin levels, which is another powerful tool in addressing depression.

Support optimal brain functioning with essential fats -- I also strongly recommend supplementing your diet with a high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fat, like krill oil. This may be the single most important nutrient to battle depression.

Get plenty of sunshine – Making sure you’re getting enough sunlight exposure to have healthy vitamin D levels is also a crucial factor in treating depression or keeping it at bay. One previous study found that people with the lowest levels of vitamin D were 11 times more prone to be depressed than those who had normal levels. Vitamin D deficiency is actually more the norm than the exception, and has previously been implicated in both psychiatric and neurological disorders.