Big Pharma Going Down

Eli Lilly have announced that they are unable to obtain and retain insurance coverage for Zyprexa. 

According to investigative reporter Eveylyn Pringle:

“In light of these insurance problems, Lilly could be likened to a dog chasing its tail. While on one hand, it is being sued for illegally marketing Zyprexa off-label, if it stops the illegal conduct profits will plummet and it won’t have the money to pay the litigation costs.

“However, Lilly has apparently decided to take the low road, because to date, settling with 26,500 Zyprexa cases out of court by paying out over $1.2 billion has done nothing to lower the off-label sales figures for Zyprexa. In fact, in 2006, sales of the drug increased 12%, according to SEC filings.”

 That is an unsustainable business practice.  To put out highly dangerous drugs that are known to have horrendous, not to say deadly, side effects, and to no longer be able to able to cover ones liabilities with insurance is a recipe for bankrupcy pure and simple.

Investors would do well to short Big Pharma as they are going down.  Not because of the FDA who have been as ‘in the pocket’ of Big Pharma as the psychiatric industry; not because of our ever-vigilant media (just a little joke), not because of our government legislature who are not quite so strident in their support of Big Pharma anymore (I think ’scurrying for cover’ would be the right term), but because they are about to be wrung dry by the legal system.

Zyprexa is just the start.  Insurance companies are suddenly looking rather more closely at the liabilities they take on with a range of Big Pharma drugs.  Big Pharma without bags of cash to throw around will be without a friend in the world.  They will be savaged mercilessley by those who have been paid off in the past and who will be desperate to establish their anti-Big Pharma credentials in the future.

Predator Psychiatrist

From:  http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/02/substantial-settlement-childrens.html

Children’s Hospital_ Predator Psychiatrist_Sexual Assault girl, 13

The Boston Herald reports: “A young patient who was sexually assaulted by a predatory psychiatrist has reached a “substantial” settlement with him and other doctors who she says let her be victimized when she was a vulnerable, suicidal teen.”

The case, like so many others that do not reach public notice, underscores one of the unacknowledged dirty secrets of psychiatric institutions: patients, especially young females, are at risk of being sexually molested by staff.

Maria Fallon, now 20, says supervisors at Boston Children’s Hospital knew Dr. Param Shukla already had been accused of assaulting a young girl in 1999 when they assigned him to her case in April 2000. Fallon was in the psychiatric unit at Children’s because her mother was dying of brain cancer and Fallon, then 13, had just tried to kill herself.
Typical of how institutions shield sexual predators, the Herald reports that even though the hospital moved the psychiatrist a to a research job in 1999 “while they investigated a 12-year-old girl’s complaint that he had fondled her, [sic] the charges were never filed in that case, and after Shukla underwent a psychiatric assessment, he was allowed to see female patients again.”

Shukla, a married 38-year-old dad at the time, lost his medical license in 2000, and was sentenced to probation in 2004 for indecent assault and battery on a child for fondling Fallon during the five days she was on suicide watch.

This is not an isolated case. A long-established culture at psychiatric institutions shields professional staff who prey on vulnerable patients.

Siamese Twins

Courtesy of: http://www.newstarget.com/021553.html

Brave New Schools

From:

http://www.wnd.com:80/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54082

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BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS
Police take home-taught student to psych ward
Government objected to her parent-led courses in math, Latin

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Posted: February 3, 2007
1:00 a.m. EasternBy Bob Unruh
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com A nation whose education officials already have warned that they will, when necessary, “bring the religious convictions of the family into line” with state requirements, now has removed a 16-year-old girl from her family and placed her in a child psychiatry unit after she turned in below-expected grades in math and Latin. The news of nearly two dozen officials and uniformed police officers physically taking the teen from her home in front of her shocked family is just the latest horror story to come out of
Germany, where homeschooling was placed under a ban by Adolf Hitler and der Fuhrer’s law still is enforced. The stories are concerning to homeschoolers in the rest of the world, including the United States, because of the real potential that international law eventually could be used to ban such activities in places where it now is legal. The newest German case was reported in a statement delivered to WND by Netzwerk-Bildungsfreiheit (Net-Education Freedom), an organization that works for homeschoolers’ rights in
Germany even though it is illegal there. A spokesman for that group had contacted WND after the news website broke the story that a German government official had warned that families’ religious beliefs will have to be brought into alignment with required school attendance laws. The government at that time had responded to a parent concerned about children being forcibly placed in custody by police officers and then delivered to the mandatory public school system: “In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement,” the government said. The student in the newest case was identified by the German organization as Melissa Busekros. She has been removed from her parents’ custody, and placed in the Child Psychiatry Unit of the
Nuremberg clinic, her father, Hubert Busekros, told the homeschool group. “What is being done to a sensitive and musical young girl, just because the bureaucrats want to set an example? In their zealous drive to enforce compulsory schooling (which by Melissa’s age is only part-time) at all costs, they readily accept the trauma caused to the unassuming and lovable Melissa,” the German homeschool said. “The Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit condemns this inconsiderate and totally incommensurate behaviour on the part of the officials involved and demands that they give Melissa her freedom and return her to her family immediately.” The case began developing in the summer of 2005, when Melissa, then 15, was told she’d have to repeat the 7th grade at the Ernst High Gymnasium, a public school, due to her grades in math and Latin. “The situation in the class played no small part in creating this state of affairs – the high noise levels and cancelled classes prevented her from receiving the educational assistance she needed during school hours,” the German organization said. Since she had good grades in all the other classes, she and her parents decided she would be tutored individually at home to meet her needs. She still took part in music and sang in her school’s choir. But school officials were unhappy, and expelled her, so the Busekros family continued educating her at home. At the end of the 2005-2006 school year she was no longer subject to full-time attendance requirements, but the Jugendamt, or Youth Welfare Office still created a case in Family Court and ordered the family to appear at a hearing. Then this week social workers accompanied by police officers appeared at the home one morning, demanding that Melissa be handed over to them immediately, providing as authorization a ruling by the

Erlangen Court

dated Jan. 29. It said, “The relevant Youth Welfare Office is hereby instructed and authorized to bring the child, if necessary by force, to a hearing and may obtain police support for this purpose.” The teen was taken to the Child Psychiatry Unit and interrogated for nearly four hours, after which she was returned home, the Netzwerk said. However, the worst was still to come. On Thursday, the Family Court judge, staff members of the Youth Welfare Office, and 15 police officers “marched up to the Busekros home, to haul Melissa off to the Child Psychiatry Unit.” “This treatment was justified by the psychiatrist’s finding, two days previously, that she was supposedly developmentally delayed by one year and that she suffered from school phobia,” the Netzwerk said. “It is not known when Melissa’s parents and siblings will be able to see her again, as the official approach in cases of ’school phobia’ is to completely prevent the ‘patient’ from having any contact with those closest to him or her, as such contact supposedly enables the phobia,” the Netzwerk said. Such issues are alarming
U.S. homeschool leaders. Michael Farris, cofounder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, has called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to protect the right of parents to educate their children at home, in light of such developments in
Europe. One of his major concerns is that if the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a plan already accepted as law by many nations around the globe, were ratified by the Senate or adopted by the federal courts as enforceable international law, American homeschooling could be banned. A homeschool advocate in
Germany earlier wrote to WND that, “We are not far away from an intolerant dictatorship in our country. Parental rights are more and more abolished. If you do not educate the way the state wants, the so-called Jugendamt (youth welfare office) is quick to check out if they can take away the custody of your children.” He is not being identified because of his position in
Germany. “As long as you practice your faith in a church building you have no problems, but as soon as you act in accordance to your faith, for example, in the education of your children, the freedom ends rapidly,” he said. He likened the situation to that of families under the Nazi regime, or “like in the former
Soviet Union under the Communists.” The HSLDA also has pleaded for help for the German community. “The situation, unfortunately, is not getting any better, and they need your prayers and support,” the organization said recently. “Most recently, a decision was handed down by the European Court of Human rights (which) … completely turned the European Union Constitution’s Article 14, the section on parent’s rights to control the education of their children, completely upside down.”

That decision will allow any nation in the EU, should it choose, to outlaw homeschooling. “Meanwhile, the German homeschoolers continue to be unmercifully persecuted. In our last report, we explained that there were approximately 40 families in court at one stage or the other. Families are fleeing regularly to other foreign countries in order to continue homeschooling…”

Shock for ECT Advocates

For the last 25 years Harold Sackeim of Columbia University has been not only the top ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) researcher in the US, but the main proponent of the controversial treatment worldwide.

He taught a generation of ECT practitioners that “permanent amnesia from ECT is so rare that it could not be studied.”  He also stated that people who said the treatment erased years of memory were mentally ill and thus not credible.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimates that more than 3 million people have received ECT just over the course of the last generation in the US alone.  It is entirely likely that ECT could not have survived as a ‘treatment’ over this same period without the calm and authoritative voice of Harold Sackeim assuring all, including the media and judicial and legislative bodies, that passing up to 420 volts through the brain of a human being was completely safe.

Now, in January of 2007, the journal of Neuropsychopharmacology reports the results of the largest follow up study ever done on ECT patients.  Sackeim who authored the study admits that the study conclusively demonstrates that ECT causes permanent amnesia and permanent deficits in cognitive abilities, which affect individuals’ ability to function:

“This study provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse cognitive effects can persist for an extended period, and that they characterize routine treatment with ECT in community settings,”…

Doesn’t sound too bad put like that does it?  See how it sounds when put into plain English: Brain Damage. 

Oddly enough that accords with the American Journal of Psychiatry (1973) which stated: “the ECT patients’ inferior (test) performance does suggest that ECT causes permanent brain damage.” Neurosurgeons agreed.  Frank Vertosick equated ECT to repairing a computer with a chainsaw.  Sidney Samant said that ECT produced effects identical to those of a head injury.  John Friedberg said that ECT caused brain damage and memory loss.  Why did psychiatrists continue to administer ECT for at least thirty-four years past the point where they knew it was causing brain damage, and why did society tolerate it?  Because Harold Sackeim, the world famous ECT research expert, stated right up until January 2007 that ECT definitely didn’t cause brain damage.

Dr. John Read of the University of Auckland said: “This study proves what critics and recipients of shock therapies have been saying for years and shows that the Ministry of Health and the Royal College of Australian and New Zealand Psychiatrists have been misleading parliament and the public.”

The results of the study were picked up by news wires around the world.  Sackeim’s admission, though long overdue and falling somewhat short of a full Mea Culpa, was still welcomed by those dedicated groups and individuals who have fought against this barbaric and primitive practice.

ECT has been around for almost 70 years now and has never been absent from controversy.  Numerous websites detail harrowing stories of electro-shock induced brain damage by survivors and their families.  Articles were written and research papers published.  Lobby groups were established.  Survivors formed themselves into groups to protest their situation.  There were even a very few courageous psychiatric insiders who blew the whistle.  Few listened.  Fewer cared.

To be labeled as mentally ill is to be stigmatized.  Open your mouth and people wonder whether you are making it up as you go along.  Your every utterance has doubt cast upon it by virtue of the fact that you have been labeled ‘mentally ill’.  Nothing that the ‘mentally ill’ person says or does can be taken in without it first being filtered through the perception that at best the person is incompetent and irrational and at worst violent.

These unspoken generalizations and perceptions though entirely erroneous are rife, especially in the media.  Whilst most people are uncomfortable with the idea of physical coercion there is a tacit and convenient agreement that in the case of the mentally ill it is ‘probably in their own best interests”.  Considerations of Human Rights are put aside because these people are ‘different’. 

The forced application of ECT to millions of people ranks alongside the worst atrocities of the twentieth century.  Coursing high voltage electricity through the brains of unwilling recipients was a blatant and barbaric disregard for Human Rights plain and simple.  It happened because decent people chose to disregard the evidence of their own ears and eyes, not to say common sense, in favour of the soothing voice of experts like Harold Sackeim.

The lesson to be learned is that Human Rights are too important to be allowed to moulder in the bin of meaningless slogans.  A genuine understanding and respect for Human Rights would have stopped involuntary ECT happening in the first place.  Human Rights must become widely and well known and to this end should be taught in schools.  Do you, or any of your family or friends, know Article 1 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights… or any of the Articles? 

Human Rights are for all people at all times and under all circumstances.  There are no exceptions and can never be any exceptions.  If there are exceptions to Human Rights then such ‘Rights’ by definition degenerate to the status of ‘Privileges’.

It has now been revealed that the inspiration for Sackeim’s support of ECT for all those years was the fact that he was quietly on the payroll of Mecta Corporation the manufacturer of ECT machines.  Just as it was money that provided the quasi-legitimacy for ECT, so it was the highly profitable nature of ETC that kept psychiatrists enthusiastically pulling the switch.  And now it will again be money, or more precisely the fear of losing money through litigation, that will bring about the end of the practise.  Not remorse or pity, nor even common decency or respect for Human Rights, just money.

We are on the cusp of an avalanche of court cases on behalf of the recipients of ECT.  No amount of money can ever compensate for the willful and unnecessary damage that has been done these people, or the indignities that they have had to suffer to even be listened to.  There is also no price that compensates for the injustice and shame of having been legally defined as unworthy of Human Rights and, ipso facto, classified as less than human.  Such court cases will though serve to focus attention on the importance of paying more than lip-service to Human Rights. 

Genuine Human Rights for all can only be attained when our media realize that alongside their disseminative power comes an intellectual responsibility.

It is not just the media though.  It is time for society at large to take a good hard look at itself.  The truth is that we all knew what was happening; we all knew that it was completely wrong and yet very few did a damn thing about it.  Why was that?  Possibly Ayn Rand explains the problem best:  “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”

Philip Barton © 30/1/07 All rights reserved

Locked Out

I used to have a Blog on Blogspot, but I got locked out about a year ago.  Funny that.   Time to move on to another Blog host.  Thanks WordPress.