Tag Archives: Pharmaceuticals

Prescription Drug Abuse

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Protecting Loved Ones from Prescription Drug Abuse or Overdoses Starts at Home

Vol. 14 Issue 8

Prescription drug abuse may be one of the most hidden types of substance abuse ever. There’s no liquor bottles in the trash, no needles hidden in a box under the bed, no little baggie of green leaves or white powder in the backpack. In fact, everything may look normal at first glance.

Maybe the first sign of a problem is that you lift a prescription bottle of your own or a family member’s and it seems a little light. You look inside and note that the supply is lower than you thought and make a note to get a refill soon. Maybe the prescription is hydrocodone (Vicodin or Lortab) left over from some dental work or minor surgery or maybe you have a bottle of over-the-counter cough medicine from a child’s illness last winter.

According to national surveys, more than 75 percent of teenage prescription drug abusers say they got those drugs from friends or family. It’s easy enough to slip into the bathroom and lift a few pills from someone’s bottle of OxyContin, Xanax or Valium. And even if your children would never do this (or you don’t have children), visitors or workmen to your house or your aging mother’s house could check the medicine cabinet while using the bathroom or working on the house. Once someone has your medication (or perhaps the medication of a family member you are caring for) then it’s up for grabs.

About 9 percent of high school seniors admit to abusing a narcotic drug other than heroin – mostly prescription opiates and opioids like methadone, OxyContin, Percocet, or Vicodin. And approximately 40 percent of these students feel that it is “easy” or “very easy” to get their hands on these drugs.

The answer is very simple: lock prescriptions away. It can be as easy as stopping by an office supply store and getting a small locking box. Place your medications in the box, keep it in a drawer and keep the keys well hidden elsewhere. This will prevent casual theft. Or you can locate a locking medicine cabinet easily enough. They are available online for $100 to $200 plus an installation charge if you have a handyman mount it in the bathroom.

And if you have prescriptions that are no longer needed, don’t hold onto them. Rather than flushing them down the toilet, which adds them to the water supply, check with local pharmacies to see if they will dispose of them for you or contact your local waste service company and ask about hazardous waste disposal.

A very little bit of work on your part can help keep these drugs out of circulation in your community.

Source: Testimony of Stephen J. Pasierf, Abuse of Prescription and Over the Counter Drug, March 1, 2008, http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/About/NewsReleases/International_Narcotics
Source: Monitoring the Future Study, 2009, http://monitoringthefuture.org/data/09data/fig09_10.pdf
Source: Proper Disposal of Prescription Drugs, October 2009, http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/pdf/prescrip_disposal.pdf

Are Flu Shots Necessary for your Family?

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DO YOU KNOW ENOUGH TO DECIDE IF YOUR FAMILY SHOULD GET FLU SHOTS?

Vol. 6 Issue 132

With flu season soon upon us, you should consider the following information before deciding if your family will get the flu shot.

Each year a “flu shot” is prepared based on the guess-work of Federal health agency officials, who try to determine which of three flu strains will be prevalent in the U.S. during the following year, so they can select which strain to include in the vaccine.

The flu vaccine is prepared from fluids of chick embryos that have been inoculated with a specific type of influenza virus. The virus is then activated with formaldehyde and preserved with thimerosal — a derivative of mercury.

If health officials select the correct strain of the virus, the vaccine is thought to be 70-80% effective in preventing the flu in healthy persons under 65 years of age — the efficacy drops to only 30-40% among those over 65 years. Health officials don’t always make the right prediction, which lowers the effectiveness for that year.

According to the National Vaccine Information Center’s fact sheet, “Influenza is a respiratory infection that produces fever, chills, sore throat, muscle aches and cough.” Symptoms can last for a week or longer and can be deadly for the elderly or those suffering from diabetes, kidney dysfunction and heart disease.

The vaccine does not protect against throat, respiratory, gastrointestinal and ear infections caused by bacteria or other kinds of viruses; it serves only to provide temporary immunity against the three specific viral strains included in the year’s vaccine.

Adverse reactions typically being within 12 hours of vaccination and last for several days; these include fever, fatigue, painful joints and headaches. The most serious reaction, which occurs within two to four weeks of vaccination is Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which is characterized by muscle weakness, unsteady gait, numbness, tingling, pain and sometimes paralysis of one or more limbs or the face.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, those at high-risk include any person who is sick with a fever, has an impaired immune system, has an egg or mercury allergy, and has a history of Guillian-Barre Syndrome. Pregnant women should be aware the flu vaccine contains the mercury-derivative thimerosal, which has been linked to causing brain damage and developmental delays in babies whose mothers were exposed to high levels of mercury during pregnancy.

SOURCE: National Vaccine Information Center, NVIC, www.909shot.com/Diseases/influenzafacts.htm; 800-909-shot.

Vaccinations for Profit, Not Safety

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Standard Vaccination Schedule For Profit, Not Safety

Vol. 14 Issue 43

The immunization schedule in this country keeps growing ever more complex as time goes on. (Or, we might say, as “Big Pharma” finds more and more ways to make a profit.)

Thirty years ago, infants were only vaccinated against five diseases – diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, rotavirus and polio. Now, according to standard immunization schedules, healthy infants are scheduled to receive immunizations against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b, varicella, and pneumococcus.

The CDC’s recommended vaccination schedule now states that American children should receive 25 to 30 vaccines before they are 5 years old. But look at the grid for these immunizations: When your tiny, helpless baby is just 2 months old, he or she could visit the doctor and be immunized for – all in one day – Hepatitis B, rotavirus, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Haemophilus influenza B, pneumococcal and polio. At 12 months, the list is even more horrible.

And while an adult may have more strength with which to fight back, the assault does not stop. What vaccines would the CDC recommend for healthy adults? The Singer Health Report writer, an exceedingly healthy female of 58 years, consulted the CDC’s quiz, What Vaccines Do You Need? (http://www2.cdc.gov/nip/adultImmSched). Answering the questions (not living in a nursing home, don’t plan to travel internationally soon, etc.) the writer found that she needs a booster of Tetanus, Diptheria and Pertussis and a seasonal flu shot. By receiving these shots, she would receive 50 mcg. of thimerosal, and doses of aluminum, hydrochloric acid and formaldehyde!

Next, the quiz was consulted for an extremely healthy 45-year-old male who travels internationally for business and who lives with his mother-in-law from Venezuela. He would need the following vaccines: Measles, mumps and rubella, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, seasonal flu, Meningococcal and the Tetanus, Diptheria and Pertussis booster. This healthy person, if he caught up on his vaccinations before his next international trip, would receive 75 mcg of thimerosal plus multiple doses of aluminum, hydrochloric acid, monosodium glutamate and formaldehyde.

To understand this assault on health from this multiplicity of vaccines, it would be necessary to go much further than just an analysis of the effects of thimerosal. The effects of all the other additives and the forms of the viruses themselves – and the sheer volume of confusing and challenging material to the immune system – must be examined in detail before this subject is put to bed.

Source: National Academy of Sciences, Infant Immunizations Not Shown to Be Harmful to Children’s Immune Systems, February 20, 2010, http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=10306

Source: Centers for Disease Control, Recommended Immunization Schedule for Persons Aged 0 Through 6 Years, 2010, http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/downloads/child/2010/10_0-6yrs-schedule-pr.pdf

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, What Vaccines Do You Need?, January 12, 2010, http://www2.cdc.gov/nip/adultImmSched/

Source: Institute for Vaccine Safety, Thimerosal Content in Some US Licensed Vaccines, February 23, 2010, http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm

Effectiveness of Flu Shots

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Flu Vaccine Posts Dismal Performance

Vol. 13 Issue 31

The results are in regarding the effectiveness of flu vaccinations for the year 2007, and the statistics are not very good for the drug companies. During this year, the effectiveness of the vaccine in protecting Americans dropped way down to just 44 percent.

Not only did the effectiveness of the shots drop, but so did public demand for the number of doses produced. According to information released by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, 18 million of the 121 million produced for the 2006-07 flu season went unused. The following year for the 2007-08 season, 27 million of the 140 million doses produced where never delivered.

Given this dismal rate of success, and with more and more information coming out on the potentially harmful side effects of vaccinations, wouldn’t it seem logical that doctors and government advisors would be guiding Americans to alternative flu-fighting solutions?

Unfortunately this is not the case, mainly because flu shots are a multi-billion dollar annual business in the United States and worldwide. Consider this projection: By the year 2012, the global vaccine market is expected to top $23.8 billion.

What the government and doctors did was get together with drug company representatives to see if they could come up with ways to sell the public on getting more flu shots. The American Medical Association, together with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held a 2-day “National Influenza Vaccine Summit” that was also attended by representatives of the five pharmaceutical companies that sell flu vaccine in the United States.

One idea that came out of this conference was that doctors should become much more aggressive in “suggesting” to their patients that they get their flu shots. One attending physician said this is how his office became more proactive in making sure their patients received the shot. “When the patient signs in, the lady who is taking their information asks, ‘Have you had the flu vaccine this year?,’ and if the answer is ‘No,’ we say, “Well, today you are getting it.’”

One such aggressive effort was naming the week following Thanksgiving “National Influenza Vaccination Week” and urging people to get their flu shot. Regardless of such hype, Americans didn’t respond to this public information campaign according to CDC. Public use did not increase during this time.

It’s good to see that Americans did not respond to this added pressure to get their flu shots and that drug companies were left with millions of unused vaccine doses in their warehouses.

Americans would be wise to learn more about non-drugging means to protect themselves during the flu season. Simply staying well-rested, well-hydrated by drinking ample water, and keeping their body defense mechanisms up through good nutrition and additional vitamin intake as needed, could offer the best defense against getting the flu.

Source: The World Chiropractic Alliance. “Flu Vaccine Success Rate Down to 44% in 2007.” November 2008. http://www.worldchiropracticalliance.org/tcj/2008/nov/a.htm

Former Glaxo Lawyer in Trouble

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Former Glaxo Lawyer Indicted

A former vice president and associate general counsel for the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline was just indicted by the U.S. Justice Department on charges of making false statements and obstructing a federal investigation into illegal drug marketing. [Read the full article here.]

Lauren C. Stevens of Durham, N.C. is accused of lying to the Food and Drug Administration by denying that Glaxo had promoted the antidepressant Wellbutrin for off-label use as a weight loss treatment.

Doctors are free to use any approved drug for any use they see fit, but pharmaceutical companies are prohibited from marketing the drugs for uses that have not been approved by the F.D.A.

In October GlaxoSmithKline had agreed to pay $750 million to settle civil and criminal complaints that it sold defective drugs, including the antidepressant Paxil, manufactured in Puerto Rico.

While psychiatrists cry about “reducing stigma,” it is their labels and treatment that initially create the stigma. And now, they are pushing depression drugs for people who want to lose weight.

[Editorial Comment: Talk about creating stigma -- "you must be depressed if you want to lose weight;" give me a break!]

People are labeled “mentally ill” with diagnoses that are completely subjective and then subjected to dangerous and addictive mind-altering drugs in order to change their behavior. It’s pretty clear where the “stigmatization” is coming from. It’s coming from the mental health monopoly that stands to profit at the sake of people seeking help.

Click here for more information about the harmful effects of Wellbutrin (buproprion HCL) and Paxil (paroxetine).

Click here for more information about psychiatric fraud.

Click here for more information about the alternatives to psychiatric drugging.

Volunteer for CCHR STL

chiropractor carbondale Former Glaxo Lawyer in Trouble

They invent the problem. They develop the product. And sell it for billions. The perfect formula for making a killing … literally.
Brutally factual, this 90-minute documentary exposes the greatest financial con this planet has ever seen.
The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore.

chiropractor carbondale Former Glaxo Lawyer in Trouble

This is the story of the high-income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit center. But appearances are deceiving. How valid are psychiatrists’ diagnoses-and how safe are their drugs? So the question is: How did psychotropic drugs, with no target illness, no known curative powers and a long and extensive list of side effects, become the go-to treatment for every kind of psychological distress? And how did the psychiatrists espousing these drugs come to dominate the field of mental treatment? Click here to find out.

MedWatch is your source for timely safety information on drugs regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and for reporting adverse reactions (side effects.)

http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/

MedWatch is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) program for reporting serious reactions, product quality problems and product use errors with human medical products, such as drugs and medical devices.

If you think you or someone in your family has experienced a serious reaction to a medical product or drug, or to electric shock, you can take the reporting form to your doctor (who is not required to report adverse reactions) or you may complete the Online Reporting Form yourself via the internet. Let us know if you do this!

Public Service Announcement
PSYCHIATRY KILLS
Have you or someone you know ever been abused or harmed by psychiatric or other mental health treatment?
Report psychiatric abuse – it’s a crime!
Call CCHR St. Louis (314) 727-8307.
All information will be held in strict confidence.
Visit www.CCHRSTL.org

Forest Lab Lawsuit

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Forest Labs Settles Some Psych Drug Suicide Suits

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article on Saturday and Sunday, October 30 and 31, 2010, describing fallout from Forest Pharmaceuticals’ guilty plea to illegally marketing antidepressants to children.

“A month after its Earth City [St. Louis, Missouri] subsidiary pleaded guilty of illegally marketing antidepressants to children and adolescents, Forest Laboratories is now settling a string of wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits from the parents of children who took the drugs Celexa and Lexapro.”

“Fifty-four lawsuits, mostly involving suicides and attempted suicides by teenagers in various parts of the country, accuse the New York-based pharmaceutical company of concealing a negative pediatric study on Celexa, duping physicians about the drug’s clinical trials, and targeting children in aggressive promotions of Celexa and a sister drug, Lexapro.”

“In vivid detail, the complaints allege that children under the influence of Celexa and Lexapro committed acts of suicide and violence.”

Read the full article here http://www.stltoday.com/business/article_c569f2c4-58a7-5432-a939-ff22e90583e5.html and thank the author, Jim Doyle, for his reporting.

Depression Screening

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09/27/2010 “When in doubt, tell the truth.” Mark Twain, 1835–1910

Depression Screening – A Cruel Fraud; Exposing “National Depression Screening Day”

This year, National Depression Screening Day is on Thursday, October 7. Its purpose is to refer people for psychiatric treatment, which means the prescription of harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs.

In 1991, the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) began organizing a “National Depression Screening Day” to encourage family doctors to diagnose depression more often in their patients and to refer them to psychiatrists. The Depression Screening Day was initiated with funds from pharmaceutical companies that have continued to fund it each year.

This is a warning: depression screening is bogus — cashing in on people’s problems in life to get them onto psychiatric drugs and increase drug sales.

Depression screening is the effort of the psychiatric industry, using drug company money, to forward their own unscientific and destructive agenda. Depression screening is based on psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which relies on American Psychiatric Association member votes (opinions only) on whether to call a list of symptoms a “disorder” — something that real medicine would never do. Without these fraudulent diagnoses, pharmaceutical companies could not make psychiatric drugs.

CCHR says that people need to be protected from the risks and human rights violations that can occur because of the DSM, and which are now heightened because of the vested influence of pharmaceutical interests on the decision making process for mental disorders.

Psychiatric adverstising that claims a biological basis to depression and that treatment can “restore brain cell connections and lead to recovery” is disease mongering, psychiatric fraud, and misleads vulnerable people in need of real help into thinking that a mind-altering drug can fix their problems in life.

The FDA warns these drugs cause hostility, agitation, mania and suicide. If you know someone who is taking a psychiatric drug from which they have suffered an adverse side effect, they should report this to the FDA MedWatch site.

If you are asked to screen your teenage son or daughter, and a screening procedure called “TeenScreen” or similar is to be used, ask them to explain why the psychiatrist who invented this says there is a potential 84% failure rate in correctly identifying someone at risk of suicide. Before agreeing to any screening, ask those doing the testing to conduct a physical test — x-ray, blood, urine or other bodily test — that would be necessary to show that depression is a “medical” (i.e. physical) disease in the brain, or are they relying on a list of personal questions (opinion) only. For more information about this bogus program, visit this site.

Click here for more information about mental health screening.

Volunteer for CCHR STL

chiropractor carbondale Depression Screening

They invent the problem. They develop the product. And sell it for billions. The perfect formula for making a killing … literally.
Brutally factual, this 90-minute documentary exposes the greatest financial con this planet has ever seen.
The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore.

chiropractor carbondale Depression Screening

This is the story of the high–income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit center. But appearances are deceiving. How valid are psychiatrists’ diagnoses—and how safe are their drugs? So the question is: How did psychotropic drugs, with no target illness, no known curative powers and a long and extensive list of side effects, become the go–to treatment for every kind of psychological distress? And how did the psychiatrists espousing these drugs come to dominate the field of mental treatment? Click here to find out.

MedWatch is your source for timely safety information on drugs regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and for reporting adverse reactions (side effects.)

http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/

MedWatch is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) program for reporting serious reactions, product quality problems and product use errors with human medical products, such as drugs and medical devices.

If you think you or someone in your family has experienced a serious reaction to a medical product or drug, or to electric shock, you can take the reporting form to your doctor (who is not required to report adverse reactions) or you may complete the Online Reporting Form yourself via the internet. Let us know if you do this!

Public Service Announcement
PSYCHIATRY KILLS
Have you or someone you know ever been abused or harmed by psychiatric or other mental health treatment?
Report psychiatric abuse – it’s a crime!
Call CCHR St. Louis (314) 727-8307.
All information will be held in strict confidence.
Visit www.CCHRSTL.org

Missouri Pharmaceuticals Pleads guilty

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09/23/2010 “When in doubt, tell the truth.” Mark Twain, 1835–1910

Forest Pharmaceuticals pleads guilty

Forest Pharmaceuticals, an Earth City, MO drug maker, has agreed to plead guilty to federal criminal and civil charges and pay more than $313 million to resolve allegations that it made drugs without FDA approval, marketed an antidepressant for pediatric use, and gave kickbacks to doctors for prescribing these harmful drugs.

Forest Pharma, a subsidiary of New York based Forest Labs, signed a plea agreement to settle, among other charges, the illegal promotion of the antidepressant Celexa for children, and causing the submission of false insurance claims for the antidepressants Celexa and Lexapro.

The settlement alleges that Forest misled doctors and consumers by failing to disclose a European medical study that determined Celexa was ineffective for pediatric use. Lexapro is the company’s main money maker, with sales of $2.3 billion in fiscal year 2010.

Celexa (citalopram) and Lexapro (escitalopram oxalate) can cause suicidal thoughts or actions in children.

Recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

Click here for more information about the harmful effects of Celexa and Lexapro.

Volunteer for CCHR STL

chiropractor carbondale Missouri Pharmaceuticals Pleads guilty

They invent the problem. They develop the product. And sell it for billions. The perfect formula for making a killing … literally.
Brutally factual, this 90-minute documentary exposes the greatest financial con this planet has ever seen.
The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore.

chiropractor carbondale Missouri Pharmaceuticals Pleads guilty

This is the story of the high–income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit center. But appearances are deceiving. How valid are psychiatrists’ diagnoses—and how safe are their drugs? So the question is: How did psychotropic drugs, with no target illness, no known curative powers and a long and extensive list of side effects, become the go–to treatment for every kind of psychological distress? And how did the psychiatrists espousing these drugs come to dominate the field of mental treatment? Click here to find out.

MedWatch is your source for timely safety information on drugs regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and for reporting adverse reactions (side effects.)

http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/

MedWatch is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) program for reporting serious reactions, product quality problems and product use errors with human medical products, such as drugs and medical devices.

If you think you or someone in your family has experienced a serious reaction to a medical product or drug, or to electric shock, you can take the reporting form to your doctor (who is not required to report adverse reactions) or you may complete the Online Reporting Form yourself via the internet. Let us know if you do this!

Public Service Announcement
PSYCHIATRY KILLS
Have you or someone you know ever been abused or harmed by psychiatric or other mental health treatment?
Report psychiatric abuse – it’s a crime!
Call CCHR St. Louis (314) 727-8307.
All information will be held in strict confidence.
Visit www.CCHRSTL.org