Samizdat Health Writers

A writers collective

Reviews

“Paxil turned me into a monster”

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“I tried killing myself thirty times.” So says Vickie, a nurse from Philadelphia who was first prescribed Paxil at the age of ten for something called “social anxiety disorder.” For the past several years, I have borne witness to people like Vickie – wonderful, creative, caring people – who were turned into burned-out shells of their former selves after getting hooked on antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs. Most of these people began taking these drugs for the most banal reasons you could imagine… By Patrick D Hahn @Patrickhahn

Children of the Cure Sends Shock Waves

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Children of the Cure should send shock waves throughout a pharmaceutical industry hell-bent on promoting drugs at any cost and waken up those whose main interests lie in the safeguarding of the general public.

Never before has a book been unleashed on the market which unmasks the lengths a British pharmaceutical company will go to ensure that young children are caught up in the unsavoury shenanigans of ghosting and distorting clinical trial data just to increase sales of a drug called Paroxetine.

A Riff and Review by Annie Bevan

At last, the truth about how Pharma really operates

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Children of the Cure, at last, gives patients and their relatives the documented truth about how Pharma really operates, how the regulators and guideline makers are not quite the safeguarders of our health that so many of us long believed them to be. And worst of all, the influence the medical journals have on our health by sleight of hand. So many of us did begin to wonder, after appalling experiences about which we were never taken seriously. But in this book we have a talisman, something to generously give to our GPs, full of facts which cannot any longer be discounted. We cannot be brushed away with lies and obfuscations any more. A much needed, carefully researched and documented book which definitely should save lives.

“I read this book because my wife was poisoned.”

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If you lose your head, you lose your mind. Our healthcare system has lost its head, but also its heart, as seen in this excellent polemic by Dr. David Healy.  A review of Dr. David Healy’s “The Decapitation of Care” by E. Kent Winward. This is a book about the black box pharmaceutical companies keep doctors and patients in about the side effects of the medications. A black box so dark and a system so effective for pharmaceutical companies that our life expectancies are shrinking. How short does you or your family’s life expectancy need to become before you pay attention? 

A Prescription for Adolescent Depression (Warning: May Cause Hostility, Insomnia and Akathisia)

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In 1993, a proposal was developed to study the drug for use in adolescent “depression”, and Study 329 was launched. Study 329 did not show a clear benefit compared to placebo, and some study participants suffered serious side effects. The researchers played these down by coding suicidality as lability, and overlooking certain adverse events altogether.

Caveat Emptor: The Dark Side of Medicine’s Relationship with the Pharmaceutical Industry

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A Review by Leemon B. McHenry, California State University Children of the Cure: Missing Data, Lost Lives and Antidepressants By David Healy, Joanna Le Noury and Julie Wood Samizdat Health, 2020, ix +269 pp. Subjecting children to antidepressant drugs that did not outperform sugar pills and that increased suicidality would seem to have been an […]

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Lessons from Study 329?

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Children of the Cure offers either a fairy tale or an epic take (pay your money and make your own call) on Study 329 – the most famous clinical trial in medicine. There are other takes on what happened in the pipeline from the more academic Illusions of Evidence-Based Medicine by Jureidini and McHenry to Paul Scott’s The Malcharist, which may be satire or may be all too real, difficult to tell, and a compelling screenplay.  These books complement Jim Gottstein’s The Zyprexa Papers.

The Children of 329: Seroxat Hell

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“During my research, I found hundreds of cases of Seroxat-induced “suicide.” I then came across a notorious study that GSK had carried out in the late 90s, a study they termed “329.” The study’s outcome had been posted in a journal online, and all seemed to be well and good. It appeared that Seroxat showed remarkable efficacy in children and adolescents. Why then were children and adolescents dying violent deaths whilst taking it, I wondered?

~ Bob Fiddaman, activist and blogger on drug-related injuries

“A frightening and tragic story”

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The story is depressing and tragic, one of many similar tales that have appeared in the past two decades. Clinicians have the skills to assess new treatments, but their independence and financial support must be assured by independent non-industry sources. Children of the Cure is a frightening and tragic story that warrants governmental and public attention. A book review by Max Fink, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology Emeritus
StonyBrook University College of Medicine

The Children of Amazon

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When Samizdat published Children of the Cure on Amazon, there was discomfort in some quarters.  The discomfort was practical for some.  Mark Carter from Auckland told us it would take 154 NZ dollars to buy two copies and have then posted to him – he had to go through Amazon.com as Amazon.com.au for some strange reason does […]

“All Medicines Are Poisons” Paracelsus’s Perspective

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The Decapitation of Care is a short text that takes issue with the current hegemonic thought that has elevated health technology to a position of being the new route to salvation. The starting point is that the thoughtless employment of this technology is harming people — it has started to shorten their life expectancy and has undermined healthcare and the doctor-patient relationship. David Healy, therefore, invites us to “stop doing” in a protocolized and standardized way, and stop to think.

The Zyprexa Papers: This book had to be written

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The Zyprexa Papers has two interlocking parts. One centers on a set of documents relating to Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa (olanzapine), a company cash cow, which had been made available under a secrecy order to lawyers acting for hundreds of people injured by Zyprexa. The other centres on Bill Bigley, a man enmeshed in the Alaskan mental health system since the early 1980s with over 70 admissions.

If you start reading, be warned, all of your defences will be stripped away. If you think what happens to Bill Bigley could only happen in some out of way place, like Anchorage, think again… It takes a certain amount of time and distance to write a book as good as this. It also takes a certain amount of nerve. It is likely that no conventional publisher would take a risk on publishing this.  All the more reason to buy The Zyprexa Papers.