Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 59

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Sorel’s chief criticism of Laplace’s science is easily comprehended: its difficulty is its source in an “expressive support” which is terribly misleading. Laplace’s principal model is the solar system. “Natural nature” is generally less predictable than artificial nature, but the one great exception to this rule, according to Sorel, is astronomy, in which the positions of phenomena are as predictable as they are in most areas of “artificial nature.” In using the solar system as its expressive support, Laplacean science, in Sorel’s view, prevented many scholars from distinguishing between artificial and natural nature. The result of this unfortunate mistake in natural science was the perpetuation of the idea of unified science, an error which created a series of false assumptions about the nature of social science. By ignoring what would later become Sorel’s distinction between natural and artificial nature, by failing to distinguish between areas of science in which men actively intervene and those in which they do not, Laplace invited a host of future utopians to develop sciences of society that “are constructed in the same way as philosophical explanations of matter.” In using his planetary model, Laplace “reconstructs the world and makes a utopia having no other reason that its own logic.” In short, like the philosophers of matter, the utopians confuse the expressive support with reality.
Sorel found an example of such utopian thinking in the liberal theories of the social contract, originally hypothesised as an expressive support or model for a view or views of human nature, but taking on in later theories, a dimension of reality.

To Sorel, utopias, like Laplacean science, consist of an ensemble “of quite clear and distinct propositions, very well connected by logic, capable of being applied with fairly high accuracy.“ Like Laplace, the utopian attempts to eliminate chance from the realm of human affairs. That is why eighteenth-century utopians so admired Chinese despotism:

"Everything was reduced to prefigured formulas; it was decided that knowledge of the world could not surpass a certain moment of perfectly determined thought….All attempts at emancipation were stifled in the name of given principles; idealism was adapted in an absolute way to a routine, and has given to it the aspect of a philosophy which has attained perfect maturity.”

Sorel implies that the perfectly ordered, old-fashioned science of Laplace’s time is almost analogous to an independently ordered mental picture. Despite the strictures of the Newtonian tradition against Descartes, there is for Sorel an almost Cartesian tendency in early-nineteenth-century science to project one’s own mentality onto the physical world; only in our mind, in the realm of abstractions, are we “used never to pose questions about the real world, but about the world that is truly subjective, more perfect and truer (because it conforms more to the laws of the mind). This world–which is sometimes called metaphysics–is the only one which lends itself to the movements of the intelligence. Here, all is logical."
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from John L. Stanley's 'The Sociology of Virtue: Political and Social Theories of Georges Sorel"

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Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 41/46

Appendix 4. Prescription Drugs – Leading Killer in USA

“… a statistical study of hospital deaths in the U.S. conducted at the University of Toronto revealed that pharmaceutical drugs kill more people every year than are killed in traffic accidents. The study is said to show that more than two million American hospitalized patients suffered a serious adverse drug reaction (ADR) within the 12-month period of the study and, of these, over 100,000 died as a result. The researchers found that over 75 per cent of these ADRs were dose-dependent, which suggests they were due to the inherent toxicity of the drugs rather than to allergic reactions.

The data did not include fatal reactions caused by accidental overdoses or errors in administration of the drugs. If these had been included, it is estimated that another 100,000 deaths would be added to the total every year. The researchers concluded that ADRs are now the fourth leading cause of death in the United States after heart disease, cancer, and stroke.”

www.cancure.org/medical_errors.htm

“Getting the wrong drug or the wrong dosage kills hundreds or thousands of people each year, with many times that number getting injured … Even higher than the number of people who die from medication errors is the number of people who die from medication, period. Even when a prescription drug is dispensed properly, there’s no guarantee it won’t end up killing you. A remarkable study in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that prescription drugs kill around 106,000 people in the US every year, which ranks prescription drugs as the fourth leading cause of death. Furthermore, each year sees 2,216,000 serious adverse drug reactions (defined as “those that required hospitalization, were permanently disabling, or resulted in death”). The authors of this 1998 study performed a meta-analysis on 39 previous studies covering 32 years. They factored out such things as medication errors, abuse of prescription drugs, and adverse reactions not considered serious. Plus, the study involved only people who had either been hospitalized due to drug reactions or who experienced reactions while in the hospital. People who died immediately (and, thus, never went to the hospital) and those whose deaths weren’t realized to be due to prescription drugs were not included, so the true figure is probably higher. Four years later, another study in the JAMA warned:

Patient exposure to new drugs with unknown toxic effects may be extensive. Nearly 20 million patients in the United States took at least 1 of the 5 drugs withdrawn from the market between September 1997 and September 1998. Three of these 5 drugs were new, having been on the market for less than 2 years. Seven drugs approved since 1993 and subsequently withdrawn from the market have been reported as possibly contributing to 1002 deaths.

Examining warnings added to drug labels through the years, the study’s authors found that of the new chemical entities approved from 1975 to 1999, 10 percent “acquired a new black box warning or were withdrawn from the market” by 2000. Using some kind of high-falutin’ statistical process, they estimate that the “probability of a new drug acquiring black box warnings or being withdrawn from the market over 25 years was 20%.” A statement released by one of the study’s co-authors, Sidney Wolfe, MD, Director of Public Citizen’s Health Studies Group, warned:

‘In 1997, 39 new drugs were approved by the FDA. As of now [May 2002], five of them (Rezulin, Posicor, Duract, Raxar and Baycol) have been taken off the market and an additional two (Trovan, an antibiotic and Orgaran, an anticoagulant) have had new box warnings. Thus, seven drugs approved that year (18% of the 39 drugs approved) have already been withdrawn or had a black box warning in just four years after approval. Based on our study, 20% of drugs will be withdrawn or have a black box warning within 25 years of coming on the market. The drugs approved in 1997 have already almost “achieved” this in only four years — with 21 years to go.’ How does this happen? Before the FDA approves a new drug, it must undergo clinical trials. These trials aren’t performed by the FDA, though — they’re done by the drug companies themselves. These trials often use relatively few patients, and they usually select patients most likely to react well to the drug. On top of that, the trials are often for a short period of time (weeks), even though real-world users may be on a drug for months or years at a time. Dr. Wolfe points out that even when adverse effects show up during clinical trials, the drugs are sometimes released anyway, and they end up being taken off the market because of those same adverse effects. Post-marketing reporting of adverse effects isn’t much better. The FDA runs a program to collect reports of problems with drugs, but compliance is voluntary. The generally accepted estimate in the medical community is that a scant 10 percent of individual instances of adverse effects are reported to the FDA, which would mean that the problem is ten times worse than we currently believe. Drugs aren’t released when they’ve been proven safe; they’re released when enough FDA bureaucrats — many of whom have worked for the pharmaceutical companies or will work for them in the future — can be convinced that it’s kinda safe. Basically, the use of prescription drugs by the general public can be seen as widespread, long-term clinical trials to determine their true safety. We are all guinea pigs.”

From 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know by Russ Kick, published by The Disinformation Company Ltd. http://www.disinfo.com/

Note: Heroin – that most notorious of ‘illegal’, ‘non-prescription’ drugs, was originally developed by the pharmaceutical company BAYER for use as a legal prescription drug.

“The majority of the cancer patients in this country die because of chemotherapy, which does not cure breast, colon or lung cancer. This has been documented for over a decade and nevertheless doctors still utilize chemotherapy to fight these tumors.” Allen Levin, MD, UCSF

“Several full-time scientists at the McGill Cancer Center sent to 118 doctors, all experts on lung cancer, a questionnaire to determine the level of trust they had in the therapies they were applying; they were asked to imagine that they themselves had contracted the disease and which of the six current experimental therapies they would choose. 79 doctors answered, 64 of them said that they would not consent to undergo any treatment containing cis-platinum – one of the common chemotherapy drugs they used – while 58 out of 79 believed that all the experimental therapies above were not accepted because of the ineffectiveness and the elevated level of toxicity of chemotherapy.”

Philip Day, Cancer: why we’re still dying to know the truth, Credence 2000

“If I were to contract cancer, I would never turn to a certain standard for the therapy of this disease. Cancer patients who stay away from these centers have some chance to make it.”

Professor Gorge Mathe, Scientific Medicine Stymied, Medicines Nouvelles, Paris, 1989

“Dr. Hardin Jones, lecturer at the University of California, after having analyzed for many decades statistics on cancer survival, has come to this conclusion: ‘… when not treated, the patients do not get worse or they even get better’. The unsettling conclusions of Dr. Jones have never been refuted”.

Walter Last, “The Ecologist”, Vol. 28, no. 2, March-April 1998 ADVERSE DRUG REACTIONS: How Serious Is the Problem and How Often and Why Does It Occur?

“Although some adverse drug reactions are not very serious, others cause the death, hospitalization, or serious injury of` more than 2 million people in the United states each year, including more than 100,000 fatalities. In fact, adverse drug reactions are one of the leading causes of death in the United States.’ Most of the time, these dangerous events could and should have been avoided. Even the less drastic reactions, such as change in mood, loss of appetite, and nausea, may seriously diminish the quality of life. Despite the fact that more adverse reactions occur in patients 60 or older, the odds of suffering an adverse drug reaction really begin to increase even before age 50. Almost half (49.5%) of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports of deaths from adverse drug reactions and 61% of hospitalizations from adverse drug reactions were in people younger than 60.2 Many physical changes that affect the way the body can handle drugs actually begin in people in their thirties, but the increased prescribing of drugs does not begin for most people until they enter their fifties. By then, the amount of prescription drug use starts increasing significantly, and therefore the odds of having an adverse drug reaction also increase. The risk of an adverse drug reaction is about 33% higher in people aged 50 to 59 than it is in people aged 40.”

Adverse Reactions to Drugs Cause Hospitalization of 1.5 Million Americans Each Year:

“An analysis of numerous studies in which the cause of hospitalization was determined found that approximately 1.5 million hospitalizations a year were caused by adverse drug reactions. This means that every day more than 9,000 patients have adverse drug reactions so serious that they need to be admitted to American hospitals. Although the rate of drug-induced hospitalization is higher in older adults (an average of about 10% of all hospitalizations for older adults are caused by adverse drug reactions) because they use more drugs, a significant proportion of hospitalizations for children is also caused by adverse drug reactions. In a review of more than 6,500 admissions of children to five different hospitals, 2.0% were prompted by adverse drug reactions.”

Adverse Reactions Occur to 770,000 People a Year During Hospitalization

“In addition to the 1.5 million people a year who are admitted to the hospital because of adverse drug reactions, an additional three quarters of a million people a year develop an adverse reaction after they are hospitalized. According to national projection, based on a study involving adverse drug reactions developing in almost 800,000 patients a year, more than 2,000 patients a day, suffer an adverse event caused by drugs once they are admitted. Many of the reactions in the patients studied were serious, even life-threatening, and included cardiac arrhythmias, kidney failure, bleeding, and dangerously low blood pressure. People with these adverse reactions had an almost twofold higher risk of death compared to otherwise comparable hospitalized patients who did not have a drug reaction. Most importantly, according to the researchers, almost 50% of these adverse reactions were preventable. Among the kinds of preventable problems were adverse interactions between drugs that should not have been prescribed together (hundreds of these are listed in Chapter 3 of this book), known allergies to drugs that had not been asked about before the patients got a prescription, and excessively high doses of drugs prescribed without considering the patient’s weight and kidney functions.

Thus, adding the number of people with adverse drug reactions so serious that they require hospitalization to those in which the adverse reaction was “caused” by the hospitalization, more than 2.2 million people a year, or 6,000 patients a day, suffer these adverse reactions. In both situations, many of these drug-induced problems should have been prevented.”

Dr. Tim O’Shea, www.cancer-healing.com/pharma_pills.php

“…at least 250,000 people have attempted suicide worldwide because of Prozac alone and that at least 25,000 have succeeded.”

Professor David Healy

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 58

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At the moment, production in every enterprise is conducted by individual capitalists on their own initiative. What -- and in which way -- is to be produced, where, when and how the produced goods are to be sold is determined by the industrialist. The workers do not see to all this, they are just living machines who have to carry out their work. In a socialist economy this must be completely different! The private employer will disappear. Then no longer production aims towards the enrichment of one individual, but of delivering to the public at large the means of satisfying all its needs.


In a socialist society, the industrialist with his whip ceases to exist. The workers are free and equal human beings, who work for their own well-being and benefit.

- Rosa Luxemburg, from The Socialisation of Society, 1918
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What will this new social order have to be like?

Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole -- that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.

It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.


The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country -- these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.

- Friedrich Engels, from Principles of Communism (1847)

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What I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers, nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all -- the realization at last of the meaning of the word "commonwealth".

- William Morris, from How I Became a Socialist (1894)
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Socialism is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at an end. That is socialism; nothing short of that.

- Daniel De Leon, from the Daily People (Nov. 2, 1908)

Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 40/46

Appendix 3. Death by Doctoring

“In the United States – where 40,000 people are shot to death each year – the chance of getting "killed" by a doctor is three times greater than being killed by a gun.” Ben Ong

“An article written by Dr Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, of the John Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, shows that medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the United States. The report apparently shows there are 2,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery ; 7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals; 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals; 80,000 deaths/year from infections in hospitals; 106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications – these total up to 225,000 deaths per year in the US from iatrogenic causes which ranks these deaths as the third killer. Iatrogenic is a term used when a patient dies as a direct result of treatments by a physician, whether it is from misdiagnosis of the ailment or from adverse drug reactions used to treat the illness (drug reactions are the most common cause). Based on the findings of one major study, medical errors kill some 44,000 people in U.S. hospitals each year. Another study puts the number much higher, at 98,000. Even using the lower estimate, more people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. And deaths from medication errors that take place both in and out of hospitals are said to be more than 7,000 annually.” www.cancure.org/medical_errors.htm

Indeed the statistics point to medicine actually being the first and leading cause of death. For in the 2001 annual death rate from heart disease in the U.S. was 699,697; and the cancer death rate was 553,251.

Compare this with the following table for ‘iatrogenic‘ or medically induced deaths:

Adverse Drug Reactions	106,000
Medical error	98,000
Bedsores	115,000
Infection	88,000
Malnutrition	108,800
Outpatients	199,000
Unnecessary Procedures	37,136
Total	783,936

Projected over a ten-year period this gives us a figure of almost 7.84 million – more than all the deaths from all the wars fought by America. Note also the projected ten-year statistics for ‘unnecessary events’ i.e. unnecessary medical intervention, along with the corresponding figures for adverse results stemming from these unnecessary treatment ‘procedures’.

Unnecessary Events

Hospitalization	89 million	17 million
Procedures	75 million	15 million
TOTAL	164 million

As Ben Ong notes, this table indicates that 56% of the population of the United States, have been treated unnecessarily by the medical industry – in other words, nearly 50,000 people per day.

ben.ong@cure-prostate.com

“The National Academies website published an article titled “Preventing Death and Injury From Medical Errors Requires Dramatic, System-Wide Changes.” which you can read online at ‘www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309068371?OpenDocument’ or the book “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System” at www.nap.edu/books/0309068371/html/ – These show medical errors as a leading cause of death. Based on the findings of one major study, medical errors kill some 44,000 people in U.S. hospitals each year. Another study puts the number much higher, at 98,000. Even using the lower estimate, more people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. And deaths from medication errors that take place both in and out of hospitals are said to be more than 7,000 annually.”

Reference:
www.cancure.org/medical_errors.htm

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 57

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If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realisation that the New World Order means we are all to be managed and not represented.....

....I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis for political liberty. Every time I see a homeless person living in a cardboard box in London, I see that person as a victim of market forces. Everytime I see a pensioner who cannot manage, I know that he is a victim of market forces

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"Like you, people of the United States, we Venezuelans are patriots. And we shall defend our homeland with every piece of our soul. Today Venezuela is united in a single clamour: we demand the cessation of the aggression that seeks to suffocate our economy and socially suffocate our people, as well as the cessation of the serious and dangerous threats of military intervention against Venezuela. We appeal to the good soul of the American society, a victim of its own leaders, to join our call for peace, let us be all one people against warmongering and war.

Long live the peoples of America!"

https://orinocotribune.com/nicolas-maduro-an-open-letter-to…

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"Let us now pass to the legend about Trotsky's special role in the October uprising. The Trotskyites are vigorously spreading rumours that Trotsky inspired and was the sole leader of the October uprising. These rumours are being spread with exceptional zeal by the so-called editor of Trotsky's works, Lentsner. Trotsky himself, by consistently avoiding mention of the Party, the Central Committee and the Petrograd Committee of the Party, by saying nothing about the leading role of these organisation, in the uprising and vigorously pushing himself forward as the central figure in the October uprising, voluntarily or involuntarily helps to spread the rumours about the special role he is supposed to have played in the uprising.

I am far from denying Trotsky's undoubtedly important role in the uprising. I must say, however, that Trotsky did not play any special role in the October uprising, nor could he do so; being chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, he merely carried out the will of the appropriate Party bodies, which directed every step that Trotsky took. To philistines like Sukhanov, all this may seem strange, but the facts, the true facts, wholly and fully confirm what I say.

Let us take the minutes of the next meeting of the Central Committee, the one held on October 16 (29), 1917. Present: the members of the Central Committee, plus representatives of the Petrograd Committee, plus representatives of the military organisation, factory committees, trade unions and the railwaymen. Among those present, besides the members of the Central Committee, were: Krylenko, Shotman, Kalinin, Volodarsky, Shlyapnikov, Lacis, and others, twenty-five in all. The question of the uprising was discussed from the purely practical-organisational aspect. Lenin's resolution on the uprising was adopted by a majority of 20 against 2, three abstaining. A *practical* centre was elected for the organisational leadership of the uprising. Who was elected to this centre? The following five: Sverdlov, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Bubnov, Uritsky. The functions of the practical centre: to direct all the practical organs of the uprising in conformity with the directives of the Central Committee. Thus, as you see, something "terrible" happened at this meeting of the Central Committee, i.e., "strange to relate," the "inspirer," the "chief figure," the "sole leader" of the uprising, Trotsky, was not elected to the practical centre, which was called upon to direct the uprising.

How is this to be reconciled with the current opinion about Trotsky's special role? Is not all this somewhat "strange," as Sukhanov, or the Trotskyites, would say? And yet, strictly speaking, there is nothing strange about it, for neither in the Party, nor in the October uprising, did Trotsky play any *special* role, nor could he do so, for he was a relatively new man in our Party in the period of October. He, like all the responsible workers, merely carried out the will of the Central Committee and of its organs. Whoever is familiar with the mechanics of Bolshevik Party leadership will have no difficulty in understanding that it could not be otherwise: it would have been enough for Trotsky to have gone against the will of the Central Committee to have been deprived of influence on the course of events. This talk about Trotsky's special role is a legend that is being spread by obliging "Party" gossips"

— J. V. Stalin, "Trotskyism or Leninism?" (1924)

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The complexity of machines, of administration, of judicial procedures, the complexity of needs in big cities, the complexity of forces and the influence of the world of the press, the complexity of scientific methods, all that is a refutation of my ideas. But these are only tools of assimilation, it’s a giant disorganized crowd that pushes everyone and everything into the vulgar pseudo-humanist mortar, it’s a complicated algebraic process that aspires to reduce everything to a single common denominator. The means of action of leveling processes are complex, but the objective is crude, simple in thought, ideal, influence. The ultimate objective is the middling man; a tranquil bourgeois among millions of men just as average, just as dead.

Constantin Léontiev, Écrits essentiels

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Things have come to a sorry pass, comrades, if the only reason why we are called old Bolsheviks is that we are *old*. Old Bolsheviks are respected not because they are *old*, but because they are at the same time eternally fresh, never-aging revolutionaries. If an old Bolshevik swerves from the path of the revolution, or degenerates and fails politically, then, even if he is a hundred years old, he has no right to call himself an old Bolshevik; he has no right to demand that the Party should respect him.

Further, questions of personal friendship cannot be put on a par with political questions, for, as the saying goes—friendship is all very well, but duty comes first. We all serve the working class, and if the interests of personal friendship clash with the interests of the revolution, then personal friendship must come second. As Bolsheviks we cannot have any other attitude.

— J. V. Stalin (1929), "The Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U (B)"

https://www.marxists.org/…/arch…/stalin/works/1929/04/22.htm

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Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 39/46

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Appendix 2. Biomedical Psychiatry – A Health Warning

Your symptoms – or those of your clients or patients if you are a counsellor or doctor – may themselves be effects of the very drugs that are being or have been prescribed to ‘treat’ them.

Recent decades have seen an enormous rise in the number of people treated with psychopharmaceutical medications – all of which have a direct effect on brain functioning. Such medications include:

Antidepressants (in particular so-called SSRI’s which raise serotonin levels in the brain )
Anxiolytics (for treating anxiety, sleep problems and panic attacks – in particular the large range of so-called benzodiazepines such as Valium)
Neuroleptics (for treating so-called psychotic symptoms)
Stimulants (used on an increasing scale to treat children and adults with so-called behaviour disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder)
Anticonvulsants (usually prescribed for epilepsy, fibromyalgia and neuralgias but some of which, for example pregabalin, are also prescribed for anxiety disorders)

What is not so well known is that many of the psychological and somatic symptoms treated by counsellors and psychotherapists, physicians and psychiatrists are a direct result of taking or having taken medications of these sorts. Symptoms such as depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, panic attacks, phobias, compulsions, mania, poor concentration, loss of affect, suicidal thoughts and psychotic episodes are all recognised by pharmaceutical companies themselves as potential effects of the very medications designed to treat them. Indeed it has been estimated that up to 50% of all patients attending mental health services may be presenting with anxiety disorders resulting from the use of anxiety-treating drugs or ‘anxiolytics’ – specifically the benzodiazepines. This is due to the development of dependency and acute or chronic withdrawal symptoms – such as increased anxiety or panic attacks – even whilst taking prescribed doses, whose efficacy declines as neuro-physiological habituation to the drugs or ‘tolerance’ sets in.

According to the psychiatrist Peter Breggin, health practitioners now confront a hidden epidemic of iatrogenic (medically caused) psychical and somatic illness resulting from short or long-term chemical disruption of brain functioning. The adverse effects of psychopharmaceutical medications, both acute and chronic, include:

intended effects (for example the mind-numbing depression of brain functioning and the dulling of thought and emotion induced by neuroleptics).
paradoxical effects (accentuation of the very symptoms which the drugs were prescribed to treat, such as panic attacks induced by anxiolytics ).
physiological side effects (ranging from respiratory, cardiac, gastrointestinal problems to long-term brain and liver damage, peripheral nerve damage, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, chronic fatigue or dyskinesia (uncontrolled Parkinsonian-type movements).
psychological side effects (symptoms of mania, depression, panic attacks, psychotic episodes, suicidal ideation etc. of a sort not previously experienced by the individual at any time before taking the medications).
withdrawal effects (acute or chronic psychological and physiological effects experienced when coming off prescribed medications).
tolerance effects (needing ever-increasing dosages of the same drug to simply avoid what can be acute and frequent inter-dose withdrawal effects).
short and long-term ‘dependency’ (in plain language addiction – resulting in tolerance and need for ever-higher doses to avoid withdrawal symptoms.)

There is a tendency to interpret even the most dangerous physiological side-effects – if reported – merely as symptoms of a patient’s psychological disorder. Cardiac symptoms, for example, may be interpreted as ‘anxiety’ symptoms, rather than the other way round. As a result, patients with genuine cardiac problems may remain medically untested and untreated until they suffer a serious heart attack.

Many social workers, nurses and even GPs, counsellors, psychotherapists and alternative health practitioners however, still believe that the use and efficacy of psychopharmaceutical drugs is scientifically proven. The medical myth has it that mental disorders such as ‘depression’ are caused by biochemical imbalances in the brain. Not only has there never been any scientific evidence of this whatsoever, it is actually not technically possible to measure the levels of neurotransmitters in the synapses between brain cells. The hypothesis of an original ‘chemical imbalance’ was arrived at by arguing backwards from the supposedly therapeutic effects of drugs designed to chemically influence the release or reuptake of particular neurotransmitters – thereby altering their respective levels in the brain, even though the latter cannot be directly measured. Thus whilst there is no evidence that such drugs correct imbalances in the brain, they can be chemically guaranteed to cause them – artificially elevating or depressing neurotransmitter levels in a way that may affect not only mood, but all the body’s most basic regulatory systems.

The principal ‘evidence’ for the therapeutic efficacy of psychopharmaceutical medications comes from short-term clinically controlled studies comparing the effects of an active drug with that of an inactive or ‘inert’ placebo. In most cases, the difference between the drug and placebo thought necessary to scientifically ‘prove’ the efficacy of the former is minimal. But comparing the effects of any active drug with an inert placebo is, as Peter Breggin says, misleading in itself. This is because the active drug may have its own type of placebo effect – giving the patient a felt sense of a drug’s power by virtue of its felt effects, however subtle.

As John Grohol points out:
 “…the double-blind placebo controlled study is not blind. Side effects are so obvious that more than 80% of the patients know whether they are on active medication or placebo, patients are equally accurate about other patients on the ward, and nurses and other personnel are privy as well. In some studies the only people who claim to be blind are the prescribing physicians, and in other studies the prescribing physicians admit being as aware of the patients' condition as everyone else.” Even with active placebos “the empirical data show that medication effect sizes are hard to distinguish from the placebo. Also not mentioned is that most antidepressant medications habituate, and the patients' symptoms return. Most patients believe they would feel even worse if they were not taking their medication.”

 Grohol goes on to question the use of clinician-rated rather than patient-rated measures of ‘improvement’ in such trials, noting that:
 “If patients cannot tell that they are better off in a controlled study, one must question the conventional wisdom about the efficacy of antidepressant drugs.”

One of the main arguments in favour of the use of anti-depressants is suicide and violence prevention. How is it then, that several studies have shown an actual increase in suicide rates in those taking anti-depressants? How is that otherwise sober and responsible individuals with no history of violence or severe personality disorder can, within a few day or weeks fall victim to violent or suicidal impulses, even to the point of committing murder or suicide? One reason is the stimulant effect of the new Prozac-type antidepressants or Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). The artificially elevated serotonin levels they are designed to induce can result not only in mild euphoria but manic states or psychotic syndromes similar to those produced by illegal amphetamines. Alternatively, they may, in the first few days of usage, result in an unnatural depression of serotonin levels as the brain tries to compensate for an artificially induced chemical imbalance. In both cases the drug has brought about a form of organic brain dysfunction of the very sort assumed, without evidence, to be responsible for the patient’s symptoms. Another argument for the use of anti-depressants is their ‘efficacy’ for many people. No thought is given however, as to the reasons why such drugs are felt or deemed to be ‘effective’. Breggin explains that:

“A patient typically is rendered unable to stay depressed during an episode of organic brain dysfunction, because depression requires a relatively intact brain and mind. Rendered either apathetic or artificially euphoric by brain dysfunction, the patient is evaluated as ‘improved’.”

“What psychiatrists call ‘depression’ – lethargy, apathy, nervousness, hopelessness, helplessness and unhappiness – is a serious problem often unrecognised as drug-related. Because of their depressant and debilitating effect, psychiatric drugs can make people feel so bad they want to kill themselves.”
SSRI’s such as paroxetine (Seroxat/Paxil) and Prozac may be authorised for use by patients over many years on the basis of clinical trials lasting from only 6 to 10 weeks. GlaxoSmithKline, whose sales of Seroxat/Paxil were valued at over one and a half billion pounds in 2000, continue aggressive marketing of the drug to doctors, with 100 million prescriptions given annually. This despite the fact that their own staff reported trial patients showing significant withdrawal symptoms of agitation and insomnia after only a short period on the drug – which now leads the World Health Organisation’s list of pharmaceuticals reported by doctors to cause acute withdrawal problems. GSK leaflet accompanying prescriptions still tell the patient that “you cannot become addicted to Seroxat.” No distinction is made between dependency of the sort comparable to an addict’s cravings for tobacco or heroin, and addiction based purely on the need to avoid acute physical or psychological withdrawal symptoms.

 The information leaflet for Seroxat also includes the following words:
“Occasionally, the symptoms of depression may include thoughts of harming yourself or committing suicide. Until the full antidepressant effect of your medication becomes apparent it is possible that these symptoms may increase in the first few weeks of treatment.”
The tone is soothing. But in June 2001, GSK were forced to pay out $6.4 million in damages to the family of a man who killed his wife, daughter, granddaughter and then himself after only two days on Seroxat.

In contrast to the SSRIs, most neuroleptic drugs or ‘anti-psychotics’, together with the minor and major tranquillizers, work by dulling and depressing brain activity through a wide range of different neurotransmitters including dopamine and GABA. The artificially-induced elevation or depression of mood brought on by the elevation or depression of different neurotransmitters in the brain, may have dramatic effects when the drug is withdrawn – either producing a dramatic ‘rebound’ elevation of neurotransmitter levels or leaving the brain incapable of generating normal neurotransmitter levels by itself. Breggin cites a typical example of withdrawal syndrome:

“Recently one of my patients, a young man in his twenties, was trying to taper off small doses of Elavil prescribed by another physician…within a day or two of complete withdrawal he began to feel ill. It seemed exactly like the flu. He felt lethargic and his muscles ached. He lacked appetite, felt sick to his stomach, and vomited in the morning.

Despite his tiredness he had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. He felt increasing anxiety as well. A complete physical examination by an internist revealed no evidence of an infection, and I was forced to conclude that he had a typical flu-like withdrawal syndrome. He gradually recovered over a few weeks, vomiting for the last time about a month after ending the medication.”

Not all are so ‘lucky’ as this patient. Countless harrowing stories by those who became unknowingly dependent on highly-addictive benzodiazepine tranquillizers and sleeping pills, or so-called ‘non-addictive’ anti-depressants, bear testament to the years or even decades of hell suffered in the attempt to withdraw from these drugs, and/or of the permanent post-withdrawal symptoms they still suffer.
With one out of four people in the UK thought to be suffering from a diagnosable mental disorder, the number of prescriptions of anti-depressants and anxiolytics is vast.

As long ago as 1984, it was reported by Professor Malcolm Lader that 11.2 percent of all adults took a benzodiazepine for anxiety or sleeping problems in any one year.

According to Lader:
‘Even at a conservative estimate, 20% of these will develop symptoms when they attempt to withdraw. That means a quarter of a million people in the UK. It is now estimated that one and a half million people in the UK alone are chronically addicted to benzodiazepine anxiolytics such as diazepam (Valium) and lorazepam (Ativan). All the drugs in this class can induce dependency in a matter of days through suppressing the brain ’s natural production of anxiety- and stress-reducing neurotransmitters. Yet they account for 50% of global sales of psychopharmaceutical medications.’
Benzodiazepine use can also cause numerous physical health problems such as dental pains, abdominal disorders, acute neuralgias, muscle aches and a whole host of other symptoms – all of which may be misdiagnosed and mistreated by dentists, physicians and consultants unaware of this.

The whole situation was summed up by Vernon Coleman (Life Without Tranquillizers)
"The biggest drug-addiction problem in the world doesn't involve heroin, cocaine or marijuana. In fact, it doesn't involve an illegal drug at all. The world's biggest drug-addiction problem is posed by a group of drugs, the benzodiazepines, which are widely prescribed by doctors and taken by countless millions of perfectly ordinary people around the world... Drug-addiction experts claim that getting people off the benzodiazepines is more difficult than getting addicts off heroin... For several years now pressure-groups have been fighting to help addicted individuals break free from their pharmacological chains. But the fight has been a forlorn one. As fast as one individual breaks free from one of the benzodiazepines another patient somewhere else becomes addicted. I believe that the main reason for this is that doctors are addicted to prescribing benzodiazepines just as much as patients are hooked on taking them.”

The sheer scale of the problem with psychopharmaceutical medications becomes clear if we consider that probably 75% or more of so-called ‘adverse reactions’, including withdrawal symptoms and withdrawal syndromes, may be unreported. Worse still, they may be unrecognised as such by patients themselves, interpreted as signs of endogenous psychological disorders by physicians or psychotherapists, and/or treated by prescriptions of further psychiatric drugs. In an attempt to deal with recognised side-effects of these drugs, many psychiatrists and psychiatric health clinics around the world now regularly prescribe whole ‘cocktails’ of anti-depressant, neuroleptic and anxiolytic medications in the hope that they will chemically counter-balance each other’s inherently toxic and unbalancing effects on brain functioning. At the same time pharmaceutical companies such as GSK are inventing ever new ‘disorders’ which can be ‘treated’ by drugs such as paroxetine. As well as ‘panic disorder’, ‘obsessive compulsive disorder’ the list now includes ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ and ‘social anxiety disorder’ and ‘attention deficit disorder’. Yet like standard DSM psychiatric designations such as ‘bipolar disorder’, ‘personality disorder’, these new ‘disorder’ terms seem to possess the authority of medical diagnoses – implying the existence of specific disease entities with an organic basis. In fact they are merely convenient labels for clusters of troublesome symptoms or behaviours that society has a problem understanding and responding to.

Biological psychiatry is founded on a flat denial that there is any meaning in ‘mental illness ’, ignoring the simple fact that in a sick society or economy there may be good reasons for a person to feel anxious, depressed, disturbed, divided or driven to compulsive behaviours in order to cope. Illnesses in general are regarded as having biological ‘causes’ rather than meanings related to the individual’s life.

Health itself is essentially defined only as the ability to ‘function’ normally as an employee – to cheerfully play one’s part in sustaining a market economy in which all human relations are geared solely to commodity production and profit making. As a result, both medicine and psychiatry have both become tools of the ‘therapeutic state’ – their principal role being to manage or suppress all bodily or behavioural symptoms of the distress and dis-ease engendered by a sick society, not least with the help of drugs – thereby also turning them into a lucrative source of profit for the corporate health industry.

‘Authoritarian psychiatry’ is now being legitimised by governments all over the world through legislation, which denies mental patients the right to refuse medication and permits their enforced detention and drug ‘treatment ’. Given the enormous attention given by politicians and the media to the problems caused by illegal drugs and drug addiction, the failure by governments and health services to recognise the scale of addiction to legally prescribed drugs and the dangers of their adverse effects is hypocritical to say the least – amounting to a form of wilful ignorance. It is all the more important then, that social workers, mental health nurses, counsellors, psychotherapists and alternative health practitioners do not fall into the trap that so many orthodox physicians and psychiatrists have fallen into – that of accepting the medical and marketing myths perpetuated by pharmaceutical companies regarding the ‘benefits’ of psychiatric medications. Above all, it is important that they:

obtain precise details of any client’s present or past use, not only of illegal drugs but of legally prescribed medications, including the names of these medications and the length of time over which they were or have been taken.
educate themselves in the adverse effects, addictive potentials and withdrawal symptoms of specific anxiolytic, anti-depressant and neuroleptic medications.

Thankfully, use of the internet now allows any patient or professional to quickly obtain information regarding specific drugs and drug types, as well as being host to many websites set up to support patients suffering from adverse reactions or dependency on such drugs, to inform health professionals of their dangers, to advise both patients and practitioners on safe methods of withdrawal, or simply to provide a forum in which users can share with each other the often horrifying experiences they have had of particular medications and their debilitating or life-destroying effects.

Recommended sites
benzohelp.blogspot.com
www.benzo.org.uk - info on benzodiazepines
www.quitpaxil.org - info on paroxetine (Paxil/Seroxat)
www.breggin.com - excellent articles by Peter Breggin
www.antipsychiatry.org - the case against biopsychiatry
www.april.org.uk - on adverse drug reactions
www.citawithdrawal.org.uk - Council for Information on Tranquillisers, Antidepressants and Painkillers

Recommended Reading
Peter R. Breggin Toxic Psychiatry
Breggin / Cohen Your Drug May be Your Problem
Joan E. Gadsby Addiction by Prescription
Heather Jones Prisoner on Prescription
David Smail The Nature of Unhappiness
Dr Ann Tracy Prozac - Panacea or Pandora