Samizdat Health Writer’s Co-operative Inc.

A writers collective

Reviews

ADHD Is Over: Obedience Pills

by Leave a Comment

OBEDIENCE PILLS is an intriguing interview with Dr. Patrick D. Hahn, a freelance writer and independent scholar with a long-standing interest in iatrogenic harm and the medicalization of everyday life. Dr. Hahn is an Affiliate professor of Biology at Loyola University in Maryland and he’s the author of three books: “Madness and Genetic Determinism: Is Mental Illness in Our Genes?”; “Prescription for Sorrow: Antidepressants, Suicide, and Violence”; and as of recent…”Obedience Pills: ADHD and the Medicalization of Childhood.”

Critiquing the Psychiatric Model: Prescription for Sorrow

by Leave a Comment

Critiquing the Psychiatric Model is the first Volume of the Ethics International Press Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series. Edited by Eric Maisel and Chuck Ruby. The book features a chapter on antidepressants and rampage killings by author Patrick D. Hahn from his book, Prescription for Sorrow. Understanding the current systems of psychology and psychiatry is […]

Drugs Given to Suppress the Childish Behavior of Children

by Leave a Comment

I just finished Obedience Pills by Patrick Hahn.  It is a very comprehensive, very readable account of the invention of ADHD and the total lack of any scientific support for the drugs given to suppress childish behavior by children. And how the diagnosis and drugs absolve parents and the other adults in their children’s lives from responsibility for raising them, as well as teaching the diagnosed they are not responsible for their behavior.  There is much more, and Obedience Pills has a lot of commonsense as well as being meticulously supported.

Gottstein Speaks: The Zyprexa Papers

by

Author Jim Gottstein talks about and reads portions of his book, The Zyprexa Papers.   It was just a normal day before Dr. David Egilman called me out of the blue on November 28, 2006. The days are short that time of year in Anchorage, Alaska, and it was getting dark by mid-afternoon. Dr. Egilman […]

The Zyprexa Papers: drugging involuntary psychiatric patients

by Leave a Comment

 Coercive, medical model psychiatry can be dangerous to your health. The Zyprexa Papers by Jin Gottstein Book Review By Tom Sandborn The Zyprexa Papers, by James Gottstein, Anchorage Alaska, 232 pp., $17.50 (paperback), ISBN-10: 0578627264 Imagine this. Someone in your life finds you inordinately eccentric,  annoying or alarming, and decides you have a “mental illness,” whatever […]

The Zyprexa Papers: A Legal System for Drug Companies and Lawyers… Not the Public

by Leave a Comment

The Zyprexa Papers by Jim Gottstein BY BRUCE E. LEVINE On November 28, 2006, attorney Jim Gottstein received a phone call that would change his life. It would propel Gottstein into a legal war against the giant pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, who would retaliate against him for his release of Lilly’s own documents about its drug […]

The Zyprexa Papers: Outing drug company corruption

by Leave a Comment

A compelling, first-hand account of how a humble attorney manages to expose the rot inside Big Pharma The Zyprexa Papers by Jim Gottstein Book Review By Maryanne Demasi Indian Journal of Medical Ethics Online First Published December 29, 2020 Jim Gottstein, The Zyprexa Papers, Samizdat Health; 2020, 232 pages, $6.10 (Kindle), $ 17.50 (Paperback) ISBN: […]

Shipwreck: a tour-de-force of scientific and historical writing

by Leave a Comment

Producing such a book was an act of courage, determination, and humanity Shipwreck Review by Jon Thompson Shipwreck is a magnificent work, a tour-de-force of scientific and historical writing, and also of literature in its precision, clarity, breadth, depth, fast pace, compelling arguments, and wealth of metaphors and analogies throughout. The latter help focus readers’ […]

Fiction that captures reality: Malcharist

by Leave a Comment

Malcharist… warns, educates, inspires. Malcharist tells stories mirroring the ugliness and craziness of health care  Review by Gary Schwitzer I don’t read much fiction. Never have. As a journalist for 48 years, my mind and my eyes are focused on learning from history and reflecting on current events. But I’ve crossed paths with Paul John […]

Drugmakers Have Dropped All Pretense of Being on Our Side

by Leave a Comment

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…