USA Today, January 26, 2016<\/a>: \u201cPrimary care doctors should screen all adults for depression, an expert panel recommended Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Let\u2019s screen everybody to find out if they have mental disorders. Let\u2019s diagnose as many people as possible with mental disorders and give them toxic drugs\u2014<\/p>\n Wherever you see organized psychiatry operating, you see it trying to expand its domain and its dominance. The Hippocratic Oath to do no harm? Are you kidding?<\/p>\n The first question to ask is: do these mental disorders have any scientific basis? There are now roughly 300 of them. They multiply like fruit flies.<\/p>\n An open secret has been bleeding out into public consciousness for the past ten years.<\/p>\n THERE ARE NO DEFINITIVE LABORATORY TESTS FOR ANY SO-CALLED MENTAL DISORDER.<\/p>\n And along with that:<\/p>\n ALL SO-CALLED MENTAL DISORDERS ARE CONCOCTED, NAMED, LABELED, DESCRIBED, AND CATEGORIZED by a committee of psychiatrists, from menus of human behaviors.<\/p>\n Their findings are published in periodically updated editions of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), printed by the American Psychiatric Association.<\/p>\n For years, even psychiatrists have been blowing the whistle on this hazy crazy process of \u201cresearch.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, pharmaceutical companies, who manufacture highly toxic drugs to treat every one of these \u201cdisorders,\u201d are leading the charge to invent more and more mental-health categories, so they can sell more drugs and make more money.<\/p>\n In a PBS Frontline episode, Does ADHD Exist?<\/em>, Dr. Russell Barkley, an eminent professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, unintentionally spelled out the fraud.<\/p>\n PBS FRONTLINE INTERVIEWER: Skeptics say that there\u2019s no biological marker\u2014that it [ADHD] is the one condition out there where there is no blood test, and that no one knows what causes it.<\/p>\n BARKLEY: That\u2019s tremendously na\u00efve, and it shows a great deal of illiteracy about science and about the mental health professions. A disorder doesn\u2019t have to have a blood test to be valid. If that were the case, all mental disorders would be invalid\u2026 There is no lab test for any mental disorder right now in our science.<\/em> That doesn\u2019t make them invalid. [Emphasis added]<\/p>\n Oh, indeed, that does make them invalid. Utterly and completely. All 297 mental disorders. They\u2019re all hoaxes. Because there are no defining tests of any kind to back up the diagnosis.<\/p>\n You can sway and tap dance and bloviate all you like and you won\u2019t escape the noose around your neck. We are looking at a science that isn\u2019t a science. That\u2019s called fraud. Rank fraud.<\/p>\n There\u2019s more. Under the radar, one of the great psychiatric stars, who has been out in front inventing mental disorders, went public. He blew the whistle on himself and his colleagues. And for years, almost no one noticed.<\/p>\n His name is Dr. Allen Frances, and he made VERY interesting statements to Gary Greenberg, author of a Wired article: \u201cInside the Battle to Define Mental Illness.\u201d<\/em> (Dec.27, 2010).<\/p>\n Major media never picked up on the interview in any serious way. It never became a scandal.<\/p>\n Dr. Allen Frances is the man who, in 1994, headed up the project to write the latest edition of the psychiatric bible, the DSM-IV. This tome defines and labels and describes every official mental disorder. The DSM-IV eventually listed 297 of them.<\/p>\n In an April 19, 1994, New York Times piece, \u201cScientist At Work,\u201d<\/em> Daniel Goleman called Frances \u201cPerhaps the most powerful psychiatrist in America at the moment\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Well, sure. If you\u2019re sculpting the entire canon of diagnosable mental disorders for your colleagues, for insurers, for the government, for Pharma (who will sell the drugs matched up to the 297 DSM-IV diagnoses), you\u2019re right up there in the pantheon.<\/p>\n Long after the DSM-IV had been put into print, Dr. Frances talked to Wired\u2019s Greenberg and said the following:<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no definition of a mental disorder. It\u2019s bullshit. I mean, you just can\u2019t define it.\u201d<\/p>\n BANG.<\/p>\n That\u2019s on the order of the designer of the Hindenburg, looking at the burned rubble on the ground, remarking, \u201cWell, I knew there would be a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n After a suitable pause, Dr. Frances remarked to Greenberg, \u201cThese concepts [of distinct mental disorders] are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the borders.\u201d<\/p>\n Frances might have been obliquely referring to the fact that his baby, the DSM-IV, had rearranged earlier definitions of ADHD and Bipolar to permit many MORE diagnoses, leading to a vast acceleration of drug-dosing with highly powerful and toxic compounds.<\/p>\n If this is medical science, a duck is a rocket ship.<\/p>\n To repeat, Dr. Frances\u2019 work on the DSM IV allowed for MORE toxic drugs to be prescribed, because the definitions of Bipolar and ADHD were expanded to include more people.<\/p>\n Adverse effects of Valproate (given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:<\/p>\n * acute, life-threatening, and even fatal liver toxicity;<\/p>\n * life-threatening inflammation of the pancreas;<\/p>\n * brain damage.<\/p>\n Adverse effects of Lithium (also given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:<\/p>\n * intercranial pressure leading to blindness;<\/p>\n * peripheral circulatory collapse;<\/p>\n * stupor and coma.<\/p>\n Adverse effects of Risperdal (given for \u201cBipolar\u201d and \u201cirritability stemming from autism\u201d) include:<\/p>\n * serious impairment of cognitive function;<\/p>\n * fainting;<\/p>\n * restless muscles in neck or face, tremors (may be indicative of motor brain damage).<\/p>\n Dr. Frances self-admitted label-juggling act also permitted the definition of ADHD to expand, thereby opening the door for greater and greater use of Ritalin (and other similar compounds) as the treatment of choice.<\/p>\n So\u2026what about Ritalin?<\/p>\n In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions published a most important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was called \u201cAn Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin (Methylphenidate)\u201d<\/em> [v.21(7), pp. 837-841].<\/p>\n Scarnati listed a large number of adverse effects of Ritalin and cited published journal articles which reported each of these symptoms.<\/p>\n For every one of the following (selected and quoted verbatim) Ritalin effects, there is at least one confirming source in the medical literature:<\/p>\n * Paranoid delusions<\/p>\n * Paranoid psychosis<\/p>\n * Hypomanic and manic symptoms, amphetamine-like psychosis<\/p>\n * Activation of psychotic symptoms<\/p>\n * Toxic psychosis<\/p>\n * Visual hallucinations<\/p>\n * Auditory hallucinations<\/p>\n * Can surpass LSD in producing bizarre experiences<\/p>\n * Effects pathological thought processes<\/p>\n * Extreme withdrawal<\/p>\n * Terrified affect<\/p>\n * Started screaming<\/p>\n * Aggressiveness<\/p>\n * Insomnia<\/p>\n * Since Ritalin is considered an amphetamine-type drug, expect amphetamine-like effects<\/p>\n * Psychic dependence<\/p>\n * High-abuse potential DEA Schedule II Drug<\/p>\n * Decreased REM sleep<\/p>\n * When used with antidepressants one may see dangerous reactions including hypertension, seizures and hypothermia<\/p>\n * Convulsions<\/p>\n * Brain damage may be seen with amphetamine abuse.<\/p>\n In the US alone, there are at least 300,000 cases of motor brain damage incurred by people who have been prescribed so-called anti-psychotic drugs (aka \u201cmajor tranquilizers\u201d). Risperdal (mentioned above as a drug given to people diagnosed with Bipolar) is one of those major tranquilizers. (source: Toxic Psychiatry<\/em>, Dr. Peter Breggin, St. Martin\u2019s Press, 1991)<\/p>\n This psychiatric drug plague is accelerating across the land.<\/p>\n Where are the mainstream reporters and editors and newspapers and TV anchors who should be breaking this story and mercilessly hammering on it week after week? They are in harness.<\/p>\n Thank you, Dr. Frances.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a little trip back in time and review how one psychiatric drug, Prozac, escaped a bitter fate, by hook and by crook. It\u2019s an instructive case.<\/p>\n Prozac, in fact, endured a rocky road in the press for a while. Stories on it rarely appear now. The major media have backed off. But on February 7th, 1991, Amy Marcus\u2019 Wall Street Journal article on the drug carried the headline, \u201cMurder Trials Introduce Prozac Defense.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n She wrote, \u201cA spate of murder trials in which defendants claim they became violent when they took the antidepressant Prozac are imposing new problems for the drug\u2019s maker, Eli Lilly and Co.\u201d<\/p>\n Also on February 7, 1991, the New York Times ran a Prozac piece headlined,\u201cSuicidal Behavior Tied Again to Drug: Does Antidepressant Prompt Violence?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry<\/em>, Dr. Breggin mentions that the Donahue show (Feb. 28, 1991) \u201cput together a group of individuals who had become compulsively self-destructive and murderous after taking Prozac and the clamorous telephone and audience response confirmed the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n A shocking review-study published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases (1996, v.184, no.2), written by Rhoda L. Fisher and Seymour Fisher, called \u201cAntidepressants for Children,\u201d<\/em> concludes:<\/p>\n \u201cDespite unanimous literature of double-blind studies indicating that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos in treating depression in children and adolescents, such medications continue to be in wide use.\u201d<\/p>\n An instructive article, \u201cProtecting Prozac,\u201d<\/em> by Michael Grinfeld, in the December 1998 California Lawyer, opens several doors. Grinfeld notes that \u201cin the past year nearly a dozen cases involving Prozac have disappeared from the court record.\u201d He was talking about law suits against the manufacturer, Eli Lilly, and he was saying that those cases had apparently been settled, without trial, in such a quiet and final way, with such strict confidentiality, that it is almost as if they never happened.<\/p>\n Grinfeld details a set of maneuvers involving attorney Paul Smith, who in the early 1990s became the lead plaintiffs\u2019 counsel in the famous Fentress lawsuit against Eli Lilly.<\/p>\n The plaintiffs made the accusation that Prozac had induced a man to commit murder. This was the first action involving Prozac to reach a trial and jury, so it would establish a major precedent for a large number of other pending suits against the manufacturer.<\/strong><\/p>\n The case: On September 14, 1989, Joseph Wesbecker, a former employee of Standard Gravure, in Louisville, Kentucky, walked into the workplace, with an AK-47 and a SIG Sauer pistol, killed eight people, wounded 12 others, and committed suicide. Family members of the victims subsequently sued Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, on the grounds that Wesbecker had been pushed over the edge into violence by the drug.<\/p>\n The trial: After what many people thought was a very weak attack on Lilly by plaintiffs\u2019 lawyer Smith, the jury came back in five hours with an easy verdict favoring Lilly and Prozac.<\/p>\n Grinfeld writes, \u201cLilly\u2019s defense attorneys predicted the verdict would be the death knell for [anti-]Prozac litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n But that wasn\u2019t the end of the Fentress case. \u201cRumors began to circulate that [the plaintiffs\u2019 attorney] Smith had made several [prior] oral agreements with Lilly concerning the evidence that would be presented [in Fentress], the structure of a postverdict settlement, and the potential resolution of Smith\u2019s other [anti-Prozac] cases.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, the rumors declared: This plaintiff\u2019s lawyer, Smith, made a deal with Lilly to present a weak attack, to omit evidence damaging to Prozac, so that the jury would find Lilly innocent of all charges. In return, the case would be settled secretly, with Lilly paying out big monies to Smith\u2019s client. In this way, Lilly would avoid the exposure of a public settlement, and through the innocent verdict, would discourage other potential plaintiffs from suing it over Prozac.<\/p>\n The rumors congealed. The judge in the Fentress case, John Potter, asked lawyers on both sides if \u201cmoney had changed hands.\u201d He wanted to know if the fix was in. The lawyers said no money had been paid, \u201cwithout acknowledging that an agreement was in place.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge Potter didn\u2019t stop there. In April 1995, Grinfeld notes, \u201cIn court papers, Potter wrote that he was surprised that the plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys [Smith] hadn\u2019t introduced evidence that Lilly had been charged criminally for failing to report deaths from another of its drugs to the Food and Drug Administration. Smith had fought hard [during the Fentress trial] to convince Potter to admit that evidence, and then unaccountably withheld it.\u201d<\/p>\n In Judge Potter\u2019s motion, he alleged that \u201cLilly [in the Fentress case] sought to buy not just the verdict, but the court\u2019s judgment as well.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1996, the Kentucky Supreme Court issued an opinion: \u201c\u2026there was a serious lack of candor with the trial court [during Fentress] and there may have been deception, bad faith conduct, abuse of the judicial process or perhaps even fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n After the Supreme Court remanded the Fentress case back to the state attorney general\u2019s office, the whole matter dribbled away, and then resurfaced in a different form, in another venue. At the time of the California Lawyer article, a new action against Smith was unresolved. Eventually, Eli Lilly escaped punishment.<\/p>\n Based on the rigged Fentress case, Eli Lilly silenced many lawsuits based on Prozac inducing murder and suicide.<\/p>\n Quite a story.<\/p>\n And it all really starts with the institution of psychiatry inventing a whole branch of science that doesn\u2019t exist, thereby defining 300 mental disorders that don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a coda:<\/p>\n This one is big.<\/p>\n The so-called \u201cchemical-imbalance theory of mental illness is dead.<\/p>\n Dr. Ronald Pies, the editor-in-chief emeritus of the Psychiatric Times, laid the theory to rest in the July 11, 2011, issue of the Times with this staggering admission:<\/p>\n \u201cIn truth, the \u2018chemical imbalance\u2019 notion was always a kind of urban legend \u2014 never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Boom.<\/p>\n Dead.<\/p>\n However\u2026urban legend? No. For decades the whole basis of psychiatric drug research, drug prescription, and drug sales has been: \u201cwe\u2019re correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem was, researchers had never established a normal baseline for chemical balance. So they were shooting in the dark. Worse, they were faking a theory. Pretending they knew something when they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n In his 2011 piece in Psychiatric Times, Dr. Pies tries to cover his colleagues in the psychiatric profession with this fatuous remark:<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past 30 years, I don\u2019t believe I have ever heard a knowledgeable, well-trained psychiatrist make such a preposterous claim [about chemical imbalance in the brain], except perhaps to mock it\u2026the \u2018chemical imbalance\u2019 image has been vigorously promoted by some pharmaceutical companies, often to the detriment of our patients\u2019 understanding.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Absurd. First of all, many psychiatrists have explained and do explain to their patients that the drugs are there to correct a chemical imbalance.<\/p>\n And second, if all well-trained psychiatrists have known, all along, that the chemical-imbalance theory is a fraud\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2026then why on earth have they been prescribing tons of drugs to their patients\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n
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