Hi everyone,
I apologize in advance if any of this is boring to you or repetitive because some of you probably know the facts behind everything I am about to say.
I'm reading David Healy's 2004 book Let Them Eat Prozac. There is much to say about the author and the book, however I am finding the information in here extremely helpful in many cases. Haven't finished the book yet but I've gotten a lot out of it so far.
I was reminded when reading the book that the initial Prozac trials involved coadministration with benzodiazepines which was not reported on the label (the benzodiazepines controlled some of the effects of the Prozac like agitation and akathisia according to the author) and that when Germany finally approved Prozac, they issued a warning to patients on the label that taking a sedative would probably be necessary if they took Prozac.
Also, early on in the book the statement is made that the scientific principle that pharmacologists believe is that any drug that turns a rat aggressive and violent would make a good antidepressant (because it activates them and depressed people are too lethargic?). I knew of the studies on rats and violence but I didn't realize that psychiatrists actually thought this was a good sign.
The book also details the way in which drug companies edit out suicides and reduce the reporting of suicides by simply NOT setting up their protocols to look for suicides, and also coding them under categories like "depression" etc. In one case they managed to completely ignore 11 suicides, and in another pediatric study, they reduced (that is they only reported) the number of suicides from the actual 6 to (the imaginary)1. What this means is that the data we have is a modest estimate, and that the actual rate of suicide (and it follows that the same applies to homicide) is probably at least 6 to 11 times higher than drug company studies show.
I found page 171 particularly important.
It states that based on clinical trials alone, the rate of suicide attempt on Prozac was at least 10 per thousand compared to 5 per thousand on placebo. Therefore since at least 40 million people worldwide have had Prozac (as of 1999) then there were at least 200,000 more suicide attempts on Prozac than had Prozac not been used.
It states that there is approximately one suicide for every 10 attempts, so there are at least 20,000 suicides caused by Prozac which would not have occurred if the victims had been left untreated or treated with older drugs.
Based on the FDA Adverse Events Reporting system, by 1999, Healy says that there were in actuality between 20,000 and 200,000 suicides on Prozac (because the FDA estimated that their database only picked up on 1-10% of cases and 2,000 were reported).
Finally, based on the Jick study of primary care depression, there were at least 40,000 or more suicides for the 40 million on Prozac between its launch and the 1999 evaluation of the data.
That's just the USA.
In Canada or the UK the author estimates that since there were at least 20 million Prozac users in the time period studied, it amounted to one suicide from Prozac every week. I n the US it would be one suicide per day on Prozac alone.
Several months ago I looked at a WebMD examination of the top 10 prescription drugs in the US and at least 3 (if not more) were antidepressant drugs, and even more were psychiatric or psychoactive.
If there is one suicide per day for Prozac then surely we can expect the same or similar for Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa.
I would love to see a study on the rate of homicide caused by the drugs and extrapolate that to the number of users. I'm sure it would rival the Iraq war dead or the death toll from terrorist acts for the same time period that we've been counting those losses.
If 25% of all new mothers get "PPD" (by some estimates) and nearly all are convinced to go on drugs (the estimates of PPD were probably derived from the number of women going in for treatment), how many children will either be victims of murder by their own moms, or will become motherless due to her suicide? Interestingly, the rate of PPD has been cited as being far lower in home birthing moms, which may have something to do with the lack of drugs like epidural anesthesia, epinephrine, and painkillers coursing through the body.
Another interesting aspect of this book is its coverage of the Wesbecker and Forsyth cases, where you can read about all the documents Lilly had which showed their efforts to cover up the suicide from the time well before the drug was licensed. The book also discusses the sad (in my opinion) history of many other psychiatric drugs, for those who are interested. It stated that usually the problems with one class of drugs does not become apparent or of concern until there is about to be a launch of another new class that is in the pipeline. I can only imagine what they have in store for us next. Did anyone notice that new ad for the fibromyalgia treatment?
Reading this book really gets me thinking about a lot of the ideas I have been mulling over & the analyses of the literature that have been on my back burner... for example the push by Thomas Hale to get breastfeeding moms to take Zoloft.
This book stated that Pfizer has always tried to make Zoloft appear to be a cleaner and lower-risk drug than Prozac and other drugs. That seems to have stretched over into the breastfeeding arena. Hale states that this drug is the first choice due to its low amount in the milk. However when I looked at the data cited by Hale, it was clear that the numbers of breastfeeding couples in the safety studies were extremely small (4 women in one study, 8 in another, etc. totalling around 30 people) and that many of the women were not even exclusively breastfeeding. It was also unclear in some of the studies whether the drug plasma levels of the babies were measured while the moms were busy not breastfeeding them (they had to pump all their milk and collect it for analysis by the researchers). One mom who was exclusively breastfeeding had a baby who had seizures when exposed to the drug in the milk. There were also effects like COMA which were merely brushed aside as though it was not very concerning and Zoloft was generally well tolerated (by babies who weren't even ingesting it? Maybe). I would love to see them blame that one on the mother's depression. The Zoloft label itself warns of these side effects, yet people tell women every day that it's safe to take Zoloft when you're breastfeeding and pregnant. My OBGYN did, and he even told me I should stay on Zoloft if I ever became pregnant!
As the book mentions, most studies are now published by ghostwriters who have no access to the raw data, and they simply cite previous studies over and over. What this means is that the writer will read the abstract and then report on that rather than analyzing new data. This gets them a publication for the "author" and it gets results in terms of sales for drug companies.
This phenomenon of not reporting on the actual data is exactly how I discovered some of the shortcomings of the advice that it's ok to breastfeed while using drugs that many breastfeeding advocates have spread around in the first place. I was given an article by a friend which was on alternatives in treating PPD and it had a section on Exercise. It stated that the Zoloft and exercise did about the same.
When I read the actual study, the Zoloft did WORSE than exercise. There were three groups, Zoloft alone, Exercise alone, and Zoloft + exercise. At 10 months, the two zoloft groups had relapsed or many patients had dropped out and started an exercise routine. However the exercise alone group was not in relapse and was doing well.
It seems that the author of the PPD alternatives article merely read the first paragraph of the abstract and did not focus at all on the actual result. Then the author wrote a book called The Hidden Feelings of Motherhood, and many articles, gave lectures, etc. and even consulted on an article in May for Mothering Magazine which effectively gave women permission and pressure to use ANTIPSYCHOTIC drugs while breastfeeding. There was obviously a lot that transpired besides what I can see, but I did do a quick search for antipsychotic drugs in breastfeeding and I did find articles that claimed (as Hale has put on his website) that antipsychotics are also safe for breastfeeding if you control for the peak concentration time and avoid breastfeeding during that time period.
The result of this is that many people worldwide are convinced that there are drugs for depression and psychosis safe not only for breastfeeding but also pregnancy. And we are seeing the result in miscarriages, stillbirths, NICU stays, and seizures, comas, and SIDS.
The Healy book also stated that in many cases if a follow-up safety study is recommended (like the FDA asked for Lilly to conduct following the 1991 hearing), the drug company NEVER completes the study because they don't want the negative data to come out. So in the case of breastfeeding, the statement by Thomas Hale on his website that says they are desperately looking for subjects seems like a total bold-faced lie. If they really wanted to study the issue they could easily find far more than 30 women to participate merely by going to any online mothering board or PPD forum and saying "Hey there, we want to pay you to test your milk for drugs and see what the effect is on the baby" but nobody does it, just like they don't do the rat studies to see how long it takes or whether our brains can actually recover from the effects of the brain damage caused by SSRIs.
This book is really eye-opening especially if any of the information is new to you. It talks about how since Prozac has NEVER been proven to be effective or safe, that many drug companies now use Prozac as the threshold against which they test their new drugs for effectiveness and safety.
It also talks about how the data gets "massaged" and how at least 50% of the literature in psychopharmacology is ghostwritten by outsourced writing companies hired by pharmaceutical companies. It even goes over how one of the author's ghostwritten articles was published after he had edited the ghostwriter's version, however his edits were ignored and they removed his statement that the drugs in question were linked to suicide and violence.
Recently I forwarded the petition to ban antidepressants out to a bunch of people and I received one reply from someone I thought was on our side, who said that I needed to provide hard data to prove that suicide is caused by SSRIs before asking for help. Things like this really make me wonder whether some of the natural health community has been hijacked somewhere along the way. It's bad enough the number of people I see promoting natural ways to raise serotonin.
In this book Healy mentions over and over the study that formed the serotonin hypothesis being one where the patients had low serotonin metabolites in their cerebrospinal fluid. How can he not understand that this means, as Dr. Tracy points out over and over, that the serotonin in the body is not being metabolized fast enough? There are so many serotonin reuptake inhibitors out there from OTC drugs to artificial sweeteners and prescription drugs, one wonders how much of the data we're being fed is interpreted without realization of the obvious causes and the things that scientists who are supposed to be smart, miss. Healy also points out over and over that patients who did poorly on SSRIs were started on MAOIs and they did much better. He says that the MAOIs have the opposite effect on the serotonin system. I am not knowledgeable on that subject, but if that is true, it seems to be another piece of evidence that people have missed, that SSRIs do not work for depression.
Sometimes I wonder what goes through the minds of these psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists. I even attended a local lecture by Graham Emslie a couple of years ago (he is a hired clinical researcher for many drug companies) in which he stated that the suicide data is all hyped and that the drugs might work, they think they work, and that they just have yet to really prove it. I guess my question is, if people like him and Healy and others can admit readily that the studies do not even prove that SSRIs work for depression, then why are they still approved drugs for depression? Let's ban them or re-label them as "drugs that psychiatrists think might make some people feel better but also make at least 60% of people who take them stop taking them and another unknown percentage kill themselves or others" - then instead of SSRIs we can call them "DTPTMMSPFBBAMAL60%OPWTTSTTAAUPKTOOs."
Here's hoping that the Hannity report on school shooters and drugs, and other efforts we've seen recently will overcome the massive lie campaigns that have ruled the last few decades. SO everyone, keep on fighting!!!
Sincerely,
Amy Philo
P.S. I am not endorsing all of Healy's views by any means but I find a lot of the information in the book to be useful. I am still reading this book but as I make my way through it I realize there is too much in it so I will forget what I want to say about it if I don't write it down now.
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