Here we go again, the appeal to authority one of the oldest rhetorical fallacies in the book. Trust the science, the science is settled when actually it's anything but settled. As Prof. Moncreiff and her colleagues have demonstrated there is no scientific basis for the seratonin chemical imbalance theory. The efficacy of the SSRIs has been questioned ever since they came on the market and the STAR*D study was supposed to settle the matter but it did not. On the contrary the researchers violated all of the standard research protocols and thus came up with a bogus 70% rate of efficacy. When the data was reanalyzed bt another group of researchers led by psychologist Ed Pigott they. came up with an effectiveness rate of only 3% and yet as has been reported by the Website Mad in America the New York times continues to publish the 70% rate even when alerted to the results of the Pigott group. And yet patients are never informed of this controversy nor of the potential harms of this family of drugs including the difficulty of withdrawal. It's all about the deep pockets of Big Pharma with their lobbyists. And who do the legislators think they are? They can question RFK Jr.'s authority but where does their authority come from? Just last week I attended a talk in Philadelphia by Laura Delano who has just published a memoire called Unshrunk which narrates, among other things, her difficulty stopping SSRIs. It was all very moving and perhaps such books will awaken the public to the real questions surrounding these medications instead of listening to the braying of misguided and uninformed and possibly bought and paid for legislators.
Agreed! When I was talking with her I got the impression that the two of you have been in contact. I am hoping to reconnect with her because I'm writing a book on a similar topic. During the Q and A after her talk in Philadelphia I had the opportunity to make a long comment about my work. I'm also finishing off an article about how organized psychiatry was the lynchpin of the child sex-change epidemic.
Not exactly. The NIMH researchers first discarded a bunch that did not meet the threshold for being depressed, they used a different and weaker instrument for the after than the before testing, then in the end they added the ones that hadn’t been treated as successes and that’s how they got the high success rate. In other words junk science.
Knowing the answer before even beginning to check (which I did), all senators who co-signed that letter are Democrat - just pure coincidence there of course.
Psychological suffering, life’s anxieties, dissatisfaction, setbacks, and lack of meaning are not histological diseases, and the concept of “disease” or human suffering as a “chemical imbalance” is one of the greatest lies in medicine. It is the violent medicalization of life. Those who claim this reveal a very poor understanding of mental health, oh, and of scientific evidence
Robert Kennedy Jr., is actually the one person who is genuinely interested in making America healthy again, and by definition thereafter, the rest of the West World.
What the vast majority of the public do not realise, is that the aim of Big Pharma is NOT to improve people's health or to make the public healthy again.
The aim of Big Pharma is exactly the opposite. Their aim is to make the public constantly unhealthy, so that they can advocate the persistent use of their drugs, to purportedly improve the health of the patient. When in fact, it is the medication that is making the patient more unhealthy in the first place.
More power to the elbow of RKJ.
What the first response to any senator or congressman questioning Robert Kennedy should be is, "How much are you being paid by BigPharma to take the stance that you are taking?"
The conflict of interest of these senators should be made transparent and then the integrity of their "concerns" could be clearly understood by the public at large.
This debate should be placed in context. What proportion of American adults take medication that sits in one of the groups that this committee describe?
SSRI 10 - 13%
Mood stabilizers and antipsychotics 1%
Stimulants 1.5%
Benzodiazepines 1.4%
Opioids 2.6%
Probably more than 15% of American adults regularly take at least one of these drugs. I find it very surprising that some of their representatives defend this situation.
Recent reports estimate this proportion has recently increased to over 20%
Why would anyone prescribe medication to someone who is depressed if it would increase the risk of suicidal ideation? Prescribed by not only psychiatrists but primary care physicians. The relationship between the FDA, Big Pharma, and the American Psychiatric Association bears looking into.
Here we go again, the appeal to authority one of the oldest rhetorical fallacies in the book. Trust the science, the science is settled when actually it's anything but settled. As Prof. Moncreiff and her colleagues have demonstrated there is no scientific basis for the seratonin chemical imbalance theory. The efficacy of the SSRIs has been questioned ever since they came on the market and the STAR*D study was supposed to settle the matter but it did not. On the contrary the researchers violated all of the standard research protocols and thus came up with a bogus 70% rate of efficacy. When the data was reanalyzed bt another group of researchers led by psychologist Ed Pigott they. came up with an effectiveness rate of only 3% and yet as has been reported by the Website Mad in America the New York times continues to publish the 70% rate even when alerted to the results of the Pigott group. And yet patients are never informed of this controversy nor of the potential harms of this family of drugs including the difficulty of withdrawal. It's all about the deep pockets of Big Pharma with their lobbyists. And who do the legislators think they are? They can question RFK Jr.'s authority but where does their authority come from? Just last week I attended a talk in Philadelphia by Laura Delano who has just published a memoire called Unshrunk which narrates, among other things, her difficulty stopping SSRIs. It was all very moving and perhaps such books will awaken the public to the real questions surrounding these medications instead of listening to the braying of misguided and uninformed and possibly bought and paid for legislators.
Reading Unshrunk at the moment. Laura is a wonderful human. 🙌
Agreed! When I was talking with her I got the impression that the two of you have been in contact. I am hoping to reconnect with her because I'm writing a book on a similar topic. During the Q and A after her talk in Philadelphia I had the opportunity to make a long comment about my work. I'm also finishing off an article about how organized psychiatry was the lynchpin of the child sex-change epidemic.
Yes, Laura and I met in Connecticut last year. 🙏
Was that 70% vs 3% the classic relative risk over the absolute risk result?
If you want to pump your puny results, always go with relative🤣
Not exactly. The NIMH researchers first discarded a bunch that did not meet the threshold for being depressed, they used a different and weaker instrument for the after than the before testing, then in the end they added the ones that hadn’t been treated as successes and that’s how they got the high success rate. In other words junk science.
A hah - thanks for that👍
"That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.” – Jacob Bronowski
RFK has a huge task and a well rehearsed lobby to fight his every move.
Knowing the answer before even beginning to check (which I did), all senators who co-signed that letter are Democrat - just pure coincidence there of course.
Psychological suffering, life’s anxieties, dissatisfaction, setbacks, and lack of meaning are not histological diseases, and the concept of “disease” or human suffering as a “chemical imbalance” is one of the greatest lies in medicine. It is the violent medicalization of life. Those who claim this reveal a very poor understanding of mental health, oh, and of scientific evidence
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763415000287
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD013674.pub2/full
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2045125320970325
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wps.20243
Interesting article as usual, and always something valuable in the comments as well. Never had heard about the 70% vs 3%, but does not surprise me.
Robert Kennedy Jr., is actually the one person who is genuinely interested in making America healthy again, and by definition thereafter, the rest of the West World.
What the vast majority of the public do not realise, is that the aim of Big Pharma is NOT to improve people's health or to make the public healthy again.
The aim of Big Pharma is exactly the opposite. Their aim is to make the public constantly unhealthy, so that they can advocate the persistent use of their drugs, to purportedly improve the health of the patient. When in fact, it is the medication that is making the patient more unhealthy in the first place.
More power to the elbow of RKJ.
What the first response to any senator or congressman questioning Robert Kennedy should be is, "How much are you being paid by BigPharma to take the stance that you are taking?"
The conflict of interest of these senators should be made transparent and then the integrity of their "concerns" could be clearly understood by the public at large.
This debate should be placed in context. What proportion of American adults take medication that sits in one of the groups that this committee describe?
SSRI 10 - 13%
Mood stabilizers and antipsychotics 1%
Stimulants 1.5%
Benzodiazepines 1.4%
Opioids 2.6%
Probably more than 15% of American adults regularly take at least one of these drugs. I find it very surprising that some of their representatives defend this situation.
Recent reports estimate this proportion has recently increased to over 20%
(Numbers from ChatGPT)
https://time.com/6308096/therapy-mental-health-worse-us/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Why would anyone prescribe medication to someone who is depressed if it would increase the risk of suicidal ideation? Prescribed by not only psychiatrists but primary care physicians. The relationship between the FDA, Big Pharma, and the American Psychiatric Association bears looking into.