- At an FDA hearing on the safety of psychotropic drugs
on Feb 2, 2004, dozens of tortured parents testified that their children
had committed suicide or other violent acts after being prescribed the
same drugs that are being marketed in the Bush-backed pharmaceutical industry
schemes aimed at recruiting the nations 52 million school children as customers.
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- In July 2003, the Bush appointed New Freedoms Commission
on Mental Health (NFC) recommended screening all children for mental illness
and designated TeenScreen as a model program to ensure that every student
receives a mental health check-up before finishing high school.
-
- The NFC also has a preferred drug program in place modeled
after the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), that lists what drugs
are to be used on children found to be mentally ill.
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- The list contains every drug that people complained about
at the FDA hearing, including Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Wellbutron, Zyban,
Remeron, Serzone, Effexor, Buspar, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroqual, Geodone,
Depakote, Adderall, and Prozac.
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- There is little if any evidence that these drugs work
on children but nevertheless, an estimated 10 million children in the US
are now taking these mind-altering drugs even though they have documented
side-effects including suicidal ideation, mania, psychosis, and future
drug dependence.
-
- According to a May 2003 report in the New York Times,
national sales of anti-psychotics reached $6.4 billion in 2002, making
them the fourth highest-selling class of drugs which proves the drug companies
are already making a killing by drugging our kids.
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- Experts against Screening
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- Dr Jane Orient is an internist and executive director
of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. She offered a few
words to the wise in United Press International's "Outside View"
on December 16, 2004.
-
- In regard to TeenScreen, Orient says parents ought to
be asking some very serious questions before the government experts interview
the first child such as:
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- What are the credentials of the screeners? What are the
criteria for possible abnormality? What is the scientific validation? Will
you be allowed to get a second opinion? Can you see the record and enter
corrections if indicated? Will the record at any point be destroyed, or
will the stigma of a diagnosis such as "personality disorder"
follow the child throughout life?
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- What will happen if your child fails the screen? What
sort of treatment will be given? Who will supervise it? What if you don't
approve of it?
-
- Do drug companies expect to have a large number of new
consumers of their psychoactive drugs? Who might profit from the program
(perhaps discoverable by asking who lobbied for it)?
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- Bingo, right question Dr. Who stands to profit?
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- In 2003, Medico Health Solutions, reports that the use
of behavioral drugs for children topped all other types of drugs at 17%
of total spending. In the year 2003, the market research firm, IMS Health,
calculated worldwide sales of antidepressants at $19.5 billion, up 10%
from the year 2002.
-
- Phyllis Schlafly, author of "No Child Left Unmedicated,"
raises several valid questions. What are the rights of youth and parents
to refuse or opt out of such screening? Will they face threats of removal
from school, if they refuse privacy-invading interrogations or medications?
How will a child remove a stigmatizing label from his records?
-
- Psychiatrist Peter Breggin, a court-qualified medical
expert, and author of books, Talking Back to Prozac and The Anti-Depressant
Fact Book, warns about the life-long damage a label of mentally illness
can cause.
-
- "There is nothing worse that you can do to a human
being in America today than give them a mental illness kind of label and
tell them they need drugs and these children are 3,4,5,6,7,8,9 years-old
being treated in this manner," Breggin reports, "I then see them
coming to me as adults saying I'd like to be a doctor but how can I when
I have crossed wires in my head," he warns.
-
- In a report, Allen Jones, former investigator Penn Office
of Inspector General Bureau of Special Investigations, points out that
there has been a 500% increase in children being prescribed drugs during
the past 6 years.
-
- Jones says the NFC call for mandatory screening of all
students, with follow-up treatment as required, translates into putting
more kids on mind-altering and potentially lethal drugs.
-
- "TeenScreen is purely and simply a marketing scam
to sell psychotropic drugs," according anti-child drugging advocate,
Ken Kramer, "When they use "even if we save one life" as
an argument to arouse emotions in parents that truly care, they are lying,"
he warns.
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- Bush Promotes Dangerous Drugs
-
- The truth is, with full support from Bush, the pharmaceutical
industry is using TeenScreen as a vehicle to push dangerous drugs on children
who in the eyes of many experts are already being overmedicated.
-
- Despite that the fact that SSRI antidepressants are banned
for use with children in the UK and despite the FDA "black box"
warning label now required on all SSRIs that the drugs increase suicidal
thinking and behavior in kids, the NFC not only recommends that the same
drugs be prescribed to children, it promotes the very schemes that will
increase the number of kids on these drugs in schools and other public
institutions.
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- According to a report by the Florida Statewide Advocacy
Council, posted on Ken Kramer's website, an investigation in Florida found
that of 1,180 kids in foster care, 652 were on one or more psychotropic
drugs.
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- In Texas, Dr John Breeding, an Austin psychologist, has
seen cases where some foster children were placed on as many as 17 drugs
and says drugs are being used as chemical restraints in Texas. He wants
all SSRIs and neuroleptic drugs banned from use on children "The SSRIs
are extremely harmful and addictive; and can cause or exacerbate suicidal
or homicidal tendencies; withdrawal is painful and dangerous," Breeding
warns.
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- Dr Ann Blake Tracy is the Director of the International
Coalition for Drug Awareness, holds a doctorate in biological psychology,
and is a specialist in the adverse reactions to SSRI medications. Tracy
claims the whole hypothesis of SSRIs is "backwards." She says
the drugs increase serotonin while decreasing the metabolism of serotonin,
especially in the 7 to 10% of the population that studies have shown don't
have the proper enzyme to metabolize SSRIs in the first place, according
to the Aug 22, 2004 Desert Morning News.
-
- Dr Tracy can recite hundreds of horror stories involving
violence by people taking the same drugs that TeenScreen is marketing to
more children.
-
- She told the Morning News about, "the professor
on Prozac who bit her mother to death; the Stanford graduate on Paxil who
stabbed herself in the kitchen while her parents slept; the mother who
bludgeoned her son and then drank a can of Drano; and the 12-year-old girl
who strangled herself with a bungee cord she attached to a plant hanger
on the wall."
-
- "Most of these drugs are not approved for children,
but it doesn't stop doctors from prescribing them," Tracy points out.
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- Turning People into Psychotic Murderers
-
- Besides causing suicide, enough evidence now exists to
prove that psychotropic drugs have played a major role in the senseless
acts of violence by school-age children in this country in recent years.
-
- Dr Breggin, is against the use of psychotropic drugs
in children, and has testified in civil and criminal cases numerous times
about the link between SSRIs and suicide and other acts of violence.
-
- On April 15, 2001, 16-year-old Cory Baadsgaard took a
rifle to his High School in Washington State and held 23 classmates and
a teacher hostage. Cory sat in jail for 14 months before finally being
released based on expert testimony by psychiatrists that his behavior was
an adverse reaction to the drugs he was prescribed.
-
- Cory has no memory of his actions at the school that
day. 21 days before the event, he had been taken off Paxil and prescribed
a high dose of the drug Effexor.
-
- Cory's father Jay told Insight News, "They always
talk about how the kids who do these things are the ones who get picked
on by the jocks and stuff, but Cory was a jock. He was on the varsity basketball
team, played football and golf, and was very popular in school.
-
- Jay wants the media to warn people about the dangers
of putting kids on these drugs, "If Cory had been on PCP the media
would say 'Oh, he needs drug rehabilitation,' but because these were prescribed
medications they say 'Oh, it can't be that,' but now we know it can be,"
he said.
-
- "The morning that Cory went to school and did what
he did, my wife and I just knew that it had to be something with the drugs,"
Jay reports. One of Cory's friends described the incident to Jay, "Cory
was yelling and then he just stopped, looked down and saw the gun in his
hand and woke up," he said.
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- Cory recently made an unlikely new friend in Colorado,
when he met Columbine High School shooting victim, Mark Taylor, who is
suing the manufacturer of the antidepressant that Eric Harris was on when
he opened fire at Columbine.
-
- Kelly Patricia OMeara interviewed Mark Taylor, and recounted
his description of the shooting incident in a report for Insight on Sept
2, 2002.
-
- Taylor told Kelly, "I was sitting on a hill outside
the school eating lunch with my best friend when Eric Harris came over
and started shooting me," Taylor recalled, "I was shot between
seven and 13 times. No one really knows the exact number because there
were so many bullet tracks. Most of the bullets just went right through
me. After I was shot I just lay there, playing dead, and could see others
being shot," Taylor recalled.
-
- It has never been revealed if Dylan Klebold was on any
legal drugs at the time of the shootings, but an autopsy revealed that
Harris was on the psychotropic drug Luvox, a selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitor (SSRI).
-
- Taylor's attitude toward the teen who nearly killed him
is surprising. He told O Meara, "I'm suing Solvay because I believe
that Eric Harris did what he did because of this drug."
-
- Taylor's suit claims the drug made Harris manic and psychotic
and as a consultant in the suit, Dr Tracy agrees. "All you have to
do is read the Luvox package insert to see that Eric's actions were due
to an adverse reaction to this drug," she told Insight News, "Show
me a drug anywhere that has listed mania and psychosis as frequent adverse
reactions. That is what the insert says for Luvox. There is no doubt in
my mind that Luvox caused Eric Harris to commit these acts," she explained.
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- Gary Null & Associates of New York is filming a documentary
called "The Drugging of Our Children," that will feature interviews
with both Cory Baadsgaard and Mark Taylor, and will chronicle the long
history of tragic events that have resulted from the use of these drugs
on children.
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- A little known fact is that a few days before the Columbine
tragedy, Eric Harris had been rejected by the Marine Corps specifically
because he was taking the drug Luvox.
-
- In 2001, 18-year-old Jason Hoffman, shot five students
and teachers at a California High School, while on the drugs Celexa and
Effexor, and he too was rejected by the Navy one day before he went on
his rampage, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
-
- In a letter to his mother, Hoffman said, "I want
people to know that what happened was not the real me, I was just angry,
maybe my medication. It was a fluke of the moment. The person was not the
true Jason Hoffman," he wrote.
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- On Oct 29, 2001, Jason Hoffman killed himself by hanging
from a vent screen in his jail cell, the Tribune reported.
-
- Kip Kinkel was 15 on May 21, 1998, when he murdered his
parents, and then went to Thurston High School in Springfield, OR where
he shot and killed 2 students and injured 22 more. Kinkel was on Ritalin
and Prozac at the time of the killings even though Prozac was not approved
for pediatric use.
-
- Seven years after the senseless killings by Kinkel, on
December 18, 2003, Eli Lilly sent letters to British healthcare providers,
warning that Prozac was not recommended for any use in children.
-
- 14 year-old Elizabeth Bush was on antidepressants when
she took a gun to school and wounded another student in Williamsport, PA
in 2001.
-
- 12-year-old Christopher Pittman was on Zoloft when he
shot his grandparents and set their house on fire, and says his violence
was caused by the drug he was on. Before Zoloft, he had been on Paxil.
-
- According to court records, the doctor who prescribed
the drug to Christopher mentioned no problems in his medical notes. A few
days before the murders, the doctor wrote: "Lots of energy. No plans
to harm self. Not flying off the handle."
-
- Christopher now sits in prison.
-
- His father, Joe Pittman, testified about the effects
of the drugs on his son at the FDA Hearing and read a letter Christopher
wrote that described how he felt when he committed the murders, "Through
the whole thing, it was like watching your favorite TV show," he wrote,
"You know what is going to happen but you can't do anything to stop
it."
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- Dr Tracy explains how this happens. SSRIs suppress "the
REM state or dream state [of sleep] ... These drugs allow a person to be
awake but at any time they can slip into the REM state. This is why people
often discuss how they couldn't tell the difference between the dream and
reality. These drugs are horribly damaging to the entire system,"
she warns.
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- Even the people closest to Jeff Weise are at a loss to
say what led to the deadly killing spree by Weise in Minnesota, where the
16-year-old shot his grandfather, his companion, and then went to the high
school and shot 5 students, a teacher and a security guard before killing
himself. According to school employee, Gayle Downwind, Weise was on Prozac
at the time of the shootings.
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- Dr Tracy has consulted on many cases where children engaged
in violent behavior including a 15-year-old boy on Zoloft who shot and
killed a woman and is serving life in prison; a 17-year-old boy on Paxil
for three months who jumped off an overpass into the path of a trailer
truck; a 14-year-old girl prescribed Paxil to deal with the suicide of
her father (who was on Paxil before killing himself) drank Drano in a suicide
attempt; and a 16-year-old boy on Paxil who stabbed a woman over 60 times,
drove his car into a cement abutment in a failed suicide attempt, and is
now serving life in prison.
-
- "In each of these cases," Tracy told Insight
News, "individuals close to them were shocked at the violent and destructive
behavior because it was so out of character for them."
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- Courts Starting to Get It
-
- Drug companies are finally starting to be held responsible
for violent behavior associated with these drugs. A jury in Cheyenne, Wyoming
recently determined that Paxil, "can cause some individuals to commit
suicide and/or homicide." The jury decided Paxil caused Donald Schell
to shoot his wife, daughter and granddaughter before killing himself after
being on the drug only two days.
-
- The jury allocated 80% of the fault on Paxil drug maker
GlaxoSmithKline and awarded the surviving family members $8 million in
damages.
-
- On June 18, 2003, GlaxSmithKline issued a warning to
British physicians against the use of Paxil in children, acknowledging
failure of clinical trials "to demonstrate efficacy in major depressive
disorders and doubling the rate of reported adverse events - including
suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts - compared to placebo."
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- In Bismarck, ND, 10 days after Ryan Ehlis began taking
Adderall, he shot and killed his 5-week-old baby and then turned the gun
on himself. He survived and was tried for the murder but was acquitted
after the Judge agreed with psychiatrists who testified that the murder
resulted solely from a psychotic state caused by the drug.
-
- In February 2005, Canadian regulators ordered Adderall
off the market after the drug was linked to 20 sudden deaths and a dozen
strokes. Of the 20 deaths, 14 were children.
-
- There has been a lot written about the increase in teen
violence and school shootings but no one has identified a common denominator
in the lives of these kids with one exception, the drugs. If we allow the
Bush-backed marketing schemes to succeed in recruiting more kids as customers
for these dangerous drugs, according to Tracy, we had better prepare for
more of the same.
-
- "We've got a nightmare on our hands with these drugs,
an absolute nightmare," she warns, "We've got kids on these drugs
that are ticking time bombs in every school in America."
-
- "When all of this is over and we count up the dead,
we're going to be in shock," she adds.
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- Evelyn Pringle is an investigative journalist focused
on exposing government corruption.
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- http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_20212.shtml
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