tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70742862011-06-18T18:02:01.395-07:00Warning: Do not stop taking psychoactive drugs without consulting your doctor.Anomadicnoreply@blogger.comBlogger131100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1105742820148633592005-01-14T14:35:00.000-08:002005-01-14T14:47:14.006-08:00

I haven't blogged for a while, and much has changed in my absense. -The FDA has finally recognized the suicide dangers that SSRI's pose and now requires that all SSRI's recieve it highest "black-box" warning. As a result all direct to consumer advertising is now banned. -The impotence of the FDA has been exposed by the recall of the pain medication Vioxx, which is now linked to thousands of

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1091848520048072972004-08-06T20:01:00.000-07:002004-08-06T20:15:20.046-07:00

Of all the affairs of the nation, one would think that public health should be divorced from the distorting interference of politics. Alas, this is not the case as former Editor in Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine makes clear in her recent article "The Truth About the Drug Companies". The article focuses more on the nasty bussiness practices which pharmaceutical companies engage,

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1091835918928656952004-08-06T16:02:00.000-07:002004-08-06T16:57:10.963-07:00

Many advocates for psychopharmocological solutions to mental health problems point to numerous studies that purport the safety of the drugs. It is true that many studies exist that claim that main psychopharmaceutical drugs used today are safe. But there are three glaring problems with accepting the outcome of these studies as fact. The first, is that most of these studies are paid for by the

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1091829449111546212004-08-06T14:24:00.000-07:002004-08-06T14:57:29.110-07:00

A cover article in the April 2004 edition of Scientific American explains how "science has missed half the brain." Researchers have long known that the brain contains two types of cells, neurons and glia. In the brain gilal cells outnumber nerve cells 9 to 1, however scientists have always held them to be relatively insignificant. They theorized that they were realitivly inactive

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1088620137701659322004-06-30T11:24:00.000-07:002004-06-30T11:30:35.200-07:00

I haven't really been able to keep this blog updated all that often, and I'm pretty sure that few people have ever seen it. If you do happen to come accross this page in your web journeys, I would ask you to go to a much better blog on this subject Pseudoscience in Psych Blog.

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1085253978866346602004-05-22T12:17:00.000-07:002004-08-07T08:10:12.253-07:00

The pharmaceutical industry, quite naturally, puts profit over people. It therefore falls to the United States' Food and Drug Administration (and ultimately ourselves) to watch out for dangerous medicines. Is the FDA up to the task? Unfortunately not, according to a PBS Frontline documentary that can be watched here. The FDA is apparently overworked, and in the pocket of the big pharmaceuticals.

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1085251133184422232004-05-22T11:21:00.000-07:002004-05-22T11:41:46.400-07:00

Ever wonder how emotions or charecterisics about ouselves suddenly became diseases? (Such as attentiveness, or lack thereof)? Most likely such a medicalization our charecteristics benefited some drug company that happened to have stumbled upon the cure. An extreme case in point is Forest Laboratories, whose lagging sales of its Anti-Depressant drug Lexapro caused it to attempt to broaden the

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1085247257497858352004-05-22T09:50:00.000-07:002004-05-22T11:18:10.386-07:00

Why is it, one may ask, that the dangers of such drugs seem to be lost upon the doctors who prescribe them? Excluding the truly evil psychiatrists, of which there must be some, one is still left with a large number of honest doctors practicing truly dangerous, harmful medicine. How is this so? Well, the answer lies in the hidden power the pharmaceutical industry has over doctors. Even if a

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1085236875797375732004-05-22T07:33:00.000-07:002004-08-06T16:00:56.080-07:00

The SSRI class of anti-depressants hit the market in 1988 with the Eli Lilly's notorious Prozac(fluoxetine). The drug was actually created in the 1970's but could not reach the market for more than a decade because of side effect problems, some of which were hidden from the FDA. As it hit the market it was regarded as a miracle drug for the treatment of depression, and in the following decade

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1085236375796181632004-05-22T07:26:00.000-07:002004-05-22T12:34:06.843-07:00

Antidepressants are the third largest prescription drug market in the US. Antipsychotics are the sixth. Together, drugs made to treat mental problems are the largest class of drugs in the United States. And they are also the fastet growing.A slew of corporations are racing to take advantage of the mad market. A psychiatric patient may be forgen for assuming that the treatment he/she is on was

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1085232635360044842004-05-22T06:13:00.000-07:002004-05-22T09:16:24.863-07:00

The drugs known as the Anti-Psychotics( aka neuroleptics, major tranquilizers) are perhaps the most dangerous drugs ever used in psychiatry. These drugs were discovered accidentally in the 1950's from their use in the dye industry. The first used was Chlorpromazine, and soon a whole new class followed. They were first marketed for use in schizophrenia, and sales were very brisk as mental

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1085231469034930532004-05-22T05:56:00.000-07:002004-05-22T11:06:20.760-07:00

For those of you who would like a little science to back up my concern for the psyco-pharmaceutical treatments that are now being used in psychiatry today, I would like to turn your attention to one Elliot Valenstein and his book Blaming the Brain: The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health. Mr. Valenstien is a neuroscientist from the University of Michigan. His book explores the hard science of the

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7074286.post-1085229929467955152004-05-22T05:28:00.000-07:002004-08-06T14:24:03.493-07:00

I believe in science. I am not a creationist, nor a loner who distrusts all of western civilization. Science has its uses, but it also has its limits. Science can create atomic energy, send a man to the moon, cure countless diseases, but it cannot (at least not yet) make us all blissfully happy. Just as every achievement of science was achieved by trial and error, so too is the achievement of

Anomadicnoreply@blogger.com0