522 Dogmatism in Science and Medicine. Psychiatric drugs can cause Dementia

Dogmatism in Science and Medicine. Psychiatric drugs can cause Dementia

(1) More from Henry H. Bauer on Dogmatism in Science and Medicine
(2) The Science Delusion, by Rupert Sheldrake, reviewed for The Guardian
by Mary Midgley
(3) Amazon.com: Customer Reviews of The Science Delusion
(4) Psychiatric drugs (earlier in life) can cause Dementia (later in life)
(5) Gary Kohls radio interview about the dangers of psychiatric drugs

(1) More from Henry H. Bauer on Dogmatism in Science and Medicine

http://www.amazon.com/Dogmatism-Science-Medicine-Dominant-Monopolize/dp/0786463015/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338772424&sr=1-9

Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize
Research and Stifle the Search for Truth
[Paperback] Henry H. Bauer (Author)

Price: $35.00 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details

Publication Date: May 18, 2012 | ISBN-10: 0786463015 | ISBN-13:
978-0786463015 | Edition: Original

The nature of scientific activity has changed dramatically over the last
half century, and the objectivity and rigorous search for evidence that
once defined it are being abandoned. Increasingly, this text argues,
dogma has taken the place of authentic science. This study examines how
conflicts of interest--both institutional and individual--have become
pervasive in the science world, and also explores the troubling state of
research funding and flaws of the peer-review process. It looks in depth
at the dominance of several specific theories, including the Big Bang
cosmology, human-caused global warming, HIV as a cause of AIDS, and the
efficacy of anti-depressant drugs. In a scientific environment where
distinguished experts who hold contrary views are shunned, this book is
an important contribution to the examination of scientific heterodoxies.

Henry H. Bauer is professor emeritus of chemistry and science studies
and dean emeritus of arts and sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute
& State University (Virginia Tech). The author of numerous books,
including a three-volume examination of scientific heterodoxies, he
lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. ==

Science or Pseudoscience: Magnetic Healing, Psychic Phenomena, and Other
Heterodoxies by Henry H. Bauer (Jul 14, 2004)

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Pseudoscience-Magnetic-Phenomena-Heterodoxies/product-reviews/0252072162/ref=la_B000APW6N4_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

This review is from: Science or Pseudoscience: Magnetic Healing, Psychic
Phenomena, and Other Heterodoxies (Hardcover) I can't add much to the
Reader & Editorial Reviews. What I can do is communicate the flavor of
the book with the following gems, from the first 60 pages. There are
lots more.

===========================

ix: those who sneer at "pseudoscience" reveal scientism, the belief that
only science is authoritative when it comes to knowledge.

2: as things stand, there is available no quick or easy guidance about
what to believe, not only on the many matters over which apparently
competent people differ but also over some where the experts seem to be
in agreement. At times we do well to believe what we're told; at other
times we had better not. Sometimes there's no better guide than the
experience of what you've seen for yourself; at other times your eyes
deceive you. We should be open to new ideas-but on the other hand we
should always be skeptical and critical before accepting a new idea, for
old beliefs are often well tested by experience whereas new ones may
just be untested hunches. It's good to see the whole picture, to be
holistic, to be interdisciplinary-but on the other hand in many fields
progress requires concentration on ultraspecialized techniques,
theories, and facts.

5: Science has itself become a sort of church, and scientists are in
that sense also priests (Knight, 1986). Science nowadays like the church
in earlier centuries feels responsible for the intellectual orderliness
of society. Thus pseudoscience is heretical belief-not merely wrong but
an actual danger to the proper functioning of society and the welfare of
humankind. The passion that authority always vents against heresy is
directed nowadays in the name of science against pseudoscience.

6-7: Confronted with what they do not yet properly understand, those who
claim to speak for science are reluctant to admit ignorance, and
therefore their answers often discount or evade.

7: much popular wisdom idealizes science. Perhaps the most common
illusion is that science uses a "scientific method" that guarantees
objectivity (Bauer 1992a; Bauer and Huyghe 1999).

7: My ulterior motive is not to disparage science but to suggest that
serious anomalistics be allowed a measure of respect as an honest
seeking of knowledge ....

14: the distinction between natural science and social science is clear
enough for the present purpose: between, respectively, certain and
merely probable consequences of a given set of circumstances. That's the
essence of it, and for many purposes it is a world of difference.

16: The "skeptical" in Skeptical Inquirer and the "skeptics" in the
names of many groups employing that label interprets skepticism in the
sense of those ancient Greeks who actively disbelieved, the atheists,
rather than in the nowadays more commonly understood sense of agnostics,
people who suspend judgment, who maintain an attitude of doubt. [I've
dubbed such persons "scoftics"--RK.] CSICOP and its "Skeptics" are
doubtful only about unorthodox beliefs, which they judge in the light of
contemporary scientific knowledge that they do believe.

18: in most cases the contrast [between serious and cranky anomalistics]
is clear enough: it is between, on the one hand, the assertion that here
are mysteries to be solved and, on the other, blandly dogmatic
assertions of "truths" that contradict established scientific knowledge.

26: Mainstream disciplines behave as though the unknown unknown doesn't
exist; perhaps just because it cannot be directly investigated.

27: Social science ... seems to assume that it can establish expertise
only if, as in the natural sciences, it is able to command a body of
understanding that the laity cannot share because it runs counter to
common sense: "what the sociologists say about common sense is the
self-serving ideology of a vested interest group seeking to establish
and maintain a monopoly over `its' professional turf" (Pease 1981:266).

27-28: some anomalistic researchers are as competent as any in the
mainstream of science ....

29: The media feature the accomplishments of the sciences; the "news
value" of anomalistics lies in its absurdities.

29: Research in anomalistics suffers from lack of resources ....

30-31: Anomalistics lacks any such organized literature. ... Compendia
of data are not often available, even when they would be highly
desirable, as for instance comprehensive listings of reported sightings
of Nessies.

33: There exists no comprehensive account of all the premature or false
trails that science has taken. By and large the history of science has
focused on the successes of science.

36: The jockeying for prominence in science is well disciplined ... In
anomalistics, jockeying for position often is less a matter of seeking
approval of peers or making contributions to the field than of
attracting attention from the media. Anomalistics therefore makes news
more through the charlatans, hoaxers, and absurdities that plague it
than for its serious investigations.

36: eyewitness testimony proves little if anything in science-just in a
few pockets like field biology. [!]

37: Personal experiences are not repeatable on demand .... if their
facts were reproducible, cryptozoology would be zoology and
parapsychology would be psychology.

38: organizational differences then amplify characteristics of the
fields' practices. Thus much of the strength of science stems directly
from the efficient, workmanlike, task-oriented procedures of the
scientific community; and the weaknesses of anomalistics have much to do
with the lack of such communally governed practices.

41: Within the various anomalistic fields one sometimes sees attempts at
an appearance of solidarity in the face of the dismissiveness and
contempt displayed by science, media, and "skeptics." The clearest
instances of this are the typical refusal to discuss their differences
publicly or to admit, as they privately believe, that some of their
number are incompetent or worse. ... Of course this is misguided and
self-defeating in the longer run, but it's typical of all guilds and groups.

41: Bigfoot enthusiasts and those who hunt dinosaurs in the Congo may
respect one another when they stop to take notice, but they rarely
communicate with one another and have little natural of instinctive
affinity with one another. There is no general feeling of commonality
between ufologists and cryptozoologists, or between either of those and
parapsychologists.

47: "How could anyone believe that?" ... The underlying presumption is
that everyone ought to have the same beliefs because we believe-or
should believe-only things that are true.

Many people tend to believe whatever they're told-even by con-men.
Others tend to believe the opposite of whatever they're told. Few indeed
are skeptical and empirical in a disciplined fashion. The real mystery
about belief is not how we come to believe something, but rather how
some of us are able sometimes to change our minds under the force of
evidence and logic rather than emotion.

The passion in many arguments ... [is] an inevitable corollary of a
human wish for certainty.

48: "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proofs," is a common
aphorism. But fundamentally the issue is, rather, whether to trust
empirical evidence or contemporary scientific theory. The opposing sides
usually fail to recognize how close this lies to the root of their
polarization. ... In anomalistics, the true believers tend to pose as
determinedly empirical .... The debunkers, on the other hand, stand on
the existing theoretical paradigm; such things didn't or don't happen
because they cannot. David Hume is constantly cited as to the possible
occurrence of miracles .... But current scientific knowledge is not
necessarily the last word.

49: It seems natural to reject reports of some happening when there's no
plausible conceivable mechanism by which it could occur.... But ... are
there not many things that we accept to happen even though we don't
understand how they do, such as psychosomatic illness and the placebo
effect?

The implacable demand for "mechanism" reveals a strict materialism.
Those who insist on it are not really relying on science ...

50: even some purely material phenomena are indubitably real despite our
inability to explain them. Cosmic rays are generated by a phenomenon
whose energy is of a magnitude that baffles our ability to conceive of a
mechanism. The homing instincts and communicating ability of insects are
unquestioned, while our explanations for them are tentative at best. The
ice ages did occur, but we don't understand how or why they came about.
And so on.

In the past, some of the most excellent arguments proved to be false, as
to why something just could not be so. [Listed are meteorites, drifting
continents, and charged ions in water.] These all seem fine arguments.
It's just that they were incorrect, as in many other cases of resistance
by mainstream science to the startlingly new. ...

53: It takes much longer to explain why a point is erroneous than it
took to assert the point. It can be very tiresome to answer in full
detail what seems like a poorly based, incoherent case for something
highly improbable. ... The frustrations of arguing with a crank have
been described with feeling by some who have had or witnessed the
experience (Russell 1956; Shaw 1944). ... Drawn into dispute, frustrated
experts may become arrogantly dismissive ... and they lose debating
points and public credibility.

55: Rarely if ever is anomalistics given credit for grains of truth.
Velikovsky was and is said to be "wrong" .... One arguably
less-than-competent laboratory is asserted to typify all of
parapsychology, whereas one less-than-competent forensics laboratory is
hardly taken to show that forensics is pseudoscience.

55: Rhetorical questions abound. ... "How could bones of Bigfoot not be
found if they exist, with so many people finding footprints of them?"
And so on and so forth. Once a given issue is settled one way or the
other, answers to such questions will be evident enough; indeed, they
are likely to appear obvious in hindsight. Before the issues are
settled, however, the inability to provide conclusive answers proves
nothing.

56-57: Debunkers typically seek to establish guilt by association. It's
no easy task to discredit entirely the major anomalist claims by careful
discussion of the evidence. It's much easier-and so it's done all the
time-simply to include them all in the same list, as "pseudoscience."
But this lumping also has disadvantages. ... [It] can backfire if even
one of the unorthodox claims turns out to be valid, as some do. For
decades there were those who decried as wasteful, or worse, the use of
vitamin supplements, but they will (or should) have been mightily
abashed when in 1998 the Institute of Medicine recommended such
supplements even for people enjoying an apparently adequate diet.

Debunking loses credibility when it calls "paranormal" or "supernatural"
the search for such entirely material albeit as-yet-uncaptured species
as the giant sloth .... Debunkers often cite their concern for public
rationality and scientific literacy; but by their lack of
discrimination, and by their doom-saying and exaggerated assertions of
the harm that supposedly flows from what they call pseudoscience, they
fail to practice the rationality and scientific approach they preach.

57: pundits will insist that science is not characterized by always
being right, or in any other particular result, but only in the process
of using the scientific method. Yet when right results are obtained by
people who flout the scientific method and other norms of science-as
with high-temperature superconductors-their lapses are not criticized.

58: There exist no reliable, accredited repositories or museums of
ufology or cryptozoology, so specimens or artifacts mentioned in the
literature often cannot be retrieved for reexamination.

58-59: In anomalistics, where by definition the evidence is not utterly
compelling, believers and debunkers are thereby free perpetually to
reach opposing conclusions, to fit the evidence into their opposing
stories. ... Concerning yeti or Bigfoot, and the fact that apemen are
featured in folklore across the world, Bayanov has pointed out that ...
"the existence of mythological hominoids is a necessary, though not
sufficient condition, of the existence of real hominoids" (Bayanov,
1982). Their absence from folklore would even speak against the
creature's existence, which is the opposite of the debunkers' usual
argument.

(2) The Science Delusion, by Rupert Sheldrake, reviewed for The Guardian
by Mary Midgley

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/27/science-delusion-rupert-sheldrake-review

The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake - review

We must find a new way of understanding human beings

Mary Midgley

guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 January 2012 09.00 GMT

The unlucky fact that our current form of mechanistic materialism rests
on muddled, outdated notions of matter isn't often mentioned today. It's
a mess that can be ignored for everyday scientific purposes, but for our
wider thinking it is getting very destructive. We can't approach
important mind-body topics such as consciousness or the origins of life
while we still treat matter in 17th-century style as if it were dead,
inert stuff, incapable of producing life. And we certainly can't go on
pretending to believe that our own experience – the source of all our
thought – is just an illusion, which it would have to be if that dead,
alien stuff were indeed the only reality.

We need a new mind-body paradigm, a map that acknowledges the many kinds
of things there are in the world and the continuity of evolution. We
must somehow find different, more realistic ways of understanding human
beings – and indeed other animals – as the active wholes that they are,
rather than pretending to see them as meaningless consignments of chemicals.

Rupert Sheldrake, who has long called for this development, spells out
this need forcibly in his new book. He shows how materialism has
gradually hardened into a kind of anti-Christian faith, an ideology
rather than a scientific principle, claiming authority to dictate
theories and to veto inquiries on topics that don't suit it, such as
unorthodox medicine, let alone religion. He shows how completely alien
this static materialism is to modern physics, where matter is dynamic.
And, to mark the strange dilemmas that this perverse fashion poses for
us, he ends each chapter with some very intriguing "Questions for
Materialists", questions such as "Have you been programmed to believe in
materialism?", "If there are no purposes in nature, how can you have
purposes yourself?", "How do you explain the placebo response?" and so on.

In short, he shows just how unworkable the assumptions behind today's
fashionable habits have become. The "science delusion" of his title is
the current popular confidence in certain fixed assumptions – the
exaltation of today's science, not as the busy, constantly changing
workshop that it actually is but as a final, infallible oracle preaching
a crude kind of materialism.

In trying to replace it he needs, of course, to suggest alternative
assumptions. But here the craft of paradigm-building has chronic
difficulties. Our ancestors only finally stopped relying on the familiar
astrological patterns when they had grown accustomed to machine-imagery
instead – first becoming fascinated by the clatter of clockwork and
later by the ceaseless buzz of computers, so that they eventually felt
sure that they were getting new knowledge. Similarly, if we are told
today that a mouse is a survival-machine, or that it has been programmed
to act as it does, we may well feel that we have been given a
substantial explanation, when all we have really got is one more
optional imaginative vision – "you can try looking at it this way".

That is surely the right way to take new suggestions – not as rival
theories competing with current ones but as extra angles, signposts
towards wider aspects of the truth. Sheldrake's proposal that we should
think of natural regularities as habits rather than as laws is not just
an arbitrary fantasy. It is a new analogy, brought in to correct what he
sees as a chronic exaggeration of regularity in current science. He
shows how carefully research conventions are tailored to smooth out the
data, obscuring wide variations by averaging many results, and, in
general, how readily scientists accept results that fit in with their
conception of eternal laws.

He points out too, that the analogy between natural regularities and
habit is not actually new. Several distinctly non-negligible thinkers –
CS Peirce, Nietzsche, William James, AN Whitehead – have already
suggested it because they saw the huge difference between the kind of
regularity that is found among living things and the kind that is
expected of a clock or a calcium atom.

Whether or no we want to follow Sheldrake's further speculations on
topics such as morphic resonance, his insistence on the need to attend
to possible wider ways of thinking is surely right. And he has been
applying it lately in fields that might get him an even wider public. He
has been making claims about two forms of perception that are widely
reported to work but which mechanists hold to be impossible: a person's
sense of being looked at by somebody behind them, and the power of
animals – dogs, say – to anticipate their owners' return. Do these
things really happen?

Sheldrake handles his enquiries soberly. People and animals do, it
seems, quite often perform these unexpected feats, and some of them
regularly perform them much better than others, which is perhaps not
surprising. He simply concludes that we need to think much harder about
such things.

Orthodox mechanistic believers might have been expected to say what they
think is wrong with this research. In fact, not only have scientists
mostly ignored it but, more interestingly still, two professed champions
of scientific impartiality, Lewis Wolpert and Richard Dawkins, who did
undertake to discuss it, reportedly refused to look at the evidence (see
two pages in this book). This might indeed be a good example of what
Sheldrake means by the "science delusion".

(3) Amazon.com: Customer Reviews of The Science Delusion

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Delusion-Rupert-Sheldrake/dp/1444727923

Enlightened challenge to mainstream contemporary science March 13, 2012

By Davide Piffer

As suggested by the title, which mimicks the book by one of Rupert
Sheldrake's critics, Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), this book
contains a critique of the mechanistic and materialistic philosophy
underlying modern science.

From its early days, science has been characterized by the "spirit of
inquiry", favouring change and the free, unprejudiced debates,
unfettered by authority or tradition but led by the power of
mathematical demonstrations and empirical evidence. This curious, almost
child-like exploration of all natural phenomena was reflected in the
scientific discussions of the early days of the Royal Society of London,
where there was virtually no limit to what was an acceptable object of
scientific investigation. Thus, "serious" experiments on the nature of
light were put forward along with the presentation of "odd" devices and
speculation, which were to be mocked by the satiric pen of Johnatan
Swift in Gulliver's Travels. This vivid curiosity was coupled with a
belief in the powers of human reason and observation over the authority
of the ancient texts and religion, best exemplified by the dispute (and
later trial) between Galileo and the Holy Inquisition. However, since
its beginnings, a more conservative force has been part of the
scientific program, laid out by Francis Bacon which associated knowledge
with power and proposed the creation of a scientific priesthood.

The baconian concept inspired much of later scientific research,
including the founding of the Royal Society in London in 1660. However,
the persistance of a strong spirity of free inquiry delayed the creation
of a scientific establishment. However, by the beginning of the 20th
century science was almost entirely institutionalised and
professionalised. After the Second World war, science was heavily funded
by governments and big corporations. Popular or individual control over
research activities reached the lowest level in the 21st century, with
funding driven by economical and political forces.

Sheldrake's sociological and historical critique of science reveals the
ideological origin of many current scientific dogmas. In his book, he
exposes the weaknesses of ten scientific theories that are generally
held by lay people and scientists alike to be true and unassailable.
Sheldrake shows the inconsistencies and the inability of the current
scientific creed to account for many facts and undermines with acute
observations and powerful arguments the fundamental and diverse official
scientific beliefs, such as the principle of conservation of mattter and
energy; the randomness of genetic mutations and the
blindness/purposlessness of genetic evolution; the unconsciousness of
matter; the absence of psychical phenomena; the doctrine that memories
are confined to brains and the exclusivism and inflated curative powers
of mechanistic medicine; the assumption that constants such as the speed
of light never change.

The author proposes a principle that underlies all these phenomena
seemingly unexplained by current scientific theory. This is the "morphic
resonance" hypothesis, which Sheldrake illusatrated with greater detail
in previous books. The author does not provide a clear and concise
definition of this concept, which we can regards as an attempt to
reintroduce metaphysics into science. It is related to Jung's collective
subconscious but extends to all living and non living entities, thus
resembling Richard Bucke's concept of cosmic consciousness. Morphic
resonance is the interaction between morphic units or holons (which can
be be thought of as chunks of information or memories set up by the
repetition of similar acts or thoughts) through morphic fields that
guide the development and organization of new forms. The greater the
degree of similarity, the greater the resonance, leading to habituation
or persistance of certain forms.

The author is to be praised for his courage to put forward a grand
theory of natural and psychological phenomena and for his attempt to
reinstate many domains of inquiry into the realm of science. In order to
"rehabilitate" many diverse and fundamental topics to the status of
acceptable scientific ideas, R.Sheldrake has greatly damaged his own
academic reputation. Thus, Sheldrake can be considered one of the last
martyrs of science.

Readable Insight into the Challenges of Modern Physcis, January
10, 2012

By Robert Lomas

Dr Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist with a distinguished track record as
fellow of Clare College Cambridge where he served as Director of Studies
in cell biology before heading up the Perrott-Warwick Project to
investigate human abilities at Trinity College, Cambridge. He has
published over 80 peer reviewed scientific papers and ten books. He
studied natural sciences at Cambridge University where he got a double
first in botany and biology. He then spent a year a Harvard studying the
history and philosophy of Science before returning to Cambridge to take
a Phd in biochemistry. His scientific credentials are sound, which makes
the questions he poses in The Science Delusion worth considering. Having
studied the science of living things for all of his academic life he has
noticed that there is an interaction between consciousness and the
structure of reality which fits uncomfortably alongside the reductionist
assumptions of the neo-darwinist school of materialist biologists, led
by Prof Richard Dawkins. The neo-Darwinists believe that life is simply
a complex, but accidental, automation. It consists of chemical and
physical interactions between purposeless particles and self-awareness
is nothing more than a post hoc rationalization of predetermined
outcomes ruled only by chance. The main thrust of their thesis is that
life is a pointless and purposeless accident.

As a physicist I have long known that my intent when devising a quantum
experiment can have a considerable impact on the results I observe, even
to the extent of creating a past for an experimental particle which had
a multiple range of possible histories until I decided to observe it. I
am also aware that I can force instantaneous action on quantum entangled
particles over vast distances in total defiance of the relativistic
speed limit of light. As Sheldrake points out there is not one
scientific approach to understanding the nature of the universe, there
are three. For the very large we have Relativity, for the very small we
have Quantum Mechanics and for the human sized we have Newtonian
Mechanics, and these three systems do not agree. Once we get down to the
level of single atoms and sub-atomic particles then quantum
probabilities take over, but the moment we string together wires four
atoms wide and 1 atom deep then the rules of Newtonian objects (Ohms
Law) apply and the systems become determinist.

The problem Shedrake identifies for the neo-Darwinist school is that
they are seeped in Newtonian thinking and fail to notice the role of the
conscious observer in relativity and quantum mechanics. As a result they
have created what is in effect an atheistic religion with its own dogmas
and creeds. Sheldrake sees the issues of conscious purpose which arise
when trying to reconcile the three viewpoints of science and in this
book poses ten probing questions to address the boundaries between these
conflicting areas of scientific knowledge. These range from asking life
is simply a complex, mechanism of dead matter, through whether memories
are storied and retrieved from in quantum fields (he names these fields
as morphic fields), rather than as material traces in brain matter to
sweeping questions such as are the laws of nature fixed or do they
evolve by interactions with conscious observation? The book is a
carefully argued investigation of the main articles of faith of the
neo-Darwinist materialist religion and musters considerable evidence to
suggest that their view is nowhere near a full explanation of universe.
He also puts forward a series of challenging questions which offer ways
of testing the currently accepted assumptions about hidden mysteries of
nature and science in order to open up understanding of the greater
mystery of the function of consciousness. He closes his discussion with
these powerful words.
"The realization that the sciences do not know the fundamental answers
leads to humility rather than arrogance and openness rather then
dogmatism. Much remains to be discovered and rediscovered, including
wisdom."

Although he is addressing issues at the forefront of modern physics
Sheldrake is eminently readable and clear in his writing. A most
enjoyable book which will challenge you to think again about the nature
of conscious life.

(4) Psychiatric drugs (earlier in life) can cause Dementia (later in life)

From: Gary Kohls <gkohls@cpinternet.com> Date: 10 April 2012 07:14

America’s Mental Illness Disability and Dementia Epidemic:

It Turns Out That the Drugs Are the Problem

Gary G. Kohls, MD

http://rense.com/general91/edi.htm

Since the introduction of major tranquilizers like Thorazine and Haldol,
“minor “ tranquilizers like Miltown, Librium and Valium and the dozens
of so-called “antidepressants” like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil, tens of
millions of unsuspecting Americans have become mired deeply, to the
point of permanent disability, in the American mental "health" system.
Many of these innocents have actually been made “crazy” and often
disabled by the use of - or the withdrawal from - these
commonly-prescribed, brain-altering and, for many, brain-damaging
psychiatric drugs that have been, for many decades, cavalierly handed
out like candy - often in untested and therefore unapproved combinations
of two or more. Trusting and unaware patients have been treated with
potentially dangerous drugs by equally unaware but well-intentioned
physicians who have been likewise trusting of the slick and obscenely
profitable psychopharmaceutical drug companies aka, BigPharma, not to
mention the FDA, an agency that is all-too-often in bed with the drug
industry that they are supposed to be monitoring and regulating. The
foxes of BigPharma have a close ally inside the henhouse.

That is the conclusion of two books by a courageous investigative
journalist and health science writer named Robert Whitaker. His first
book, entitled Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the
Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill noted that there has been a
600% increase (since Thorazine was introduced in the US in the
mid-1950s) in the total and permanent disabilities of millions of
psychiatric drug-takers. This uniquely First World mental health
epidemic has resulted in the taxpayer-supported, life-long disabilities
of large numbers of psychiatric patients who are now unable to be happy,
productive, taxpaying members of society.

Whitaker has done a powerful service to humanity, albeit an unwelcome
one for various healthcare-related industries, by presenting previously
hidden, but very convincing evidence from the scientific literature to
support his thesis: that it is the drugs and not the so-called “mental
illnesses” that are causing the epidemic of “mental illness” disability.
Many open-minded physicians and many aware psychiatric patients are now
motivated to be wary of any and all synthetic chemicals that can cross
the blood/brain barrier because all of them are capable of altering the
brain in ways totally unknown to medical science, especially with
long-term medication use.

The Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

In Whitaker’s second book Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets,
Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
(which was recently recommended by a group of psychotherapists here in
Duluth) the author provides overwhelming proof regarding this sobering
assertion. He documents the history of the powerful forces behind the
relatively new field of psychopharmacology and its major shapers,
promoters and beneficiaries, namely BigPharma and those groups and
individuals who benefit financially from the widespread and increasing
use of psychiatric drugs, now even to toddlers, children and
adolescents, despite no FDA-approval for marketing to the under-18 age
group. Psychiatric drugs are far more dangerous than the drug and
psychiatric industries are willing to admit, especially for the
developing brain. These drugs, it turns our, are fully capable of
disabling - often permanently - bodies, brains and spirits. Whitaker
presents evidence that is only rarely made available to mental health
practitioners and the consumers of such synthetic drugs.

Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime

More evidence to support Whitaker’s well-documented claims are laid out
in two other important new books written by practicing psychiatrist and
scholar Grace E. Jackson, MD. Jackson has done yeoman’s work in
researching and documenting, from the voluminous basic neuroscience
literature (which is uniformly ignored by most mental health
clinicians), the unintended and often disastrous consequences of the
chronic ingestion of any of the major classes of psychiatric drugs.

Jackson’s most powerful book, in my opinion, is her second one. It is
titled Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime, which proves beyond a
shadow of a doubt, that any of the five classes of psychotropic drugs
that are commonly used to alter the brains of psychiatric patients
(antidepressants, antipsychotics, psychostimulants, tranquilizers and
anti-seizure/”mood-stabilizer” drugs) have shown microscopic,
macroscopic, radiologic, biochemical, immunologic and clinical evidence
of brain shrinkage and other signs of brain damage, especially when used
long-term Long-term use can result in clinically-diagnosable, probably
irreversible Dementia, premature death and a variety of other related
brain disorders that can mimic mental illnesses “of unknown cause”. Dr.
Jackson’s first book, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed
Consent was an equally sobering warning about the many hidden dangers of
psychiatric drugs, dangers that are commonly not mentioned to patients
when they get their first prescriptions.

The sad truth is that the prescribing of potent and often addicting
(dependency-inducing) psychiatric drugs has become the standard of care
in American medicine since the introduction of the so-called
anti-schizophrenic “miracle” drug Thorazine in the mid-1950s. (Thorazine
was the offending drug that Jack Nicholson’s character Randall McMurphy
and his fellow patients were coerced into taking (to keep them from
revolting) at “medication time” in the Academy Award-winning movie “One
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.) Thorazine and all the other “me-too”
early “antipsychotic” drugs are now universally known to have been an
iatrogenic disaster (iatrogenic = doctor or other treatment-caused)
because of their serious long-term, initially unsuspected,
brain-damaging effects that resulted in a number of permanent and
incurable neurological disorders such as tardive dyskinesia, tardive
Dementia, Parkinson’s disease, etc.

Thorazine and all the other knock-off drugs like Prolixin, Mellaril,
Navane, etc, are synthetic “tricyclic” chemical compounds similar in
molecular structure to the tricyclic “antidepressants” like imipramine
and the similarly toxic, obesity-inducing, diabetogenic, "atypical”
“anti-schizophrenic” drugs like Clozaril, Zyprexa and Seroquel.

Thorazine, incidentally, was originally developed in Europe as an
industrial dye. That doesn’t sound so good although it may not be so
unusual in the closely related fields of psychopharmcology and the
chemical industry. For example, Depakote, a popular drug approved
initially only as an anti-epilepsy drug is now being heavily promoted as
a so-called "mood stabilizer". Depakote, known to be a hepatotoxin and
renal toxin (potentially poisonous to liver and kidney), was originally
developed as an industrial solvent capable of dissolving fat -
including, presumably, the fatty tissue in human livers and brains.
There are reports in the literature of patients who had never had a
seizure in their lives but had been prescribed Depakote for other
reasons, who suffered withdrawal seizures when discontinuing the drug!

Some sympathy and understanding needs to be generated for the various
victims of BigPharma’s relentless drive to expand market share and
”shareholder value” (share price, dividends and the next quarter’s
financial report) by whatever means necessary. Both the prescribers and
the swallowers of BigPharma’s drugs have been influenced by cunning
marketing campaigns. Prescribers have been seduced by attractive
opposite-sex drug company representatives and their “pens, pizzas and
post-it note” freebies in the office; and patients have been
brain-washed by the inane and unbelievable (if one has intact critical
thinking skills) commercials on TV that quickly gloss over the lethal
adverse effects in the fine print while urging the watcher to “ask your
doctor” about getting a prescription for the latest unaffordable
blockbuster drug.

The source of America’s epidemic of mental illness disability

For a quick overview of these issues, I recommend that everybody read a
long essay written by Whitaker that persuasively identifies the source
of America’s epidemic of mental illness disability (a phenomenon that
doesn’t exist in Third World nations where costly psych drugs are not
prescribed as cavalierly as in the developed First World).

Whitaker and Jackson (among a number of other courageous ground-breaking
and whistle-blowing authors who have been essentially black-listed by
the mainstream media and even in mainstream medical journals) have
proven to most critically-thinking scientists, alternative practitioners
and assorted “psychiatric survivors” that it is indeed the drugs - and
not the so-called “disorders” - that are causing our nation’s epidemic
of mental illness disability. The Whitaker essay, plus other pertinent
information about his books can be accessed at
http://www.madinamerica.com/2011/12/answering-critics/ . An excellent
long interview with Dr Joseph Mercola can be heard at:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/05/08/robert-whitaker-interview.aspx.


The medicolegal implications of ignoring the new information

After reading and studying all these inconvenient truths, mental health
practitioners must consider the medicolegal implications for them,
especially if the information is ignored by practitioners who are often
tempted to dismiss out of hand new, clinically-important information
that challenges or disproves their old belief systems.

Those who are hearing about new data for the first time need to pass the
word on to others, especially their healthcare practitioners. This is
important because the opinion leaders in the highly influential
psychiatric and medical industries have often been bribed or marketed
into submission, without considering all the facts that might some day
reveal that they are guilty of malpractice. It shouldn’t have to be
pointed out that it is the solemn duty of ethical practitioners to fully
examine - and then reveal to their patients - the potential negatives of
prescription drugs.

Sadly, it must be admitted that most of the over-worked, double-booked
care-givers in medical clinics (and I was once one of them, so I know
whereof I speak) have not yet heard this sobering news: that most, if
not all of the brain-altering synthetic chemicals known as psychotropic
drugs (which are treated as hazardous materials until they are packaged
in swallowable or injectable forms!) have been hastily marketed as ”safe
and effective” - but not “proven” to be more than marginally-effective
or safe in very short-term use.

The captains of the pharmaceutical industries know that most
psychotropic drugs that they present for FDA-approval have only been
tested in animal trials for days or weeks and only tested in clinical
trials with real humans for only 4-8 weeks. These captains of industry
also know - and fervently hope - that patients will be taking their
high-profit-margin drugs for years despite no long-term trials proving
safety and efficacy before the drug got its FDA approval for marketing.
These corporate heads (who usually are among the 1%) have succeeded in
convincing almost everybody that treatment for “mental illness” means
drugs rather than any consideration of safer, often curative, non-drug
alternatives. They also know that their brain-altering drugs can be
dependency-inducing (aka addicting, causing withdrawal symptoms when
stopped), neurotoxic and increasingly ineffective (a la “Prozac
Poop-out”) as time goes by.

The truth is that the most people who have been diagnosed as "mentally
ill for life” (and therefore told that they need to consume drugs for
the rest of their lives) are often simply people who have been
unfortunate enough to have found themselves, through no fault of their
own, in temporary or long-term states of crisis or “overwhelm”. Such
crises can be due to any number of preventable and imminently curable
(ie, with treatment utilizing counseling, good nutrition but no need for
long-term drug use) bad luck situations such as sexual, physical,
psychological or spiritual abuse, loss of job, loss of home, loss of
relationship, poverty, violence, torture, homelessness, racial
discrimination, joblessness/underemployment, brain malnutrition, drug
addictions and/or withdrawal, brain damage from traumatic brain injury
(including electroshock “therapy”) and/or exposure to neurotoxic
chemicals in their food, air, water or prescription bottles. None of the
above, it should be pointed out, are “mental illnesses of unknown
etiology”. They aren’t even mental illnesses.

It ain’t easy to “just say no to drugs

Those labeled as “mentally ill” are usually just like most of the
so-called “normals” who have not yet decompensated because of some
yet-to-happen, crisis-inducing, overwhelming (however temporary) life
situation. And thus we have somehow not yet been given a billable code
number (accompanied by the seemingly obligatory - and usually
unaffordable - drug prescription or two) that signifies that we are now
among the burgeoning population of the “chronically mentally ill”. If we
are lucky enough to have no DSM label, we will most likely have been
lucky enough to remain off prescription drugs; however, with a label and
now within “the system”, it is very difficult to “just say no to drugs.”

The victims of hopelessness-generating random situations like bad luck,
bad circumstances, bad company, bad choices, bad government and living
in a ruthless wealth-extracting capitalist economic system where the
competitive society unjustly rewards winners who rise to the top at the
expense of the losers in the lower 99%. America tolerates, indeed
celebrates, punitive and thus fear-inducing social systems resembling in
many ways the infamous police state realities of 20th century European
totalitarianisms, where people who were different or dissident and were
thought to be abnormal. Such abnormal ones were often so intolerable to
the ruling elites that they were “disappeared” into insane asylums,
jails or concentration camps without just cause or competent legal
defense. And many of them were (and still are) drugged against their
wills with disabling psychoactive chemicals, living out their miserable,
numbed lives in the back wards of institutions.

The truth is that most, if not all of BigPharma's psychotropic drugs are
lethal at some dosage level (the LD50, the lethal dose that kills 50% of
lab animals, is calculated before testing is done on humans), and
therefore the drugs need to be regarded as hazardous. The chronic use of
these drugs must be considered to be among the major causes, not just or
disability and Dementia, but of various less well-defined and often
overlapping disorders such as cognitive disorders, brain atrophy, loss
of creativity, loss of spirituality, loss of empathy, loss of energy,
loss of strength, loss of memory, loss of intelligence, fatigue and
tiredness, aggression, personality disorders and a multitude of adverse
metabolic effects that can sicken the body, brain and soul by causing
insomnia, somnolence, mania, panic disorders, worsening depression,
increased anxiety, delusions, psychoses, paranoia, etc. So before
filling the prescription, it is advisable to read the product insert
labeling under WARNINGS, PRECAUTIONS, ADVERSE EFFECTS,
CONTRAINDICATIONS, TOXICOLOGY, OVERDOSAGE and the ever-present BLACK BOX
WARNINGS ABOUT SUICIDALITY.

Long-term, high dosage or combination psychotropic drug usage could be
regarded as a chemically traumatic brain injury (cTBI) or, as
“antipsychotic” drugs were known in the 1950s and 60s, a “chemical
lobotomy”. TBI or chemical lobotomy can be a useful way to conceptualize
this serious issue of drug-induced toxicity, because such neurologically
brain-altered patients can be indistinguishable from those who have
suffered physically traumatic brain injuries or been subjected to
ice-pick lobotomies which were popular before psych drugs came on the
market in the 1950s – and before the huge epidemic of mental illness
that America is experiencing.


America’s mental ill health epidemic is grossly misunderstood. And the
epidemic is worsening, not because of a supposed disease progression,
but because of the chronic use of neurotoxic, non-curative drugs that
are, in America, erroneously regarded as first-line "therapy."

For more information on these extremely serious topics check out these
websites: www.madinamerica.com; www.cchr.org; www.mindfreedom.org;
www.breggin.com; www.icspponline.org; www.drugawareness.org;
www.psychrights.org; www.benzo.org.uk; www.quitpaxil.org;
www.wildscolts.com; www.endofshock.com; www.mercola.com;
www.iHealthTube.com and follow the links. ==

Dr. Kohls is a physician who practiced holistic mental health care until
his retirement in 2008. His patients came to see him mainly asking for
help in getting off the psychotropic drugs that they knew were sickening
and disabling them. He was successful in helping hundreds of his
patients get off or cut down on their drugs using a thorough (and
therefore time-consuming) program that was based on psychoeducational
psychotherapy, brain nutrient therapy, a drastic change away from the
malnourishing and often toxic Standard American Diet (SAD) plus a
program of gradual, closely monitored drug withdrawal.

Dr. Kohls warns against the abrupt discontinuation of any psychiatric
drug because of the common, often serious withdrawal symptoms that can
occur with the chronic use of any dependency-inducing psychoactive drug,
whether illicit or legal. Close consultation with an aware, informed
physician who is familiar with drug withdrawal syndromes (ideally and
hopefully the original prescribing physician), who has read and studied
the appropriate literature (including the books and websites referred to
above), has become aware of the previously poorly-understood dangers of
these drugs and is knowledgeable about the nutritional needs of the
drug-toxified and nutritionally-depleted brain. ==

(5) Gary Kohls radio interview about the dangers of psychiatric drugs

From: Gary Kohls <gkohls@cpinternet.com> Date: 17 April 2012 08:31

I was interviewed on Mike Feder's radio show this afternoon (PRN.FM).
The topic was about the mental illness disability and Dementia epidemic.
It has been archived at this site:
http://prn.fm/category/archives/the-turning-point/