-Caveat Lector-
>From NewsMax.CoM
> Are Psychiatric Drugs Driving Our Kids to Kill? Ken HamblinJuly
> 1, 1999
>
> Like most other Americans, I've spent the last couple of months
> trying to make sense of all the howling about the dire influence
> of violence on television, savagery in movies and mayhem in video
> games on our children today.
>
> Recently, however, I've come to wonder why the same crisismongers
> kicking up the fuss over these topics aren't asking hard
> questions about the so-called mental-health medication
> increasingly being dispensed to our kids.
>
> T.J. Solomon, the high-school shooter in Conyers, Ga., was
> reportedly taking the drug Ritalin. Eric Harris, the ringleader
> of the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Col., had
> been prescribed the drug Luvox. And Kip Kinkel, the student in
> Springfield, Ore., who killed his parents and then went on a
> shooting rampage at his high school, was taking the psychiatric
> drugs Prozac and Ritalin.
>
> There were many other possible factors in their cases, of course,
> but I couldn't help wondering if these drugs might have had some
> influence on their actions.
>
> In an effort to educate myself, I invited Ann B. Tracy, author of
> Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? (Cassia Publications, 1999), to
> appear on my syndicated talk-radio show. Her book is the result
> of five years of research into the booming
> mental-health-medication industry and the pharmaceutical
> companies whose coffers it so plentifully fills.
>
> My conversation with Tracy was indeed an eye opener. She directed
> me to a 1997 letter written to Time magazine by Candace B. Pert,
> a research professor at Washington's Georgetown University
> Medical Center.
>
> "I am alarmed at the monster that Johns Hopkins neuroscientist
> Solomon Snyder and I created when we discovered the simple
> binding assay for drug receptors 25 years ago," Pert wrote.
> "Prozac and other antidepressant serotonin-receptor-active
> compounds may also cause cardiovascular problems in some
> susceptible people after long-term use, which has become common
> practice despite the lack of safety studies.
>
> "The public is being misinformed about the precision of these
> selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors when the medical
> profession oversimplifies their action in the brain ..."
>
> Intrigued, I decided to investigate further. A week later I
> talked with Dr. Peter R. Breggin, a psychiatrist who is the
> author of Talking Back to Ritalin (Common Courage Press, 1998)
> and the president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights
> International. He shared his concern about the number of children
> on psychiatric drugs.
>
> "Several million children are being treated with Ritalin and
> other stimulants on the grounds that they have attention
> deficit-hyperactivity disorder and suffer from inattention,
> hyperactivity or impulsivity," Breggin says in his book. "The
> stimulants include: Ritalin (methylphenidate), Dexedrine and
> DextroStat (dextroamphetamine or d-amphetamine), Adderall
> (d-amphetamine and amphetamine mixture), Desoxyn and Gradumet
> (methamphetamine), and Cylert (pemoline)."
>
> "Except for Cylert," Breggin notes, "all of these drugs have
> nearly identical effects and side effects ... Ritalin and
> amphetamine frequently cause the very same problems they are
> supposed to treat _ inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. A
> large percentage of children become robotic, lethargic, depressed
> or withdrawn on stimulants.
>
> "Withdrawal from Ritalin can cause emotional suffering, including
> depression, exhaustion and suicide," he adds. "This can make
> children seem psychiatrically disturbed and lead mistakenly to
> increased doses of medication."
>
> Breggin points out that today there are more than 909,000
> children and adolescents between the ages of 6 and 18 receiving
> psychiatric antidepressant drugs in the United States alone.
>
> As for Luvox, the antidepressant Eric Harris was taking,
> Breggin's report is intriguing _ and frightening.
>
> "According to the manufacturer, Solvay, four percent of children
> and youth taking Luvox developed mania during short-term clinical
> trials," he says. "Mania is a psychosis which can produce
> bizarre, grandiose, highly elaborated destructive plans,
> including mass murder ..."
>
> It seems hardly irrational to wonder if there was a link between
> these designer drugs and the violent, antisocial actions of the
> children taking them.
>
> Did Luvox play a substantial role in the massacre at Columbine
> High School? Was Kinkel at least in part motivated to kill his
> parents and shoot up his school because he was on Prozac? Could
> his Ritalin prescription have been a significant factor in T.J.
> Solomon's rampage at his high school?
>
> I'm no doctor, but these coincidences strike me as too glaring
> for the medical community to ignore.
>
> It's no endorsement to say that we can understand the antisocial
> rationale that drives one kid in the ghetto or the barrio to
> murder another over turf conflicts, macho aggression or drug
> disputes. It's irrational, but at least it's comprehensible.
>
> But many of us are hard-pressed to understand how violent video
> games, violent movies or firearms _ all of which have long been
> available to our children in one form or another _ can suddenly
> be responsible for so many white-bread suburban and country kids
> lashing out and massacring their parents and schoolmates.
>
> But when a surprising number of these students turn out to have
> been administered psychiatric drugs with little regard for their
> known or unknown side effects ... well, it doesn't prove
> anything, but it certainly makes me want to learn more.
>
> c.1999 Ken Hamblin
>
> Ken Hamblin is the author of “Pick a Better Country.” He writes a
> column for the Denver Post and has been a radio talk-show host
> for 15 years. His program is syndicated by American View Inc.,
> and currently is carried by 120 stations across the country.
<<Now: Any bets the cities or the other forms of 'government'
go after the drug companies with the same zeal they seem to
demonstrate in relation to the gun makers? A<>E<>R >>
A<>E<>R
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