This article was recently prepared for Forbes Magazine and apparently
will not run. This is no surprise. The industry is clearly
attempting to outrun the lawsuits while redirecting rage to the NRA
as pointed out here.
At best the science will be challenged and the challenge will lose in
front of the courts just as tobacco lost. What is going to have to
happen now is for defense lawyers to take the science into court to
defend their mass murderer as a deliberate victim of clearly
dangerous drugs. Then the publicity bandwagon will start to counter
the gross abuse now obviously underway.
It will likely turn out that some of these drugs are actually safe
and remain highly useful. Yet some are dangerous as can be. Doctors
need to know which are which and to also have a real handle on known
side effects in order to judge the patient's susceptibility.
The human mind is quite able to toss up unhealthy impulses in all of
us. The healthy disciplined mind is quite able to wash those away as
simply annoying. Drugs interfering with all that is a really bad
idea as we are obviously discovering.
Perhaps we need a class action suit of all victims of an act of
violence associated with these drugs launched. It would certainly
allow data to be assembled and the true scope of the problem to
emerge and be counted.
Way more important. Anyone using these drugs and their entire
household should automatically be fully disarmed forthwith as part of
any gun management legislation. It is clearly necessary. We do not
understand enough to guarantee safety.
Psychiatric Drugs,
Not A Lack Of Gun Control, Are The Common Denominator In
Murderous Violence
JANUARY 14, 2013 ·
11:25
Lawrence Hunter,
Contributor Forbes.com
1/14/2013 @ 8:00AM
In 2000, New York
legislators recognized the ubiquitous and unambiguous connection
between violence, especially gun violence and mass murder, and the
widespread prescribed use of psychiatric drugs. Senate Bill 7035 was
introduced in the New York State Senate that year requiring police
agencies to report to the Department of Criminal Justice Services
(DCJS) on certain crimes and suicides committed by a person who is
using psychiatric drugs, including assault, homicide, sex offenses,
robbery offenses, firearms and other dangerous weapons offenses,
kidnapping and arson. The preamble to the bill read, in part:
There is a large body
of scientific research establishing a connection between violence and
suicide and the use of psychotropic drugs in some cases. This
research, which has been published in peer reviewed publications such
as the American Journal of Psychiatry, The Journal of the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and The Journal of
Forensic Science, has shown, among other things, that: certain
drugs can induce mania (a psychosis which can produce bizarre,
grandiose and highly elaborated destructive plans, including mass
murder);. . .and certain drugs can produce an acute psychotic
reaction in an individual not previously psychotic.
The bill died in
committee. Since that time, there have been at least 12 additional
high-profile mass murders linked to the use of psychiatric drugs,
about one a year. And, in virtually every mass school shooting during
the past 15 years, the shooter has been on or in withdrawal from
psychiatric drugs. Here is a partial list of 24 such horrific events
that occurred since 1998, not including the Virginia Tech shootings
and the recent Sandy Hook shootings where the authorities continue to
suppress information about whether and to what extent the shooters
were on or in withdrawal from a psychiatric drug.
These examples are not
unique. According to the Citizens Commission On Human Rights
International (CCHR), between 2004 and 2011, there were 12,755
reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system of psychiatric drugs
causing violent side effects including: 1,231 cases of homicidal
ideation/homicide, 2,795 cases of mania and 7,250 cases of
aggression. Since the FDA admits that only one to ten percent of
all side effects are ever reported to it, the actual occurrence of
violent side effects from psychiatric drugs is certainly nine or ten
times higher than the official data suggest.
Yet, federal and state
governments continue to ignore the connection between psychiatric
drugs and murderous violence, preferring instead to exploit these
tragedies in an oppressive and unconstitutional power grab to snatch
guns away from innocent, law-abiding people who are guaranteed by the
U.S. Constitution the right to own and bear arms to deter government
tyranny and to use firearms in self defense against any miscreant who
would do them harm. Therefore, it is pharmaceutical makers, not
law-abiding gun owners or gun manufacturers, who should be held to
account for the series of “lone-wolf,” mass shootings that have
occurred since the widespread use of psychiatric drugs began.
Although it is
doubtful any single variable can explain what causes someone to
commit such unspeakable acts as we saw recently at Sandy Hook, one
common denominator surfaces time and time again, in hundreds and
hundreds of cases where a “lone wolf” commits violence, murder
and mayhem for apparently no reason: Prescribed psychiatric drugs,
which are well documented to induce mania, psychosis, violence,
suicide and murder, including mass murder for no apparent reason by
otherwise non-psychotic people.
Given the mass of
supporting data linking psychiatric drug use/withdrawal and violence,
and given the fact it has been ignored studiously by the U.S.
Congress and federal agencies, it is well past time that Congress and
state legislatures and government agencies at all levels formally
investigate the well established link between prescribed use of
psychiatric drugs, school shootings and similar acts of senseless
violence.
This video reveals
the indisputable connection between psychiatric drugs and violence,
especially young “lone-wolf” shooters in gun massacres.
As psychiatrist Peter
Breggin observes in the video:
“One of the
things in the past that we’ve known about depression is that it
very, very rarely leads to violence. It’s only been since the
advent of these new SSRI drugs that we’ve had murderers even mass
murders taking these antidepressant drugs.”
Instead of
intimidating the NRA into negotiating away Americans’ Second
Amendment rights through its seat at the table in Washington, the
government should be demanding answers and explanations from PhRMA
and the pharmaceutical companies.
Instead of extorting
NRA chairman Dave Keene and NRA president Wayne LaPierre into
participating with the gun snatchers’ efforts to nullify the Second
Amendment in the name of reducing gun violence, why aren’t the
White House and Congress putting former Business Roundtable President
and current head of PhRMA, John Castellani, along with the presidents
of the pharmaceutical companies on the hot seat?
Why isn’t Castellani
sitting in on White House and congressional meetings about the
connection between his products and mass shootings instead of Keene
and LaPierre of the NRA?
Why isn’t there a
White House Task Force on the connection between psychiatric drugs
and violence, suicide and murder, both gun related and otherwise?
Why aren’t there
congressional hearings on the connection between violence and
psychiatric drugs?
Why aren’t there
bills being introduced in Congress and state legislatures to tighten
down on the indiscriminate, unmonitored use of these killer drugs?
Why is the government
still suppressing information about the shooters’ psychiatric drug
use at Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech?
Why is the government
turning America into a police state in the name of protecting us
against nonexistent “reefer madness” while it turns a blind eye
to the real, deadly med madness created by psychiatric drugs and the
uncontrollable violent rages they produce in some people?
Could it be there is a
quiet conspiracy afoot among pharmaceutical companies, the government
and the gun grabbers to make Mr. and Mrs. Gun Owner of America the
patsies for the violence and to blame lone-wolf violence on guns
rather than psychiatric drugs?
Could it be that
power-hungry politicians and gun snatchers are out to exploit rare
tragedies such as Sandy Hook and use the blood of innocent children
to scare America into giving up its constitutional rights to own and
bear arms and use them as a deterrent against tyranny?
Could it be that big
pharma is today’s big tobacco?
Could it be there is
an intentional effort underway in the centers of power in Washington,
DC to hide the truth from the American people about the strong
connection between psychiatric drugs and violence and to protect the
pharmaceutical companies from civil and criminal charges for their
responsibility in these heinous crimes?
Could that be the
explanation for why there continue to be lawsuits against gun
manufacturers — not for defects in their products but rather for
the misuse of their products by drug-addled individuals — and why
there are few lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies for the
obvious flaws in their products, which are producing violence and
mayhem?
Could it be the Gun
Control movement is simply a blind; just an effort by the triple
alliance of left-fascists, big-government politicians and big-pharma
prescription-drug dealers to dose and oppress the American people in
the name of public safety, “officer safety” and social order?
The gun snatchers such
as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg all shamefully exploit the bloody murder
of children as a pretext to nullify the Second Amendment and short
arm the American public with their so-called “assault-weapons”
ban and ammunition/clip restrictions. The fact is, the kinds of guns
used by mass shooters are far less relevant than the kinds of drugs
they were prescribed.
Could that be the
explanation for why there continue to be lawsuits against gun
manufacturers — not for defects in their products but rather for
the misuse of their products by drug-addled individuals — and why
there are few lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies for the
obvious flaws in their products, which are producing violence and
mayhem?
Could it be the Gun
Control movement is simply a blind; just an effort by the triple
alliance of left-fascists, big-government politicians and big-pharma
prescription-drug dealers to dose and oppress the American people in
the name of public safety, “officer safety” and social order?
The gun snatchers such
as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg all shamefully exploit the bloody murder
of children as a pretext to nullify the Second Amendment and short
arm the American public with their so-called “assault-weapons”
ban and ammunition/clip restrictions. The fact is, the kinds of guns
used by mass shooters are far less relevant than the kinds of drugs
they were prescribed.
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