They died medically abandoned. They were given drugs in lieu of individually appropriate diagnostics. No effort was made to ensure the patients were metabolically fit to tolerate the drug. Virtually no medicine was practiced on these patients. They were processed, not diagnosed. All were victims of an inappropriately truncated clinical path; in some way, victims of a a silent conspiracy to ration medical care and ignore the biochemical individuality of all patients who poorly conform to the allopathic model. That's my opinion.
Dump the drugs and abandon the patient. Save money. Save time. Get reimbursed. Next patient please. Welcome to Allopathic care and medical rationing: If it doesn't bother you it doesn't bother us and if it does, well, it doesn't bother anybody else, but I'll see you in two weeks if it still bothers you so we can give you something else so you won't come back.
In a land with the greatest surgical and trauma medicine in the history of man, with the greatest diagnostic tools and technology ever known to man, how could such an institutional cancer take hold and kill so many innocent and medically dependent patients?
I understand the anguish of someone who has lost a child and the almost overwhelming urge to seek explanations. However, for obvious reasons, you can't always expect them to be rational about the matter. The fact that someone is in pain does not lend any particular weight to their arguments, let alone make them correct. Argument from emotion is a fallacy.
When a coroner writes "SSRI-induced suicide" on a death certificate, then you will have my full attention.
In memory of my dear relative, who took his life nearly 60 years ago by swallowing rat poison which he put in his thermos jug and swallowed it on his way to work. Since his wife always made his lunch, the police assumed she poisoned him. But no such luck. He had a previous history of attempted suicides, one of which involved jumping off a bridge. Alas, just a broken leg. There weren’t any medications around in those days. So he made another willful conscious decision to keep his date with destiny.
Were he alive today, he undoubtedly would have been on medication and any completed suicide could very easily be blamed on the FDA, Drug Companies, Psychiatrists as well as Senator Obama, and the entire US Congress or even Ding Dongs.
His wife undoubtedly would have a memorial internet site with his photo and that of the nine-year old son/cousin he left fatherless and some statements about how rotten Congress is and the entire medical profession.
I have at no point asked that "pain" be the source of authority on cause and effect, but rather, experience.
Read these testimonials:
http://www.copesfoundation.com/testimonials.html
...then please come back and tell us that you still intend to hold out your "full attention" and emotional engagement for a coroner who can somehow see that the corpse on the table was pushed to suicide from an SSRI.
The only people who could possibly tell us that would be the people who knew, watched, and loved the human being in question, and could tell us when and how the suicidality began. These testimonials all share a timeline that is devastating to your argument--unless you have an exceptional tolerance for coincidence.
You say, "argument from emotion is a fallacy."
You can't be serious.
Life and knowledge are guided by emotion and instinct--unless we willfully numb ourselves, courting tragedy, which is far worse than "fallacy."
why shouldn't he be serious? Isn't this a serious subject? Just read the first testimonial. "This drug is not safe for anyone." That can't be true, because lots of people use the drug safely and are helped by it. The point is as willem wrote above, medical care can not begin and end with a prescription handed down without interest.
Unfortunately, this is anecdotal information. As many people pointed out in the previous threads, there are too many overlapping factors here. We need controlled experiments done. Advocating for that is fine, but throwing out weepy testimonials to try and shame people into panicking and sweeping an (at least sometimes) useful drug off the table of treatment options is just not a sound argument.
"I'm both a neurobiologist and a primatologist, and I've changed my mind about plenty of things in both of these realms. But the most fundamental change is one that transcends either of those disciplines — this was my realizing that the most interesting and important things in the life sciences are not going to be explained with sheer reductionism."
ROBERT SAPOLSKY
Neuroscientist, Stanford University, Author, A Primate's Memoir
Celia, there is a nearly impenetrable "cult of reductionism" which has risen to the status of secular religious practice in the modern sciences. The cult-think is at it's absolute virulent worse in human medicine. When you kill people for a living in the name of saving them, no lie becomes too big to tell; especially to themselves.
The attacks made on your offered 'anecdotalism' provides a perfect case in point. You are criticized politely for your inferior reasoning and emotional incontinence. The implication is you are a fool for succumbing to anecdotal examples and, as an unsophisticated lay person, cannot be taken seriously.
However, left unsaid, there are no data on the use of SSRIs in PPD patients. Empirically speaking, this is the great unknown.
Also left unsaid, the potential SSRI benefits to PPD patients are themselves wholly based upon supposition and anecdotalism of less rigor and specificity than offered by you.
I marvel at how easily the self-perpetuating lies flow from the lips of orthodoxy. The cult-think is so complete, they no longer know they are lying. They are certainly sincere; but let us not forget the role of sincerity in the great crimes of history; e.g., Hitler was sincere, and he was convinced he was doing the right thing. As was Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
Authoritarian medicine has no place in our society. Beware the totalitarians in the tower.
Yes, I am completely serious. Losing a child, however tragically, does not magically transform a parent into a medical doctor capable of correctly determining the child's cause of death.
Not to beat the dead "correlation is not causation" horse, but here we have people who are, in their grief, making a very similar error -- "my kid took SSRIs and committed suicide, therefore the SSRIs are at fault" -- presented as supposedly incriminating evidence against the medications.
These experiences are tragic, and that causes us to intuitively lend them more weight in an argument. My own experience with SSRIs was very positive, almost miraculously so, but sadly, people whose lives were saved by medicine lack grieving relatives to bring a gut-punch to the argument. Nobody grieves for people who didn't die. But in any sane analysis, they must count just as much.
Here's the thing of it, Celia. People who are put on SSRIs are usually already in distress. And people who are bent on committing suicide, sad to say, usually do it eventually. The fact that a person who was suicidal commits suicide while on these drugs is surely not a surprise?
People who are grieving have a tendency to want to blame someone or some thing, and these drugs provide a convenient scapegoat.
Not that I'm defending big drug companies here: they have abused the process before, and will no doubt do it again.
Here, I propose a simple study. IF these drugs cause suicide, then we should see some effect in society as a whole, because they have been widely prescribed. Since their use has increased widely, we should see some increase in the suicide rate, yes?
If they cause suicide, and if their use has increased, then the suicide rate should have increased.
I am not advocating cult-think or that SSRIs do not need to be examined. I don't think anyone is calling Celia stupid. Anecdotal information can be useful. In this case I would say that there are enough anecdotes to warrant a serious, scientific look into the issue. However, Celia is asking us to take the anecdotal information as scientific data, which it is not. I don't know anyone here (except maybe Vic) who is arguing for the medical orthodoxy. Most people seem to be saying: "yes, let's look into it." The only disagreement I have is that I think it's an open question that needs to be asked in a serious way, where Celia seems to think that the question is already answered by the signatories' statements.
The best peer-reviewed study on the subject of American deaths CAUSED by legal prescription drugs in the "correct" doses -- was published in JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association) in 1998. (See Lazarou, JAMA, 1998).
The major finding was that about 106,000 Americans each year are killed by prescription drugs - not as overdoses, but by taking the allegedly "correct" dose.
Let me re-emphasize -- these are drugs approved as "safe and effective" by the FDA, taken in the doses that all the genius scientific/medical experts say is "safe."
So, "Yes", of course, medicines help ease pain and suffering, but "Yes" a substantial portion kill people. That's life. Some people find this trade-off acceptable, some people don't. But denying that a significant downside exists in an over-medicated society is plain dumb.
Given this general picture, the particular charge of deaths caused by anti-depressants doesn't surprise me one bit.
I thank you warmly for your words or communion and understanding. I catch myself these days: Rather than reflexively start windmilling against the charge that, as you so marvelously phrased it, my reasoning is inferior and I am emotionally incontinent, I accept the spankings and consider them a small price to pay for the freedom I am accorded. All my life I have been condescended to, along these lines, and I have excellent anti-bodies. I don't actually care that much. Sterile arguments, lacking humanity, overly proud of a lack of empathic functioning.
I believe that superior, more complete and advanced knowledge comes through empathy and not through the shutting down of it.
So I resist too much fighting back because this "isn't about," any of us. It is not an intellectual debate. It is a crisis.
The people caught in this web--those mother and their babies--I care about them. They are life.
I am going to continue to post their stories, in their words, regularly, here.
3.1.2008 11:58pm
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
They died medically abandoned. They were given drugs in lieu of individually appropriate diagnostics. No effort was made to ensure the patients were metabolically fit to tolerate the drug. Virtually no medicine was practiced on these patients. They were processed, not diagnosed. All were victims of an inappropriately truncated clinical path; in some way, victims of a a silent conspiracy to ration medical care and ignore the biochemical individuality of all patients who poorly conform to the allopathic model. That's my opinion.
Dump the drugs and abandon the patient. Save money. Save time. Get reimbursed. Next patient please. Welcome to Allopathic care and medical rationing: If it doesn't bother you it doesn't bother us and if it does, well, it doesn't bother anybody else, but I'll see you in two weeks if it still bothers you so we can give you something else so you won't come back.
In a land with the greatest surgical and trauma medicine in the history of man, with the greatest diagnostic tools and technology ever known to man, how could such an institutional cancer take hold and kill so many innocent and medically dependent patients?
When a coroner writes "SSRI-induced suicide" on a death certificate, then you will have my full attention.
In memory of my dear relative, who took his life nearly 60 years ago by swallowing rat poison which he put in his thermos jug and swallowed it on his way to work. Since his wife always made his lunch, the police assumed she poisoned him. But no such luck. He had a previous history of attempted suicides, one of which involved jumping off a bridge. Alas, just a broken leg. There weren’t any medications around in those days. So he made another willful conscious decision to keep his date with destiny.
Were he alive today, he undoubtedly would have been on medication and any completed suicide could very easily be blamed on the FDA, Drug Companies, Psychiatrists as well as Senator Obama, and the entire US Congress or even Ding Dongs.
His wife undoubtedly would have a memorial internet site with his photo and that of the nine-year old son/cousin he left fatherless and some statements about how rotten Congress is and the entire medical profession.
A true story.
I have at no point asked that "pain" be the source of authority on cause and effect, but rather, experience.
Read these testimonials:
http://www.copesfoundation.com/testimonials.html
...then please come back and tell us that you still intend to hold out your "full attention" and emotional engagement for a coroner who can somehow see that the corpse on the table was pushed to suicide from an SSRI.
The only people who could possibly tell us that would be the people who knew, watched, and loved the human being in question, and could tell us when and how the suicidality began. These testimonials all share a timeline that is devastating to your argument--unless you have an exceptional tolerance for coincidence.
You say, "argument from emotion is a fallacy."
You can't be serious.
Life and knowledge are guided by emotion and instinct--unless we willfully numb ourselves, courting tragedy, which is far worse than "fallacy."
why shouldn't he be serious? Isn't this a serious subject? Just read the first testimonial. "This drug is not safe for anyone." That can't be true, because lots of people use the drug safely and are helped by it. The point is as willem wrote above, medical care can not begin and end with a prescription handed down without interest.
Unfortunately, this is anecdotal information. As many people pointed out in the previous threads, there are too many overlapping factors here. We need controlled experiments done. Advocating for that is fine, but throwing out weepy testimonials to try and shame people into panicking and sweeping an (at least sometimes) useful drug off the table of treatment options is just not a sound argument.
Celia, there is a nearly impenetrable "cult of reductionism" which has risen to the status of secular religious practice in the modern sciences. The cult-think is at it's absolute virulent worse in human medicine. When you kill people for a living in the name of saving them, no lie becomes too big to tell; especially to themselves.
The attacks made on your offered 'anecdotalism' provides a perfect case in point. You are criticized politely for your inferior reasoning and emotional incontinence. The implication is you are a fool for succumbing to anecdotal examples and, as an unsophisticated lay person, cannot be taken seriously.
However, left unsaid, there are no data on the use of SSRIs in PPD patients. Empirically speaking, this is the great unknown.
Also left unsaid, the potential SSRI benefits to PPD patients are themselves wholly based upon supposition and anecdotalism of less rigor and specificity than offered by you.
I marvel at how easily the self-perpetuating lies flow from the lips of orthodoxy. The cult-think is so complete, they no longer know they are lying. They are certainly sincere; but let us not forget the role of sincerity in the great crimes of history; e.g., Hitler was sincere, and he was convinced he was doing the right thing. As was Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
Authoritarian medicine has no place in our society. Beware the totalitarians in the tower.
Not to beat the dead "correlation is not causation" horse, but here we have people who are, in their grief, making a very similar error -- "my kid took SSRIs and committed suicide, therefore the SSRIs are at fault" -- presented as supposedly incriminating evidence against the medications.
These experiences are tragic, and that causes us to intuitively lend them more weight in an argument. My own experience with SSRIs was very positive, almost miraculously so, but sadly, people whose lives were saved by medicine lack grieving relatives to bring a gut-punch to the argument. Nobody grieves for people who didn't die. But in any sane analysis, they must count just as much.
People who are grieving have a tendency to want to blame someone or some thing, and these drugs provide a convenient scapegoat.
Not that I'm defending big drug companies here: they have abused the process before, and will no doubt do it again.
Here, I propose a simple study. IF these drugs cause suicide, then we should see some effect in society as a whole, because they have been widely prescribed. Since their use has increased widely, we should see some increase in the suicide rate, yes?
If they cause suicide, and if their use has increased, then the suicide rate should have increased.
I am not advocating cult-think or that SSRIs do not need to be examined. I don't think anyone is calling Celia stupid. Anecdotal information can be useful. In this case I would say that there are enough anecdotes to warrant a serious, scientific look into the issue. However, Celia is asking us to take the anecdotal information as scientific data, which it is not. I don't know anyone here (except maybe Vic) who is arguing for the medical orthodoxy. Most people seem to be saying: "yes, let's look into it." The only disagreement I have is that I think it's an open question that needs to be asked in a serious way, where Celia seems to think that the question is already answered by the signatories' statements.
The major finding was that about 106,000 Americans each year are killed by prescription drugs - not as overdoses, but by taking the allegedly "correct" dose.
Let me re-emphasize -- these are drugs approved as "safe and effective" by the FDA, taken in the doses that all the genius scientific/medical experts say is "safe."
So, "Yes", of course, medicines help ease pain and suffering, but "Yes" a substantial portion kill people. That's life. Some people find this trade-off acceptable, some people don't. But denying that a significant downside exists in an over-medicated society is plain dumb.
Given this general picture, the particular charge of deaths caused by anti-depressants doesn't surprise me one bit.
HankB
I thank you warmly for your words or communion and understanding. I catch myself these days: Rather than reflexively start windmilling against the charge that, as you so marvelously phrased it, my reasoning is inferior and I am emotionally incontinent, I accept the spankings and consider them a small price to pay for the freedom I am accorded. All my life I have been condescended to, along these lines, and I have excellent anti-bodies. I don't actually care that much. Sterile arguments, lacking humanity, overly proud of a lack of empathic functioning.
I believe that superior, more complete and advanced knowledge comes through empathy and not through the shutting down of it.
So I resist too much fighting back because this "isn't about," any of us. It is not an intellectual debate. It is a crisis.
The people caught in this web--those mother and their babies--I care about them. They are life.
I am going to continue to post their stories, in their words, regularly, here.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.