Lawmakers Pledge Action on Psychiatric Drugs in Foster Care
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Big Pharma’s Bad Medicine
St. Petersburg Times
BAD MEDICINE
A Times Editorial
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
It’s now clear that the pharmaceutical industry that claims its goal is to improve lives is just as likely as any other industry to manipulate the truth to make a buck. Even more disturbing: Drug companies have found a stable of doctors willing to help them in exchange for cash or prestige. Doctors should know better, particularly those affiliated with medical schools, and the medical schools should adopt stricter rules.
Recent disclosures, forced by court cases or federal regulators, have laid bare the complicity of doctors, including some in Tampa Bay, in helping drug companies sell their products. Experts estimate for each $1 spent on such marketing, companies reap $12 in increased prescription sales. When doctors receive thousands of dollars from drugmakers to help deliver their message, it creates an inherent conflict of interest with their primary job: Caring for their patients. Medical schools should be attacking this ethical problem directly, particular in an era when costs are leaving many uninsured.
Some schools, such as Harvard and Stanford, have banned the lucrative relationships. Short of that, medical schools should at least require strict reporting and public disclosure, with serious consequences for lapses. That hasn’t been the case in the past at the University of South Florida College of Medicine.
The St. Petersburg Times’ Kris Hundley reported on Sunday how drugmaker Wyeth for years paid for and influenced the ghostwriting of medical journal articles and continuing education conferences in an effort to boost sales of its hormone treatments for menopause. The campaign continued even after a federal study indicated the drugs might make it harder to detect breast cancer in patients. Dr. James Fiorica, then a professor at USF and head of the gynecologic oncology program at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, was among those who participated. He chaired a Wyeth-backed conference and signed his name to two ghostwritten articles. He, like other doctors earning money from pharmaceutical companies, said he never signed his name to a position he couldn’t scientifically defend.
And last month, Hundley wrote about Eli Lilly & Co.’s program that paid physicians tens of millions of dollars in the first quarter of this year to talk about its drugs. One of Lilly’s highest paid physicians and its top earner in the Tampa Bay area is Dr. Maria-Carmen Wilson, a neurologist and USF professor who is director of Tampa General Hospital’s Headache & Pain Center. She was paid $54,400 in the first quarter of the year for speaking with fellow doctors about Lilly’s Cymbalta drug on 27 occasions. Wilson reached Lilly’s annual cap of $75,000 in May.
Nonetheless, Wilson failed to follow USF policy to get prior approval before making presentations on behalf of a drugmaker. Wilson also failed to inform USF when she took free trips to Scotland and Spain for drugmaker Astra-Zeneca. Last month, USF approved Wilson’s Lilly activities retroactively.
Another USF-affiliated physician, Dr. Brian Keefe, also failed to disclose earning $15,000 from Lilly in the first quarter.
In April, USF medical school announced new reporting guidelines for interactions between faculty and drug- and medical device makers. But it seems the message has not gotten through, and faculty who ignore the rules are retroactively given a pass.
USF’s answer is that more clarity is coming. Dr. Stephen K. Klasko, CEO for USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine, says he has convened a group to look at all faculty relationships with pharmaceutical companies in order to make new rules and reporting requirements “as simple and as consistently enforceable and as clear as possible.”
“We’re going to have a zero tolerance policy,” Klasko says.
That can’t happen soon enough. Patients rely on doctors to give them the best treatment possible, not just the treatment they’re paid to support.
Cocaine Addiction and U.S. Legal Tender
The money tells the tale
In a recent study conducted by the American Chemical Society (ACS), it was discovered that between 85 and 90 percent of the paper money in the United States showed traces of cocaine. Seem amazing? Well it should. But while this does indicate that the majority of the citizens in the U.S. are technically carrying cocaine in their wallet, purse etc, the real scary fact here is the indication of how huge a problem cocaine truly is throughout the United States and in fact the world.
We here about cocaine being a widespread problem in many forms. We hear about large scale cocaine busts in nearby areas and cocaine overdose issues in our local hospital, but how big does the problem have to be if nearly 90 % of the paper money in the United States has been in contact with cocaine leaving traces of the drug behind?
Roughly 19 billion notes ranging from a $100 denomination to a $2 dollar denomination are in circulation at this time. This means that over 17 billion individual pieces of paper currency have come into direct contact with cocaine during its circulatory lifetime. Again, the magnitude of the cocaine addiction problem currently facing our nation must be even more massive and far reaching than is usually thought for this amount of our money to be “touching” cocaine during its relatively short lifespan of circulation.
Cocaine addiction experts say this contact with cocaine stems primarily from a variety of methods including the use of paper currency to “snort” the drug or inhale it in its powder form, the presence of large quantities of money in and around major drug scenes where tons of cocaine is either being processed or packaged, residue from the fingers and hands of those addicted to cocaine leaving their residuals behind during a cocaine purchase where both parties the seller and purchaser have the substance on their hands, and storage of the bills in direct contact with cocaine either for shipment over sees or in police lock ups.
Clearly this nation is underestimating the magnitude of the cocaine problems we still face and more needs to be done to fully address the size of cocaine addiction problems we have. With 3 percent or less of those who have become addicted to drugs like cocaine actually receiving the treatment needed to stop the demand for their drugs of choice, there will likely continue to be an overwhelming rise in the number of innocent bystanders who become prey for cocaine dealers and drug dealer in general. The time is now to step up and truly confront the cocaine addiction issues that plague our nation.
~ excerpted from article by Megan Thorpe
The Prozac Calamity
The Prozac Calamity by award winning Scientist Shane Ellison
By Shane Ellison, Award winning Scientist, Masters Degree in Organic Chemistry
I love Big Pharma. After getting a masters degree in drug design, I was fortunate enough to work within their stinky labs and learn the inner workings of corporate drug making (and dealing). My most important lesson: Not all drugs are bad. Some are really bad. Take the so-called antidepressant Prozac as an example.
In 1990, Prozac appeared on the cover of the pharmaceutically compliant, Newsweek magazine with the headline “Prozac: A Breakthrough Drug for Depression.” It was designed almost twenty years prior. And during that time, some ghastly findings were made which proved the drug to be the antithesis of what popular media touted it as. Such findings were kept hidden. Patients are learning the hard way.
Thirteen days after taking the SSRI Prozac, on April 28, 2003, Jordan’s wife of 56 years, Kathy, found his lifeless body hanging from a beam in a back room of their shop. Not depressed at the time of his appointment, Jordan was given a free sample of Prozac for “chest pains!” Apparently, a pretty drug rep convinced Jordan’s doctor that Prozac could be used for these types of “off-label” purposes. By FDA standards, this is totally illegal. But those standards are never enforced by the consumer watch dog turned Big Pharma lap dog. Regardless of what they are prescribed for, Prozac is a real and present danger to SSRI users.
SSRI’s strive to increase the levels of a “coping” molecule known as serotonin in the brain. It helps us FIND happiness when it’s covered in an avalanche of nastiness. SSRI’s attempt to boost serotonin by “selectively” stopping the “reuptake” of it among brain cells. This is where the whole SSRI acronym came from – “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.” It’s a slick name that seems to hypnotize medical doctors into prescribing submission, but it’s a really stupid idea.
Nothing is selective in the body. While trying to block the reuptake of serotonin, SSRI’s can also prevent its release. The areas of the brain responsible for release and reuptake are so damn similar (after all, they work on the same molecule) that an SSRI isn’t smart enough to understand which one it is supposed to work on. So it does what any dumb drug would do, it blocks both. The end result: no coping molecules in the brain. Deep sadness, fear or anger can set in. Early studies proved this.
The first testing of Prozac was performed on dogs and cats. Every trial showed that Prozac use caused aggression amongst these normally calm and friendly animals, as could be seen by increased hissing and growling. When the animals were taken off of the drug, they returned to their usual friendly behavior. Researchers concluded that Prozac use causes aggressive behavior.
By mid 1978, Prozac testing moved to humans in controlled clinical trials involving more than 4000 patients. In an attempt to hide its aggressive tendencies, the study allowed for voluntary dropout of those who experienced the most severe side effects. Additionally, clinical investigators were allowed to administer concurrent sedatives to patients to further mask Prozac’s side effects that would most likely lead to violence/suicide. This is a common loophole used by drug company-funded drug trials and is known as “checkbook science.” Despite the lack of scientific methodology, this study concluded that Prozac works well to a “statistically significant” degree in a population of depressed patients.
Since its approval, the potential for Prozac calamity has become frighteningly clear amongst both professionals and the public. Reports of Prozac-associated suicide, written by James D. Hagerty and distributed by the Drugs and Devices Information Line at the Harvard School of Public Health, dominated the “Letters to the Editor” section of the American Journal of Psychiatry during the fall of 1990.
Under the FDA’s own analysis, there have been more than 20,000 Prozac-related suicides since 1987.
Clinical studies performed on Prozac show 191 negative side effects per 100 people. This equates to almost two negative side effects for every user of the drug.
The FDA continues to ignore the Prozac body count (they approved Prozac’s use for children in 2003). To make matters worse, the FDA granted its manufacturer, Eli Lilly, extended patent protection. In order to procure thirty additional months of earning power, Eli Lilly changed the name of Prozac to Sarafem, while at the same time labeling common personality and biological shifts as a disease among women; this “disease” being premenstrual irritability. As a result, thousands of unsuspecting women were given Prozac for premenstrual irritability while at the same time increasing their chances of suffering from the aforementioned negative side effects such as aggression, and suicide.
Such lessons got me out of corporate drug making. Thankfully, they taught me how not to be healthy: Take prescription drugs. You can do the same, just say no to Prozac.
About the Author
Ellison’s entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules; how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. He is a best selling author, holds a master’s degree in organic chemistry and has first-hand experience in drug design. Use his knowledge and insight to look and feel your best with his Secret Cures monthly report. Get it free at www.thepeopleschemist.com
The Birth of the American Heroin Addict
NO PLACE TO HIDE:
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF DRUG ABUSE AND EDUCATION IN AMERICA
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF DRUG ABUSE AND EDUCATION IN AMERICA
Part III
THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HEROIN ADDICT
Far from being a recent development in this country, drug or alcohol addiction has been part of the American scene for more than one hundred fifty years. And for thousands of years before that, drugs and alcoholic products have been intertwined throughout various cultures from the ancient Egyptians and Persians to the Romans. They have been labeled as the work of the devil, promoted as miracle cures for disease, even the key to finding God. Some drugs have healed or made terrible trauma survivable. Others have destroyed lives and even entire cultures.
As we begin to search for effective solutions for today’s drug problem, we must first understand the origins of drugs in America. How did they come to have such a powerful influence in today’s society?
Wherever there have been channels of commerce established, drugs and alcohol have eventually showed up as commodities of trade. This has been true since at least 1300 B.C., with the export of opium from Egypt to Greece and Europe. As soon as international trade to opium-producing countries opened in America, those who wished to trade in human misery and addiction could profit from this entirely new frontier. And then once the opium channels were open, those same channels could be utilized to purvey morphine, heroin and other drugs.
Opium began to arrive in the mid 1800s as Chinese workers immigrated to work on the railroads or gold mines. By the late 1800s, opium was a fairly popular drug. Soon, opium dens were scattered throughout the country, including well-known sites in Tombstone and Williams in Arizona, Deadwood in South Dakota, New York City, Denver and San Francisco.
The stereotypical cowhand bellied up to the bar drinking straight whiskey – or so we are told. That was only part of the story of the West. Often, the cowhand was not bellied up to a bar at all. He was lying in a dim candle-lit room, smoking opium in the company of an oriental prostitute. It was not uncommon for some of these cowhands to spend several days and nights at a time in these dens in a constant dreamlike state, eventually becoming physically addicted to the drug.
At about the same time, morphine became available to physicians in the United States. Earlier in the century, a German pharmacist had succeeded in deriving morphine from opium for the purpose of using it as a surgical and post-surgical anesthetic. But not only did it alleviate pain, it also left the user in a completely numb and euphoric state. The benefits of the drug were considered nothing short of remarkable to doctors of the time. Unfortunately, the addictive properties of the drug went virtually unnoticed until after the Civil War. It was even utilized as a treatment for opium addiction.
During the Civil War, morphine was used during the treatment of terrible war-related injuries. When tens of thousands of Northern and Confederate soldiers became morphine addicts, the country was plagued with a major morphine epidemic. A review of New York Times articles from post-Civil War years shows case after case of ruined men or morphine suicides among veterans of the war. Even though no actual statistics were kept on addiction at this time, the problem had grown to proportions large enough to raise serious concerns from the medical profession. Doctors were completely in the dark as to how to treat this new epidemic.
By 1874, the answer to this increasing problem was thought to be found in another German invention: HEROIN. Soon after invention, heroin was imported into the United States. It was pitched to American doctors as a “safe, non-addictive” substitute for morphine, specifically for use in treating morphine addicts.
Thus, the American heroin addict was born.
NARCOTIC USE REACHES NEW LEVELS OF RESPECTABILITY
From the late 1800s through the early 1900s, reputable drug companies of the day manufactured drug kits that anyone could buy and use at home for the administration of morphine or heroin or later, cocaine. These kits contained glass-barreled hypodermic needles and vials of opiates packaged attractively in engraved tin cases.
Laudanum (opium in an alcohol base) was also a very popular elixir that was used to treat a variety of ills. Laudanum was administered to children and adults alike as freely as aspirin is used today. Charles Dickens was known to consume laudanum for pain he experienced after he was injured in a train crash. Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the president, were also customers. Preparations were given such comforting names as Dover’s Powder, Dr. J. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne and Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, recommended for teething children. Unfortunately, opium overdoses were not uncommon among small children, resulting in their death.
Newspapers and magazines of the time carried advertisements for these and other narcotic products, unchecked by any legal restriction. The drug companies producing these products promoted their use as the cure for all types of physical and mental aliments ranging from alcohol withdrawal to cancer, depression, sluggishness, coughs, colds, tuberculosis, aches, “female trouble,” headaches and even old age. Most of the elixirs pitched by traveling “snake oil salesmen” in their medicine shows contained one or more of these narcotics in their mix.
As heroin, morphine and other opiate derivatives were unregulated during these times, they were able to be sold legally and freely until 1920 when Congress passed the Harrison Act. This new law created law gave the federal government regulatory control of the over-the-counter distribution of narcotics and dangerous drugs.
By the time this law was passed, however, it was already too late. A thriving market for heroin in the U.S. had been created. By 1925, there were an estimated 200,000 heroin addicts in the country. The market has only grown since then. In 2005, more than a quarter million people were admitted to treatment for heroin addiction.
In the next century, America’s problems with opium, morphine and heroin would be joined by a whole new set of problems. Cocaine (and the later derivative crack cocaine) were on their way from South America and would cut a wide swath through the lives of the affluent and the entertainers for many decades.
By Gary W. Smith, C.C.D.C., Executive Director at Narconon Arrowhead Drug Rehabilitation and Education Center located in Canadian, Oklahoma
The History of Cocaine
The History of Cocaine Series: Part I
If you are struggling with an addiction, then that struggle can itself be the source of constant stress and strife. If someone you love is struggling with addiction then you know the stress and strife is not limited to the person addicted but will definitely extend to those who love the person as well. On both accounts, part of the stress felt is derived from simply not knowing what to do. When it seems like there is no logical reason for this travesty to happen and simultaneously it seems like there is no immediate solution to handle the addiction competently then the result can be personal and societal overwhelms and stress.
This educational series is designed to assist with a part of the overall stress of not understanding why addiction is occurring. With this in mind we begin the history of drug use with an historical view of one of the planets strongest enemies, cocaine.
Coca predates written history in Peru and all of South America. Clear evidence of the predominance and dependence on coca goes easily back to 3500 years ago and beyond with the discovery of coca containers and their accompanying gourd full of shells. When the shells are ground they produce an alkali that makes the coca absorb into the body quicker. This process which is still undergone today in Peru has been unchanged for over 3500 years.
The ancient Inca people, who had at one time become a huge conquering people, show a dependence on coca from before written history all the way until today. Coca was so cherished and widespread that an Inca citizen was buried with it, gifted with it for luck on journeys or headed to war, rationed coca for exemplary bravery shown and more. In truth, the primary thing the culture is based on throughout history is the use of coca. Those who control the coca control the Inca people completely and this seizure of control over the raising and distribution of coca leaves will be used by multiple conquering invaders to enslave the Incas to hard labor while getting large majorities of their pay for selling them their own native coca leaves to continue their reliant habits of coca chewing.
The prime example of the slavery encounter by the Inca people is in the 15th Century at the hands of the Spanish Conquests. The Spaniards invaded and conquered the Inca people, took over the coca production in the area and forced the native Incas to toil in the silver mines to haul silver down the high Andes Mountains to be exported back to the mother Country. The Incas would work to the point of death and live in poverty and squalor, forgoing food purchase for coca purchase. Of course the reason for the purchase of coca was to sustain the energy needed to perform their work. As radical as it might first appear, the Inca people were spending most of the money they could make to purchase coca which facilitated working more to make more money to buy more coca.
The sale of coca had become at that time a huge money maker for the Spanish. This was evidenced poignantly when the very powerful Catholic Church of the day tried to seek a ban on the use and abuse of coca having discovered the enslavement that followed its use. The church had convinced the King of Spain who ruled over Peru that coca use and abuse was immoral and extremely detrimental to the Inca People. However, learning that coca was the #1 industry in Peru as well as the only method of getting the Incan people to work in the silver mines, they promptly denied the ban on coca.
Many more Christian Crusades followed over the years with religious leaders attempting to make the travesties of coca use and abuse end through banning its sale and each one would fail due to the large profits that were being made by the very sale it sought to ban. In short, coca addiction was too profitable to lose, even despite the health and welfare of those who were enslaved by it.
It is clear that even as far back as the early 15th century, drug addiction and the profits born out of controlling drugs and then selling them to those addicted was in full bloom. The similarities to our current predicaments over drug use and abuse versus the profits made by its sale are horrifying and will be included in the coming segments of this history of drugs series. The one key point to make here is that it is the war on addiction , and not the war on drugs that we must strive to handle. The war on drugs and the legalization issues that follow it only produce changes of who makes a profit from drug abuse and the sale of the substances of abuse. It is only by understanding the true nature of our current drug epidemic that we might proceed with an effective remedy for the masses currently suffering. Meanwhile, large profits will guarantee addiction in massive proportions; the advertising is perfectly honed and the keys to success at drug induced slavery have been known for a very long time. Only mass education will ultimately achieve any notable change in our culture and that education must be achieved by the families and citizens, not be some authoritative select few. It is with this basic purpose in mind that this series is written.
Author: Megan Thorpe
No Place to Hide: Part I
NO PLACE TO HIDE:
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF DRUG ABUSE AND EDUCATION IN AMERICA
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF DRUG ABUSE AND EDUCATION IN AMERICA
This article was written by Gary W. Smith, C.C.D.C., Executive Director of the Narconon Arrowhead Drug Rehabilitation and Education Center located in Canadian, Oklahoma.
If you follow stories in the traditional media about drug use in the United States, you might have heard some encouraging news recently. Perhaps you heard that teen drug use, particularly of marijuana or methamphetamine, is down. Or maybe you read somewhere that by blocking the sales of pseudoephedrine-containing products – an essential ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine – the number of meth labs found and destroyed has fallen dramatically. Unfortunately, these isolated statistics fail to tell the whole tale.
The story of illicit drug use in America is a devastating tale of lost life, abuse, neglect, emotional and physical damage and lost potential. Since 1996, statistics on the number of current drug users ages 12 and over have risen from an estimated 13,000,000 to 20,400,000. Drug abuse and addiction aggravate every social ill we experience, from child or domestic abuse to crime, medical costs, production and employment problems and social welfare costs.
No American is completely safe from the effects of drug abuse and addiction. There is no corner of the United States where drug abuse and addiction cannot be found. Areas designated as High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) can be found in nearly every state, ranging from most of the counties along the I-5 corridor through California, Oregon and Washington, along the entire Mexico-U.S. border, and urban centers of the Northeast. What might be less expected are the hundreds of largely-rural counties scattered across every region of the country that are also designated as HIDTAs. Counties such as Benton County, Arkansas, Shasta County, California and Letcher County, Kentucky.
Even if a family can manage to find a safe neighborhood, create a secure home and convince their children of the dangers of drugs, each person in that and every other family in the country is paying more than a thousand dollars a year to handle the destruction created in our society by substance abuse and addiction.
In the whole of America, there is literally no place to hide from the effects of drug abuse and addiction.
How did we ever get into this situation? To answer that, let’s backtrack fifty-five years. It is the mid 1950’s, the illegal drug problem is not yet on society’s radar screen. In the 1950’s all anyone knew about illicit drugs like marijuana was that jazz drummer and bandleader Gene Krupa and actor Robert Mitchum smoked it, got caught and the media condemned them for it. Cocaine? That was a word in the lyrics to the popular Cole Porter hit “I Get a Kick Out of You.”
As for heroin, that was a drug of horror used only by the most degenerate and despairing individuals. Frank Sinatra’s character in the movie Man With a Golden Arm teaches us that. Most Americans tended to view drug addiction as an affliction of the urban poor or an evil obsession of a handful of musicians and actors who were too eccentric to worry about. In short, Americans in the 1950’s were completely naive to the nature and threat of drug addiction. We were clueless about the magnitude of harm and societal trauma that drug abuse would soon wreak on our precious country’s future.
Move forward ten years to 1965. The country was in the post-mourning years of President Kennedy’s assassination. The first onslaught of the English rock and roll music invasion with the Beatles and Rolling Stones hits our shores and took American youth by storm while President Lyndon Baines Johnson grappled with the escalating Vietnam War. At the same time, LSD began to find its way from the experimentation laboratories of the Sandoz Drug Company to the streets of San Francisco.
It is also at this time the first indications of increased heroin abuse in urban ghettos caught the attention of President Johnson’s White House staff. This increase, small by today’s numbers, was of enough concern for Johnson for him to convince Congress to enact the Drug Rehabilitation Act and ask for an annual appropriation of $15,000,000 to treat addicts. At the time, no one in government at the federal, state, or local level had any idea that in little more than twenty years’ time, heroin abuse in the U.S. would escalate to a point where it would cost taxpayers nearly $100,000,000 annually.
Society’s radar screen began to blip on the subject of illicit drug use. Unfortunately, not enough people were paying attention.
In the middle of the 1960’s, Americans still tended to view drug addiction as a problem inherent to the underprivileged. By the end of the decade, America’s view on drugs began changing. Drug use became popularized by movies such as I Love You Alice B. Toklas, starring Peter Sellers. Skidoo, starring Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing and a long list of other stars, featured the use of LSD. LIFE magazine and TIME magazine reported on the drug culture in 1969, featuring marijuana, hashish, LSD, cocaine and other hallucinogens. The art, music, movies and television slowly but insidiously presented the new Flower Power era as not only acceptable but popular and exciting. And while this was alarming to many parents of this period, most of us thought that unless we lived in one of the inner cities, we and our families were insulated from these pro-drug influences.
We have unfortunately learned the hard way that drugs have never respected and never will respect geographic boundaries. They are as present in suburban, affluent Plano, Texas, as they are in the slums of the toughest inner city.
From this vantage point, it’s easy to look back at and see how our complacency allowed us to overlook the growing problem. However, if we look closer we will see that this failure was driven in no small measure by the assumption of the masses that it was someone else’s problem, not our problem. And it is this assumption that allowed drugs the time they needed to seep into every neighborhood in every city and class across America without prejudice.
In the 21st century in America, the message is loud and clear: There is no place to hide from the problem of substance abuse and addiction.
To be continued…
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