let’s make this point clear: fluoride
is NOT an essential nutrient. The fluoride added to your drinking water
is in fact a chemical waste product! It is NOT something you should use as a
supplement to your diet. …
Category: Implications
Grassley Probes Financing of Advocacy Group for Mental Health (Bloomberg News)
The group identifies itself as the largest grassroots organization in the U.S.
for people with mental illness and their families. The group came under scrutiny
in 1999, when the magazine Mother Jones reported that 18 drug companies gave the
group $11.7 million from 1996 to mid-1999. …
Is APA treatment advice tainted by pharma ties? (FiercePharma)
Some prominent psychiatrists have come under fire recently for thousands in
unreported income from drugmakers. Critics have said that these influential
doctor-researchers led the way toward off-label use of some powerful psychiatric
drugs–and perhaps their recommendations weren’t objective judgments but biased
by their financial ties to pharma. …
Study questions long-term ADHD med use (FiercePharma)
The latest data confirm that there are “no long-term differences between
children who were continuously medicated and those who were never medicated,”
the Washington Post reports, citing the
Journal of the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry. Meanwhile, the number of scrips for ADHD meds grew
to 39.5 million last year from 28.3 million in 2004. …
Harvard doc promised J&J ‘positive’ trial data (FiercePharma)
according to Biederman’s testimony, he prepared the presentation himself.
Another presentation promised that a study of J&J’s psychiatric drug
Concerta would “extend … positive findings” on the drug to adolescents. …
Pioneer Press: U doctor scrutinized over drug research
The results compelled AstraZeneca to look deeper into the data
for more positives. What they got were negatives. On a rating scale, patients in
these same four studies showed a greater reduction in behavioral symptoms when
taking Haldol instead of Seroquel, according to the analysis. …
The fool on the hill: an essay sharply critical of the psychiatric industry (The Lancet)
Antipsychotics are, at times, cruel drugs. Some cause shaking, salivation,
restlessness, infertility, stiff ness, agitation, and frail bones; others cause
obesity, somnolence, and increase the risk of heart attack, diabetes, and
stroke. Antidepressants also have side-effects, although theirs are typically
less dramatic: sickness, sexual dysfunction, a feeling of being numbed, or
losing one’s personality, and acutely increased risk of suicide. …
Burt’s Bees, Tom’s of Maine, Naked Juice: Your Favorite Brands? Take Another Look (AlterNet C/O OCA)
I began to wonder about the other products I liked, trusted and respected for
their independence and their social responsibility. How many were really owned
by big corporations, who were going out of their way to hide the link between
the big corporate company with the small, socially responsible brand? It didn’t
take long for my list of disappointments to grow and grow. …
Post resurrects “buried” Seroquel study (FiercePharma)
Meanwhile, AstraZeneca folks were worried about Study 15. As you know, internal
emails released as court documents show that higher-ups praised a company
doctor’s efforts to put a “positive spin” on “this cursed study.” Company
officials discussed their “cherry-picking” of data; one said, “Thus far, we have
buried Trials 15, 31, 56 and are now considering COSTAR” (which also produced
unfavorable results). In public, however, AstraZeneca publicized a less-rigorous
study showing that patients lost weight
on Seroquel. …
Case Not Yet Closed on Vaccines and Autism (Mercola.com)
After his findings were publicized, rates of MMR vaccine in the UK promptly
fell; Dr. Wakefield was fired from his position and later was charged with
professional misconduct by the UK’s General Medical Council (GMC). The paper was
also removed from The Lancet amidst all the controversy.
It has
now become clear that the allegations were totally false and amounted to nothing
more than a smear campaign. …