Samizdat Health Writer’s Co-operative Inc.

A writers collective

Shipwreck of the Singular

Shipwreck of the Singular looks at our changing environment through a healthcare lens rather than an economic one. One advantage to this is that each of us are better placed to put right what is going wrong in the climate of healthcare than we are to tackle the global climate. In tackling what needs changing in health, we may solve our wider climate crisis.

This book does not come with recommendations from people of distinction, or experts who have turned a blind eye to developments that have landed us in the mess we now have.

The people best placed to grasp what is going wrong and force our ‘betters’ to justify the distinctions that have been bestowed on them are those whose lives have been touched by what is going wrong in healthcare.

Shipwreck shows you how we got to the point of peril we are now at. It points to a Care that needs courage. A book won’t get us there. It needs you to engage and engage others.

The Zyprexa Papers

In The Zyprexa Papers, Author Jim Gottstein gives a riveting first-hand account of what really happened, including new details about how a small group of psychiatric survivors spread the Zyprexa Papers on the Internet untraceably. All of this within a gripping, plain-language explanation of complex legal maneuvering and his battles on behalf of Bill Bigley, the psychiatric patient whose ordeal made possible the exposure of the Zyprexa Papers. The hardcover edition of The Zyprexa Papers will be published June 1, 2021.

Prescription for Sorrow

One could scarcely have been alive and conscious anywhere in the Western world any time in the past twenty-five years and not have been aware of a raging controversy surrounding antidepressants, suicide, and violence—a controversy that shows no sign of abating. During that same period, prescriptions for antidepressants have skyrocketed. So what is the story?

“Prescription for Sorrow: Antidepressants, Suicide and Violence” by Patrick D. Hahn

Malcharist: A Novel

A novel by Paul John Scott

A closely-observed, panoramic thriller about medical science gone wrong, and the people who make dangerous pills seem safe.

It’s Manhattan in the winter of 2010, and Shivani Patel is carrying the secrets of a trade that no one understands: medical ghostwriting. A Cambridge-trained scientist and wordsmith for the world’s largest drugmaker, she makes her soaring pay by delivering the sleight-of-hand needed to move new drugs into journals and onto market. Then she watches as a parade of aging males take credit for her work…

Children of the Cure

Children of the Cure tells the story of the only Medical Study that has two publications in the academic literature—telling precisely the opposite story—and how no one is bothered by this. Study 329 was a clinical study that began in 1994 giving a new antidepressant to teenagers. It has become the most famous clinical trial ever, leading to a fraud charge, a $3 billion fine, and a Black Box Warning.

Buy Book: Children of the Cure

The Decapitation of Care: The Healthcare Manifesto

Samizdat has just launched The Decapitation of Care on Amazon — in English (print and kindle) and La santé décapitée in French (kindle) with French print in a few days time and El Fin Del Cuidado; Una breve historia del auge y caída de la atención médica in Spanish both print and kindle very soon after. […]

Children of the Cure: A shocking must-read

Can anything in healthcare be worse than pushing children into suicide while pretending that the pills are as attractive as candy? I don’t think so. These drugs are being widely used in children and young people. According to the book, aside from contraceptives, they have become the most commonly prescribed drugs in adolescent girls in Britain, and the usage is increasing. The fact that leading professors in psychiatry in most countries still claim that the drugs protect against suicide shows a profession in ethical free fall that has allowed itself to become corrupted by the siren songs from the drug industry.

Drugmakers Have Dropped All Pretense of Being on Our Side

By Patrick D Hahn

Hot on the heels of the publication of David Healy’s Shipwreck of the Singular comes a paper in Neuropsychopharmacology by Elan Cohen and seven of his colleagues which demonstrates why Shipwreck was needed in the first place.

Seven of the eight authors of the paper are drug company employees. The subject of the paper is the “mitigation” of the placebo response in placebo-controlled randomized clinical trials.

As Dr. Healy points out in Shipwreck, the placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial once was held up as a shield to protect us from useless or dangerous medicines but in fact has turned into a vehicle to deliver adverse consequences with impunity…

A Story of Iatrogenic Insanity: “Prescription for Sorrow”

There are quite a few books published about the lack of benefit and harm caused by so-called “anti-depressants.”  The fact that so many people have felt compelled to write such books is interesting in itself.  Prescription for Sorrow, by Patrick Hahn, is simply the best one I have read.  It is the most engaging and readable.  This is aided by victim vignettes of real people killed by these drugs to make the data real. 

A book review of “Prescription for Sorrow” by Jim Gottstein

Health Services, Bullshit Jobs, and the Defining Struggle of the Twenty-First Century

Beginning in 2014, life expectancy in the United States dropped every year for five years straight. This was before the time of Covid, by the way. This is an absolutely unprecedented development which has been completely ignored by the mainstream media.  What is behind this staggering drop in life expectancy? David Healy, a professor of Family Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, points the finger at a health care system…

A book review of Shipwreck of the Singular by Patrick D Hahn

Medical Assistance in Dying: Enduring Sexual Dysfunctions

Canada put Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) legislation in place in June 2016. This allowed for medical assistance in dying in cases where death was reasonably foreseeable. In 2019, in Truchon v Attorney General of Canada, the Superior Court of Québec declared the “reasonable foreseeability” criterion unconstitutional. This decision forced a review of the original legislation.