The depression epidemic - Part III

The first issue that is skimmed over by the newspapers reporting Dr Gallop's resignation is that the antidepressants used to "treat" depression are dangerous. Check out www.healyprozac.com or www.breggin.com (or my own www.consciouslivingseminars.com ). In February 2004 I wrote about the "horrific murder-suicide in Gillette, Wyoming in February, 1998, in which Donald Shell shot his wife, daughter and nine-month-old granddaughter in the head, before turning the gun on himself, two days after beginning to treat a depression of ten years with Seroxat (Paxil in the US and Aropax in Australia). His son-in-law, Tim Tobin, was devastated by the scene, but not devastated enough to do nothing. He took GlaxoSmithKline (the manufacturer of the drug) to court and his lawyer succeeded in obtaining a court order allowing an expert of the family’s choosing access to the company’s archive of clinical trials in Harlow, Essex, in the UK. The research on the effects of the drug on healthy people had been confidential for fifteen years. The research showed that a quarter of the healthy subjects of the experiment suffered side effects, many within just a few days of taking the drug. The side effects included restlessness, being in a state of mental turmoil and nightmares. These results were not explored further and were not made public. The subjects had “no previous signs of mental illness” (the research also showed that 85% of the volunteers had withdrawal symptoms, even though they had been on the drug for a relatively sort time).

Dr David Healey, Director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine, the expert representing the family, presented this evidence to the court in the US. The family lawyer played a taped interview with Dr Ian Hudson, Worldwide Director of Safety in the period 1999-2001 for SmithKlineBeecham, GSK’s predecessor. Commenting on the interview, Dr Healey said: “Listening to Ian Hudson in court, I’d have to say that I didn’t get any feel that he was actually concerned about the welfare of people going on this drug. I’d have to say that it seemed to me that he was much more concerned about the welfare of the company” (“Four Corners”, 28 April, 2003).

The jurors in Wyoming seemed to agree. They unanimously found that Seroxat was the main factor in the four deaths in Gillette, in February, 1998. GlaxoSmithKline was found guilty of failing to warn people about the dangers and was ordered to pay over USD$6 million in damages After the court case, however, GSK representatives continued to maintain that the drug “did not cause the tragic events in this case”. Dr Alastair Benbow insisted, in spite of the unanimous verdict of the court: “There is no reliable clinical evidence that Seroxat causes violence, aggression or homicide” and that it only occurs, from time to time, “in patients who are depressed”. That is, violence, aggression, homicide (as well as self harm and suicide) are caused by the depression, not the drug. This was in spite of evidence provided to the court – which the jurors accepted – that Donald Shell had not been suicidal, even though he had been depressed for ten years prior to commencing treatment with the drug and had displayed no signs of aggressiveness previously".

This is what I wrote in the May 2005 CLS Journal:

"The manufacturers of the SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil (Aropax), Celexa and Luvox survived a series of high profile murder-suicide incidents through a clever manipulation, not only of the mass media, government agencies and the medical profession (as well as the scientific community) but even the legal system.

On 3 August, 1989 , Joseph Wesbecker was prescribed Prozac for depression. Five weeks later, his psychiatrist, Lee Coleman, noticed that Wesbecker had become very agitated and much more nervous and anxious and angry than he normally was. He suspected that Prozac was the cause, told Wesbecker to stop taking it and urged hospitalisation. Three days later, on 14 September, 1989, still with a high level of Prozac in his blood, Wesbecker walked into his former workplace, a printing plant in Louisville, Kentucky, with an AK-47 assault rifle, killed eight people and wounded another twelve and then turned the gun on himself (Peter R Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin, Talking back to Prozac: What doctors won’t tell you about today’s most controversial drug. New York: St Martin’s Press, June, 1994/St Martin’s Press paperback, September, 1995: 148-150).

Prozac horror stories flooded the media and, by the end of 1992 no fewer than 170 lawsuits were filed against its manufacturer, Eli Lilly. Reports linking Prozac to violence appeared in the media and in Talking back to Prozac the authors document dozens of cases of violence or a preoccupation with violence by people taking Prozac. These cases take up five pages of print. Most of the dozens of incidents related to suicide or homicide. In September, 1991, the FDA held a public hearing to examine the issue, listened to several heartrending stories and decided Prozac was safe. By March, 1994, Bonnie Leitsch, director of the national Prozac Survivors Support Group, had documented over 1000 cases of individuals who had had “adverse reactions” to Prozac, the vast majority being related to violence against self or others – including both murder and suicide (Breggin and Breggin, 1994/1995: 159).

A large number of the surviving families of the victims of Wesbecker took Eli Lilly to court. Peter Breggin was their chief medical expert witness for the Plaintiff. Amongst other things, he testified that Eli Lilly had withheld information from the public, the medical establishment and the FDA, namely that they had conducted clinical trials which showed that Prozac could increase the rate of suicide attempts and lead to very high rates of agitation and could even cause psychotic mania (Peter R Breggin, The anti-depressant fact book: What your doctor won’t tell you about Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and Luvox. Cambridge , Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing, July, 2001: 174-175). The jury came back with a 9-3 verdict in favour of Eli Lilly. The mass media gave wide coverage to the drug company’s victory. Then something extraordinary happened. Prior to the commencement of proceedings, Breggin had found that Paul Smith, the attorney for the litigants, did not seem to be interested in his testimony, had put him in a hotel several miles removed from the legal team and had even hidden evidence from him. They’d had several heated confrontations over what Breggin saw as Smith’s obstructionist tactics. Indeed, Breggin had to write out his testimony in the form of dozens of prepared questions for Smith to ask him and only after yet another confrontation did Smith agree to ask some of the questions – but not all. He refused, for example, to ask Breggin about some of the most important discoveries he’d made (Breggin, 2001: 176). “Increasingly I felt like I was being set up, but why or to what end?” Soon after the trial, presiding judge John W Potter concluded that Eli Lilly and Co had fixed the trial. Even though, toward the end of the trial, he had asked both sides if they had made a secret settlement, and both sides had denied it, the judge concluded that an agreement had, indeed, been reached between the parties: In return for the drug company paying a large, undisclosed amount to the plaintiffs (hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Breggin’s estimate), Smith agreed to present a watered down case as well as to discredit Breggin as an expert witness for future Prozac suits (Breggin, 2001: 177). The trial had been rigged.

Judge Potter threw out the jury verdict and changed it to a settlement with prejudice (ibid) by Eli Lilly and Co. Eli Lilly – as well as Paul Smith – appealed the judge’s decision to the Kentucky Supreme Court, which concluded, in May 1996, that the drug company had manipulated the judicial system and may even have committed fraud. Although Potter wanted to disclose the amount of money that had been paid, a new judge concluded that the amounts were so large that their disclosure would harm the drug company. “The case ended with the invalidation of the jury verdict and the open admission that the Wesbecker trial had been rigged” (Breggin, 2001: 178). The mass media failed to report the reversal against the drug company, with one exception (the British news agency, Reuters). “As a result of the media silence, the fake trial was a massive legal, public relations and political victory for Eli Lilly & Co” (ibid). Peter Breggin summed it up like this: 'The Wesbecker trial indicates the degree to which a powerful drug company can and will influence American society, including the courts and the media. This influence reaches into the very heart of organized psychiatry and medicine' (Breggin, 2001: 179).

William Forsyth was diagnosed as being depressed in December 1992, by Dr Riggs Roberts, a Hawaiian psychiatrist in private practice. It was not a serious depression. He was not suicidal and did not require hospitalisation (David Healy, Let them eat prozac: The unhealthy relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and depression. New York: New York University Press, 2004: 91). The psychiatrist prescribed Prozac. Two days later, he felt so bad he had to go to hospital. Ten days after going on Prozac he left the hospital, went home, had a meal with his wife, stabbed her fifteen times and then “fixed a serrated kitchen knife to a chair and impaled himself on it” (Healy, 2004: 93).

The case went to court, after almost seven years, in March and April, 1999. The jury found in favour of Eli Lilly. On 20 April, 1999 , the plaintiffs appealed. The case was settled out of court in 2002! Once again, as Healy (2004: 129-149) describes, there were strange goings-on, this time in the jury room, which was why the plaintiffs appealed the verdict.

The decade of the nineties rolled on, producing unprecedented profits for the pharmaceutical industry. Prozac made, not millions, but billions of dollars for the manufacturer (the other SSRIs were not far behind). In spite of both scientific evidence that ALL the SSRIs, including Prozac, had deadly side-effects, including homicide and suicide, and in spite of regular murder-suicides which received huge publicity, the thought processes of the average American and Australian citizen remained unresponsive. The combined weight of the pharmaceutical industry, the medical profession, the professional scientific community, government agencies, the mass media and the publishing industry deadened our cognitive abilities.

On 21 May, 1998, Kip Kinkel, who “had been receiving psychiatric treatment that probably included his taking Prozac sometime in the past and Ritalin at the time of the shooting”, killed his parents and opened fire at Thurstone High School, in Oregon, wounding a 17-year-old student in the chest (Peter R Breggin, Reclaiming our children: A healing plan for a nation in crisis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Books, 2000: 10, 19).

On 16 April, 1999, Shawn Cooper, a fifteen-year-old student at Notus Junior-Senior High School in Notus, Idaho, fired two shotgun rounds, narrowly missing students and school staff. He was taking Ritalin at the time (Breggin, 2000: 19).

On the morning of 20 April, 1999 , eighteen-year-old Eric Harris and his friend, seventeen-year-old Dylan Klebold, killed or wounded 35 students and one teacher at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado. They then killed themselves. Twelve students and one teacher were killed, that is, there were fifteen deaths, with another 23 injured. Eric Harris had been receiving “medical treatment” for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) with the SSRI, Luvox (fluvoxamine).

On 20 May, 1999 , exactly one month after the shootings at Columbine High School, a fifteen-year-old student, Thomas (“T J”) Solomon, fired on his classmates at Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia . T J Solomon entered the school carrying a .357 magnum revolver and a .22-calibre rifle. He shot and wounded six students before being persuaded to hand his weapons over by Assistant Principal Cecil T Brinkley. At the time of the shootings, T J had been receiving treatment, supposedly for depression, with Ritalin"

It may be difficult to believe, but the above represents only a tiny percentage of cases. Is it responsible or accurate reporting to allow psychiatrists like Professor Hickie to claim that prescribing these dangerous antidepressants is associated with a reduction in suicide, while remaining silent about the evidence that they can cause both suicide and homicide (as well as mental turmoil, agitation, mania, self-harm, nightmares and even psychosis?(To be continued)

The depression epidemic - Part II

Most of what I am about to say (see "The depression epidemic - Part III) has been covered in various issues of the Conscious Living Seminars Journal over the past three years (www.consciouslivingseminars.com ). See, especially,the following: www.consciouslivingseminars.com/mar03_journal.html ("the myth of mental illness");
www.consciouslivingseminars.com/apr03_journal.html (all); www.consciouslivingseminars.com/feb04_journal.html (editorial; "drugs and the corporate world"); http://www.consciouslivingseminars.com/sep03_journal.html (editorial; "nature and nurture"; www.consciouslivingseminars.com/apr04_journal.html ("antidepressants");
www.consciouslivingseminars.com/aug04_journal.html (all); www.consciouslivingseminars.com/sep04_journal.html (editorial; "The blood of these children is on your hands: antidepressants yet again"); www.consciouslivingseminars.com/feb05_journal.html (all);
www.consciouslivingseminars.com/may05_journal.html (editorial; Bruno Bettelheim).

For conflicts of interest in scientific research see www.consciouslivingseminars.com/may04_journal.html (editorial; the economics of scientific research); and www.consciouslivingseminars.com/jun04_journal.html ;

In addition, the following works should be consulted by those wishing to explore further the way so-called "science" (especially "scientific research") has been corrupted by narrow economic self interest: Sheldon Krimsky (2003), Science in the private interest: Has the lure of profits corrupted biomedical research? (Forward by Ralph Nader); Derek Bok (2003), Universities in the market place:The commercialization of higher education; Daniel S Greenberg (1967;1999) The politics of pure science (New edition, 1999, with introductory essays by Sir John Maddox and Professor Steven Shapin and a new Afterword by the author, 1999); Daniel S Greenberg (2001) Science, money and politics: Political triumph and ethical erosion; Linda Marsa (1999), Prescription for profits: How the pharmaceutical industry bankrolled the unholy marriage between science and business.

Finally, to get an insight into the processes by which "news" is manufactured and manipulated to ensure that we, the public, develop appropriate consciousness (that is, unconsciousness), the following may prove useful: Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988), Manufacturing consent:The political economy of the mass media (Vintage paperback, 1994); Larry Tye (1998), The father of spin:Edward L Bernays and the birth of public relations; John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton (1995), Toxic sludge is good for you: Lies, damn lies and the public relations industry; Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (2001), Trust us, we're experts: How industry manipulates science and gambles with your future (To be continued)

The depression epidemic - Part I

This morning's papers (in Australia) are full of the sort of reporting that makes it so difficult either to become or to remain conscious. It is one more example of how the marriage between the mass media, the public relations industry and the institutions of science and medicine, with the covert support of the powerful and wealthy pharmaceutical industry, works to colonise our consciousness (See the list of links and references in Part II)..

As already reported in last night's TV news and repeated by all the mainstream newspapers this morning, Geoff Gallop, the premier of Western Australia, has resigned, in order "to undergo treatment for depression" (The Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 17 January 2006, Page 1). This, says the Telegraph, is "one of the most sudden and dramatic illustrations of how the scourge of mental illness affects people from every walk of life". Dr Gallop, aged 54, said, according to the Telegraph, that depression had affected many aspects of his life and that, therefore, "he needed treatment, time and rest to recover from the debilitating illness". Colleagues within the Labor Party were devastated, saying there was "no knowledge in the party of his illness". Dr Gallop, a Rhodes scholar and doctor of philosophy, said that he had been suffering so badly that he sought expert help last week. He said: "My doctors advised me that with treatment, time and rest, this illness is very curable".

Former Victorian premier and chairman of "Beyondblue", Jeff Kennett, praised Dr Gallop for his honesty, calling it his "greatest act of public service" (The Daily Telegraph, 17 January 2006, Page 2). Dr Gallop's honesty showed that "depression could afflict anyone, even the most successful in life" (ibid). Mr Kennett acknowledged that being premier was a stressful job "but remember, clinical depression is a result of a chemical imbalance" and "it can attack anyone".

The Sydney Morning Herald went further, devoting several pages, including a page one headline, to the case, as well as featuring an article on page 11 by Professor Ian Hickie, clinical advisor to Beyondblue and executive director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney (my alma mater, I'm ashamed to say). Professor Hickie also praised Dr Gallop for his courage in revealing that the reason for his resignation was "to seek treatment for depression". Men in high profile positions "have neglected their mental health" too long. Alternatively they have "sought to manage the problem themselves". These "misguided attempts to 'tough it out''' have led to other problems, including premature death. "Depression affects one in six men over the course of their life" Professor Hickie writes. "Depression is a common illness" which often ends in suicide. Most middle-aged men who commit suicide "have had depressive illness". Acknowledging that "social stresses are key risk factors to depression", Prof Hickie adds that "increasingly we know more about the other genetic, biochemical, physical health and medical factors that also increase your chance of developing this illness". The crunch of course, is this: "Most importantly, we now have available a whole range of effective psychological and medical therapies". Professor Hickie goes on to claim that, in spite of the "adverse publicity" concerning the use of "antidepressant medications", there is "evidence" in both Australia and other "developing countries" that "the increasing prescription of these drugs has been associated with substantial reductions in suicide in people who come forward to get care".

All this is very disturbing. For one thing, the so-called "adverse publicity" to which Professor Hickie refers actually documented scientific evidence (that had been withheld by the manufacturers of antidepressants) showing that these antidepressants (the so-called SSRIs) doubled the risk of suicide (Professor Hickie's reference to "substantial reductions in suicide" is difficult to reconcile with this evidence). See the links to several articles (in Part II) describing some of the evidence - especially www.consciouslivingseminars.com/feb04_journal.html . For some of the overseas (especially American) publicity concerning not merely suicide but homicide, murder and psychosis as "adverse reactions" to these medications, see my article, "Bruno Bettelheim and the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago: A personal view", at http://www.consciouslivingseminars.com/may05_journal.html .

Secondly (again, as argued in some of the articles to which I provide links in Part II), describing depression as an "illness" which is due to some sort of "chemical imbalance" (Mr Kennet) resulting from genetic, or "biochemical" or "medical" factors (Professor Hickie), a condition which requires medical "treatment", is unhelpful at best and misleading and dangerous at worst. It helps us neither to understand nor to assist or support people who are in pain. Indeed, conceptualising depression this way (by medicalising it) can lead to a reliance on doctors and psychiatrists and the prescribing of harmful, often dangerous medications (like the SSRIs - Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil/Aropax/Seroxat for example) which can lead to severe side effects as well as a permanent reliance on drugs. Worst of all, such an approach eliminates the need to look for social, familial or political causes, ensures that we ignore such factors and eliminates any necessity for social change (In this regard, see the works of Dr Peter Breggin, amongst others. For an alternative approach to the twin issues of "mental health" and "healing", see my article in the October 2003 issue of the Conscious Living Seminars Journal at www.consciouslivingseminars.com/oct03_journal.html ).

This is what I wrote in the April 2003 issue of the Conscious Seminars Journal:

"Those of us suffering from depression, or 'schizophrenia' or 'bipolar disorder' or any other 'illness' need not concern ourselves with the real world into which we were born (according to the medical model - the current orthodoxy). These 'disorders' are inherited – and we have scientific evidence to prove it. Whether we are happy or unhappy, calm or anxious, bright or dull, introverted or extraverted, all of these are biological givens. And the benefit of these 'facts' is that we no longer need to concern ourselves with how we treat our children, since it won’t make much (or any) difference in the long run. Whether mum picks her baby up to comfort her or leaves her to cry for hours makes no real difference in the long term. Whether baby is looked after, in the home, by the mother (or father, for that matter) or whether she is placed in 'child care' is simply a matter of personal choice. 'It won’t harm them'. Indeed, there is a 'child care' lobby that proselytises about the benefits of 'child care', even for babies as young as three months old!

As for the mess that these appalling views create (for example, the depression epidemic, or the sky-rocketing incidence of ADHD), we now have an instant cure, in the form of medication or, for those opposed to drugs, 'natural remedies'. I realise that I may appear, to some, to be taking an incredibly rigid, hard line on this subject. That is because I take a rigid, hard line on the subject. To see the ungodly mess that masquerades as 'reality' (the state of the world, globally, nationally and locally) yet fail to connect it with what takes place within the family, at the child care centre, at preschool, at school and in the organisations in which we earn our living, to fail to make such a connection is to be both blind and irresponsible".

To return now to today's news (17 January 2006), the same newspapers that give so much space to the scourge of depression continue to carry the "news" of the "crisis" in "childcare", that began (the "news" that is) two days ago with the Sun Herald headlines "What a shambles" (Sunday, 15 January 2006, Page 1). The idea that there could be any possible connection between the experience of institutional "childcare" (or "day care") and depression (or, for that matter, other "mental disorders" or "illnesses") has been banished from public (or private) discussion. The reason why such an idea now sounds absurd to most people is not due to evidence of any sort - and certainly not what people like to call "scientific" evidence - but rather a conscious decision by governments, universities, the medical profession and our institutions of science, aided and abetted by the pharmaceutical industry and the mass media, to ban any discussion of such factors. There is simply no scientific research of any sort being reported in scientific journals or the mass media looking, even, at a possible connection between a diagnosis of "depression" (or any other so-called "mental disorder" such as OCD or ADHD) on the one hand and the experience of early day care on the other. The same is true for a possible link with practices like "controlled crying" or early weaning (or not breast feeding at all). My wife and I gained some insight into this lack of research into a possible relationship between early childhood experiences and "mental disorders" like depression when she applied to two universities to fill this gap. Both universities rejected the proposal. See http://www.consciouslivingseminars.com/dec04_journal.html (To be continued).

The cancer epidemic - Part IV

So, are we getting healthier as a result of our massive expenditure on "health"? Our mass media certainly think so. So, too, do our governments, government agencies like the US National Cancer Institute (NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH) and "non-profit" organizations like the American Cancer Society (ACS). Robert E Moffit, director of the US Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, after acknowledging that "the health care system is broken" (see previous post) thought the rising costs were justified. "Yes, we're spending more, but we're also getting more" he told the Washington Post (28 September 2004). As "evidence" that "the typical patient gets more for the health care dollar" he cited, not improvements in our health - which would have been a big ask - but the following: "newer diagnostic tests, less-invasive surgery and prescription medications"!!!

Returning to cancer, then, just how have we fared? The American Cancer Society (ACS), in its annual report, published last year, estimated that 1,373,000 people were newly diagnosed with cancer in 2005 (1.2 million in 2004) and that 570,280 Americans died from cancer (in 2005). As I pointed out previously, that means that over 1500 people died because of cancer every day last year (and over 1500 people are dying from cancer every day, as I write). How would we define it if 1500 people were dying of the avian (bird) flu every day? It may be difficult to believe, but, since the first cases of avian flu were detected in 1997, the total number of cases reported throughout the world has been a mere 140. That is less than the number of cases of cancer diagnosed in the US alone, every hour! According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 10 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed worldwide every year and there are seven million deaths because of cancer worldwide each year (see post on 16 November 2005). Are we not, therefore, experiencing a global "pandemic" right now? You certainly wouldn't think so if your only source of information is the mainstream press or television. "Childhood cancers are rare" trumpets the ACS document referred to above. Then it gives the game away: "Despite its rarity, cancer is the chief cause of death by disease in children between the ages of 1 and 14" (American Cancer Society, "Cancer facts and figures 2005", Page 11). What the ACS document does not say is that cancer has been the chief cause of death by disease in children between the ages of 1 and 14 for more than 30 years, nor that the incidence of cancer in children has been increasing throughout that period (at least since 1971, when President Nixon launched the "war on cancer") and continues to increase (see www.preventcancer.com).

It is true that, as the cancer establishment, aided by the mass media, has been recently telling us, age-adjusted death rates have finally begun to fall slightly since 1991 (See the NCI's recent report, "Cancer trends progress report - 2005 update", last reviewed 22 December 2005; http://progressreport.cancer.gov/highlights.asp ). But this is only true when the mortality rates are adjusted to take account of the aging population. And even then, we are no better off than we were in 1975, by which time deaths from cancer had already reached epidemic proportions. As I pointed out earlier, the death rate from cancer has been increasung since 1850, when the crude (unadjusted) cancer death rate was around 30 per 100,00 population (in England and Wales). Undoubtedly the figures would change considerably when "age-adjusted". But not enough to hide the fact that there has been a significant increase in both the incidence and mortality rate of cancer over the past 150 years. Here are the figures (cancer deaths per 100,000 population, adjusted to a standard population, viz for the year 2000), from the NCI report, for the past 28 years:

1975-199; 1976-202; 1977-203; 1978-204; 1979-205; 1980-206; 1981-207; 1982-208; 1983-209; 1984-211; 1985-211; 1986-211; 1987-212; 1988-213; 1989-214; 1990-215; 1991-215; 1992-214; 1993-214; 1994-211; 1995-209; 1996-207; 1997-204; 1998-202; 1999-200; 2000-199; 2001-196; 2002-194.

To the cancer establishment these figures mean that we are "winning the war" against cancer, in spite of the fact that over 570,000 Americans died from cancer last year, that well over a million new cases are being diagnosed in the US every year, that 10 million new cases are diagnosed worldwide every year, that seven million people are dying from cancer worldwide every year and that, without the statistical manipulation of "adjusting" the "crude" cancer mortality rates there has been an increase from around 30 per 100,000 to around 200 per 100,000 population. There is also the embarrassing fact that, even according to the figures used by the NCI (and acknowleged by the NCI) the incidence of the following ten cancers continues to rise: breast cancer (in women), prostate and testis (in men), leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, myeloma; melanoma; thyroid, kidney and esophagus. The (age-adjusted) death rates from cancers of the liver, thyroid and esophagus also continue to rise, as does death due to lung cancer in women.

Yet another horror statistic not favoured by the NCI or ACS (nor by the mass media) is the following: Cancer in the US now strikes 44% 0f males and 39% of females. That alone should horrify us to the point where it should be the number one issue being discussed, both in the mass media and within government agencies responsible for protecting our health and wellbeing, way ahead of any concern with terrorism or a possible bird flu epidemic or pandemic! We've got an epidemic of frightening proportions taking place right now! What is causing this epidemic? This is an issue I intend to discuss in the future.

In the meantime, I'd like to come back to another uncomfortable statistic, one mentioned earlier. While it is true that well over half a million Americans are dying each year from cancer and while it is also true that some 700,000 Americans are dying every year because of heart disease, it is significant that the "treatments" for these and other diseases, by doctors, using the most modern equipment and drugs in the most modern hospitals, are killing even more Americans than the diseases themselves. In December 2003, Carolyn Dean MD and Gary Null PhD reproduced the following figures for 2001 from National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 51, Number 5, 14 March 2003: In 2001 there were 699,697 deaths in the US due to heart disease; there were 553,251 deaths due to cancer; and the total number of "iatrogenic deaths" (that is, deaths caused by doctors, hospitals and medications) in 2001 was 783, 936 (For the last of these figures, see http://www.mercola.com/2004/jul/7/healthcare_death.htm; see also, Carolyn Dean, "Death by medicine", Total Health, 30 September 2004, Volume 26 Issue 4, Pages 42-43). In other words, more people died from medical errors of various kinds, from infections suffered in hospitals and from adverse reactions to drugs than from any disease, sickness or illness, including heart disease and cancer. That should surely be worth a headline or two! The fact that hardly any of us seems even faintly aware of what is killing and injuring us is the most telling feature of our unconsciousness I can think of. But it is also a testament to the enormous power of the combined forces of government, the institutions of science and modern medicine and the mass media to colonise our very consciousness.

The cancer epidemic - Part III

In my earlier post (this morning) I mentioned that expenditure on so-called "health" (that is, on ill-health, sickness and disease) had reached an astronomical USD$1.6 trillion 2002, an increase of 9.3% on the figure for 2001. What makes this figure so obscene is that its beneficiaries are executives and other employees of multinational corporations, in particular, drug companies, with whom politicians, administrators, senior executives and employees of the US government and its agencies (FDA, CDC, NIH and so on) have (often substantial) financial ties. It may be difficult to believe, but expentiture on "health" greatly exceeds that on arms, in spite of the fact that military spending is itself obscene [As I pointed out in the post on the economics of war and terror on 16 November 2005, worldwide military spending during 2004 amounted to USD$1.035 trillion during 2004. I also mentioned that President Bush had said, in March 2003, that the war in Iraq would cost around USD$60 billion but that, as at March 2005 it had already cost USD$135.3 billion. SBS TV reported last month that the figure had reached $300 billion, although the report did not specify whether this figure was in US or Australian Dollars. Today's Age newspaper, however, has the following headline: "Iraq war may top $2.65 trillion (USD$2 trillion)"This estimate comes from none other than Nobel Prize winning economist and former advisor to Bill Clinton, Joseph Stiglitz, author of "Globalization and its discontents"(2002) and "The roaring nineties (2003)].

If the figure of USD$1.6 trillion (2002 "health spending") sounds frightening you may not want to read on, because, according to a report from US government actuaries issued on 12 March 2002 "healthcare" spending is expected to top USD$2.8 trillion by 2011 (see www.mercola.com Issue 311, 30 March 2002, citing an article in Health Affairs for March/April 2002, Volume 21, Pages 207-217; the same issue of mercola.com reports that retail pharmacies filled three billion prescriptions during 2000)! As a result of these unsustainable costs - something now universally being acknowledged - the cost of family insurance in the US is rapidly approaching the gross earnings of a full-time minimum wage-earner (Washington Post, 28 September 2004). The average American family was paying USD$10,000 per annum for health insurance. "By most financial measures, the health care system is broken, agreed Robert E Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the conservativeHeritage foundation" (ibid).

This brings us back to the question we started with. What are we getting for this huge and clearly unsustainable expenditure, expenditure which is making senior executives of corporate America and their allies in the US Congress wealthy beyond their wildest dreams? (To be continued)

The cancer epidemic - Part II

The organization later renamed the American Cancer Society was created in 1913 "to disseminate knowledge about cancer symptoms, treatment and prevention; to investigate conditions under which cancer was found; and to complile cancer statistics" (American Cancer Society, "Cancer facts and figures 2005", Page 49). Beginning with 10 physicians and 5 laypeople, "the organization now includes more than 2 million friends and volunteers working to conquer cancer" (ibid). According to its latest report: "For nearly a century, the American Cancer Society has continued to make significant progress toward victory over cancer" (ibid). The report goes on to claim that "we have seen remarkable strides in cancer science, prevention, early detection, treatment and cancer patients' quality of life". As Professor Samuel Epstein has been trying to tell us for the last 30 years, this claim is patently false. He is being too kind. The claim is absurd! Both the incidence of and mortality from cancer have escalated to epidemic proportions, as I began to indicate in my previous post (6 January).

This was clearly recognized by 1971 when the US Congress passed the National Cancer Act, launching President Nixon's "War on cancer" through the "National Cancer Program" under the direction of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), with a mandate to eradicate cancer. By this time, deaths from cancer had reached epidemic proportions (see previous post, 6 January). To allow the NCI to do its job, its 1970 budget of USD$149 million was increased by 50% to USD$223 million. During the next eight years its budget was increased by a further 321% to USD$940 million, although this figure (321%) does not take inflation into account. Nevertheless, huge increases have continued to the present day, so that the NCI's annual budget has been USD$4.6 billion for the past two years (2003 and 2004), over USD$6 billion being requested for 2005 (Figures cited by Samuel S Epstein, "Why we are still losing the winnable cancer war", The Humanist, December 2004/January 2005, reprinted in Samuel S Epstein, "Cancer-Gate: How to win the losing cancer war", 2005, Page 286; and Samuel S Epstein, "The crisis in US and international cancer policy", International Journal of Health Sciences, 2002, Volume 32, Number 4, reprinted in "Cancer-Gate", Page 112 Table 1). "By one recent estimate", Epstein writes, "total public and private spending on cancer will amount to over $14 billion this year (2005)". Again Professor Epstein is being kind to the industry. The American Cancer Society, in its recent report for 2005, published two weeks ago, quotes a far higher estimate (for 2004) by the National Institutes for Health (NIH), being USD$69.4 billion for direct medical costs alone!

This is as good a place as any to mention that "healthcare spending" (in reality, expenditure to cure sickness and disease, including cancer and heart disease) has itself become an epidemic to cure an epidemic. The New York Times reported 12 months ago that expenditure on "health" in the US amounted to a staggering USD$1.6 trillion during 2002, an increse of 9.3% on 2001 (The New York Times, 3 December 2004). This figure had been issued the previous day, on Thursday, 2 December 2004, by the National Center for Health Statistics, as part of a report on the nation's health. According to the report, prescription drugs accounted for about 10% of the nation's total health bill, with no fewer than 49% of women and 39% of men taking at least one prescription drug during 1999-2000 ("more than 40% of Americans"). Heart disease is still the number one killer disease, killing even more Americans than cancer. In 2001, according to the National Vital Statistic Reports, 14 March 2003, Volume 51, Number 5, there were 699,697 deaths in the US due to heart disease and 553, 251 deaths from cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates the number of cancer deaths for 2005 at 570,280. This equates to some 1560 deaths every day, or almost 11,000 people dying from cancer each week!! Given the awful statistics on heart disease it is interesting to note that, according to the above report from the National Health Statistics, use of cholesteol-reducing statin drugs (especially Lipitor, Pravachol and Zocor) among people 45 and older more than tripled from 1995 to 2002. The use of antidepressants by adults "almost tripled from 1988 to 2000 (The New York Times, 3 December 2004). Even more horrifying, the report states that, in 1999-2000, 10% 0f women over the age of 18 reported taking antidepressants during the previous month. "The report also confirms a sharp increase in the use of stimulants (like Ritalin...often used to treat impulsive, aggressive traits known as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children) by children aged 5-17" (To be continued)

The cancer epidemic - Part I

In my final post on vaccinations on 16 November 2005, I wrote: "In his 1885 pamphlet, Wallace cited figures showing a 77% increase in the death rate from cancer between 1854 and 1882". In light of the constant references in the media to modern medicine winning the war on cancer, I thought it might be useful to cite some statistics - statistics that come from government agencies, figures which nobody disputes. First, in the 1885 pamphlet written by Alfred Russel Wallace, the following figures were culled from various government reports ("Forty-five years of registration statistics proving vaccination to be both useless and dangerous", Page 23): During the five-year period 1850-54, there were 302 annual deaths from cancer per million people living in England and Wales. The figures for the following 30 years are as follows: 1855-59, 327; 1860-64, 369; 1865-69, 404; 1870-74, 442; 1875-79, 493. In 1880 there were 514 cancer deaths per million population; in 1881 there were 522; in 1882 532 people died from cancer for every million living.

So, let's keep in mind that, in England and Wales, during the years 1850 to 1854, the number of cancer deaths per million, each year, was 302, that is, 30.2 deaths per 100,000 people living. Let's compare this figure with those for the last 35 years. In England and Wales in 1971, there were no fewer than 265 deaths per 100,000 population amongst males because of cancer and 215 amongst females (Samuel S Epstein, "The politics of cancer revisited", 1998, Page 404, Table 14.3). By 1977, these figures were, respectively 283 and 233, increases of 6.8% and 8.4% over this 6-year period). These figures are what are called "crude cancer mortality rates" and take no account of the aging population. What happens when corrections are made for changing age demographics? Here are the figures for the US during a comparable period (age-adjusted cancer mortality rates per 100,000 US population), 1969 to 1976: For "white males" there were 195 deaths per 100,000 due to cancer in 1969; there were 129 deaths amongst "white females" (the corresponding figures for African Americans are significantly worse). By 1976, the death rates per 100,000 had risen to 210 and 133.8 respectively. Whichever way we look at these figures, it is clear that something significant must have happened between the mid-to-late 1800s and the 1960s to cause such a huge increase in the cancer mortality rate! (To be continued)