MEDICAL, DOCUMENTARY EXPOSING $27 BILLION PSYCHIATRIC DRUG INDUST

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MEDICAL EXPERTS SUPPORT DOCUMENTARY EXPOSING $27 BILLION PSYCHIATRIC DRUG

INDUSTRY

Psychiatric/pharmaceutical interests blamed for misleading advertising about

antidepressant violence/suicide risks as the FDA meets to hear the mounting

evidence

Los Angeles: 12 December: Dr. Fred Baughman Jr., a California neurologist,

slammed pharmaceutical companies, the American Psychiatric Association and

psychiatric “front†groups for denying consumers the right to informed

consent

regarding the dangers of psychiatric drugs, including the risk of suicide.

Speaking at the Los Angeles release of a documentary, “Psychiatry: An

Industry of Deathâ€â€”a damning indictment of how psychotropic drug dealing is

legitimized in the name of “scienceâ€â€”Dr. Baughman said psychiatrists

“label, drug

and victimize us by the millions, from cradle-to-grave, with absolutely no

medical legitimacy.†“Unthinkably,†he added, “psychiatric diagnosis

is a

total, 100% fraud.â€The release of the documentary was timely as the Food and

Drug Administration’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee prepares

to

hold a hearing tomorrow on the relationship of antidepressants and suicide in

adults taking them.

The APA and several psychiatric groups that receive over 7.5 million dollars

from manufacturers of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, have

asked the FDA to be “careful†about the information it provides to

consumers

about antidepressants. But experts say that denying information about the

serious risks of these drugs violates a person’s informed consent rights and

requires warnings that antidepressants are not prescribed for a medical

disease.Dr. Baughman, author of The ADHD Fraud and Texas psychiatrist, Colin

Ross,

author of Pseudoscience in Biological Psychiatry, addressed those attending the

release of “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death†documentary, stating that the

theory that a “chemical imbalance†in the brain requires antidepressants to

“

balance†out depression is completely false. It is “not based on blood

test or brain scan, or physical findings. It’s based on descriptions of

behavior. And that’s what the whole psychiatry system is,†Dr. Ross said.

Such

misleading advertising has led to $13 billion a year in sales of

antidepressants

and $27 billion a year for all psychiatric drugs.Jan Eastgate, international

president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which produced

the documentary, said, “The FDA should not only ensure a black box label be

placed on antidepressants warning about the risk of suicide and violent

thoughts and behavior in adults taking them, but also prohibit or prosecute

those

manufacturers and psychiatric associations that pharmaceutical companies fund

which advertise that psychiatric drugs correct serotonin levels or chemical

imbalances in the brain. In 2003, the Irish government prohibited

GlaxoKline from claiming Paxil could restore serotonin levels to normal.

The same ban is needed for any advertising in the U.S., and should include

those associations that receive funding from drug companies and which

indirectly promote antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs.â€Before the

antidepressant Prozac was FDA approved for the U.S. in 1987, German authorities

had

already determined that the rate of suicide for the drug was more 5.6 times

higher than for older antidepressants and could be accompanied by violent

outbursts. In 1991, an FDA Hearing into Prozac—elicited by public pressure

that

CCHR garnered—ignored the evidence and gave Prozac a clean bill of health, an

act that some experts say could have contributed to the more than 360 murders

and acts of violence committed by individuals taking antidepressants. In

2005, several studies published in the British Medical Journal and BMC

Medicine,

determined that antidepressants were between 2 and 7 times more likely to

induce suicide in adults taking this than those taking placebo.

The documentary, which Dr. Baughman describes as “probing, unflinching and

riveting†and exposing “chilling facts that all people concerned about

human

rights will want to know,†documents using psychiatric footage and interviews

with more than 160 experts and victims, how, since the 1960s, plans to

increase the development of psychotropic drugs has been aimed at “the control

of

selective aspects of man’s life,†and not therapy.

CCHR is an international psychiatric watchdog that has been in the vanguard

of patients' rights since it was co-founded in 1969 by the Church of

Scientology and Dr. Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State

University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, to investigate

and

expose psychiatric violations of human rights.

Dr. Rick Lippin