Implants May Stabilize Schizophrenia Patients for a Year
Source:
http://unisci.com/stories/20022/0530024.htm
30-May-2002 - By Ellen O'Brien
One of the greatest difficulties in treating schizophrenia has always been
helping patients to stay on their medication. Now, that problem is closer to
being solved.
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine have designed
an implantable device capable of delivering anti-psychotic medication for a
period of five months, and continuing work at Penn indicates that such devices
may work for up to a full year.
The device has been proven effective in initial laboratory studies, and more
research is underway (in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh School
of Medicine) to lead to potential clinical trials.
Findings from the small-mammal study appear in the current issue of the
scientific journal Neuropsychopharmacology. If the device can be demonstrated to
work effectively in human subjects in future trials, it will offer a medical
alternative that may relieve many patients of the threat of psychosis and
chronic social instability.
"Schizophrenia destroys an individual's grasp of reality, robbing him of his
identity and devastating his family," said Steven Siegel, MD, PhD, of the
Division of Neuropsychiatry in Penn's Department of Psychiatry. This device
could relieve those threats, by assuring medical stability.
"Patients who need anti-psychotic drugs often fail to comprehend the profound
severity of their illness, and may stop taking their medication during temporary
periods of impaired judgment. But when the majority of patients with psychiatric
disorders take appropriate medicine, they do achieve periods of remission from
psychotic symptoms."
Siegel said, "The advantage of relying on an implantable anti-psychotic medicine
is that patients are able to make decisions about the future course of their
treatment during periods of relative health, but if a medical reason arises that
necessitates curtailing treatment, the implant can be easily removed."
The delivery device consists of a surgically-implantable disc made of
biodegradable polymers (a series of linked molecules) combined with medication.
In the trials, a traditional anti-psychotic medicine, Haloperidol, was used.
The discs have been modeled in a fashion that allows each type of polymer to
disintegrate at a specific rate, so that exactly the prescribed volume of
medication is released into the bloodstream each day for up to a year.
About the size of a quarter, the device is held in place under the skin with a
single surgical stitch. According to Siegel, the implantation procedure (and
removal procedure) can be performed in about 15 minutes under local anesthetic.
Other Penn researchers who collaborated in the study are: Karen I. Winey, PhD,
Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Raquel Gur, MD, PhD, and Robert
H. Lenox, MD, Department of Psychiatry; Warren B. Bilker, PhD, Department of
Biostatistics and Epidemiology, and Debbie Ikeda, Neel Gandhi, and Wen-Xiao
Zhang, MS, also of Psychiatry.
Siegel's work is supported by the Stanley Foundation, an advocacy organization
for families of individuals afflicted with schizophrenia. He has been named
director of the newly formed Stanley Center for Experimental Therapeutics in
Psychiatry at Penn.
A patent for the implant technology is pending.
Although some may benefit from a long term medication solution
such as this, we feel that they should be aware of the risks when they make
their decision. We do not feel that such a treatment should ever be
forced, or made a condition for living in the community due to those risks.
David Oaks, of Support Coalition International, wrote:
What a truly horrible, frightening development.
Note that Raquel Gur was part of this. She knows that taking long-term
neuroleptics is linked to structural changes in the brain. In an e-mail debate
with her, she claimed that those raising this problem were trying to claim
"conclusive causation" which almost no scientist ever does, anywhere, for any
hazard. No, we were saying there was a reasonable red flag... and so she
stopped responding.
Also note that Stanley Foundation funded this.... The same folks funding
Treatment Advocacy Center push for more forced psychiatry.
If they ran around with an ice pick and forcibly lobotomized people at least
it would be more obvious....
- David
Move Over Mengele, It's Fuller Time Now
by Vicki Fox Smith
I'm trying to see an upside to the announcement that researchers are ready to
begin human trials on an implanted drug delivery system designed to drip
antipsychotics drugs into us. Social control the modern way. Eugenics the
modern way. Move over Mengele, Fuller Torrey is the mad doctor for the new
age. The only thing I can come up with is that at least now when a disheveled
individual accosts me in the streets talking about evil doctors and a
conspiracy to control his thoughts through implants under his skin I will know
(rather than merely suspecting) that it is true.
Funded by Stanley Foundation dollars, mad psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey has
shaped a research agenda that has resulted in the development of a device, now
ready for human trials, designed to be implanted under the skin where, like a
ticking time bomb, it will release a steady stream of anti-psychotic
medication into its victims blood stream for 5 ½ months to a year.
I have no doubt there are people who will volunteer to be the human guinea
pigs for the clinical trials. Offer a homeless person a few hundred bucks a
month and you too can get informed consent for horrific experimentation. I
also have no doubt that with forced treatment laws in place thousands more
will be implanted against their will.
Think about the savings though. The police can round up folks who are socially
unacceptable, the mental health courts can sentence them to implantation, and
a technician can probably perform the procedure the very same day. Think how
much quieter our prisons will be when ¼ of the inmates get their implants.
Those kids in Connecticut who are being screened for early signs of
schizophrenia and being "preventatively" medicated-why we can save so much
time by implanting them now.
It's a simple procedure; really it is.
(http://www.madnation.cc)
Read the announcement of the implant research:
http://unisci.com/stories/20022/0530024.htm
