Drugs on Campus
Just as I was about to send you the information on the campaign Wyeth
Pharmaceuticals (of Fen-Phen and Redux fame) has out on college campuses to
push Effexor, Alex Beam of the Boston Globe took the words right out of my
mouth in describing the abomination within our halls of learning. I refer you
to his most excellent article below.
The one thing Alex does not understand, along with the majority of the
population and far too many physicians, is that the serotonin THEORY behind
the SSRIs is backwards and because of that no one is indeed being "helped" by
these drugs as so many have been lead to believe.
What a shame that so few understand this or have even heard! But why bother to
read research when you have drug companies to tell you what is true.
The truth is that when serotonin metabolism is impaired, as every one of the
SSRIs do - this is thought to be their "therapeutic effect" - it has been
shown for decades of medical research to produce impulsive murder and suicide.
At this point we have a decade and a half of these drugs being used on the
general population as proof that the research from the past several decades is
indeed correct. Counting the dead from the SSRI induced impulsive murder and
suicide will take a very long time.
As if the problems with these drugs were not already bad enough, if Wyeth has
their way we can just use college campuses as microcosms to help us see what
adverse effects these drugs have upon a very vulnerable group within our
society.
It was in the spring of 2000 that Elizabeth Shin set herself on fire under the
influence of Celexa in her dormitory room at MIT.
But Wyeth's Effexor has been in the news so much this year you would think
someone might have noticed some red flags popping up.
To list only a few:
First we had Andrea Yates go to trial for killing her five children while
under the influence of both Effexor and Remeron at maximum dose of each drug.
Then this past spring a woman, who worked for Wyeth, died in a terrible
murder/suicide. Her job was to take calls on adverse reactions to Effexor. Her
husband, Michael Burgess, while on Effexor, chased her, her daughter and her
parents through the house and grounds of the home they shared killing them all
before killing himself.
Now, if your job consists of listening to these reactions at work all day long
and recording them for the drug maker, and you STILL don't see the warning
signs clearly enough to save your own life and the lives of your family, why
would we expect anyone else to notice?
Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, Executive Director,
International Coalition For Drug Awareness
www.drugawareness.org and author of Prozac: Panacea
or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare (800-280-0730)
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/290/living/The_biggest_drug_dealer_on_campus+.shtml
The biggest drug dealer on campus
By Alex Beam,
Globe Columnist,
10/17/2002 It is an article of faith among my friends and neighbors who troop
off to vote for Robert Reich, or to pay top dollar for genetically unaltered
foods, that large drug companies are Bad. Instinctually, I would disagree. The
fairy tales of Volvoland, like the finely tuned cars its inhabitants favor,
are foreign to me.
But maybe this once, the whole foods crowd has it right. Big Pharma, as the
Mercks, Pfizers and GlaxoSmithKlines are known to their enemies, has managed
to outrage even me with their brazen marketing of depression to innocents at
home and abroad. America's $12 billion antidepressant market has, as they say,
matured. It's time to start pushing the pills to kids and foreigners!
This is a subtle issue. Depression is very real, and immobilizes tens of
thousands of Americans. It is treatable, or at least its symptoms can be
alleviated by a variety of drugs now so common that everyone knows their
names: Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, etc.
Big Pharma has a vested interest in selling more and more lucrative
antidepressant drugs, and they are cynical and merciless in doing so. Take,
for example, Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth's forthcoming campus promotion,
''Depression in College: Real World, Real Life, Real Issues,'' a 90-minute
forum designed to introduce students to the antidepressant Effexor. (''We
refer to it as an educational campaign, not a promotion,'' Wyeth spokesman
Douglas Petkus tells me.) The promotion features doctors, psychologists, and
Cara Kahn, a star of the MTV reality show, ''Real World Chicago,'' who takes
Effexor to combat her depression.
How insidious is this? Millions of college students feel lousy, for any number
of reasons: they are far from home; college is an unfamiliar and sometimes
threatening environment; the object of their affection is inattentive. God
knows we all have been there. Do they need a $120- a-month Effexor fix to see
them through these tough years? Probably not. But who could be more
suggestible, or vulnerable, than a boy or girl making the transition to
adulthood? You can get a feel for Wyeth's campaign at the Web site
www.GoOnAndLive.com.
Wyeth says four colleges will be hosting its forum and one, which it declines
to identify, has demurred. In last week's Wall Street Journal, Harvard provost
Steven Hyman spoke out against allowing these sharks on campus. Hyman is a
doctor who used to run the National Institute of Mental Health and knows a
thing or two about this subject. ''In the case of celebrities speaking, who
are actually being paid by the company, there is a risk that inappropriate
marketing will go on,'' he said. ''It's a slippery slope I do not believe
universities should take.'' Wyeth notes that they weren't planning to come to
Harvard anyway.
(As if by coincidence, the Journal ran a similar story the previous day,
reporting on drug companies' attempts to open up the culturally resistant
Japanese market to antidepressant pills. One tactic: eschewing the pejorative
Japanese word for ''depression'' and substituting a word that loosely
translates as ''the soul catching a cold.'' Remember: it's education, not
promotion.)
(As if by coincidence, a recent Newsweek cover story on teen depression touted
several drugs, including Effexor, Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Celexa, and
Desipramine, as potentially helpful in combating depression. The same issue
had a 24-page ''Health and Fitness'' advertorial replete with full-page ads
from Wellbutrin maker GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Schering, and other huge drug
companies. Remember: it's education, not promotion.)
Why do these campaigns revolt me? Because I know that I could easily become
addicted to Big Pharma crack. I am angry a lot of the time; I am chronically
pessimistic; I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I know the psychiatrists'
bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, well enough
to know that I could get an internist or a psychiatrist to put me on an
antidepressant with a snap of my fingers. But who would be there to help get
me off the dope?
I have the tools to make reasonable decisions about my mental health. But many
young people don't. Lay off the kids, Wyeth & Co.: pick on somebody your own
size.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com
Last Updated on
02/20/2005
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