☼ nz11 climbs onboard

[brassmonkey]

Half life by definition is a constant.  It is the time it takes to reduce the original amount by one half.  But it doesn't stop there because it takes the same amount of time to reduce the remaining amount by half, then the same amount of time to reduce that by half etc.  You end up with an asymptotic curve where you never reach "0", same as doing a set percentage dose reduction.  The only thing the dose amount would do is change the blood concentration.  So for a given drug reducing a blood concentration of 50mg to 25mg takes the same amount of time it would take to reduce a blood concentration of 10mg to 5mg.

 

The Wikipedia article has a pretty good explanation  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life

[nz11]

Thanks SB and Amy

 

Thanks for the link  BM. Thats a lot of reading complex stuff .

 

Funnily i woke up this morning and realized i made a school boy error in my assertion of the arithmetic progression,

 

the a.p. should in fact be

 

d, d + (d-y), d + (d-y) + (d-2y) , d + (d-y) + (d-2y) +(d-3y), ....etc

 

General term then given by a quadratic T(n) = -(y/2)n^2 + (y/2)n + n.d

 

But even this is no doubt over simplified.

 

I don't know how to represent an expression for when steady state occurs.

 

 

You know what ..i think we just go with the time to steady state as stated !!  lol.

 

Been an interesting exercise though.

[nz11]

Just changing the subject last night watched a movie.

 

 'Every cloud has a silver lining'

Great examples of ssri wdl rage. oh boy!

[SkyBlue]

Nz11, that was the name of the movie? I'd like to see it but don't see it in a Google search.

 

Just some Thomas the Tank Engine videos!! 

[nz11]

Here is the trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh2ZA_WKF5s

 

Here is the full movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3YB969trAY
 

[brassmonkey]

I've been looking for that quadratic for ever.  It was mentioned in passing the first time I took college algebra (took 3 tries to pass) and I've never seen it since.  There have been several times it would have come in handy.

 

Yea, that article is some pretty heady stuff.  My father was an expert on nuclear fallout so I learned about half life from early on.  It's surprising how many other applications it has. 

[nz11]

Yeah apparently its even used in dating...!

 

Sounds like your dad had a pretty high powered job. 

 

I've heard physicists have a favourite lunch ....fission chips !

[Songbird]

Half-life for radioactivity isn't quite the same for pharmacology.  For some drugs the half-life is dose-dependent, and there are other factors such as enzyme saturation.  It's actually very complex.  I found this interesting article (not sure if I'm allowed to post it or if it counts as a commercial link):

 

http://www.preskorn.com/books/ssri_s6.html

 

Interestingly they say the half-life of a single 20mg paroxetine dose is only 10 hours, which doesn't tally with the study and graph I used, which showed 21 hours.  Also the time to steady state is reported as 4-5 days, which doesn't match my calculation of 9-10 days, possibly because of the CYP 2D6 inhibition they talk about. This suggests to me that time to steady state might also vary in a dose-dependent way, and that time to steady state after dose decreases could be different than for increases.  Also interesting was that for paroxetine the dose was not proportionate to plasma level, possibly also because of CYP 2D6 inhibition - I found this other interesting article (which reported steady state in 7-14 days):

 

https://www.pharmgkb.org/pathway/PA166121347#tabview=tab0&subtab=.

 

This article suggests that at higher doses, plasma levels increase more than at lower doses.  Or thinking in reverse, when you are tapering, going to lower doses would actually cause a bigger reduction in plasma levels than you would expect.  Which would make it harder to taper as you go down.

 

There seem to be no easy answers in this area, and a lot of variation in the data when you look around.  There are also plenty of inaccuracies around in the scientific literature.  For example, in the first article they say: "Certainly, such withdrawal syndrome would be highly unlikely with fluoxetine due to its extended half-life."  Which we know is codswallop because Prozac withdrawal definitely exists.

 

Anyway, it's all very interesting, but I'm waffling on without really knowing what I'm talking about, so will stop there.  My poor brain can't handle any complicated maths stuff any more, sad to say.  Years ago I used to be good at that stuff.  I'm impressed nz11, for someone who went through severe w/d, you are still able to do complicated maths equations.

[AmyK]

Songbird, so you take your dose twice a day? If so, how is it?

Now, on a really low dose, I sometimes feel that my dose doesnt "last" all day. Maybe twice a day would be better.

[brassmonkey]

I see your point Songbird.  I find the disproportionate relation between dose and blood plasma level rather intriguing.  There have been many comments about how the lower doses don't seem to last as long as the larger ones.  Another reason for making drops even smaller the lower one goes.

 

NZ11-- not powerful but responsible, and couldn't talk about it a lot.  It lead to my having to do a lot of thinking about things in order to form my own opinions about the dangers involved and the like. (How's that for cryptic?)

[nz11]

Thanks SB, but its not as complicated as your radioactive pharmacology.

 

Don't worry BM, mums the word.

 

Wishing you pharmokinetic scholars a big ..........((((((((((HUGS BISON)))))))))))))

Hows that for cryptic!

[Songbird]

Songbird, so you take your dose twice a day? If so, how is it?

Now, on a really low dose, I sometimes feel that my dose doesnt "last" all day. Maybe twice a day would be better.

 

That was my concern - that at the lower doses, they would kind of run out before the end of the day - that's why I went to twice-daily doses.  It's hard to know whether things would have been any different if I'd carried on with once a day, but so far it doesn't seem to have caused any problems.

[nz11]

Wanted to save this here

 

Article can be found here:  http://www.omicsonli...165-1000217.pdf

 

Article by Dr Lucire , just published.

 

"Pharmacological Iatrogenesis: Substance/Medication-Induced Disorders That Masquerade as Mental Illness"

Received date: Nov 26, 2015; Accepted date: Jan 15, 2016; Published date: Jan 22, 2016

 

Abstract:

Introduction: This paper addresses the epidemiological consequences of not teaching prescribers and patients what they need to know about human distress and adverse effects of medications.

 

Here are some of my choice gleanings...

 

Hanging is the most common method of suicide in those suffering from akathisia.

 

Between 1993 and 2001, suicide numbers in the mental health care tripled. Hospitalisations for suicide attempts in NSW increased threefold.

In 2013 police in New South Wales received 38,000 mental health related callouts for suicidality and violence.

Intra-family homicides are reported almost daily in the press. They are attributed to mental illness but examination shows that mental illness was very rarely in evidence before medication.

 

The number of Australian veterans committing suicide reached three times the number killed in Afghanistan.

 

There was actually one sentence I didn't like in this article, and it was this "the drugs can be effective in persons suffering serious depression, provided that doses are adjusted according to their ability to metabolise them normally and there is an formed monitoring."

 

In 2003 Healy and Whittaker reviewed many epidmiological studies and the clinical trials that had been represented to the US FDA for the licensing of antidepressants.

They found on follow-up studies, and studies in the community and on information from morgues all of which disclosed that the population that was taking antidepressants, or had just stopped taking them, committed or attempted suicide at a rate that ranged between twice and infinitely more times than the same population taking placebos or not using medication at all.

 

By 2003 and many times since, the  proposition that 'SSRIs induce suicide' passed the scientific standard of proof in scores of epidemiological  studies and also in American courtrooms. The trials presented for approval had selected out nearly 400 antidepressant trials whose raw data was later reviewed in detail by the Cochrane collaboration and others. The undisclosed trials had failed to show either safety or efficacy and had revealed substantial numbers of suicides and related behaviours both on active substance and in withdrawal.

 

1000 new secure mental health beds were built in New South Wales alone to accommodate this new epidemic.

 

Most of those who had stopped taking antidepressants made a full but slow recovery from akathisia; some developed chronic, and some developed delayed post withdrawal akathisia weeks and months after stopping the medicines  and withdrawal akathisia which went on for years was the hardest to manage and reverse. Many remained physically disabled and felt weak and remained on disability support. Suicidal and homicidal ideation both sometimes persisted for months after withdrawal. When a subject understood its cause and saw that it was decreasing in intensity, it was less dangerous and easier to tolerate. Sometimes suicidality developed for the first time when a dose was missed and when the subject tried to stop taking the drugs.

 

Why are we not taking this on board and funding more psychology and psychiatric treatments or detoxification clinics?

 

But without doubt, the major problem that needs to be addressed by relevant authorities is the manner in which drugs are prescribed, for conditions for which they have not been approved, which they cannot change, in huge doses and with interacting polypharmacy.

 

When the FDA published its 2004 advisory, the first for adults but fifth for children, the American psychiatric Association immediately issued warnings about suicide induction by antidepressants. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of psychiatrists refused saying "we're not convinced" The RANZCP remains unconvinced, and supports its clinical practice guidelines which do not warn of catastrophic adverse effects and are not even consistent with each drug's product information.

 

Journalist Robert Whittaker via the freedom of information act gained access to FDA data on the drug trials for the atypicals risperidone quetiapine olanzapine. Whittaker found that one in every 145 patients who entered the trials died, and yet those deaths were never mentioned in the scientific literature.

One in every 35 patients in risperidone trials experienced a serious adverse event defined by the FDA as a life-threatening event or one that required hospitalisation.

 

Most malpractice does not fall within the categories of having acted against the medical code, incompetent performance or dereliction out of greed or laziness, but most damage occurs in the ordinary practice of well-trained men and woman who have learned to bow to prevailing professional judgement and procedure, even though they know, or could or should know, what damage they do.

 

It is in the realms of the unthinkable that good people can stand by and see this public health catastrophe and do nothing.

It is a legitimate question to ask why taxpayers are still subsidising the irresponsible use of antidepressants and atypical antipsychotics which increased deaths and suicides and their precursor states by 2 to 6 fold over placebo in the best clinical trials that their makers could produce. Or multiplied suicidality 11 fold in the case of paroxetine for children or fourfold for sertraline. That no suicides occurred in a trial of antidepressants suggests only that clinical trial subjects were warned of the risk, according to the Nuremberg protocols for research subjects and those persons who became suicidal were withdrawn. Suicide should not occur in practice if patients are warned and watched. This does not happen in the community, as prescribers have not been advised how poorly these drugs were tolerated and how many subjects had been withdrawn and could not complete trials.

 

A medical board has determined that medications and doses that had caused people to commit suicide and homicides were  'standard psychiatric treatmen't even when the consequence had been fatal. Akathisia cases were not investigated or given any credit. Coroners sitting on five cases of antidepressant – akathisia – related suicides brought before them refused to hear this evidence. Yet the harm done is in plain sight.

 

Yolander  finishes with a great example from the Holocaust.

Introducing his book about reasons that our brains cannot, accommodate climate change, George Marshall tells of the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski who gave eyewitness testimony to the Supreme Court judge Felix Frankfurter in 1942. Supported by the Polish ambassador, he reported the clearing of the Warsaw ghetto and the systematic murder of Polish Jews in the Belzac concentration camp. Listening to him  Frankfurter, himself a Jew, and one of the outstanding legal minds of his generation replied, "I must be frank, I am unable to believe him." He added, "I did not say this young man is lying. I said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference".

This raises the issue of our ability to separate what we know from what we believe, to put aside the things that seem too painful or embarrassing to accept. How is it possible when presented with overwhelming evidence, even the evidence of our own eyes, that we can deliberately ignore something – while being entirely aware that this is what we're doing? The magnitude and enormity of the lethal nature of Pharma driven biological psychiatry is too painful to tolerate but it cannot go on forever.

 

Yolanda concludes with: a petition needs to go all around the world asking for the signatures of those who have lost loved ones or have had their lives and reputations destroyed.

[nz11]

This posting may be offensive and may not meet acceptability. It is totally okay for a moderator to delete it if that should be so. Offensive in that it talks about the ‘D’ word. A word that I find offensive anyway, however I mention it to expose it as nonsense, not to promote it.

……………………………………………//……………………………….

 

In 201?, I found a new healthcare provider and made a complaint against my ex doctor. That complaint was dismissed. However post-complaint dismissal my ex Dr wrote a letter to the complaint authority apologizing for not completing a PHQ-9 and that he had showed a weakness in his practice, and he wouldn’t let this happen again.

 

[This reveals that he had drugged me without completing any clinical assessment whatsoever!]

 

This was a very careful cover-up, he did not show a weakness at all the reason he did not do a PHQ-9 is because I would not have ticked a single criteria for it.

 

It appears that doctors in New Zealand are using (or should be using) a PHQ-9 for clinical assessment purposes.

 

Anyway over the past few years I have wondered what is a PHQ-9,

 

just this last month I was skim reading a book in the library and I found this:

 

Patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9)

 

The PHQ 9 is a self-administered multi-choice questionnaire, which was developed by Pfizer.

[Well that’s a red flag for a start having a pharmaceutical company develop this … shouldnt it be the medical professions job to do this?]

 

Essentially, it asks nine questions, each of which are considered criteria for making a diagnosis of depression.

The individual scores them from zero, when the answer is ‘not at all’ to 3, when the answer is ‘nearly every day’.

A score out of 27 is obtained and the score gives an indication if depression is present and also its severity.

Doctors can also use this as a means to assess how someone is responding to treatment, when the score should progressively go down.

 

A score of five or above is reasonable grounds to book an appointment to see your doctor to assess together where you go from there.

 

[This questionnaire is just disgusting. What if someone had just fallen in love they would be very high up on the list. What if someone was grieving? There is no consideration of situation. What if someone is suffering drug withdrawal?]

 

 

 

Over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems?

1. Little interest or pleasure in doing things?

Not at all

several days

more than half the days

nearly every day

 

2. Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?

Not at all

several days

more than half the days

nearly every day

 

3. Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much?

Not at all

several days

more than half the days

           nearly every day

 

4. Feeling tired or having little energy?

Not at all

several days

more than half the days

nearly every day

 

5. Poor appetite or overeating?

Not at all

several days

more than half the days

nearly every day

 

6. Feeling bad about yourself – or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down?

Not at all

several days

more than half the days

nearly every day

 

7. Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television?

Not at all

several days

more than half the days

nearly every day

 

8. Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed? Or the opposite -being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual?

Not at all

several days

more than half the days

nearly every day

 

9. Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself in some way?

Not at all

several days

more than half the days

nearly every day

 

 

 

…………..//…………………………………….

‘The PHQ -9 has been validated by a study as being 88% sensitive and specific for picking up major depression.’ This statement had two references attached to it.

 

So turning to the back of the book to look up the references I find they are as follows:

 

Kroenke K, Spitzer RL, Williams JB. The PHQ -9: validity of a brief depression severity measure. J Gen Intern Med 2001; 16 (9): 606 – 613.

 

Kroenke K, Spitzer RL. The PHQ -9: a new depression and diagnostic severity measure. Psychiatric Annals 2002; 32: 509 -521.

 

..........................//......................

Questions

1. Who is this Spitzer R L ?

Could it possibly be the Robert Spitzer, who headed up the task force for the making of DSM III in 1980?

(Did pharma go to the top dog to push there criteria and there drugs…?)

 

Surprise surprise (not!) …..indeed it is, a wiki search gives

 

Robert Leopold Spitzer (May 22, 1932 – December 25, 2015) was a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City. He was a major force in the development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Spitzer was briefly featured in the 2007 BBC TV series The Trap, in which he stated that the DSM, by operationalizing the definitions of mental disorders while paying little attention to the context in which the symptoms occur, may have medicalized the normal human experiences of a significant number of people.

 

2. When did this Pfizer PHQ-9 thing come out?

 

The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) is a multiple-choice self-report inventory copyrighted by Pfizer Inc, that is used as a screening and diagnostic tool for mental health disorders of depression, anxiety, alcohol, eating, and somatoform. It is the self-report version of the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME-MD), a diagnostic tool developed in the mid-1990s by Pfizer Inc.

 

 

3. Did Pfizer produce any drugs in the 1990s?

 

The popular antidepressant Zoloft has brought in billions of dollars for its manufacturer, Pfizer. It is linked to serious side effects like autism and birth defects in babies when taken during pregnancy. Zoloft (sertraline chloride) is an antidepressant developed and manufactured by Pfizer in 1990. 

 

A 2015 study published in JAMA Pediatrics showed that Zoloft and other SSRIs were associated with a 200 percent increased risk of having a child born with autism while antidepressants had an 87 percent overall increased risk.

 

Professor Anick Bérard of the University of Montreal, one of the authors of the study, wrote:

 

“Our study has established that taking antidepressants during the second or third trimester of pregnancy almost doubles the risk that the child will be diagnosed with autism by age 7, especially if the mother takes selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, often known by its acronym SSRIs.”

http://www.drugwatch.com/zoloft/

 

[so basically the PHQ-9 is a pharma drag net to get as many people on their drug(s) as possible?]

 

In a 2011 interview, Robert Spitzer spoke of how the drug companies understood that a new commercial world would unfold with the publication of DSM-III (1980), as its new disease model was certain to trigger a “gold rush” the pharmaceutical companies Spitzer said, “were delighted.”

 

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028151-900-bipolar-kids-victims-of-the-madness-industry/

 

This article was so outrageously revealing I had to post more of it.

 

Excerpt from article:

[DSM-III] was also a gold rush for drug companies, which suddenly had 83 new disorders they could invent medications for. “The pharmaceuticals were delighted with DSM,” Spitzer told me, and this in turn delighted him: “I love to hear parents who say, ‘It was impossible to live with him until we gave him medication and then it was night and day’.” Spitzer’s successor, a psychiatrist named Allen Frances, continued the tradition of welcoming new mental disorders, with their corresponding checklists, into the fold. His DSM-IV came in at a mammoth 886 pages, with an extra 32 mental disorders. Now Frances told me over the phone he felt he had made some terrible mistakes. “Psychiatric diagnoses are getting closer and closer to the boundary of normal,” he said. “How?” I asked. “There’s a societal push for conformity in all ways,” he said. “There’s less tolerance of difference. Maybe for some people having a label confers a sense of hope – previously I was laughed at but now I can talk to fellow sufferers on the internet.”

Part of the problem is the pharmaceutical industry. “It’s very easy to set off a false epidemic in psychiatry,” said Frances. “The drug companies have tremendous influence.”

One condition that Frances considers a mistake is childhood bipolar disorder. “Kids with extreme temper tantrums are being called bipolar,” he said. “Childhood bipolar takes the edge of guilt away from parents that maybe they created an oppositional child.” “So maybe the diagnosis is good?”

“No,” Frances said. “And there are very good reasons why not.” His main concern is that children whose behaviour only superficially matches the bipolar checklist get treated with antipsychotic drugs, which can succeed in calming them down, even if the diagnosis is wrong. These drugs can have unpleasant and sometimes dangerous side effects.

 

Knife edge

 

The drug companies aren’t the only ones responsible for propagating this false epidemic. Patient advocacy groups can be very fiery too. The author of Brandon and the Bipolar Bear, Tracy Anglada, is head of a childhood bipolar advocacy group called BP Children. She emailed me that she wished me all the best with my project but she didn’t want to be interviewed.

 

If, however, I wanted to submit a completed manuscript to her, she added, she’d be happy to consider it for review.

Anglada’s friend Bryna Hebert has also written a children’s book: My Bipolar, Roller Coaster, Feelings Book. “Matt! Will you take your medicines please?” she called across the kitchen when I visited her at home in Barrington, Rhode Island. The medicines were lined up on the kitchen table.

 

Her son Matt, 14 years old, took them straight away.

 

The family’s nickname for baby Matt had been Mister Manic Depressive. “Because his mood would change so fast. He’d be sitting in his high chair, happy as a clam; 2 seconds later he’d be throwing things across the room. When he was 3 he’d hit and not be sorry that he hit. He was obsessed with vampires. He’d cut out bits of paper and put them into his teeth like vampire teeth and go up to strangers. Hiss hiss hiss. It was a little weird.”

 

“Were you getting nervous?” I asked. “Yeah,” said Hebert. “One day he wanted some pretzels before lunch, and I told him no. He grabbed a butcher knife and threatened me.”

 

“How old was he?”

 

“Four. That was the only time he’s ever done anything that extreme,” she said. “Oh, he’s hit his sister Jessica in the head and kicked her in the stomach.”

 

“She’s the one who punched me in the head,” called Matt from across the room.

 

It was after the knife incident, Hebert said, they took him to be tested. As it happened, the paediatric unit at what was then their local hospital, Massachusetts General, was run by Joseph Biederman, the doyen of childhood bipolar disorder. According to a 2008 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Biederman’s influence is so great that when he merely mentions a drug during a presentation, tens of thousands of children will end up taking it.” Biederman has said bipolar disorder can start, “from the moment the child opens his eyes”.

 

“When they were testing Matt he was under the table, he was on top of the table,” said Hebert. “We went through all these checklists. One of Dr Biederman’s colleagues said, “We really think Matt meets the criteria in the DSM for bipolar disorder.”

 

That was 10 years ago and Matt has been medicated ever since. So has his sister Jessica, who was also diagnosed by Biederman’s people as bipolar.

 

“We’ve been through a million medications,” said Hebert. “There’s weight gain. Tics. Irritability. Sedation. They work for a couple of years then they stop working.”

 

Hebert was convinced her children were bipolar, and I wasn’t going to swoop into a stranger’s home for an afternoon and tell her they were normal. That would have been incredibly patronising and offensive. Plus, as the venerable child psychiatrist David Shaffer told me when I met him in New York later that evening, “These kids can be very oppositional, powerful kids who can take years off your happy life. But they aren’t bipolar.”

 

“So what are they?”

 

“Attention-deficit disorder?” he said. “Often with an ADD kid you think: ‘My God, they’re just like a manic adult.’ But they don’t grow up manic. And manic adults weren’t ADD when they were children. But they’re being labelled bipolar.

 

“That’s an enormous label that’s going to stay with you for the rest of your life. You’re being told you have a condition which is going to make you unreliable, prone to terrible depressions and suicide.”

 

The debate around childhood bipolar is not going away. In 2008, The New York Times published excerpts from an internal hospital document in which Biederman promised to “move forward the commercial goals of Johnson & Johnson”, the firm that funds his hospital unit and sells the antipsychotic drug Risperdal. Biederman has denied the allegations of conflict of interest.

 

Frances has called for the diagnosis of childhood bipolar to be thrown out of the next edition of DSM, which is now being drawn up by the American Psychiatric Association.

 

This article shouldn’t be read as a polemic against psychiatry. There are a lot of unhappy and damaged people out there whose symptoms manifest themselves in odd ways. I get irritated by critics who seem to think that because psychiatry has elements of irrationality, there is essentially no such thing as mental illness. There is. Childhood bipolar, however, seems to me an example of things having gone palpably wrong.

 

On the night of 13 December 2006, in Boston, Massachusetts, 4-year-old Rebecca Riley had a cold and couldn’t sleep. Her mother, Carolyn Riley, gave her some cold medicine, and some of her bipolar medication, and told her she could sleep on the floor next to the bed. When she tried to wake Rebecca the next morning, she discovered her daughter was dead.

 

The autopsy revealed that Rebecca’s parents had given her an overdose of the antipsychotic drugs she had been prescribed for her bipolar disorder. They had got into the habit of feeding her the medicines to shut her up when she was being annoying. They were both convicted of Rebecca’s murder.

 

Rebecca had been diagnosed as bipolar at 2-and-a-half, and given medication by an upstanding psychiatrist who was a fan of Biederman’s research into childhood bipolar. Rebecca had scored high on the DSM checklist, even though like most toddlers she could barely string a sentence together.

 

Shortly before her trial, Carolyn Riley was interviewed on CBS’s 60 Minutes show by Katie Couric:

 

KC: Do you think Rebecca really had bipolar disorder?

CR: Probably not.             

KC: What do you think was wrong with her now?

CR: I don’t know. Maybe she was just hyper for her age.

………………….//…………………………………

[nz11]

Let’s consider Biederman,

 

In 2008 Senator Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee undertook a three year Congressional Investigation that found that Joseph Biederman, M.D., Timothy Wilens, M.D., and Thomas Spencer, M.D., well-known university psychiatrists, who had promoted psychoactive drugs, had violated federal, Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital regulations by secretly receiving large sums of money from the pharmaceutical companies which made the drugs.

 

Biederman and Wilens "were leading investigators and advocates for the diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents." Biederman earned consulting fees of at least $1.6 million over eight years from pharmaceutical companies, but did not report much of this income to university officials. Johnson & Johnson gave more than $700,000 to a research center that was headed by Biederman from 2002 to 2005, and some of its research was about Risperdal.

 

In her article published in the New York Review of Books in 2009, Dr. Marcia Angell, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, cited Biederman as an example of physicians who use "drugs that have already been approved for a particular purpose for any other purpose they choose" without any basis in "good published scientific evidence." She argued that "Biederman’s own studies of the drugs he advocates to treat childhood bipolar disorder were so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive."

 

By 2009,

"Thanks largely to [Dr. Biederman] children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose, and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age."

— Dr. Marcia Angell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Biederman

[Songbird]

Okay, I give up - what's the D word?

[nz11]

lol.

You mean you dont know what the 'd' word is .....i think i feel a Tui ad coming on!

 

https://www.pinterest.com/kloppenmum/tui-billboards/

 

System wont let me copy and paste so i provided the link ...but check out:

 

"If you see a shark punch it on the nose", Yeah right.

 

"The Dog farted again" , yeah right!

[Fresh]

The discussion of the word "depression" does not make the content offensive.  

It's fascinating , I wonder if other countries have an equivalent of a PHQ-9.

 

Ha ha @ Tuis , yeah right!

[Songbird]

Oh, it's depression?  It could have been doctor, or diagnosis...  Maybe its D for dumb tui.

[Songbird]

I'm just imagining an SA "Tui billboard" campaign (has this already been done here somewhere?):

 

"You can just stop taking it - Yeah, right!"

 

"It's your original condition returning - Yeah, right!"

 

"If you can't stop taking it, it means you still need it - Yeah, right!"

 

"You need it like a diabetic needs insulin - Yeah, right!"

 

"The AD unmasked your hidden bipolar disorder - Yeah, right!"

 

"If your AD isn't working, you need a booster med - Yeah, right!"

[Fresh]

This is fun . . . 

 

"If your AD isn't working , double the dose  - Yeah right!"

 

"You'll have no trouble getting off AD's , they're not addictive  - Yeah right!"

 

"Here's a drug that will help you feel better -  Yeah right!"

[nz11]

Songbird and Fresh those are excellent !

How could i spent 4 yrs writing complaint letters and never finish it off with a Tui advertisement.

 

SB there are only about 5 kiwis here so no-one would know what a Tui ad is. You are right we need a Tuii thread !

 

 

"Doctors do  not hesitate to file an adverse  effects report"   Yeah right.

 

"A doctor will always do a PHQ-9 before drugging you"   Yeah right.

 

....oh boy!

[nz11]

Sometimes i see something and i just have to save it...this is one of those times.

 

I tapered for 3yrs and 11months.
I stopped having any withdrawal symptoms at about
7mnths posttaper and the wd for those seven months wasn't bad at all.
I'm 100% back to normal for awhile now and I'm almost a ur and a half posttaper.
I was on antidepressants for 22yrs and Effexor xr for about ten.
So it's possible to get off and return to normal, but ya gotta go slow.
I got down to half dose in one year and, like you, wanted the other half to go quickly.
tried to speed things up and ended up in the worst wd of the whole process. But you have to slow down taper as you go lower. Gets harder , not easier.
The other thing is to step off at the lowest dose possible.
That's a problem with beads because one is about a quarter mg, which would've been way to high for me. in fact it took one year to reduce my last quarter mg.
I switched to solid pill regular Effexor before starting taper. In the end of taper I was taking about 5-6 finest ground grains of powderized Effexor. Almost nothing, but I still felt it when I stopped. This stuff is the most powerful drug man has ever put into his body-one of the scariest things to get used to is that the drs have no idea what tey're talking about with this stuff-and not knowing-they end by making the most retarded recommendations-don't know why this is-but you do a lot better once you get this -onceyou can fully accept this awful truth.
I also didn't reduce by a calendar date, but by how I felt, always giving wd symptoms plenty of time to show up. I never dropped a dose before one and a half months. the whole thing takes yrs, but it worked.

[AliG]

NZ.   How are you travelling ?  Thank you for popping in , and adding encouragement !  You don't say much about how you are going .  I hope , well  !!

Love ,

Ali

[nz11]

I have just finished reading:

 

 Bass, Alison. Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial. Algonquin Books, 2008

 

 There are many good parts of the book I could share but I have decided to just share a 2 page portion that is very meaningful to me. For this reason:

 

When I complained to a psychiatrist that these drugs cause suicide and should be banned, and that it was a miracle I was still alive, his response was that when the black box warnings went on the drug, suicides rates actually went up and so perhaps people weren’t getting the help they needed.

 

I wasn’t aware of this statistic at the time and so I couldn’t reply back regarding this statement but it just didn’t sit right with me.

 

Here is a piece from Bass’s book on this very subject which caught my eye:

 

[ Despite such extensive coverage, many medical professionals still take money from the pharmaceutical industry – for both research and consulting gigs. While the most respected medical journals insist on the disclosure of these conflicts (in fine print at the end of the article), many other venues do not. Take, for example, the debate over whether black box warnings should be extended to antidepressant usage in young adults. In December 2006, the FDA held an advisory meeting to consider new findings that young adults between 18 and 25 who took Paxil and eight other antidepressants were significantly more likely than those on placebo to report a suicide attempt, just as the research on children and adolescents had shown. At that hearing, opponents of the black box warnings on SSRI cited preliminary results from a study showing what appear to be a correlation between an uptick in national suicide rates among adolescents and a drop in the prescription of SSRIs among this age group. Several psychiatrists pointed to the apparent correlation as proof that the publicity over the SSRIs in the black box warnings had scared physicians from prescribing these drugs. The lack of treatment, the psychiatrist argued, may have prompted more youngsters to kill themselves.

 

However when this finding was published in the September 2007 issue of the American Journal of psychiatry, it was roundly criticised as being erroneous. The number of suicides among adolescents under the age of 19 did indeed climb about 14% (from 1737 to 1,985) between 2003 and 2004, according to statistics from the centres for disease control and prevention. The number of prescriptions for SSRIs among adolescents, however, remained essentially unchanged from 2003 to 2004 (prescription usage didn’t decline until after 2004). Thus the FDA’s black box warnings cannot be blamed for the apparent increase in suicides among adolescents the year before. This discrepancy in the data was not mentioned at the December 2006 FDA hearing. Nor was it disclosed that an SSRI maker (Pfizer) paid  $30,000, the cost of obtaining prescription data for the AJP study, or that two lead authors of the study have financial conflicts of interest: Robert Gibbons served as an expert witness for Wyeth pharmaceuticals (the maker of effexor another SSRI), and Dr J John Mann a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, has been a paid consultant to at least two SSRI makers, GSK and Pfizer.

 

Other psychiatric researchers say that the latest upturn in suicide rates does not mean anything, given the small numbers involved and the tendency of suicide rates to fluctuate from year to year. “People who are specialists in statistics know you have to look at trends over years and years”, said Julie Zito an associate Professor  of pharmacy and psychiatry at the University of Maryland, who has published several articles on the subject. “For instance you will see that the overall trend in suicide rates among children and adults has been going down quite a ways before the SSRI s  arrived on the scene.”

 

In the end the FDA did extend split box warnings on antidepressants to young adults. But it also  added language to the labels warning that “depression and certain other psychiatric disorders are themselves associated with the risk of suicide” the FDA’s Thomas Laughren  now director of the Division of psychiatry Products, said the new language had been added because of the agency’s concerns about the uptick in suicide rates between 2003 and 2004. (National suicide rates for 2005 and beyond had not been released when this book went to press). Both Zito and  Dr Peter Lurie deputy director of the public citizen  health research group, say that including language about untreated depression in the black box cautions on antidepressants undermines the whole point of the warning. The important thing is that the risk of suicidal ideation is higher in the treated group than untreated group in randomised controlled trials, and that’s what the warning should be about, Lurie says “whether or not untreated depression also leads to suicidal ideation is misleading and irrelevant. The FDA should not have put in that kind of language because it is intended to confuse.” ] (p225-227)

,

............................................//................................................Great Book Highly recommended.....................................................''.........................

 

Well i've been doing some more reading (as you do) and i found some more damning stuff regarding this argument which can be added to a previous posting ...ie black box warnings contributed to lethality.

 

This is an excerpt on this very topic from Healy's Pharmageddon pg 126-127. [insert mine]. I found this an amazing read. Who would be aware of such behaviour. 

The topic is regarding regulatory hearings and court cases of  ssris connection to suicide.

 

In close proximity to every single SSRI jury trial or regulatory hearing, one or more articles favorable to the drug company view has been published in a major Journal.

Pharmaceutical companies, it would seem, have refined the process of managing 'science' to the point of being able to turn up papers on demand in an attempt to save the day if their product is in difficulty or under scrutiny.

 

From the time of their launch in 1987 through the end of 2009, there were 4 legal cases involving SSRIs, 3 of them centred on suicide, and one, the Kilker case, on birth defects.

 

In the weeks prior to each of the suicide cases at least one article had appeared outlining the benefits of drug treatment and claiming that antidepressants reduced rather than increased the risk of suicide or proclaimed the benefits of antidepressants in pregnancy.

 

[Are you wondering what I am wondering ?.... I wonder who the authors of these articles are?

 I turned to the back of the book to check the references for these antidepressant-defending-articles and two names jumped out at me straight away they were Gary D Tollefson as the lead author for one of them

Gary D Tollefson et al, Absence of a relationship between adverse events and suicidality during pharmacotherapy for depression, Journal of clinical psychopharmacology 14, 163-169 (1994)

 

and the lead author in a second article was Charles B Nemeroff.

 

Charles B Nemeroff,  Michael T Compton, and Joseph Berger, The depressed and suicidal patient: assessment and treatment, Annals of the New York Academy of science 932, 1-23 (2001)

 

Let’s consider Gary D Tollefson:

 

Dr Joseph Glenmullen in his book Prozac backlash, cites several cases where questionable practices occurred with regard to drug research.

 

The first involved a controversy over the drug Prozac. Some people on the drug were experiencing intense violent, suicidal thoughts as a result of taking the medication. Dr Gary Tollefson wrote an article for the American Journal of psychiatry defending Prozac. He suggested that “we should not lose sight of its beneficial addiction to our therapeutic armamentarium” he went on to suggest that it was potentially counter-productive to talk about the negative side effects of the drug. Tollefson neglected to identify the fact that he was an employee of Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company that introduced Prozac.

                                   

Let’s consider Charles Nemeroff

a wiki search gives:

 

Nemeroff's undisclosed ties to drugmakers and under-reported incomes from them have raised questions about conflict of interest. Following a congressional investigation, Nemeroff was found to be in violation of some federal and university regulations and resigned as chair of the psychiatry department at Emory University. He was also forbidden by Emory to act as an investigator or co-investigator on National Institutes of Health grants for at least two years.

 

According to the Annals of Neurology, the court documents released as a result of one of the lawsuits against GSK in October 2008 indicated that GSK "and/or researchers may have suppressed or obscured suicide risk data during clinical trials" of paroxetine.

 

Nemeroff stepped down as department chair amid revelations that he had received over $960,000 from GSK in 2006, yet reported less than $35,000 to Emory University. Subsequent investigations revealed payments totaling more than $2.5 million from drug companies between 2000 and 2006, yet only a fraction was disclosed. In July 2012, GlaxoSmithKline pleaded guilty to criminal charges. The settlement is related to the company's illegal promotion of prescription drugs, its failure to report safety data, bribing doctors and using kickback schemes.

 

Ok well another lead author on another article was a person by the name of Andrew Leon.

Andrew Leon et al, Prospective study of fluoxetine treatment and suicidal behaviour and effectively ill subjects, American Journal of Psychiatry 156, 195- 201 (1999).

 

I wonder if Leon has any credibility cos Nemeroff sure had zero!

 

It didn’t take me long to find this:

According to Merrill Goozner, there are conflicts of interest on the FDA panel which will review the link between SSRIs and suicide. Andrew Leon is one member whose links to Big Pharma seem significant, yet FDA issued him a waiver so that he could stay on the panel.

http://clinpsyc.blogspot.co.nz/2006/12/fda-ssri-panel-and-conflicts-of.html

 

Hold on a minute... are you telling me that Leon was the author of an article defending the use of antidepressants and saying they don't cause suicide, and paid handsomely for it from Pharma and yet he was on the FDA panel which reviewed the link between SSRIs and suicide. Furthermore he was given a waiver because of conflict of interest so that he could stay on the panel. That’s disgusting!]

 

Healy continues with:

 

Since 1991 there have been four regulatory hearings on SSRIs and suicidality.

Two in 2004 involved children, while 1 in 1991 and 1 in 2006 involved adults.

 

In the week before the first regulatory hearing on suicidal behavior among children taking antidepressants in 2004, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) sent out a press release of a then as-yet-unpublished position statement apparently from a distinguished set of academics that concluded that antidepressants did not cause suicidality in children. This position statement was widely covered in the media at the time the paper was written by a public relations agency based in Washington DC.

 

In addition to the ACNP statement that came out prior to the February 2004 FDA hearings, a paper appeared in July just prior to the September 2004 hearings suggesting that there was no risk linked to SSRIs.

 

The Beasley paper appeared in the week of the FDA hearings on Prozac and suicide in 1991, while prior to the 2006 FDA hearings regarding adult suicidality on antidepressants, a series of articles was published on the American Journal of psychiatry suggesting that warnings added to SSRI labels had themselves led to an increase in the rate of suicide, inferring that it would be a mistake to further extend the warning from children to adults.

 

[ So what was this article? and who wrote this article? The article was :

Robert D Gibbons et al, The relationship between antidepressant prescription rates and rate of early adolescent suicide, American Journal of psychiatry 163, 1898 - 1904 (2006).

 

Question: Does Gibbons have conflicts of interest?

Answer: What do you think?

 

Well no surprises what tuned up ...its just the same old same old....

In November 2014 Gibbons wrote a letter, to the editor of JAMA Psychiatry, titled,

 ‘Failure to Report Financial Disclosure Information’

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1780020&utm_source=Silverchair%20Information%20Systems&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=JAMAPsychiatry%3AOnlineFirst11%2F20%2F2013

 

and here are the details of this plan:

http://behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2013/12/23/dsm-5-dimensional-diagnoses-more-conflicts-of-interest/

“But the bottom line is always the same:  turf and money.  Something is truly rotten in the state of psychiatry.”

 

Also I found this:

Robert D Gibbons: Has been an expert witness on cases related to issues involving drugs and suicide for the US Department of Justice, Wyeth and Pfizer over the past 10 years. Page xi

Taken from, A Concise Guide to Understanding Suicide, Epidemiology Pathophysiology and Prevention,  2014.

 

Found this on Rxisk.org

The best way to explain what GSK may be up to is perhaps to repeat the wonderful story of Robert Gibbons – modest hero.

On May 1 this year [2012], The Scientist ran an article, Data Diving, on the benefits of data access. It said what every article on this subject says – in the presence of full and unfettered access to scientific data the truth will out, while without access, companies can claim their trials show whatever the company wants them to show, get to charge whatever they want for their products and can hide what they know about any harms.

Data Diving opens with the struggles of Doshi, Jefferson and colleagues to get access to the data on Roche’s Tamiflu. It then portrays Robert Gibbons as a member of the same club as Gøtzsche, Doshi and Jefferson, a pioneer in favor of unfettered access to data, who with access to patient level data denied to others has been able to turn myths on their head.

The truth is infinitely more intriguing. Gibbons, a professor at the University of Illinois and regular expert witness for pharmaceutical companies, published two articles in Archives of General Psychiatry in early 2012 claiming that patient level data from trials of Lilly’s Prozac and Wyeth’s Effexor (see Coincidence a fine thing & May Fool’s Day) showed that in contrast to media hype antidepressants in fact work very well and don’t cause suicide. It was, it turns out, lack of access to the data that led us to these mistaken beliefs. Companies don’t engage in conspiracies, they are masters of the cock-up, and if given a choice of feet to shoot themselves in will opt for both feet. It needs independent academics like Robert Gibbons to wade in and put a stop to their self-injurious behavior, and show the world how good these drugs truly are.

http://davidhealy.org/wont-get-fooled-again-glaxosmithkline-and-access-to-data/

 

I think this is Healy being cynical….i can relate to that.

 

And I also found this on Gibbons :

I’m biased here. Dr. Carroll is a role model for vetting scientific misbehavior. And I don’t care for the DSM of almost any number very much. Prior to DSM-5, my objections were on scientific grounds, but with the DSM-5, I added motivation to my criticisms – so I am already suspicious of the APA leadership that created it. I’m appalled at the overmedication of patients and I’m suspicious of screening as a potential mechanism for increasing drug sales without value to patients.

 

And Dr Gibbons has long been on my watch-list. He’s made a career of trying to undermine the FDA’s warnings about some of our drugs, about possible ominous adverse reactions – warnings that I think of as to the FDA’s credit as the oversight agency charged with drug safety. So I’m primed and ready to be focused on these new tests, and the authors’ failure to acknowledge their conflicts of interest just pours gasoline on the flames of those suspicions. But even knowing all of my biases, this whole thing still has the smell of three old day fish. At the least, it deserves careful watching…

http://1boringoldman.com/index.php/2013/11/21/41793/  ]

 

Healy goes on to say that he has been on consensus statement meetings and says its very easy to control the timing of  the appearance of these statements.

.......................................................//........................................

 

nz11

[its not just a few apples that are rotten the whole barrel is rotten!]

 

If you don't have Pharmageddon buy yourself a copy or get it from the library.

[ChessieCat]

Hi NZ,

 

These are the new ones that I have done.  These (plus the Excel Speadsheet) are now in Post 1 of the Dr Joseph Glenmullen Withdrawal Symptom Checklist topic

 

PDF Monthly List of Dr Glenmullen's Symptoms to Print

 

PDF Monthly List BLANK to Print

[Fresh]

Here you go possum If this isn't what you want , let me know and I'll delete it.

 

 

PSYCHIATRIC SYMPTOMS

That Mimic Depression

1. Crying spells

2. Worsened mood

3. Low energy (fatigue,lethargy, malaise)

4. Trouble concentrating

5. Insomnia or trouble sleeping

6. Change in appetite

7. Suicidal thoughts

8. Suicide attempts

 

That Mimic Anxiety Disorders

9. Anxious, nervous, tense

10. Panic attacks (racing heart, breathless)

11. Chest pain

12. Trembling, jittery, or shaking

 

Irritability and Aggression

13. Irritability

14. Agitation (restlessness, hyperactivity)

15. Impulsive

16. Aggressiveness

17. Self-harm

18. Homicidal thoughts or urges

 

Confusion and Memory Problems

19. Confusion or cognitive difficulties

20. Memory problems or forgetfulness

 

Mood Swings

21. Elevated mood (feeling high)

22. Mood swings

23. Manic-like reactions

 

Hallucinations

24. Auditory hallucinations

25. Visual hallucinations

 

Dissociation

26. Feeling detached or unreal

 

Other

27. Excessive or intense dreaming

28. Nightmares

 

MEDICAL SYMPTOMS

That Mimic the Flu

29. Flu -like aches and pains

30. Fever

31. Sweats

32. Chills

33. Runny nose

34. Sore eyes

 

That Mimic Gastroenteritis

35. Nausea

36. Vomiting

37. Diarrhea

38. Abdominal pain or cramps

39. Stomach bloating

 

Dizziness

40. Disequilibrium

41. Spinning, swaying, lightheaded

42. Hung over or waterlogged feeling

43. Unsteady gait, poor coordination

44. Motion sickness

 

Headache

45. Headache

 

Tremor

46. Tremor

 

Sensory Abnormalities

47. Numbness, burning,or tingling

48. Electric zap-like sensations in the brain

49. Electric shock-like sensations in the body

50. Abnormal visual sensations

51. Ringing or other noises in the ears

52. Abnormal smells or tastes

 

Other

53. Drooling or excessive saliva

54. Slurred speech

55. Blurred vision

56. Muscle cramps, stiffness, twitches

57. Feeling of restless legs

58. Uncontrollable twitching of mouth

[nz11]

Thanks Fresh thats EXACTLY  what i want.

 

Thanks cc also for those links, you sure are a links wizz!

[nz11]

Spent this evening perusing this

http://www.depression.org.nz/

 

Here you see how a sporting icon (ex all black - john kirwan)  has been used as a pimp for pharma.

Its very difficult to go through a week in nz without this misinforming link popping up somewhere on your computer.

They are misleading the nation pushing the chemical imbalance delusion.

 

I note they are using the pharma sponsored and written PHQ9 form as a drag net. They ask 9 questions ...it is the PHQ-9 test.

 

No one would be aware that pfizer paid Spitzer a whole heap of cash to write this and declare it (erroneously) validated.

 

Kirwan himself suffered protracted ssri wdl but was clueless it was wdl and says he conquered depression.

 

He never had depression in the first place he had a disappointment ( as you do when you reach your use by date in top level sport) and the clueless team doctor John Mayhew gave him a little something to get by.

He was tapered too fast and had to ri then come off again. (its in his book)

 

John Kirwan is a danger to society! Thats right i said it.

 

Its very sad and tragic that Kirwan is so ignorant and now a paid pimp for pharma.

 

Rightly or wrongly thats my take on it.

[nick1990]

Wow NZ11 just Wow! I know J. Kirwan. Not on a super personal level but enough so that we'd acknowledge each other. Surf with him sometimes. He's actually a brilliant guy. I think he has great intention for helping people who are experiencing what he went through. But yeh, im sure he doesn't think that SSRI WD was actually his problem. I'd really like to read his book. So you genuinely believe that he did suffer protracted WD? Its funny because one of my first proper surfs after WD began was with him and his son. I remember floating out there on my board and thinking "This guy in NZ's "Mental Illness" advocate, i bet that he's never even heard of WD syndrome though"... I might actually try and catch up with him at some point when i run into him again.. 

[nz11]

Wow Nick i'm speechless.

You have the ear of the king....wow!

Im sure John is a great sincere guy. He means well for sure.  He is simply misinformed.

I read his book from the library. I think i will get it out again.

 

 Wow that would be fantastic if you could get to have a chat to  John Kirwan and even show him around sa.

Hey imagine if John became an sa advocate.  !!

 

Yes i genuinely believe he suffered protracted wdl not depression (whatever that is). I did a post on this at other site and nows its lost. I just hate it when that happens.

 

(I also believe journalist Lizzie Marvelly suffered protracted ssri wdl as well Nick did you read this:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11592599)

[nz11]

..........Just read this today ...this is great news. Paroxetine claimants have day in court in the UK.

 

http://fiddaman.blogspot.co.nz/2016/02/exclusive-uk-seroxat-litigation-to.html

 

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Judgement was given on Feb 4, 2016 with regard to the on-going Seroxat (paroxetine) litigation in the UK. (1)

Defendants, GlaxoSmithKline, sought an order that would have had the effect of bringing these proceedings to a permanent halt.

In arriving at his conclusion to not grant GlaxoSmithKline their order, Mr. Justice Foskett said...

 

Mr. Justice Foskett had previously asked both parties to supply him with a summary of other litigation throughout the world concerning Paroxetine. In his Judgement Mr. Justice Foskett said...


"The Defendant is anxious (it might be said, over-anxious) to stop this litigation in its tracks. The motivation may simply be a total conviction that there is, in effect, no case to answer and that it is wrong to be harassed with unmeritorious claims. Alternatively, it may derive simply from a desire not to have to face in this jurisdiction the kind of claims brought in the USA and elsewhere. It may, of course, be a combination of both."

It's good to see this on-going litigation finally get the thumbs-up to move forward to trial, and in my view the Honorable Mr Justice Foskett has to be applauded here for meticulously combing through arguments from both parties.

Mr Justice Foskett's Judgment seems to have paved the way for both parties to, at the very least, now plan where they are going with this.


The case between: SANDRA BAILEY AND OTHERS (Claimants) and  GLAXOSMITHKLINE (UK) LIMITED (Defendant) will now proceed to trial.

Claimants are represented by Jacqueline A. Perry QC, Niazi Fetto and Timothy Killen (instructed by Fortitude Law)

Defendants are represented by Malcolm Sheehan QC and Andrew Kinnier (instructed by Addleshaw Goddard LLP)


Bob Fiddaman.



Declaration of Interests: I am one of the claimants.

(1) Bailey & Ors v Glaxosmithkline (UK) Ltd [2016] EWHC 178 (QB) (04 February 2016) "Although the list of actions provided to me on behalf of the Claimants is longer than that provided by the Defendant, a cursory comparison suggests that they largely cover the same material. Overall, it would seem that in the USA between 2000 and 2005 over 3500 claimants alleged that they suffered discontinuation symptoms when they attempted to reduce or discontinue the use of Paroxetine and in 2005 a confidential settlement agreement with a total of 3,294 eligible claimants (whose claims would otherwise have gone to a jury trial) was reached with no admission of liability. From 2003 a cohort of claimants filed a "putative class action" consisting of all California residents who paid for prescriptions of Paroxetine in California in which it was alleged that they sustained economic damage and were entitled to reimbursement or other relief due to alleged "discontinuation symptoms." In January 2012 a class-wide settlement with no admission of liability was achieved. Again, the claims would have gone to a jury trial in the absence of settlement."

[KarenB]

I remember being pointed at John Kirwan earlier in my struggle with depression, but I found myself utterly unable to relate to what he was saying.  All those steps/checklists felt too slick, too easy.  I felt like the website was for other people, as it didn't seem to understand where I was at, at all.

 

I also found myself annoyed at the assumption that every Kiwi will be inspired by an All Black. 

 

Probably he's a lovely guy, but his experience has been turned into a slicked up campaign by the organisation around him. 

[Fresh]

Is he the guy who started the prozac support group "Once We Were Worriers" ?

[nick1990]

I plan on speaking to him about SA at some point in the future. I hadn't seen that no - but very interesting. I have a feeling that for people who have touched drugs, MOST cases of worsening depression/anxiety are being caused by the drugs or WD. Saw this link in my FB feed just now and even though they dont mention drugs - i have a feeling too, that they were involved 

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/share-your-news-and-views/8369353/Suicide-The-one-I-least-expected

[nz11]

Is he the guy who started the prozac support group "Once We Were Worriers" ?

Good one Fresh lol !