It would be laughable if it weren’t tragic. This week, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin introduced a plan to stem the nation’s growing suicide rate without addressing the nation’s growing use of suicide-linked drugs. Continue reading
Peter R. Breggin, MD, has been called “The Conscience of Psychiatry” for his efforts to reform the mental health field. A Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Breggin has also been a consultant to the Federal Aviation Agency on the adverse effects of psychiatric drugs on pilots. Dr. Breggin’s private practice is in Ithaca, New York, where he treats adults, couples and families with children. He is the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty books. In this interview, he discusses his most recent book, Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and Their Families. Continue reading
In days surrounding the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the federal government is expected to add 50 types of cancer to the list of World Trade Center-related diseases covered by the Zadroga Health and Compensation Act. This will come as good news to those first responders suffering from cancer-related illness, and even those close to passing, in that their pain will be properly cared for and eased. Continue reading
Statins are medications which lower cholesterol by inhibiting an enzyme involved in its production the liver and other organs. First approved by the FDA, debuting in 1987, statins are arguably the most widely prescribed medicine in the industrialized world today—and the most profitable, representing $26 billion a year in profits to the drug industry. In fact, Lipitor was the world’s best selling drug until its patent expired recently. Continue reading
The FDA is often accused of serving industry at the expense of consumers. But even FDA defenders are shocked by recent reports of an institutionalized FDA spying program on its own scientists, lawmakers, reporters and academics that included an enemies list of “actors” and collaborators. Continue reading
There is good news and bad news about the popular antipsychotic Seroquel. The good news is, after years of pleas from military families, the U.S. Central Command removed the controversial drug from its approved formulary list in March. Doctors now need a waiver to write a prescription for Seroquel in combat zones, reports Military Times, and the Army, The Navy Department are Air Force are also tightening use. The military blew millions of dollars on antipsychotics like Seroquel only to discover they are not effective against post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Oops. Continue reading
Endocrine disruptors, synthetic chemicals that mimic and interfere with natural hormones, lurk everywhere from canned foods and microwave popcorn bags to cosmetics and carpet-cleaning solutions. The chemicals, which include pesticides, fire retardants and plastics, are in thermal store receipts, antibacterial detergents and toothpaste (like Colgate’s Total with triclosan) and the plastic BPA which Washington state banned in baby bottles. Continue reading
Three years ago, Mirko and Regina Ceska of Crawfordville, Florida, told former Gov. Charlie Crist their two adopted 12-year-olds had been prescribed 11 pills a day, including the powerful antipsychotic Seroquel, reported the Tampa Bay Times. Continue reading
David Healy is a professor of Psychiatry at Bangor University. He is a former secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, and author of over 175 peer reviewed articles, 200 other pieces and 20 books, including The Antidepressant Era, and The Creation of Psychopharmacology from Harvard University Press, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1–3, Let Them Eat Prozac, Mania, and Pharmageddon Continue reading
Two-thirds of U.S. adults are now overweight and one-third are obese, making normal size people an actual minority. Americans have so ballooned in size, government safety regulators worry that airline seats and belts won’t restrain today’s men who average 194 pounds and women who average 165 pounds, in a crash. Continue reading
Like Vioxx, Merck’s expensive “super aspirin” that caused thousands of cardiovascular events before being recalled, Merck’s Fosamax, the first bisphosphonate bone drug, flew out of the FDA with only a six-month review. Continue reading
News of a new “mad cow” in the United States could not come at a worse time. Continue reading
Growing up in the post-war era (after the Second World War), I never expected to live in the strange Kafkaesque world that exists today. The US government can assassinate any US citizen that the executive branch thinks could possibly be a “threat” to the US government, or throw the hapless citizen into a dungeon for the rest of his or her life without presenting any evidence to a court or obtaining a conviction of any crime, or send the “threat” to a puppet foreign state to be tortured until the “threat” confesses to a crime that never occurred or dies at the hands of “freedom and democracy” while professing innocence. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
Few remember the grisly summer of 2002 when four Fort Bragg soldiers’ wives were murdered within six weeks of each other and the malaria drug, Lariam, widely prescribed to troops deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq, was suspected as a factor in at least some of the killings. Continue reading
Selling milk looks easy and even fun when you see the celebrity “milk mustache” ads. “Got Milk?” ads may be the most recognizable and spoofed of all ad campaigns but they are probably also the least successful: milk sales have actually fallen every year since the ads began admit the agencies charged with selling milk. Continue reading
As the Supreme Court laced up its gloves to get in the ring with Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), demonstrators in D.C. are petitioning the Court outside for it to be or not to be. It always seemed strange to me that ACA was intended for 30 million people without health insurance though you had to pay for it either through your employer or an IRS tax on income. Why couldn’t Obama and Congress have opened up Medicare as a single-payer insurance plan for working people and Medicaid for the poor? Continue reading
Let’s put it this way, if there is an adventure to be had—even in going to the hospital—it will find me or I will find it. Continue reading
Two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight and a third are obese, but few drugs have been able to make a dent in our “gross national product.” They’ve proved ineffective or dangerous or ineffective AND dangerous. The popular Fen Phen was withdrawn almost fifteen years ago for killing at least 120 people. Meridia, another popular diet drug, was withdrawn in 2010 for increasing the incidence of cardiovascular events in patients. Continue reading
I recently wrote an article about my personal experiences in dealing with the medical system while undergoing surgery (“Free Market Medicine: A Personal Account”). In response, a number of readers sent me accounts of their own experiences trying to get well in America. Continue reading
It is not just Rick Santorum, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly who missed freshman biology it is also a vast number of state legislators who fall into that category. What has caused this severe knowledge deficit about human biology, or to put it more quaintly—why don’t many males understand how women’s bodies function? For that matter, why don’t they have basic knowledge about their own genitourinary systems? Continue reading
As the nation increasingly relies on sleeping pills, new information last week suggests they may not be as safe as thought. Continue reading
When it comes to the new malaria vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) now being tested on infants in the east African country of Tanzania, I will let the words of an industry insider tell it best . . . Continue reading
It was not a great surprise that the FDA’s new cephalosporin livestock rules have the Agribusiness Seal of Approval. It was Big Pharma and Agribusiness lobbying that killed its stronger cephalosporin rules issued four years after. Continue reading
So far, 2012 is bringing bad news for people who don’t want “free antibiotics” in their food. Continue reading
When I recently went to Alta Bates hospital for surgery, I discovered that legal procedures take precedence over medical ones. I had to sign intimidating statements about financial counseling, indemnity, patient responsibilities, consent to treatment, use of electronic technologies, and the like. Continue reading
Women are in such danger of osteoporosis they need regular bone scans. That was conventional medical “wisdom” since the first lucrative bone drug surfaced over a decade ago. But an article in last week’s New England Journal of Medicine reveals that the warnings don’t apply to 90 percent of women who have been getting the scans–and the bone drugs the scans were designed to sell–for no reason. How did this happen? Continue reading
“Olé, Amigo! Pack your bags, we’re going to Mexico!” bubbled Dr. Franklin Peterson Comstock III, faux physician and money-maker. Continue reading
There’s nothing like a celebrity endorsement to move a drug off the shelves and into the nation’s medicine cabinets. TV personality Joan Lunden and former baseball star Mike Piazza stumped for the allergy pill Claritin, ice skater Dorothy Hamill and track star Bruce Jenner for the pain pill Vioxx, and Sen. Bob Dole, of course, pushed Viagra. Continue reading
What’s really behind Republican contempt for what everyone from Michele Bachmann to Mitt Romney like to call “Obamacare?” Continue reading
It’s said that it takes 22 FDA safety officers to change a light bulb: 12 to defend the decision to install it, 8 to call it another “lighting option,” 6 to quote Big Pharma studies and one to say it doesn’t need changing, it just needs a better label. This month’s hearings into birth control pills Yaz, Yasmin, Beyaz and Safyral confirm the FDA’s dedication to pharmalateralism. Continue reading
It used to be joked that a consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is. These days, the opportunist is Big Pharma which raises your insurance premiums and taxes while providing you “low priced” drugs that you paid for. Continue reading
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