iatrogenic pains
Happy Dog
> > a) Psychiatrists uniformly act in evil ways that are grossly at odds
with
> > their patient's needs. That's patent paranoia.
>
> I refer any who believes in the kindness of psychiatry to:
Someone else who will do your talking for you. Unimpressive.
> The documented history of psychiatry, including lobotomy, drownings,
> imprisonment, insulin coma, electroconvulsive therapy, and forced
> eugenic sterilization, is an unrelenting trail of horrors.
>
> You can see one of the evils of psychiatry in Happy Dog's posting. He
> cannot help but label someone with whom he disagrees with the "mental
> illness" "paranoia."
This is only a valid observation if you really believe that there aren't any
crazy people. Since you adore me by posting my name, "Nicolas Martin" makes
reference to long abandoned therapies to support his case against
psychiatry. But he doesn't have anything to say about current treatments.
> One of the most interesting parts of psychiatric history, as told in
> "Cruel Compassion," is about the imprisonment of epileptics in
> "colonies" because they were considered by medical experts to have a
> disease which caused them to be incurable pathological criminals.
Show me where thus happens today.
> I have just been reading "Insulin Treatment in Psychiatry, Proceedings
> of the International Conference on the Insulin Treatment in Psychiatry
> Held at the New York Academy of Medicine, Oct. 24 to 25, 1958.
Like most kooks, you have no shame about citing ancient information (whether
or not it's invalid) to make your case. "1958"? Kook.
> People who disdain history resent having to look back, but it must be
> noted that the Nazi holocaust is now known to have had psychiatrists as
> its primary architects and executioners. They were heavily influenced by
> the many American psychiatrists who participated in the eugenics
> movement. The histories are available to be read by anyone who cares.
Idiot, kook or liar. Take your pick. I've seen this before. It's crap.
But, knock yourself out trying to prove me wrong.
erf
xposted to sci.skeptic where I last dealt with this.
Lawrence Foard
Happy Dog <happ...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>"Nicolas Martin" <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote
>> > a) Psychiatrists uniformly act in evil ways that are grossly at odds
>with
>> > their patient's needs. That's patent paranoia.
>>
>> I refer any who believes in the kindness of psychiatry to:
>
>Someone else who will do your talking for you. Unimpressive.
>
>> The documented history of psychiatry, including lobotomy, drownings,
>> imprisonment, insulin coma, electroconvulsive therapy, and forced
>> eugenic sterilization, is an unrelenting trail of horrors.
>>
>> You can see one of the evils of psychiatry in Happy Dog's posting. He
>> cannot help but label someone with whom he disagrees with the "mental
>> illness" "paranoia."
>
>This is only a valid observation if you really believe that there aren't any
>crazy people. Since you adore me by posting my name, "Nicolas Martin" makes
>reference to long abandoned therapies to support his case against
>psychiatry. But he doesn't have anything to say about current treatments.
I'm sure psychiatry has improved, but there is currently the issue of
drugging kids, not because its good for the kid but because it makes them
able to sit still in school. We are talking about serious drugs like speed
(Ritalin) introduced into a growing brain here. Do we know how that turns
out?
Studies often find that people are in mental institutions for undiagnosed
and treatable physical conditions such as Wilson's disease (I knew one case
personally). You often hear of a long list of dangerous drugs given to
children with Tourette's and Autism, conditions where a supportive
environment is usually much more helpful than drugs. Not to mention that
most evidence points toward Autism being an intestinal condition which
results in neurological symptoms. There are numerous dietary adjustments
which help many kids, but these are ignored in favor of drugs.
And then there are the anti depressants. The incidence of bad reactions to
them seems to be very high, in the people I know basically anyone who
has been on one has suffered serious side effects, only one person has
actually reported that they worked well. I once had to bundle some
one who was totally freaking out up into a cab and to the hospital because
of an adverse reaction. The freakout was as bad as the worst bad acid trip
I've ever seen, and substantially more dangerous since it started with
driving down the wrong side of a busy road.
I'm sure they help many people, but these days they are handed out like
candy with little warning of the risks. Anti depressants are mind altering
drugs and need to be treated with the same level of respect as any of the
seratonin system effecting psychadelics such as LSD, MDMA, etc. Then there
are the withdrawal symptoms which no one warns patients about.
--
Be a counter terrorist perpetrate random senseless acts of kindness
Rave: Immanentization of the Eschaton in a Temporary Autonomous Zone.
I'm looking for computer hardware donations for charities, E-mail me.
Available for contracting http://www.farviolet.com/~entropy/resume.txt
Nicolas Martin
ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
> I'm sure psychiatry has improved...
Psychiatry can't improve, anymore than the Spanish Inquisition could
improve. It is based on unscientific and uttely false premises. The
product of false premises cannot be truth.
There is not a single biological test to validate a single "brain
disease" claimed as psychiatric. The list of bogus diseases grows with
each new DSM. More people than ever before are "treated" for these
invented illnesses. Anti-depressants are doled out in greater numbers
with less medical rationale every day. Now, if you live in Ohio and are
sad because the World Trade Center was attacked, you are not expected to
deal with your feelings, you can be drugged by you local physician in
the role of psychiatrists (even though he may be a gynocologist or a
podiatrist).
Psychiatrists, and docs who give out psychiatric meds, are
indistinguishable now from dope dealers, except that the drugs sold on
the street are intrinsically less harmful and less dishonestly marketed.
Poor people who want to get high get their drugs from the 'hood, the
more affluent get their high from docs who pretend to be acting with the
authority of science. Well, the Nazi docs acted with the authority of
science, as well.
"American's eugenicists even encouraged Nazi Germany in its massive
sterilization of the mentall ill, a program that led directly to the
crematoriums of the Holocaust."
--- Mad In America, Robert Whitaker, Perseus Publishing, 2001
The most avid American eugenicists were psychiatrists.
Psychiatry will be a more pervasive evil long before its myths are
debunked.
--
Nicolas Martin
Executive Director
American Iatrogenic Association
www.iatrogenic.org
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>There is not a single biological test to validate a single "brain
>disease" claimed as psychiatric. The list of bogus diseases grows with
>each new DSM. More people than ever before are "treated" for these
>invented illnesses. Anti-depressants are doled out in greater numbers
>with less medical rationale every day.
Regarding, NORMAL people I would have to agree with you.
But, how do you explain the truly Psychotic?
--
John Gohde,
Patient Empowerment Advocate
http://home.naturalhealthperspective.com/empowerment.html
Email: N...@NaturalHealthPerspective.com
www.NaturalHealthPerspective.com - Pioneering de-medicalisation by
handing back the power to the people, encouraging self care and
autonomy, and resisting the categorization of life's problems as
medical.
Nicolas Martin
John 'the Man' <DeMan[62]@hotmail.com> wrote:
> But, how do you explain the truly Psychotic?
John,
The "psychotic" are no exception. They are people with problems in their
lives and a strategy for dealing with (or avoiding) them, not with any
demonstrable physical abnormalities.
If someone becomes divorced from reality because of a physical
condition, by definition his problem is not psychiatric. We don't say
that Alzheimer's victims who talk gibberish have a psychiatric disorder.
We don't (anymore) say that epileptics who foam at the mouth are crazed
animals. We accept that REAL brain diseases can cause mental effects,
and we try to find real causes and treatments. In the case of ADHD, it
has been shown that 6 percent of the kids treated with stimulant drugs
END UP WITH DRUG-INDUCED PSYCHOSIS.
Psychotic Side Effects of Psychostimulants: A 5-Year Review
Cherland et al., Can J Psychiatry, Vol 44, October 1999
As Whitaker describes in "Mad in America," effective "therapies" for
these people were discovered long ago, and they include primarily
treating them with kindness and respect.
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>If someone becomes divorced from reality because of a physical
>condition, by definition his problem is not psychiatric.
Okay, what in your opinion is the correct terminology for such a
person who is severely psychotic due to physical brain damage?
Further, do you advocate letting physically dangerous psychotics roam
the streets? How should society deal with psychotics who pose a
danger to other people?
Also there is a rather famous case of a person whose skull was
penetrated by a long iron rod. The iron rod was cut off at both ends
of his skull. He survived the incident, but the iron bar remained in
his skull the remainder of his life. He was said to have had a
complete change in his personality and lost all his inhibitions.
How would you classify that person? Was he physically sick, and if
not why not?
--
John Gohde
Email: N...@NaturalHealthPerspective.com
((((((((((( Left-Brain Mode ON ))))))))))))
Richmond, Virginia, USA, Planet Earth, The Sun, Milky Way galaxy
Nicolas Martin
John 'the Man' <DeMan[62]@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Okay, what in your opinion is the correct terminology for such a
> person who is severely psychotic due to physical brain damage?
If he has brain damage then what it is called depends on the damage. If
there is detectable damage then he will be referred to a neurologist for
a diagnosis. Could be cancer, Alzheimer's, strokes, or the side-effects
of psychotropic drugs, for instance. It won't be "schizophrenia." No
person with detectable physical brain damage is ever diagnosed as
"schizophrenic." In the case of real disease, it is understood that the
inability to think clearly is sometimes a side-effect. We no longer
imprison people for the side-effects of their brain damage.
> Further, do you advocate letting physically dangerous psychotics roam
> the streets? How should society deal with psychotics who pose a
> danger to other people?
I don't advocate imprisoning people for being potentially dangerous, but
I do advocate putting people who have committed crimes in jail. I oppose
corrupting the legal system with pseudo-medical judgements.
Psychiatrists are not soothsayers who can predict dangerousness, and we
imprion people for actual crimes, not prospective crimes. So-called
psychotic people deserve the same rights and punishments as everyone
else. (In reality, of course, we do imprison people who have committed
no crimes and are not even threatening to. We put them in psychiatric
prisons, which are different than ordinary prisons where people retain
their rights to due process.)
You must be clear about what you mean by "pose a danger." If you mean
someone has threatened harm then that may be a punishable crime. If you
mean he just acts in odd or obnoxious ways that scare people, those are
not crimes (though you may choose to kick him out of the house or stay
away from him). Exactly the same rules apply to "psychotics" as everyone
else. If a person acts crazy because he has a genuine biological
disease, then we don't hold him responsible to the extent that the
disease affects his judgement, as in the case of Alzheimer's disease.
> Also there is a rather famous case of a person whose skull was
> penetrated by a long iron rod. The iron rod was cut off at both ends
> of his skull. He survived the incident, but the iron bar remained in
> his skull the remainder of his life. He was said to have had a
> complete change in his personality and lost all his inhibitions.
>
> How would you classify that person? Was he physically sick, and if
> not why not?
Of course he was physically sick, he had a rod in his head! His mental
abnormalities were the conseqence of a severe trauma to the head, for
which he was no more resonsible than an epileptic is for having seizures.
There is a phenomenon called "sundowners," which is not uncommon to
people with Alzheimer's disease. After dark a person who exhibits
"sundowners" becomes violent. I don't know if it is yet understood why
it happens, but nobody thinks that the person knows what he is doing, or
holds him reponsible for his actions, or says he is "mentally ill." It
happened to a friend of mine who was a fine, caring physician and as
nice a person as you could find.
Real diseases have real effects, and are detected through biological
tests. There are no biological tests that confirm a diagnosis of
"schizophrenia" or any other psychiatric "disease." If a person acts
oddly and a brain abnormality is dicovered, his actual disease will be
identified by a neurologist and it will have nothing to do with
psychiatry. If you got shot in he head with a bullet, would you go to a
psychiatrist to have it "treated"?
Alex Brands
> >If someone becomes divorced from reality because of a physical
> >condition, by definition his problem is not psychiatric.
>
> penetrated by a long iron rod. The iron rod was cut off at both ends
> of his skull. He survived the incident, but the iron bar remained in
> his skull the remainder of his life. He was said to have had a
> complete change in his personality and lost all his inhibitions.
Are you talking about Finneus Gage (That must be spelled wrong)? I
thought the rod blew right through his skull and flew out the top of his
head.
mark doran
news:Pine.GSO.4.31.0205171412500.
>
> Are you talking about Finneus Gage (That must be spelled wrong)? I
> thought the rod blew right through his skull and flew out the top of his
> head.
>
have a look at:
http://www.brainviews.com/abFiles/ImgGage.htm
and
http://www-instruct.nmu.edu/psychology/mmacmill/gage_page/PGSTORY.HTM
It's 'Phineas', BTW.
Bests,
Mark D.
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>If a person acts
>oddly and a brain abnormality is dicovered, his actual disease will be
>identified by a neurologist and it will have nothing to do with
>psychiatry.
Okay, now we are getting some where. :-)
So, you are simply saying that people with physical brain problems
should see a neurologist, *not* a psychiatrist, for treatment. The
neurologist will in turn select some treatment code so that the HMO or
whatever insurance the patient has will pay the physician for his
services.
A psychiatrist is an MD with a specialty in psychiatry. A neurologist
is an MD with a specialty in neurology. Seems to me that all we are
playing here is a semantics game?
In other words, it okay to treat a person as long as you are a MD.
After that, it is simply turf warfare. You seem to think that
neurology is okay, while psychiatry is not? In the end, might *not*
the treatment actually received by the patent be the same? I am not
talking about psychoanalysis. I am referring to prescriptions.
There are many specialties in medicine. In the end, anyone of a dozen
specialties could treat a person for cancer, for example.
Nicolas Martin
John 'the Man' <DeMan[62]@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Once upon a time, our fellow Nicolas Martin
> rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
> Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>
> >If a person acts
> >oddly and a brain abnormality is dicovered, his actual disease will be
> >identified by a neurologist and it will have nothing to do with
> >psychiatry.
>
> Okay, now we are getting some where. :-)
>
> So, you are simply saying that people with physical brain problems
> should see a neurologist, *not* a psychiatrist, for treatment. The
> neurologist will in turn select some treatment code so that the HMO or
> whatever insurance the patient has will pay the physician for his
> services.
I am saying that no real illnesses, that is illnesses that are
biological rather metaphorical, are treated by psychiatrists. You can
refer to any other medical specialty you want; none of them treat
illnesses for which there is no biological evidence (unless they too are
giving psychiatric treatments).
I don't know what you mean by semantics, and I don't know how to be
clearer. There is no biological test that shows that a person has a
psychiatric or mental illness because psychiatrist don't treat real
illnesses.
I like this definition from Webster's Unabridged (1913):
Disease
An alteration in the state of the body or of some of its
organs, interrupting or disturbing the performance of the
vital functions, and causing or threatening pain and
weakness; malady; affection; illness; sickness; disorder;
-- applied figuratively to the mind, to the moral
character and habits, to institutions, the state, etc.
Psychiatrists treat mental illnesses, diseases of the mind. Figurative
diseases, metaphorical diseases, fake diseases.
It used to be understood that a "sick mind" was meant figuratively since
the "mind" is a metaphor. We still understand that a "sick economy" is a
metaphor and we don't expect doctors to treat it, but we are confused
about the "mind." This confusion has lead to physicians, mostly
psychiatrist, using drugs to treat a metaphor. They now claim that the
brain is damaged, but they provide no objective evidence, and they treat
without tests to prove their claims.
Gym Bob
"Nicolas Martin" <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote in message
news:aia-0376B7.1...@netnews.attbi.com...
Denis Loubet
I, for one, find your posts very clear, and you present a persuasive
argument.
Denis Loubet
dlo...@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
Lawrence Foard
> rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
>Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>
>>There is not a single biological test to validate a single "brain
>>disease" claimed as psychiatric. The list of bogus diseases grows with
>>each new DSM. More people than ever before are "treated" for these
>>invented illnesses. Anti-depressants are doled out in greater numbers
>>with less medical rationale every day.
>
>Regarding, NORMAL people I would have to agree with you.
>
>But, how do you explain the truly Psychotic?
The truly psychotic would seem to be those who most obviously have a
physical source of there illness (physical either inside or outside
of the brain).
I do tend to think psychiatry needs to go away. It should be subsumed by
psychology and neurology. Those things which are a result of bad thought
patterns should fall under psychology, those things which are the result of
a physical/chemical abnormality should fall under neurology.
In the future if someone is schizophrenia I can imagine it being diagnosed
with a blood or urine test, rather than from symptoms alone. Hopefully
treatment would consist of treating closer to the source of the problem.
Perhaps we will discover that the source of schizophrenia is not even
in the brain, but some other sort of metabolic abnormality. Bofutenin in
the urine is a pretty good sign that there is a physical process going on
beyond bad thought patterns or nerve wiring.
Nicolas Martin
ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
> In the future if someone is schizophrenia I can imagine it being diagnosed
> with a blood or urine test, rather than from symptoms alone. Hopefully
> treatment would consist of treating closer to the source of the problem.
> Perhaps we will discover that the source of schizophrenia is not even
> in the brain, but some other sort of metabolic abnormality. Bofutenin in
> the urine is a pretty good sign that there is a physical process going on
> beyond bad thought patterns or nerve wiring.
Again, there is no evidence of any biological abnormality in persons
labeled "schizophrenic." There is evidence that their abnormal behaviors
diminish when they are treated with kindness and respect. There is no
reason to think that "schizophrenia" will ever be a biologically
diagnosed medical disorder treatable with medication. It is a strategy
some people use to deal (or not deal) with problems in living. Looking
for solutions to life's problems in urine and blood is a superstition of
our time.
Nicolas Martin
"Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote:
> I, for one, find your posts very clear, and you present a persuasive
> argument.
Thanks, Denis. I appreciate your thinking so.
fred & michele
> In article <ac4ggv$q28$1...@farviolet.com>,
> ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
>
> > In the future if someone is schizophrenia I can imagine it being
diagnosed
> > with a blood or urine test, rather than from symptoms alone. Hopefully
> > treatment would consist of treating closer to the source of the problem.
> > Perhaps we will discover that the source of schizophrenia is not even
> > in the brain, but some other sort of metabolic abnormality. Bofutenin in
> > the urine is a pretty good sign that there is a physical process going
on
> > beyond bad thought patterns or nerve wiring.
>
> Again, there is no evidence of any biological abnormality in persons
> labeled "schizophrenic." There is evidence that their abnormal behaviors
> diminish when they are treated with kindness and respect.
While I find the labels of psychiatry unhelpful & stigmatizing, I don't
think the people who suffer with whatever disorder/disease/problem you want
to call *severe* behavioral abnormalities can be helped to be able to return
to a functioning behavior (where they aren't harming themselves or others --
with this behavior detrimental to *themselves* far more common ) *just* with
kindness & respect. Hallucinations, extreme fear & paranoia (to the extent
that the person cannot maintain employment, their own basic self care, or in
some cases even the most superficial interaction with others needed to
manage day-to-day living), & the fact that in many cases the situation
worsens as time goes on even when others (including the ones who deeply love
the individual & treat them with such kindess & respect) says something is
very sadly amiss. Unfortunately we don't have much to go on with the
"what?". I've had such patients tell me in their lucid periods (which I've
seen happen, startling like night & day) that they'd give just about
anything to regain the lives they used to have & seemed to have lost.
There is no
> reason to think that "schizophrenia" will ever be a biologically
> diagnosed medical disorder treatable with medication. It is a strategy
> some people use to deal (or not deal) with problems in living.
That would suggest that these people are choosing severely dysfunctional
behavior. I could agree with that if they were choosing to engage in
behavior in order to alter their mindset, but in many cases that is not so.
The changes in their behavior & perception of reality often frighten the
patient themselves, especially in the beginning. Usually those who choose
to deal or not deal with life's problems, whether with substances like drugs
& alcohol or mildly dysfunctional behavior, follow a different pattern where
"everything's just fine" until well into their behavioral choices. I think
choice is something that many going through such mental/emotional torture
desperately want & simply find they can no longer find within themselves.
Labels may not help. Drugs & other treatment may not help. But we cannot
simply give up. And while we should always treat others with kindness &
respect, we have to do everything we can to find out how we are "wonderfully
made" & what we can do to give those who have lost so much the chance to get
it back. Doesn't *that* shows kindness & respect as well?
Michele
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>There is no
>reason to think that "schizophrenia" will ever be a biologically
>diagnosed medical disorder treatable with medication. It is a strategy
>some people use to deal (or not deal) with problems in living.
The truly "schizophrenia" are reported to be so because of organic
reasons. Whether or not they are best treated by neurologists or
psychiatrists is nothing but turf warfare that should have been
resolved by the AMA a long time ago.
Here, again for a NORMAL person that thinks himself to be
"schizophrenic," I would tend to agree with you. But, not for the
truly "schizophrenic."
A truly "schizophrenic," and other types of psychotics, are not even
approachable with psychoanalysis. They need to be treated. And, like
always the primary reason is to protect society from them.
Frankly, I think that society should be protected from the homeless as
well. Most homeless people are mentally ill anyway. Anyway you look
at it, the homeless belong anywhere but on the streets. Whether
society should put them in jail, in a work camp, or in a mental
hospital is purely splitting hairs.
And, I don't need a Masters degree in nutritional epidemiology from a
second rate institution to say so. :-)
slenon
>Again, there is no evidence of any biological abnormality in persons
labeled "schizophrenic." There is evidence that their abnormal behaviors
>diminish when they are treated with kindness and respect
Right up to the point where they hurt themselves or someone else. You don't
treat or cure schizophrenia with new age feel good methodologies.
--
Stev
Still dancing in the Phil Zone & scattering Garcia ashes
Stev Lenon MT(ASCP) - In healthcare the ultimate bottom line is patients not
profit
Save a cow, eat a PETA member
sle...@tampabay.rr.com
http://web.tampabay.rr.com/stevglo/index.html/slhomepage92kword.htm
watchman
> Again, there is no evidence of any biological abnormality in persons
> labeled "schizophrenic." There is evidence that their abnormal behaviors
> diminish when they are treated with kindness and respect. There is no
> reason to think that "schizophrenia" will ever be a biologically
> diagnosed medical disorder treatable with medication. It is a strategy
> some people use to deal (or not deal) with problems in living. Looking
> for solutions to life's problems in urine and blood is a superstition of
> our time.
Well if Hoffer gets such results with his niacin therapy .. I would have
to disagree .
If he were treating and getting results with more than one substance ..
then there may be something to the placebo .. but since niacin seems to be
the treatment .. then .. there IS something biologically wrong..
Who loves ya.
Tom
> --
> Nicolas Martin
> Executive Director
> American Iatrogenic Association
> www.iatrogenic.org
--
Jesus was a Vegetarian! http://www.nucleus.com/watchman
Moses was a Mystic! http://www.nucleus.com/watchman/light.html
Nicolas Martin
"slenon" <sle...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Right up to the point where they hurt themselves or someone else. You don't
> treat or cure schizophrenia with new age feel good methodologies.
No, they are treated with unproven drugs without any evidence of their
having physical abnormalities. This isn't New Age, it is just quackery.
At least the proponents of psychiatry don't even bother to pretend that
their treatments are scientific.
Lawrence Foard
Nicolas Martin <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote:
>In article <ac4ggv$q28$1...@farviolet.com>,
> ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
>
>> In the future if someone is schizophrenia I can imagine it being diagnosed
>> with a blood or urine test, rather than from symptoms alone. Hopefully
>> treatment would consist of treating closer to the source of the problem.
>> Perhaps we will discover that the source of schizophrenia is not even
>> in the brain, but some other sort of metabolic abnormality. Bofutenin in
>> the urine is a pretty good sign that there is a physical process going on
>> beyond bad thought patterns or nerve wiring.
>
>Again, there is no evidence of any biological abnormality in persons
>labeled "schizophrenic." There is evidence that their abnormal behaviors
>diminish when they are treated with kindness and respect.
I don't disagree with this part. Everyone needs kindness and respect.
>There is no
>reason to think that "schizophrenia" will ever be a biologically
>diagnosed medical disorder treatable with medication.
Yet abnormal derivatives of seratonin are found in the urine. There is
something physical going on there.
>It is a strategy
>some people use to deal (or not deal) with problems in living. Looking
>for solutions to life's problems in urine and blood is a superstition of
>our time.
Take 400mcg of LSD and tell me body/brain chemistry is irrelevant to
mental state :)
Lawrence Foard
> rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
>Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>
>A truly "schizophrenic," and other types of psychotics, are not even
>approachable with psychoanalysis. They need to be treated. And, like
>always the primary reason is to protect society from them.
Other than the criminally insane the schizophrenic needs to be protected from
society, not vice versa.
Nicolas Martin
John 'the Man' <DeMan[62]@hotmail.com> wrote:
> A truly "schizophrenic," and other types of psychotics, are not even
> approachable with psychoanalysis. They need to be treated. And, like
> always the primary reason is to protect society from them.
>
> Frankly, I think that society should be protected from the homeless as
> well. Most homeless people are mentally ill anyway. Anyway you look
> at it, the homeless belong anywhere but on the streets. Whether
> society should put them in jail, in a work camp, or in a mental
> hospital is purely splitting hairs.
Your views illustrate the rationale for psychiatry. It is an instrument
for social control of unpopular people.
In the 1970s, Loren Mosher was Director of the Center for Schizophrennia
Studies at the National Institute for Mental Health. He began an
experiment called the Soteria Project for the treatment of
"schizophrenics." These were people who exhibited the usual "symptoms"
associated with the "disease."
As Whitaker tells it:
"They told of visions of spiders and bugs coming from the walls, or of
being the devil, of of how the CIA was after them. They could be loud,
they could be aggressive, and certainly they could act in crazy ways.
One of the first was an eighteen-year-old woman so lost to the world
that she would urinate on the floor. She had withered to eighty-five
pounds, wouldn't bathe or brush her teeth, and would regularly fling her
clothes off an jump into the laps of male staff and say, 'Let's fuck.'
"The philosophy at Soteria was that staff, rather than do things 'to'
the residents, would 'be with them.' that meant listening to their crazy
stories, which often did reveal deeper stories of past trauma --
difficult family relationships, abuse, and extreme social failure. Nor
did they try to argue the residents out of their irrational beliefs. For
instance, when one resident proclaimed that aliens from Venus had
selected him for a secret mission and were going to come to a nearby
park at daybreak to pick him up, a staff member took him to the part at
the appointed time. When the extraterrestrial visitors didn't arrive,
the resident simply shrugged and said, 'Well, I guess they aren't going
to come today after all,' and then returned to Soteria House, where he
fell sound asleep.
"That was a reality chack that had helped psychosis loosen its grip.
"...Friendships blossomed, residents and staff played cards and games
together, and there were no locks on the doors. Other activities
included yoga, reading to one another, and massage.
"...By 1974, Mosher and his colleagues were ready to begin reporting
outcomes data. As they detailed in several published papers, the Soteria
patients were faring quite well. At six weeks, psychotic symptoms had
abated in the Soteria patients to the same degree as in medicated
patiens, Even more striking, the Soteria patients were staying well
longer. Relapse rates were lower for the Soteria group at both one-year
and two-year follow-ups. The Soteria patients were also functioning
better socially -- better able to hold jobs and attend school."
"...Soteria soon disappeared into the [American Psychiatric
Association's] dustbin, an experiment that American psychiatry was
grateful to forget."
source: Mad in America, Robert Whitaker, 2001
------------------
It is really just a choice between treating troubled people decently and
compassionately, or heaping cruelty on them and treating them as less
than human. People can draw their own conclusions about which route most
psychiatrists and John prefer. Personally, I find the wanton abuse of
unhappy people to be quite disheartening.
Nicolas Martin
"fred & michele" <heal...@concentric.net> wrote:
> That would suggest that these people are choosing severely dysfunctional
> behavior. I could agree with that if they were choosing to engage in
> behavior in order to alter their mindset, but in many cases that is not so.
> The changes in their behavior & perception of reality often frighten the
> patient themselves, especially in the beginning. Usually those who choose
> to deal or not deal with life's problems, whether with substances like drugs
> & alcohol or mildly dysfunctional behavior, follow a different pattern where
> "everything's just fine" until well into their behavioral choices. I think
> choice is something that many going through such mental/emotional torture
> desperately want & simply find they can no longer find within themselves.
>
> Labels may not help. Drugs & other treatment may not help. But we cannot
> simply give up. And while we should always treat others with kindness &
> respect, we have to do everything we can to find out how we are "wonderfully
> made" & what we can do to give those who have lost so much the chance to get
> it back. Doesn't *that* shows kindness & respect as well?
I agree with much of what you posted. However, nowhere did I suggest
that we "give up" on anyone.
I do think the behaviors are chosen, but not because they are
beneficial. People chose to engage in many self-destructive behaviors.
They smoke cigarettes, they don't brush their teeth often, they drive
too fast, they eat too much...
The behavior of so-called schizophrenics is a strategy for dealing with
(or not dealing with) problems in living. It may be counter productive,
in the same way that husbands and wives perpetually arguing may be
counter productive, and like the spouses it may be difficult to give up
unhelpful behaviors.
I agree that "schizophrenics" are often unhappy and scared of their
plight. For one thing it brings down upon them psychiatrists and the
urge to mistreat them that John's posting exemplifies.
I believe that there are proven ways to help the people who are called
schizophrenics. I posted a lengthy excerpt about the Soteria project, in
which the "schizophrenics" were substantially improved merely by being
treated respectfully and compassionately, not being drugged, and living
in a reponsible orderly environment.
Kindness works. Responsibility works. Torture, drugs, and imprisonment
do not. It hardly stands to reason that people who act oddly and badly
because of misery in their lives need more misery piled onto them. And
even is they never "got better," they wouldn't deserve this.
Treating "schizophrenics" the way John recommends (and psychiatry
practices) is the moral equivalent of the way the German psychiatrists
treated the Jews.
John 'the Man'
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>> A truly "schizophrenic," and other types of psychotics, are not even
>> approachable with psychoanalysis. They need to be treated. And, like
>> always the primary reason is to protect society from them.
>> Frankly, I think that society should be protected from the homeless as
>> well. Most homeless people are mentally ill anyway. Anyway you look
>> at it, the homeless belong anywhere but on the streets. Whether
>> society should put them in jail, in a work camp, or in a mental
>> hospital is purely splitting hairs.
>Your views illustrate the rationale for psychiatry. It is an instrument
>for social control of unpopular people.
"Social Sanctions " is the NORMAL term used.
>As Whitaker tells it:
>"They told of visions of spiders and bugs coming from the walls, or of
>being the devil, of of how the CIA was after them. They could be loud,
>they could be aggressive, and certainly they could act in crazy ways.
>One of the first was an eighteen-year-old woman so lost to the world
>that she would urinate on the floor. She had withered to eighty-five
>pounds, wouldn't bathe or brush her teeth, and would regularly fling her
>clothes off an jump into the laps of male staff and say, 'Let's fuck.'
This type of psychotic does *not* respond to psychoanalysis so clearly
psychiatry is *not* the problem. When you behave at the animal level
some type of corresponding therapy is appropriate; such as
behaviorism, drugs, and electroshock.
I have a news flash for you.
According to Darwinian Evolution, if it wont for human culture, these
people would simply die.
In human culture, you either follow the rules or suffer the
consequences.
Ever hear of the concept of social sanctions?
Ever hear of being terminated from you job, criminally prosecuted,
being excommunicated? That ain't Evil, that is life!
In the real world, either you learn to cope with reality or you don't.
You either learn to control your own frustrations and behave as an
adult in a manner acceptable to your culture, or all hell will
eventually break out on you. :-)
Nicolas Martin
ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
> Other than the criminally insane the schizophrenic needs to be protected from
> society, not vice versa.
Agreed, except that I don't believe that there are "insane" criminals,
merely criminals.
Nicolas Martin
ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
> In article <aia-4DC7A2.0...@netnews.attbi.com>,
> Nicolas Martin <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote:
> >In article <ac4ggv$q28$1...@farviolet.com>,
> > ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
> >
> >> In the future if someone is schizophrenia I can imagine it being diagnosed
> >> with a blood or urine test, rather than from symptoms alone. Hopefully
> >> treatment would consist of treating closer to the source of the problem.
> >> Perhaps we will discover that the source of schizophrenia is not even
> >> in the brain, but some other sort of metabolic abnormality. Bofutenin in
> >> the urine is a pretty good sign that there is a physical process going on
> >> beyond bad thought patterns or nerve wiring.
> >
> >Again, there is no evidence of any biological abnormality in persons
> >labeled "schizophrenic." There is evidence that their abnormal behaviors
> >diminish when they are treated with kindness and respect.
>
> I don't disagree with this part. Everyone needs kindness and respect.
>
> >There is no
> >reason to think that "schizophrenia" will ever be a biologically
> >diagnosed medical disorder treatable with medication.
>
> Yet abnormal derivatives of seratonin are found in the urine. There is
> something physical going on there.
>
Visit this page for a selection of professional responses to this claim:
http://www.ctvip.org/web2c.html
Samples:
Dr. Elliot Valenstein, University of Michigan Neuroscientist and
Professor Emeritus of Psychology:
"Contrary to what is often claimed, no biochemical, anatomical or
functional signs have been found that reliably distinguish the brains of
mental patients".
Blaming the Brain: The Truth about Drugs and Mental Health
Gary J. Tucker, M.D., Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine:
"[W]e have no identified etiological agents for psychiatric disorders."
American Journal of Psychiatry, February, 1998
> Take 400mcg of LSD and tell me body/brain chemistry is irrelevant to
> mental state :)
Who said it was irrelevant? It is possible to modify brain function by
ingesting any of thousands of different chemicals, or by shooting
yourself in the head. If you can modify your brain with 400 mcg of LSD
does that mean you had a brain disease or that you have given yourself a
brain disease? If you feel better after inhaling marijuana, does that
mean you have a marijuana deficiency? If you get tardive dyskinesia from
psychiatric drugs, THAT is a brain disease.
There are observable brain changes associated with happiness; does that
make happiness a disease?
Nicolas Martin
wrote:
> Well if Hoffer gets such results with his niacin therapy .. I would have
> to disagree .
>
> If he were treating and getting results with more than one substance ..
> then there may be something to the placebo .. but since niacin seems to be
> the treatment .. then .. there IS something biologically wrong..
It is just as possible to "treat" fake diseases nutritionally as
medically.
If the standard is whether one "gets results," then the old practice of
dunking people in water until they nearly drowned was an effective
treatement for "schizophrenia."
http://iatrogenic.org/library/psychhist.html
"Already towards the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the new
period an interest developed in attempting to treat schizophrenics by
some form of shock. In Switzerland at this time schizophrenics were put
into nets and lowered into lakes until they were almost drowned and then
pulled out again. Sometimes short-lasting remissions were witnessed. In
other countries patients were hit with chains and whips. Some of these
patients died. But again there were some very impressive recoveries and
remissions."
"...Stansky described a schizophrenic patient who in a delusional state
escaped from a mental asylum, then climbed an electric pole from which
he was thrown to the ground. This left him in a serious physician
condition for weeks, but also left him free of any psycho-pathological
symptoms. In spite of the fact that this patient died due to the
consequences of his fall, a new development of treatment had been
inaugurated."
"...Klasi in Switzerland treated schizophrenic patients with sleeping
cures. Patients were kept under sleeping drugs for weeks...It was
thought possible that rest would cure a the sick mind just as inactivity
cures a sick lung. However, the treatment was fraught with danger...But
this form of treatment showed some success."
"...A very ingenious form of treatment was attempted by Potzl...He found
a disturbance of a distinct system in the brain causing such specific
symptoms and signs [similar to schizophrenia]. He described this fiber
system of the brain as consisting of thalamocortical and
thalamo-commissural connections. He therefore made the attempt in some
schizophrenics to change the pathological functions of the brain by
causing injury to the thalamus itself. This came close to the starting
point of one of the organic treatments of schizophrenia called
psychosurgery."
Source: "History of the organic treatment of schizophrenia" by Hans
Hoff, M.D., Professor, Vorstand der Psychiatrisch-Neurologische Klinik
der Universitat Wien, Vienna
Insulin Treatment in Psychiatry, Proceedings of the International
Conference on the Insulin Treatment in Psychiatry Held at the New York
Academy of Medicine, Oct. 24 to 25, 1958. Rinkel and Himwich, eds. 1959.
Philosophical Library, New York.
Claims have been made for myriad physiological "schizophrenia"
treatments over the years. They have all been found bogus. Many of them
have been barbaric. Hoffer recommends levels of niacin that are know to
be damaging to the liver.
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>Hoffer recommends levels of niacin that are know to
>be damaging to the liver.
I read a book by Abram Hoffer: Smart Nutrients.
All his research is Pre-1965 which makes it down right ancient and
hard to track down.
My take on his niacin therapies was that he was using it for its blood
thinning properties. Hoffer often referred to it's "Anti-sludging
Effect." He considered niacin a cholesterol normalizing agent.
Hence, Omega-3's, Ginkgo Biloba, and Vitamin E would probably be more
effective.
He was equally known for his theories on chronic malnutrition and
dehydration, too.
slenon
your meds and don't bother the adults.
Nicolas Martin
John 'the Man' <DeMan[62]@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I read a book by Abram Hoffer: Smart Nutrients.
>
> All his research is Pre-1965 which makes it down right ancient and
> hard to track down.
>
> My take on his niacin therapies was that he was using it for its blood
> thinning properties. Hoffer often referred to it's "Anti-sludging
> Effect." He considered niacin a cholesterol normalizing agent.
John, you're right. It's been ages since I read Hoffer. I can't remember
anything.
David Wright
> ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
>
>> In the future if someone is schizophrenia I can imagine it being diagnosed
>> with a blood or urine test, rather than from symptoms alone. Hopefully
>> treatment would consist of treating closer to the source of the problem.
>> Perhaps we will discover that the source of schizophrenia is not even
>> in the brain, but some other sort of metabolic abnormality. Bofutenin in
>> the urine is a pretty good sign that there is a physical process going on
>> beyond bad thought patterns or nerve wiring.
>
>Again, there is no evidence of any biological abnormality in persons
>labeled "schizophrenic."
Some of the PET scans of schizophrenics undergoing hallucinations were
quite unlike those of non-schizophrenics.
-- David Wright :: alphabeta at prodigy.net
These are my opinions only, but they're almost always correct.
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants
were standing on my shoulders."
Steve Harris
>In article <weXE8.16931$t2.25...@news20.bellglobal.com
>I said what I said, that they profit mightily. In many cases people are
>forced to have office visits for medications that couldn't possibly hurt
>them (used as labeled). I used to use Nizoral shampoo. No doctor EVER
>gave me unlimited refills for that shampoo.
Federal law prohibits unlimited refills for any Rx drug-- the most you can
get is a year's worth. And I routinely give patients a year's worth of
things like Claritin, Nizoral shampoo, antihypertensives they've been on for
more than a year, etc,etc.
> What harm could have
>befallen me from using Nizoral? Well, now that it has been made OTC we
>know not much.
Its costs companies money to switch from Rx to OTC. Until then, all Rx drugs
are subject to the same Federal prescribing laws. If you don't like that, I
invite you to write your congressman. For example, you can write your
senator-- since there is exactly one physician in a senate of 100 people and
about 50 lawyers, do be sure and include you suspicion that federal laws are
written by lawyers to make doctors more money, since lawyers love doctors so
much, and vice versa. Let me know what answer your senator gives. Yuck,
yuck.
>Why do you think a doctor would not give unlimited refills for a
>medication that is both harmless (used as labeled) and effective?
No medication is harmless-- used as labeled or not. And risks vary, but
there's only a binary set of laws-- OTC or Rx. Perhaps a four-tier system if
you count the separate laws and hassles for DEA scheduled stuff, and four if
you separate C-II from C-III to V DEA controlled stuff. But at max that's 4
categories in an infinite range of dangerous stuff. So it will never really
fit very well.
> What
>other motivation besides money could require an office visit for this
>refill? You think docs yearn for my company?
Perhaps they don't want you using stuff for for months or years when it
will cause damage if used for that long--- but is fine when used for weeks.
>What would have been the
>liability issue resulting for unlimited Nizoral refills?
None, since you can't get unlimited refills for anything.
> In many
>countries where people have less money (and no insurance) to waste on
>unnecessary office visits, most drugs are OTC. We are blessed with the
>obligation of perpetually returning for expensive drug renewals and
>negative test results.
Correct. But those countries steal our drug study results. Information
costs money to produce, and the question is: who should pay?
>Are these revisits to protect patients? Evidence please?
The irony. You provide the evidence yourself below, and you don't even know
it.
>I once got a prescription for a Texas doc for a drug for a face rash.
>When I went to fill it the pharmacist (God love him) said, "You don't
>want to use this, it will permanently change the shape of your face."
That should have been a high potency steroid creme. And it will only change
your face skin permanently if you use it for too long. This doesn't happen
in weeks-- it takes months or years. It would happen an unlimited
prescription of the sort you're pining after, but doubtless you'd have been
fine if you'd used the drug as directed, and had a pharmacist who wasn't an
idiot.
> On top of that it was not indicated for my condition.
I doubt that. Supply details and I'll tell you. Dermatologists use medium
and even high potency steroids on the face all the time-- but they know when
to stop.
>When I called the doc
>to ask her why she recommended a drug with such a serious side effect
>and which was not indicated, she literally screamed at the phone: "It is
>not my job to tell you about the side effects of the drugs I prescribe."
A likely story. The point is that the side effect you mention is
time-dependent, and is *exactly* the kind of thing that prescription
limitations work best to keep from happening. Your own illustrative story
illustrates only what an ignoramus you were being (and your pharmacist
doesn't get off very well, either).
>I called the clinic management where she worked. It was arranged that I
>see another doc at that clinic. When I explained things to him and
>showed him the drug, he asked that I give him the drug so that I
>wouldn't be enticed to use it. I declined and kept it as a momento. He
>agreed that it was totally inappropriate for my mild skin rash.
Not a dermatologist, was he? Non-dermatologists have a horrid (and not
well-justified) fear of high potency steroid cremes. But they are not very
dangerous if used correctly. You were telling us that your original doc gave
you a year of refills for this stuff? No, you weren't.
>What would have been my fate if I hadn't lucked upon an attentive
>pharmacist?
A hysterical pharmacist, you mean?
>What penalty was levied against the doctor? None, she still
>works at the same clinic. (Oh, and my insurance company and I got to pay
>for the improper medication.)
I want to know what penalty got levied against the pharmacist?
>My wife recently went to a Knoxville clinic, primarily for a referral.
>She also had some persistent coughing and respiratory distress. The doc
>came to the door of the office my wife was in, he did not enter the
>room. She told him of her problem breathing and coughing and he said,
>"There's nothing I can do about that, I'll prescribe an antihistamine."
>He never got within 8 feet of her, so how did he know she didn't have
>something serious and contagious?
Like tuberculosis? There aren't many persistant contageous things. You say
it was for a referral? So how much information did you bring with you?
>When I complained to that clinic's management they said he had been
>"talked to" before about diagnosing without examening patients. But he
>suffered no penalty and the clinic still billed our insurance $70
>despite agreeing that the doc had provided no competent medical service.
I won't make excuses for a doctor who didn't examine the patient personally.
However, there are some referrals where it doesn't add much.
>These are not horror stories, these are normal medical practice, and
>I've experienced much worse.
Perhaps (from reading stuff such as your "steroid nightmare" above), your
experience is not as bad as you think it is.
I'd be the last to say that the practice of medicine doesn't have a lot of
problems. But a good many of them would be fixed by 45 min office visits.
Alas, the system (which means the patients) are only willing to pay for 15.
A lot of the money that used be paid to doctors to spent 45 has gone into
regulatory overhead and expensive tests. There's an interesting article in
the NEJM this money about luxury medical care-- patients spend an extra
$1000-10,000 a year to get the longer office visits, house calls, doctor's
pager number, 24 hour access, etc. This allows doctors to have 300 patient
practices instead of 5000 patient practices. It's a lot like the HMO or
insurance plan, except we eliminate the middle man (the HMO or insurance
company). Everybody who had afford it is very happy with it. People who want
something for nothing, naturally, aren't.
>One of the more laughable was when I went
>to be told of a test result (which was negative and could have been told
>to me over the phone gratis), the doc spent the majority of our time
>together dictating a thank-you letter into a tape recorder to the doc
>who had referred me to him.)
If you don't show up in person, your insurance doesn't pay the doc. That's
not his problem-- that's YOUR problem. Tests have to be ordered and
interpreted, and letters have to be dictated, and almost none of it is
billable without a patient sitting in an exam room (this courtesy of
medicare, which has de facto now set the standards for non-medicare care
also). It's conceivable that third parties will eventually figure out how to
pay doctors for thinking about particular patients when the patients are not
there in front of them. But save for the unique case of radiologists and
pathologists, it mostly hasn't happened. Medicare in a serious of moves over
the last 15 years has decided that "face to face" time is the gold standard
in billing. That means your federal government (remember that senate full of
doctors? ;) ) has decided that you therefore must waste a lot of your time
going to the doctor's office. Do be sure and write to tell them how much
you appreciate this.
Don't write to the doctors. If you think they make the rules, please follow
Harris' law for deciding who has the power in societies. Go to your nearest
large city. Look at the big buildings. Why owns those buildings? There
might be hospital, but do the doctors in it, own it? No.
The owners of the buildings are who run your society. They, plus, the
voters, make the rules. We doctors are outvoted, and we're outspent, and we
don't own those buildings.
>the medical party line is "we're here to help," but the reality is often
>much different. You can see just by the example of the Texas doc that
>she didn't give a damn whether she permanently disfigured me, and in my
>experience she is not unusual.
You wouldn't have been disfigured unless you'd had the power to buy drugs of
any kind of an unlimited time, and then proceeded to use them against all
advice.
>Let's see, there was the doc who gave me a pain med to which I had a
>nasty reaction. I called his office and he didn't call back for several
>days. When I finally got him he said, that is not unusual and you can
>just quit taking it if you want. No, it is not unusual, my side effect
>was potentially serious and listed among reasons to quit taking the drug
>immediately, which I had. But suppose I hadn't quit taking it and had
>waited the several days for him to call back? What might the
>consequences have been? Liver damage was certainly a possibility.
Ummm, you weren't smart enough to know you could stop taking a pain pill any
time? Hello?
How unusual it was or wasn't, and interpretation of rest of your story, can
only be told if you provide the details. Otherwise, we'll file it under
urban myth.
>Before you are three instances of medical incompetence that could have
>led to serious medical errors. Not one of the doctors showed the
>slightest concern or sustained any penalty.
We haven't been given enough information to tell how much concern was
warranted- just vague stories. And that goes double for penalties.
>Either iatrogenic disease will be drastically reduced or there will be a
>popular uprising.
A popular uprising? ROFL. That would be the populace that spends more on
pet food than medical research?
People like the guy I ran into recently at Circuit
>City, whose leg was amputated after he went in with a sprained ankle and
>ended up with 17 surgeries during which his bone was infected, are
>getting plenty steamed.
I'm getting plenty steamed at these ridiculous stories. Nobody gets bone
infection from a sprained ankle. Nobody gets operated on for a sprained
ankle.
--
I welcome email from any being clever enough to fix my address. It's open
book. A prize to the first spambot that passes my Turing test.
--
I welcome email from any being clever enough to fix my address. It's open
book. A prize to the first spambot that passes my Turing test.
Steve Harris
>In article <weXE8.16931$t2.25...@news20.bellglobal.com
>I said what I said, that they profit mightily. In many cases people are
>forced to have office visits for medications that couldn't possibly hurt
>them (used as labeled). I used to use Nizoral shampoo. No doctor EVER
>gave me unlimited refills for that shampoo.
COMMENT:
Federal law prohibits "unlimited" refills for any Rx drug-- the most you can
get is a year's worth. And I routinely give patients a year's worth of
things like Claritin, Nizoral shampoo, antihypertensives they've been on for
more than a year, etc,etc.
> What harm could have
>befallen me from using Nizoral? Well, now that it has been made OTC we
>know not much.
It costs companies a lot of application money to switch a drug from
Rx to OTC. Until then, all Rx drugs are subject to the same Federal
prescribing laws, which limit the time the Rx is good for. If you don't like
that, I
invite you to write your congressman. For example, you can write your
senator-- since there is exactly one physician in a senate of 100 people and
about 50 lawyers, do be sure and include you suspicion that federal laws are
written by lawyers to make doctors more money, since lawyers love doctors so
much, and vice versa. Let me know what answer your senator gives. Yuck,
yuck. BTW, the laws are now the same for eyeglass prescriptions, but there
aren't ANY optometrists in the senate. Explain THAT trick.
>Why do you think a doctor would not give unlimited refills for a
>medication that is both harmless (used as labeled) and effective?
No medication is completely harmless-- used as labeled or not. And risks
vary, but there's only a binary set of laws-- OTC or Rx.
Or you could perhaps count it as a three-tier system if
you count the separate laws and hassles for DEA scheduled stuff, and four if
you separate C-II from the "C-III to C-V" DEA controlled stuff. But at max
that's 4
categories in an infinite range of dangerous stuff. So it will never really
fit very well.
> What
>other motivation besides money could require an office visit for this
>refill? You think docs yearn for my company?
Perhaps somebody knows that some things are fine if used for a few days or
weeks, but when used for months or years they cause damage.
>What would have been the
>liability issue resulting for unlimited Nizoral refills?
Probably few, but (again) the system isn't flexible enough to have a max
time limit
which is different for every Rx drug. Can you imagine how complicated that
would be?
> In many
>countries where people have less money (and no insurance) to waste on
>unnecessary office visits, most drugs are OTC. We are blessed with the
>obligation of perpetually returning for expensive drug renewals and
>negative test results.
Correct. But those countries steal our drug study results. Information
costs money to produce, and the question is: who should pay?
>Are these revisits to protect patients? Evidence please?
The irony. You provide evidence yourself below, and don't realize it. Thus
self-illustrating the reason why the laws are in place as they are. It's to
protect
fools from follow, and the ignorant from the results of being ignorant.
Alas, having
a Pharm. D. or M.D. after your name doesn't totally protect you from
ignorance in
medicine-- it just decreases your chances.
>I once got a prescription for a Texas doc for a drug for a face rash.
>When I went to fill it the pharmacist (God love him) said, "You don't
>want to use this, it will permanently change the shape of your face."
That should have been a high or medium potency steroid creme.
And it will only change your facial skin permanently if you use it for
too long. This doesn't happen in weeks-- it takes months or years.
It might happen with an unlimited prescription of the sort you're pining
after,
but doubtless you'd have been fine if you'd used the drug as initially
directed,
and had had a pharmacist who wasn't such a hysteric.
> On top of that it was not indicated for my condition.
I doubt that. Supply details and I'll tell you. Dermatologists use medium
and even high potency steroids on the face all the time-- but they know when
to stop.
>When I called the doc
>to ask her why she recommended a drug with such a serious side effect
>and which was not indicated, she literally screamed at the phone: "It is
>not my job to tell you about the side effects of the drugs I prescribe."
A likely story. The point is that the side effect you mention is
time-dependent, and is *exactly* the kind of thing that prescription
limitations work best to keep from happening. Your own illustrative story
illustrates only what an ignoramus you were being (and your pharmacist
and doc don't get off very well, either).
>I called the clinic management where she worked. It was arranged that I
>see another doc at that clinic. When I explained things to him and
>showed him the drug, he asked that I give him the drug so that I
>wouldn't be enticed to use it. I declined and kept it as a momento. He
>agreed that it was totally inappropriate for my mild skin rash.
Not a dermatologist, was he? Non-dermatologists have a horrid (and not
well-justified) fear of high potency steroid cremes. But they are not very
dangerous if used correctly (which means short term).
You were telling us that your original doc gave
you a year of refills for this stuff? No, you weren't, were you? Hmmm.
You've
got these docs coming and going here. You don't know why they don't give you
free reign with refills, and here you're criticizing one for a problem which
would
only have occurred with too many refills.
>What would have been my fate if I hadn't lucked upon an attentive
>pharmacist?
An hysterical pharmacist, you mean?
>What penalty was levied against the doctor? None, she still
>works at the same clinic. (Oh, and my insurance company and I got to pay
>for the improper medication.)
I want to know what penalty got levied against the pharmacist?
>My wife recently went to a Knoxville clinic, primarily for a referral.
>She also had some persistent coughing and respiratory distress. The doc
>came to the door of the office my wife was in, he did not enter the
>room. She told him of her problem breathing and coughing and he said,
>"There's nothing I can do about that, I'll prescribe an antihistamine."
>He never got within 8 feet of her, so how did he know she didn't have
>something serious and contagious?
Like tuberculosis? There aren't many persistent contagious things. You say
it was for a referral? So how much information did you bring with you?
>When I complained to that clinic's management they said he had been
>"talked to" before about diagnosing without examening patients. But he
>suffered no penalty and the clinic still billed our insurance $70
>despite agreeing that the doc had provided no competent medical service.
I won't make excuses for a doctor who didn't examine the patient personally.
All should.
However, it must admitted that there are some referrals where it doesn't add
much.
Harris' Law for deciding who has the power, in societies. Go to your nearest
large city. Look at the big buildings. Why owns those buildings? There
might be hospital, but do the doctors in it, own it? No.
The owners of the skyscrapers are who run your society. They, plus, the
voters, make the rules. We doctors are outvoted, and we're outspent, and we
don't own those buildings. So complain somewhere else.
>the medical party line is "we're here to help," but the reality is often
>much different. You can see just by the example of the Texas doc that
>she didn't give a damn whether she permanently disfigured me, and in my
>experience she is not unusual.
You wouldn't have been disfigured unless you'd had the power to buy drugs of
any kind for an unlimited time, and then proceeded to use them, against all
advice.
infection from a simple sprained ankle. Nobody gets operated on for a simple
sprained ankle.
SBH
Steve Harris
Nicolas Martin
"Steve Harris" <sbha...@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com> wrote:
I have little to respond to this, except to note the colossal arrogance,
dangerous to any patient who encountered it, and the assumption things I
wrote were dishonest. When I'm accused of lying that's where the dialog
ends.
If anyone needs to know why we have large number of medical errors,
deaths, and injuries, they need only consider what this posting
reflects. Patients are liars, pharmacists are hysterics, physicians are
gods. A man who has never met me "knows" that I didn't have the
experiences I claim to have had. The man I spoke to didn't have his foot
amputated because it became infected during surgeries. (This claim is
the most silly. Of course nosocomial infections occur, and they kill.)
This person is dangerously oblivious (and uncaring) about the
well-documented reports of iatrogenic injury, with a toll in tens of
thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries annually.
On the steriod issue, instead of taking the word of a newsgroup
diagnostian who has no idea what the condition was being treated but is
sure that the right med was prescribed (how irresponsible is that?), I
will accept the word of the pharmacist (who knew the condition) and the
follow-up doc who said that the med was totally inappropriate for the
modest rash.
Then again we could all be liars and fools. All but Steve Harris,
egomaniac.
--
slenon
>I will accept the word of the pharmacist (who knew the condition) and the
follow-up doc who said that the med was totally inappropriate for the
> modest rash. Then again we could all be liars and fools. All but Steve
Harris, egomaniac.
Your pharmacist is licensed to dispense medications prescribed by physicians
and anwer questions abou those medications subject to the guidelines of his
profession. A pharmacist is not licensed or trained in diagnosis or
treatment.
If you feel that physicians and drug companies are responsible for all the
deaths you claim, take a guess how many deaths would occur without the
intervention of said physicians and drug companies. Rather than cite
numbers of nosocomial infections, provide the percentage of patients vs
total patient visits who actually acquire a nosocomial infection. Your
facts are skewed and your viewpoint biased.
You and gohde can treat each other using your new-age feel-good pop-psych
approach to healthcare when you've pissed off all the people who took the
time to actually learn medicine and related disciplines. Watchworm can
diagnose and bleed all three of you.
If only TDTF were more than a wishful diagnosis. With respect to the three
of you, I certainly hope it is accurate.
Steve Harris
>I said what I said, that they profit mightily. In many cases people are
>forced to have office visits for medications that couldn't possibly hurt
>them (used as labeled). I used to use Nizoral shampoo. No doctor EVER
>gave me unlimited refills for that shampoo.
COMMENT:
Federal law prohibits "unlimited" refills for any Rx drug-- the most you can
get is a year's worth. And I routinely give patients a year's worth of
things like Claritin, Nizoral shampoo, antihypertensives they've been on for
more than a year, etc,etc.
> What harm could have
>befallen me from using Nizoral? Well, now that it has been made OTC we
>know not much.
It costs companies a lot of application money to switch a drug from
Rx to OTC. Until then, all Rx drugs are subject to the same Federal
prescribing laws, which limit the time the Rx is good for. If you don't like
that, I invite you to write your congressman. For example, you can write
your
senator-- since there is exactly one physician in a senate of 100 people and
about 50 lawyers, do be sure and include you suspicion that federal laws are
written by lawyers to make doctors more money, since lawyers love doctors so
much, and vice versa. Let me know what answer your senator gives. Yuck,
yuck. BTW, the laws are now the same for eyeglass prescriptions, but there
aren't ANY optometrists in the senate. Explain THAT trick.
>Why do you think a doctor would not give unlimited refills for a
>medication that is both harmless (used as labeled) and effective?
No medication is completely harmless-- used as labeled or not. And risks
vary, but there's only a binary set of laws-- OTC or Rx.
Or you could perhaps count it as a three-tier system if
you count the separate laws and hassles for DEA scheduled stuff, and four if
you separate C-II from the "C-III to C-V" DEA controlled stuff. But at max
that's 4 categories in an infinite range of dangerous stuff. So it will
never really
fit very well.
> What
>other motivation besides money could require an office visit for this
>refill? You think docs yearn for my company?
Perhaps somebody knows that some things are fine if used for a few days or
weeks, but when used for months or years they cause damage.
>What would have been the
>liability issue resulting for unlimited Nizoral refills?
Probably few, but (again) the system isn't flexible enough to have a max
time limit which is different for every Rx drug. Can you imagine how
complicated that
would be?
> In many
>countries where people have less money (and no insurance) to waste on
>unnecessary office visits, most drugs are OTC. We are blessed with the
>obligation of perpetually returning for expensive drug renewals and
>negative test results.
Correct. But those countries steal our drug study results. Information
costs money to produce, and the question is: who should pay?
>Are these revisits to protect patients? Evidence please?
The irony. You provide evidence yourself below, and don't realize it. Thus
self-illustrating the reason why the laws are in place as they are. It's to
protect fools from follow, and the ignorant from the results of being
ignorant.
Alas, having a Pharm. D. or M.D. after your name doesn't totally protect you
from
ignorance in medicine-- it just decreases your chances.
>I once got a prescription for a Texas doc for a drug for a face rash.
>When I went to fill it the pharmacist (God love him) said, "You don't
>want to use this, it will permanently change the shape of your face."
That should have been a high or medium potency steroid creme.
And it will only change your facial skin permanently if you use it for
too long. This doesn't happen in weeks-- it takes months or years.
It might happen with an unlimited prescription of the sort you're pining
after, but doubtless you'd have been fine if you'd used the drug as
initially
directed, and had had a pharmacist who wasn't such a hysteric.
> On top of that it was not indicated for my condition.
I doubt that. Supply details and I'll tell you. Dermatologists use medium
and even high potency steroids on the face all the time-- but they know when
to stop.
>When I called the doc
>to ask her why she recommended a drug with such a serious side effect
>and which was not indicated, she literally screamed at the phone: "It is
>not my job to tell you about the side effects of the drugs I prescribe."
A likely story. The point is that the side effect you mention is
time-dependent, and is *exactly* the kind of thing that prescription
limitations work best to keep from happening. Your own illustrative story
illustrates only what an ignoramus you were being (and your pharmacist
and doc don't get off very well, either).
>I called the clinic management where she worked. It was arranged that I
>see another doc at that clinic. When I explained things to him and
>showed him the drug, he asked that I give him the drug so that I
>wouldn't be enticed to use it. I declined and kept it as a momento. He
>agreed that it was totally inappropriate for my mild skin rash.
Not a dermatologist, was he? Non-dermatologists have a horrid (and not
well-justified) fear of high potency steroid cremes. But they are not very
dangerous if used correctly (which means short term).
You were telling us that your original doc gave you a year of refills for
this stuff?
No, you weren't, were you? Hmmm.
You've got these docs coming and going here. You don't know why they don't
give you
free reign with refills, and here you're criticizing one for a problem which
would only have occurred with too many refills.
>What would have been my fate if I hadn't lucked upon an attentive
>pharmacist?
An hysterical pharmacist, you mean?
>What penalty was levied against the doctor? None, she still
>works at the same clinic. (Oh, and my insurance company and I got to pay
>for the improper medication.)
I want to know what penalty got levied against the pharmacist?
>the medical party line is "we're here to help," but the reality is often
>much different. You can see just by the example of the Texas doc that
>she didn't give a damn whether she permanently disfigured me, and in my
>experience she is not unusual.
You wouldn't have been disfigured unless you'd had the power to buy drugs of
any kind for an unlimited time, and then proceeded to use them, against all
advice.
SBH
Steve Harris
>In article <weXE8.16931$t2.25...@news20.bellglobal.com
>My wife recently went to a Knoxville clinic, primarily for a referral.
>She also had some persistent coughing and respiratory distress. The doc
>came to the door of the office my wife was in, he did not enter the
>room. She told him of her problem breathing and coughing and he said,
>"There's nothing I can do about that, I'll prescribe an antihistamine."
>He never got within 8 feet of her, so how did he know she didn't have
>something serious and contagious?
Like tuberculosis? There aren't many persistent contagious things. You say
it was for a referral? So how much information did you bring with you?
>When I complained to that clinic's management they said he had been
>"talked to" before about diagnosing without examening patients. But he
>suffered no penalty and the clinic still billed our insurance $70
>despite agreeing that the doc had provided no competent medical service.
I won't make excuses for a doctor who didn't examine the patient personally.
All should. However, it must admitted that there are some referrals where it
doesn't add
much.
>These are not horror stories, these are normal medical practice, and
>I've experienced much worse.
Perhaps (from reading stuff such as your "steroid nightmare"), your
Harris' Law for deciding who has the power, in societies. Go to your nearest
large city. Look at the big buildings. Why owns those buildings? There
might be hospital, but do the doctors in it, own it? No.
The owners of the skyscrapers are who run your society. They, plus, the
voters, make the rules. We doctors are outvoted, and we're outspent, and we
don't own those buildings. So complain somewhere else.
infection from a simple sprained ankle. Nobody gets operated on for a simple
sprained ankle.
SBH
Steve Harris
My wife recently went to a Knoxville clinic, primarily for a referral.
>She also had some persistent coughing and respiratory distress. The doc
>came to the door of the office my wife was in, he did not enter the
>room. She told him of her problem breathing and coughing and he said,
>"There's nothing I can do about that, I'll prescribe an antihistamine."
>He never got within 8 feet of her, so how did he know she didn't have
>something serious and contagious?
COMMENT
Like tuberculosis? There aren't many persistent contagious things. You say
it was for a referral? So how much information did you bring with you?
>When I complained to that clinic's management they said he had been
>"talked to" before about diagnosing without examening patients. But he
>suffered no penalty and the clinic still billed our insurance $70
>despite agreeing that the doc had provided no competent medical service.
I won't make excuses for a doctor who didn't examine the patient personally.
All should. However, it must admitted that there are some referrals where it
doesn't add
much.
>These are not horror stories, these are normal medical practice, and
>I've experienced much worse.
Perhaps (from reading stuff such as your "steroid nightmare"), your
Harris' Law for deciding who has the power, in societies. Go to your nearest
large city. Look at the big buildings. Why owns those buildings? There
might be hospital, but do the doctors in it, own it? No.
The owners of the skyscrapers are who run your society. They, plus, the
voters, make the rules. We doctors are outvoted, and we're outspent, and we
don't own those buildings. So complain somewhere else.
infection from a simple sprained ankle. Nobody gets operated on for a simple
sprained ankle.
Nicolas Martin
> and anwer questions abou those medications subject to the guidelines of his
> profession. A pharmacist is not licensed or trained in diagnosis or
> treatment.
First, the issue was the side-effect of a drug. Second the doc insisted
that side-effects were not her business. So you would leave me with
what? My wife's opinion? Again, I trust pharmacists to know more about
medication effects that physicians. For one thing pharmacists don't get
quite the stash of gratuities that the drug makers bestow on the docs.
> If you feel that physicians and drug companies are responsible for all the
> deaths you claim,
I don't claim they are responsible for more deaths than do the Institute
of Medicine and the other agencies and studies that deal with iatrogenic
issues. The real data are scary enough. Is it your contention that the
data provided by IOM, Harvard School of Public Health, CDC et al. are
fraudulent? I merely quote the authoritative data. What do you offer to
the contrary besides pique?
>take a guess how many deaths would occur without the
> intervention of said physicians and drug companies.
That is puerile. It's like the bumper stickers that say, "If your kid
can read, thank a teacher." The average American doctor has about as
much to do with scientific medical progress as Moniz, who, for those who
don't know, won the Nobel in physiology/medicine for inventing the
lobotomy. Most docs are ordinary people who go to school, work a day
job, and make no special effort to keep up with the literature and seem
clueless about how to avoid misusing antibiotics. Let's help them before
we end up back in the pre-antibiotic era, as WHO puts it. Since docs are
expanding their influence, they are taking on such things as suicide
prevention. The results should be spectacular since physicians have
thrice the suicide rates (men and women) of the general population.
(This percentage long predates the public concern with errors, so don't
misattribute the suicides to that.)
>Rather than cite
> numbers of nosocomial infections, provide the percentage of patients vs
> total patient visits who actually acquire a nosocomial infection. Your
> facts are skewed and your viewpoint biased.
Am I alone? Does CDC agree with me or you? Why are numbers of infections
not useful? If airplanes were crashing every day, would you say, "But
those 300 deaths a day are just 0.02 percent of total airline
passengers?" That would would convince a lot of people, I'm sure. Pretty
soon 300 deaths would be 100 percent of daily airline passengers because
that is all who would fly. But then airlines don't keep their errors
secret.
Commercial air travel in the US usually kills between 0 and 500 people a
year, drawing great concern when it reaches the high end. Errors in
hospitals kill between 50,000 and 100,000 a year, says IOM. Yes, don't
look at the numbers, look at the percentages. It looks much better to
say that only (hypothetically) .05 percent of hospitalized people are
killed every year by errors. Very palatable.
This is so tedious. Can't anyone do his own homework, look up his own
articles? OK, let us work with this for now. (Of course the data would
be better if physicians were not violently opposed to mandatory
reporting of errors.)
-------------------------
CDC MMWR Weekly
March 03, 2000 / 49(08);149-153
Monitoring Hospital-Acquired Infections to Promote Patient Safety --
United States, 1990-1999
http://www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4908a1.htm
Hospital-acquired infections are adverse patient events that affect
approximately 2 million persons annually.
Patients in intensive care units (ICUs) are at high risk for nosocomial
infections. By ICU type, these patients have been monitored using
site-specific, risk-adjusted infection rates (4,5). During 1990-1999,
risk-adjusted infection rates decreased for all three body sites (i.e.,
respiratory tract, urinary tract, and bloodstream) monitored in ICUs
(Figure 1) (6). Bloodstream infection rates decreased substantially in
medical (nonsurgical) ICUs (44%), coronary ICUs (43%), pediatric ICUs
(32%), and surgical ICUs (31%). NNIS uses data from 1997 to 1999 as its
benchmark (Table 1). Device use ratios, the proportion of days spent in
the ICU in which the patient's treatment included invasive devices, also
were calculated. Urinary catheter-associated urinary tract infection
(UTI) rates were highest in medical (nonsurgical) ICUs (6.5 UTIs per
1000 days a catheter was used) and lowest in pediatric ICUs (5.6 UTIs
per 1000 days a catheter was used). Central line-associated bloodstream
infection (BSI) rates were highest in pediatric ICUs (7.7 BSIs per 1000
days a central line was used) and lowest in coronary ICUs (4.3 BSIs per
1000 days a central line was used). Ventilator-associated pneumonia
(VAP) rates were highest in surgical ICUs (13.0 cases of pneumonia per
1000 days a ventilator was used) and were lowest in pediatric ICUs (5.0
cases of pneumonia per 1000 days a ventilator was used). The percentiles
(Table 1) represent a measure of the variations in device-associated
rates in NNIS ICUs. For example, the 25th percentile for VAP rates in
the medical (nonsurgical) ICU was 4.1, (i.e., 25% of reporting medical
[nonsurgical] ICUs had a VAP rate of >4.1). Device use ratios ranged
from 0.22 for ventilators in coronary ICUs to 0.85 for urinary catheters
in surgical ICUs.
The Institute of Medicine reports that preventable adverse patient
events, including hospital-acquired infections, are responsible for
44,000-98,000 deaths annually at a cost of $17-$29 billion.
----------------------------
Medical Association Communications
American College of Chest Physicians
Nosocomial Pneumonia in the Critically Ill Patient
July 2000
Nosocomial infections are estimated to result in 88,000 deaths annually
in the United States. The eight million excess hospital days attributed
to these infections contribute significantly to the $4.5 billion cost of
treating infected patients. Although urinary tract infections associated
with in-dwelling catheters are the most frequent nosocomial infections,
pneumonia and bacteremia, which rank second and third in incidence, are
more difficult to treat and are associated with significantly increased
morbidity and mortality. Approxi-mately 10 percent of patients admitted
to intensive care units (ICUs) contract infections within three days of
admission. Importantly, approximately 70 percent of these infections
involve micro-organisms that are resistant to at least one antibiotic.
Severity of disease, immunocompromise, prior antibiotic treatment,
recent hospitalization or residence in a long-term care facility, and
the presence of invasive urinary, respiratory, circulatory, and/or
nasogastric tubes all contribute to risk of infection by resistant
organisms. It is estimated, for example, that 20 to 22 percent of
patients admitted to ICUs are already colonized with
vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). Nosocomial infection is overall
the most common cause of death in American ICUs.
---------------
Of course, hospital-acquired infections are more ominous due to
bacterial resistance caused by the overprescription of antibiotics:
----------------
CDC
Campaign to Prevent Antimicrobial Resistance in Healthcare Settings
http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/healthcare/problem.htm
Why a Campaign?
Drug-resistant pathogens are a growing threat to all people, especially
in healthcare settings.
Each year nearly 2 million patients in the United States get an
infection in a hospital.
Of those patients, about 90,000 die as a result of their infection.
More than 70% of the bacteria that cause hospital-acquired infections
are resistant to at least one of the drugs most commonly used to treat
them.
Persons infected with drug-resistant organisms are more likely to have
longer hospital stays and require treatment with second- or third-choice
drugs that may be less effective, more toxic, and/or more expensive.
Risk factors that promote antimicrobial resistance in healthcare
settings include:
-Extensive use of antimicrobials
-Transmission of infection
-Susceptible host
----------------
The Challenge of Antibiotic Resistance
Scientific American
March 1998
http://www.sciam.com/1998/0398issue/0398levy.html
by Stuart B. Levy
"Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have
estimated that some 50 million of the 150 million outpatient
prescriptions for antibiotics every year are unneeded. At a seminar I
conducted, more than 80 percent of the physicians present admitted to
having written antibiotic prescriptions on demand against their better
judgment."
STUART B. LEVY is professor of molecular biology and microbiology,
professor of medicine and director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics
and Drug Resistance at the Tufts University School of Medicine. He is
also president of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics and
president-elect of the American Society for Microbiology.
-------------------
Overcoming Microbial Resistance
World Health Organization Report on Infectious Diseases, 2000
http://www.who.int/infectious-disease-report/2000/
"This report describes the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance.
It documents how once life-saving medicines are increasingly having as
little effect as a sugar pill. Microbial resistance to treatment could
bring the world back to a pre-antibiotic age."
--------------------
I recently was asked to contribute a short article on iatrogenic disease
to an upcoming book. They liked what I wrote but came back with a
request for expanded discussion of antibiotic resistance. I assure you
that this is not a New Age publisher.
The real threat to arrogant healthcare professionals doesn't come from
me (although I am formidable). It comes directly from the agencies that
oversee healthcare. I do nothing but keep their data in the public eye.
It's interesting that several docs on here so loathe anecdotes about
medical error. It's obviously because, the facts not in their favor,
they mistakenly think they see a vulnerability to attack. But the
now-famous Institute of Medicine report on medical error, "To Err is
Human: Building a Safer Health System," (Institute of Medicine, 2000;
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309068371/html/1.html#pagetop) begins with
these words:
"The knowledgeable health reporter for the Boston Globe, Betsy Lehman,
died from an overdose during chemotherapy. Willie King had the wrong leg
amputated. Ben Kolb was eight years old when he died during 'minor'
surgery due to a drug mix-up."
Anecdotes that I'm sure makes Harris et al. sneer. Big-mouth reporter,
knucklehead who had the wrong leg amputated, punk kid who was probably
going to die eventually anyway. Lousy, ungrateful human race.
Your disdain for humanity is palpable.
Nicolas Martin
conversation with you ended.
Lawrence Foard
>being excommunicated? That ain't Evil, that is life!
>
>In the real world, either you learn to cope with reality or you don't.
>You either learn to control your own frustrations and behave as an
>adult in a manner acceptable to your culture, or all hell will
>eventually break out on you. :-)
I'm always curious how people who hold these sorts of views react when life
decides to take a dump on them. And it will, in the end we are all dead, and
very few of us will die suddenly. Do you have money saved up for nursing
home care? No? Mind if we just leave you in the gutter when your to old/sick
to care for yourself?
Nicolas Martin
ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
> I'm always curious how people who hold these sorts of views react when life
> decides to take a dump on them. And it will, in the end we are all dead, and
> very few of us will die suddenly. Do you have money saved up for nursing
> home care? No? Mind if we just leave you in the gutter when your to old/sick
> to care for yourself?
It is painful to see the cruelty people are willing to inflict. It isn't
surprising: the last century was one of mass slaughter as never seen
before. But is is always dispiriting and often shocking. Much of the
worst of it has been in the name of medicine.
"Well then, maybe it would be worth mentioning the three periods of
history. When man believed that happiness was dependent upon God, he
killed for religious reasons. When man believed that happiness was
dependent upon the form of government, he killed for political reasons.
After dreams that were too long, true nightmares we arrived at the
present period of history. Man woke up, discovered that which he always
knew, that happiness is dependent upon health, and began to kill for
therapeutic reasons."
Casares, Adolfo Bioy. 1986. Plans for an Escape to Carmelo. New York
Review of Books, 10 April.
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains and psychiatric abuse."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>>Ever hear of being terminated from you job, criminally prosecuted,
>>being excommunicated? That ain't Evil, that is life!
>>In the real world, either you learn to cope with reality or you don't.
>>You either learn to control your own frustrations and behave as an
>>adult in a manner acceptable to your culture, or all hell will
>>eventually break out on you. :-)
>I'm always curious how people who hold these sorts of views react when life
>decides to take a dump on them. And it will, in the end we are all dead, and
>very few of us will die suddenly. Do you have money saved up for nursing
>home care? No? Mind if we just leave you in the gutter when your to old/sick
>to care for yourself?
I think life took a dump on me the day that I was born.
I see no reason to grant the slime of this earth special privileges so
that they can continually being totally out of control.
You may think that a homeless bum is better than the person who can
hold down a job, but I don't.
Its called Life. Now, deal with it ... Wimp!
Lawrence Foard
Nicolas Martin <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote:
>In article <ac5odh$2vc$1...@farviolet.com>,
> ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
>
>Visit this page for a selection of professional responses to this claim:
>
>http://www.ctvip.org/web2c.html
>
>Samples:
>
>Dr. Elliot Valenstein, University of Michigan Neuroscientist and
>Professor Emeritus of Psychology:
>"Contrary to what is often claimed, no biochemical, anatomical or
>functional signs have been found that reliably distinguish the brains of
>mental patients".
>Blaming the Brain: The Truth about Drugs and Mental Health
>
>Gary J. Tucker, M.D., Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry and
>Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine:
>"[W]e have no identified etiological agents for psychiatric disorders."
>American Journal of Psychiatry, February, 1998
Yet:
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/bufotenin/bufotenin_journal2.shtml
>> Take 400mcg of LSD and tell me body/brain chemistry is irrelevant to
>> mental state :)
>
>Who said it was irrelevant? It is possible to modify brain function by
>ingesting any of thousands of different chemicals, or by shooting
>yourself in the head. If you can modify your brain with 400 mcg of LSD
>does that mean you had a brain disease or that you have given yourself a
>brain disease? If you feel better after inhaling marijuana, does that
>mean you have a marijuana deficiency? If you get tardive dyskinesia from
>psychiatric drugs, THAT is a brain disease.
So what makes you believe that a physical disease process is not responsible
for producing altered mental states in mental illness? Its already been
noticed that people are excreting a hallucigen in there urine, and not a
very pleasant hallucigen at that.
>There are observable brain changes associated with happiness; does that
>make happiness a disease?
No, but when someones brain lacks the ability to produce those changes...
slenon
>"Approxi-mately 10 percent of patients admitted to intensive care units
(ICUs) contract infections within three days of
>admission."
Admitted to ICU's? Be specific. Neonatal ICU's? Cardiac ICU's? Surgical
ICU's? It is very common for people admitted postoperatively after severe
trauma to develop infections. It is common for people with end-stage renal
disease, malignancies, COPD, and other system failure conditions to develop
infections that are not nosocomial but are diagnosed after admission.
>"Importantly, approximately 70 percent of these infections involve
micro-organisms that are resistant to at least one antibiotic."
Anyone student of microbiology, any Clinical Lab Scientist would tell you
that the reason we perform susceptibility testing on microbial isolates is
that not all organisms are now, or, were ever susceptible to the same
antibiotics. Drugs that kill gram positive orgnanism may not be effective
against gram negative organisms and vice versa. And these resistance
patterns have nothing at all to do with overuse. But you don't take that
into account in your weighted statement.
>Yes, don't look at the numbers, look at the percentages. It looks much
better to say that only (hypothetically) .05 percent of hospitalized people
are
>killed every year by errors. Very palatable.
Numbers by themselves mean nothing. Numbers in relation to the overall
picture mean more. Sometimes statistics are more honest than raw numbers.
No one calls nosocomial infections and related deaths acceptable. If you
have a real solution rather than a generalized need to bitch about something
you personally have no experience with, please notify CDC, NIH, and anyone
else you can think of. Otherwise, wash your hands and read for
comprehension rather than personal agrandizement.
>Again, I trust pharmacists to know more about medication effects that
physicians
That physicians what? Care to finish that statement? Pharmacists study
pharmacology. Physicians study treatment. As Dr. Harris pointed out to you
repeatedly, nothing is without side effects. Nothing is harmless. Ever see
anyone overdose on plain old tap water? I have and it can be lethal pretty
damnd quickly.
You cut and paste artists subject the world to your pseudo-intellectual
brand of crap. Anyone with a computer and an ISP can find some article to
support whatever their pet mania may be. There are still flat earthers out
there. And they cut and paste articles to prove their point. It's
intellectual masturbation. Wash your hands and get on with life.
If you want to make a difference, get off your ass, go to medical school and
treat patients as you feel most effective. Should you accomplish this, your
patients will develop infections and some will die. Some will ignore your
advice and prescriptions because someone less qualified tells them something
that they want to hear to support their own manias and madness.
>Anecdotes that I'm sure makes Harris et al. sneer. Big-mouth reporter,
knucklehead who had the wrong leg amputated, punk kid who was probably
>going to die eventually anyway. Lousy, ungrateful human race. Your disdain
for humanity is palpable.
I've spent most of my life working in health care. When you've crawled out
under fire to drag wounded back and try to keep them alive, when you've
worked 72 hours straight in support of mine explosions, multiple burns, auto
accidents and all the rest that comes in through the ER and the outpatient
departments; then we can talk about concern for humanity. What have you and
gohde and all the would-be authorities done besides bitch and moan because
you were too unqualified, too lazy or too uncommitted to anything beyond
your own anatomy to put in the time and effort it takes to gain education
and credentials.
What have you done to prolong the lives of your fellow man except sit back
and snipe from a position of ignorance?
Nicolas Martin
ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
> So what makes you believe that a physical disease process is not responsible
> for producing altered mental states in mental illness? Its already been
> noticed that people are excreting a hallucigen in there urine, and not a
> very pleasant hallucigen at that.
If you want to believe things that are not scientifically demonstrated
that is you business. But let's not pretend that it's anything more than
superstition.
I have given you authoritative quotes, you have given nothing in return
but your impression.
Nicolas Martin
"slenon" <sle...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> You cut and paste artists subject the world to your pseudo-intellectual
> brand of crap. Anyone with a computer and an ISP can find some article to
> support whatever their pet mania may be. There are still flat earthers out
> there. And they cut and paste articles to prove their point. It's
> intellectual masturbation. Wash your hands and get on with life.
What you mean to say is that I provide references for my assertions. You
provide nothing except descriptions of your heroism.
Your argument is misplaced. It is not with me but with IOM, CDC and the
rest. You just don't like the news and I'm the messenger. So be it, but
after your lifetime in medicine you haven't offered a single rebuttal
source to anything that I've offered. Not one.
After multiple posts, I take it you've gotten nothing but your own
inflated self-importance as evidence. So, we have concluded.
Others can decided whether to read and believe the references I've
offered. There is no serious medical debate over their accuracy. There
are only a few resentful medical professionals who don't want to have
their exalted status challenged.
But the challenge is made, the studies have been and continue to be
done, and you are part of the old guard who defends the crumbling
edifice. The harmful practices of medicine are an Alamo not worth
defending. I'm fortunate that my "mania" is well supported by a mountain
of journal articles and references at NIH, CDC, IOM, WHO, and every
medical authority in any country in the world rich enough to be
concerned about medical error.
You, in contrast, have nothing.
Denis Loubet
"Nicolas Martin" <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote in message
news:aia-DDFC00.0...@netnews.attbi.com...
> In article <q9iF8.96626$Q42.5...@typhoon.austin.rr.com>,
> "Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote:
>
> > I, for one, find your posts very clear, and you present a persuasive
> > argument.
>
> Thanks, Denis. I appreciate your thinking so.
I do have a few questions though: What is the explanation for bizarre and
destructive behaviors that are accompanied by no physical damage to the
brain. Are such catastrophic dysfunctions merely the extremes of behavior
that are to be expected from variation within a species?
Is it possible that "data" could be incorrectly routed within a physically
healthy brain to produce the bizarre behaviors we see in "psychotic"
patients? I know that there have been experiments that demonstrate the
brain's ability to reinforce specific pathways, so it would seem possible
that such reinforcement could go wrong and result in bizarre behavior, but
leave no trace of physical damage. If so, what are the methods of dealing
with such an eventuality?
Denis Loubet
dlo...@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
watchman
> I've spent most of my life working in health care. When you've crawled out
> under fire to drag wounded back and try to keep them alive, when you've
> worked 72 hours straight in support of mine explosions, multiple burns, auto
> accidents and all the rest that comes in through the ER and the outpatient
> departments; then we can talk about concern for humanity. What have you and
> gohde and all the would-be authorities done besides bitch and moan because
> you were too unqualified, too lazy or too uncommitted to anything beyond
> your own anatomy to put in the time and effort it takes to gain education
> and credentials.
You really are quite proud of yourself .. eh ..
Don't hold back .. let us all know ..
Due for a fall .. ?
It is called a 'seed' .. and once planted .. grows ..
Some of the greatest thinkers in the world NEVER .. ever .. actually
physically DID a thing ..
But .. according to YOUR line of thinking .. they were totally without
merit ..
What a maroon ..
Who loves ya.
Tom
--
Jesus was a Vegetarian! http://www.nucleus.com/watchman
Moses was a Mystic! http://www.nucleus.com/watchman/light.html
Nicolas Martin
"Denis Loubet" <dlo...@io.com> wrote:
> I do have a few questions though: What is the explanation for bizarre and
> destructive behaviors that are accompanied by no physical damage to the
> brain. Are such catastrophic dysfunctions merely the extremes of behavior
> that are to be expected from variation within a species?
>
> Is it possible that "data" could be incorrectly routed within a physically
> healthy brain to produce the bizarre behaviors we see in "psychotic"
> patients? I know that there have been experiments that demonstrate the
> brain's ability to reinforce specific pathways, so it would seem possible
> that such reinforcement could go wrong and result in bizarre behavior, but
> leave no trace of physical damage. If so, what are the methods of dealing
> with such an eventuality?
>
I doubt that my answer will sound sufficiently mechanistic. I believe
that most people who behave "schizophrenically" (badly, crazily) do so
because they simply have problems coping. There are obviously as many
explanations, then, as there are people. Sometimes the individuals have
been overtly abused, and other times they just might be overly sensitive
or just not strong.
The evidence, going back to the Quaker retreats of the late 1700s,
demonstrates that people who act "crazy" improve when their conditions
improve, and when they are treated well.
There is a quote in Whitaker's "Mad in America" by a leader in this
approach, William Tuke, who said, "If it be true that oppression makes a
wise man mad, is it supposed that stripes, and insults, and injuries,
for which the receiver knows no cause, are calculated to make a madman
wise? Or would they not exasperate his disease, and excite his
resentment? May we not hence most clearly perceive, why furious mania,
is almost a stranger in the Retreat? Why all patients wear clothes, and
are generally induced to adopt orderly habits?"
Tuke was describing the difference between the Quaker approach and the
abuses "crazy" people had been previously subjected to, and are today.
Whitaker says of the Quakers that "Their simple, common-sense methods
produced good results. During the York Retreat's first fifteen years, 70
percent of the patients who had been ill for less than twelve months
recovered, which was defined by Tuke as never relapsing into illness.
Even 25 percent of the patients who had been chronically ill before
coming to the retreat, viewed as incurable, recovered under this
treatment and had not relapsed in 1813, the year Tuke published
"Description of the Retreat."
The results of Mosher's Soteria project in the 1970s were even more
impressive.
It all adds up to this. Many people who live troubled lives do better if
they are treated well, they do worse if treated badly. Americans have
generally preferred to treat oddly behaving people badly; to shock, gag,
imprison, and drug them.
I don't feel comfortable with a behavioralistic-mechanistic explanation,
such as about behavior pathways being changed. If you kick a dog enough
times he gets surly and mean, and people aren't much different.
When a dog that has been trained to be vicious attacks someone, we don't
do a brain autopsy to see where the brain is damaged, we hold the owners
reponsible for mistreating and mistraining the dog. Yet with people,
when they are abused and act badly, we assume the explanation lies in
their brains, blood, and urine! Better that we convince the
psychiatrists to go after pit bulls and leave people alone.
Unlike dogs, people are responsible for their behavior. Even when
someone who is "schizophrenic" is, in my opinion, fully responsible for
any harm that inflicts on other people (physically), and has no more
right to commit crimes than anyone else. People have no right to harass
others on the street, or to make threats. The rules should be the same
for everyone.
But "crazy" people also have the right to be left unmolested by the rest
of us, and not to have "treatments" forced upon them.
The day may come when we see that we treat the "mentally ill" as badly
as we understand the Elephant Man to have been treated, but I'm not
holding my breath. Most people want to attack what they don't
understand, and crazy behavior is, by definition, not understandable.
Suppose we never have a satisfactory "explanation" for why people are
crazy; do we use them as subjects for our experiments and tortures until
the end of time? Or do we give them the opportunity to do the best they
can and enjoy as much as they might?
Lawrence Foard
Nicolas Martin <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote:
>In article <ac6u15$90q$1...@farviolet.com>,
> ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
>
>> So what makes you believe that a physical disease process is not responsible
>> for producing altered mental states in mental illness? Its already been
>> noticed that people are excreting a hallucigen in there urine, and not a
>> very pleasant hallucigen at that.
>
>If you want to believe things that are not scientifically demonstrated
>that is you business. But let's not pretend that it's anything more than
>superstition.
>
>I have given you authoritative quotes, you have given nothing in return
>but your impression.
You snipped the url below out before replying:
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/bufotenin/bufotenin_journal2.shtml
To quote:
"Thirteen of 15 schizophrenic patients were also positive for bufotenine.
[...] Only two of 200 urine specimens from healthy controls were positive for
bufotenine."
Nicolas Martin
Nicolas Martin <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote:
Denis, sorry about my poor proofreading. I'm not so great a proofreader
at my best, and when I get tired I'm worse.
Nicolas Martin
ent...@farviolet.com (Lawrence Foard) wrote:
> You snipped the url below out before replying:
>
> http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/bufotenin/bufotenin_journal2.shtml
>
> To quote:
>
> "Thirteen of 15 schizophrenic patients were also positive for bufotenine.
> [...] Only two of 200 urine specimens from healthy controls were positive for
> bufotenine."
Sorry, I missed that before.
This one was good:
BOSFELD, JANE
Toad Tripping
OMNI; Dec 1989
It's not exactly a craze, but licking toads is the latest - and
certainly the wierdest - way to get high. ''It is not a big problem, but
when people hear about it they try it,'' explains Robert Sager, chief of
the US Drug Enforcement Administrations's Western Regional Laboratory in
San Francisco. The toad of choice is the Cane Toad, a tropical green and
red toad that's a favorite among aquarium habitues. It secretes a toxin,
called bufotenine to ward off predators. Ingesting bufotenine - by
licking the toad, or killing it and boiling it's skin for a foul-tasting
tea - will give you a high similar to that of psilocybin (a hallucinogen
found in certain mushrooms). But, Sager warns, bufotenine will ''make
you ill, and it is not terribly hallucinogenic. It's just not that great
a high.'' Of course for those who don't mind licking a tailless
amphibian, it might be possible to buy several and keep them on hand:
Once a toad has been licked it secretes more bufotenine, so replenishing
the supply would not be a problem. Although four Australians croaked
last summer after drinking an especially strong batch of Cane-skin tea,
no fatalities have been reported in this country. But, says Sager, a
number of people have been hospitalized. Nevertheless, possessing a Cane
Toad is not illegal if you do it for reasons other than getting high
------------------------
Bufotenine has been the subject of investigation for its brain effects
since the 1950s. There has been the occasional study to see whether
"schizophrenics" have an excess, and they have concluded either that
they did not or that the results were statistically insignificant. One
more study of 15 people is not likely to get anyone excited, but who
knows. One reason to be suspicious is that, in the study, they also find
excess bufotenine in autistics and depressed people. A study that
explains everything usually explains nothing. In any case, the numbers
studied were tiny. And of course a bufotenine explanation for depression
would mean that everything we currently "know" would be bogus. It is
bogus (in my view), but not because bufotenine lurks. One reason it's
bogus is that exercise works as well as drugs to "treat" depression.
Does exercise also reduce bufotenine levels?
We could probably locate thousands of once-promising biochemical studies
of the causes of "schizophrenia." To date they have all turned out to we
wild goose chases. A tiny study of a chemical that has been studied
before with no unambiguous result is not likely to excite people, but
who knows.
I think what you need to answer is this: If behavioral experiments, like
the Soteria Project, find that "schizophrenics" are much improved by
doing nothing but changing their environments, do better living
conditions alter bufotenine-related brain chemistry? If in the unlikely
event they do change bufotenine-related chemistry, isn't the answer
still to provide a favorable environment rather than fiddling with their
brains?
The problem with brain chemistry theories is that it is not possible to
measure the amounts of chemicals in live brains. That's why even present
migraine theories are so weak, depending as they do on serotonin. There
is no way to determine if a migraineur has unusual serotonin levels. So,
the most recent study of note found that people with migraines had high
levels of gut bacteria, which has zero to do with serotonin. I have a
friend who had fierce migraines. I didn't talk to her for about a dozen
years. When we spoke I asked her how her migraines were. She said, "Oh
they went away when I had my gallbladder removed." That was mighty
interesting to me because I had hardly ever had a headache until I had a
botched liver biopsy, then I had headaches every day. Did a botched
biopsy change my brain serotonin chemistry?
I think it is quite possible that migraines will not turn out to be
caused by brain chemistry abnormalities, and it is almost certain that
people who have had unpleasant lives and act strangely as a result, will
not turn out to have abnormal bufotenine levels.
By the way, "'Witches' took scopolamine, atropine, bufotenine from
licking toads to feel like flying in 1100 AD," so it can't be all bad!
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>The average American doctor has about as
>much to do with scientific medical progress as Moniz, who, for those who
>don't know, won the Nobel in physiology/medicine for inventing the
>lobotomy.
When used appropriately lobotomies were in fact very effective. When
abused, you are talking about abuse.
On a similar vain when used appropriately electro-shock therapy is in
fact very effective. When abused, you are talking about abuse.
All that you are doing is jerking people, unfamiliar with the subject
matter, around by playing with their emotions. Radio talk show hosts
and politicians do use the same technique all the time.
Obviously, I would not recommend a lobotomy or electro-shock therapy
for any NORMAL person. But, in the real world doctors have to make
hard decisions.
It is my understanding that lobotomies are no longer done. There is
now a technique of sending electric impulses to electrodes planted
inside the brain that is a much more effective treatment.
John 'the Man'
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>Treating "schizophrenics" the way John recommends (and psychiatry
>practices) is the moral equivalent of the way the German psychiatrists
>treated the Jews.
It obvious to me that you have not met a single truly psychotic person
in your entire life.
Happy Dog
> Nicolas Martin <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote:
> >> In the future if someone is schizophrenia I can imagine it being
diagnosed
> >> with a blood or urine test, rather than from symptoms alone. Hopefully
> >> treatment would consist of treating closer to the source of the
problem.
> >> Perhaps we will discover that the source of schizophrenia is not even
> >> in the brain, but some other sort of metabolic abnormality. Bofutenin
in
> >> the urine is a pretty good sign that there is a physical process going
on
> >> beyond bad thought patterns or nerve wiring.
> >
> >Again, there is no evidence of any biological abnormality in persons
> >labeled "schizophrenic."
>
> Some of the PET scans of schizophrenics undergoing hallucinations were
> quite unlike those of non-schizophrenics.
Not to mention the fact that the bizarre hallucinations that are a major
symptom of schizophrenia are, themselves, evidence of a biological
abnormality. There are also myriad ways that people damage their brains and
exhibit various types of psychosis. If it isn't biological, then what?
arf
Nicolas Martin
"Happy Dog" <happ...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Not to mention the fact that the bizarre hallucinations that are a major
> symptom of schizophrenia are, themselves, evidence of a biological
> abnormality. There are also myriad ways that people damage their brains and
> exhibit various types of psychosis. If it isn't biological, then what?
> arf
Your reasoning is circular. "It is biological because it exists. It
exists because it is biological." It's a basic logical fallacy, and it
simply reflects you unwillingness to accept alternative explanations.
--
Nicolas Martin
Executive Director
American Iatrogenic Association
Nicolas Martin
John 'the Man' <DeMan[62]@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Treating "schizophrenics" the way John recommends (and psychiatry
> >practices) is the moral equivalent of the way the German psychiatrists
> >treated the Jews.
>
> It obvious to me that you have not met a single truly psychotic person
> in your entire life.
My opinion is much the same as that of Loren Mosher, who was Chief of
the National Institute for Mental Health's Center for Studies of
Schizophrenia. It is virtually identical to that of Thomas Sszasz,
professor emeritus of psychiatry, it is barely different than the
director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, Dr. Peter Breggin. I
assume you think, then that they never met a psychotic person.
My father was a psychologist.
You talk a lot of unsupported rubbish.
Nicolas Martin
John 'the Man' <DeMan[62]@hotmail.com> wrote:
> When used appropriately lobotomies were in fact very effective. When
> abused, you are talking about abuse.
You are a savage, morally indistinguishable from a Mengele. You won't
get anymore comment from me.
--
Nicolas Martin
Executive Director
American Iatrogenic Association
slenon
accept alternative explanations.
Rather an apt description of your website, too. Please provide your
qualifications, academic and otherwise to hold the directorate of this
"association." Or, are you, like gohde, merely another dropout who wants
recognition and finds it in creating an organizations that exists mainly in
his own mind. Another "uncompensated researcher" like Hennessy, the
watchworm, perhaps?
slenon
give you your next dose of thorazine. You've about as much comprehension of
the articles you cut and paste as something found in the bottom of an O&P
prep tube.
Like gohde, you need to learn to spell the words you attempt to use.
Go find your keepers and tell them it is time for your next EST session.
slenon
>What you mean to say is that I provide references for my assertions. You
provide nothing except descriptions of your heroism
As I've stated before, you cut and paste artists can find all the articles
you want to support nearly any premise and post them in long rambling
sequence. When you personally have put in the time to gain the education
and the clinical skills required to actually read and assess the validity
and accuracy of the articles you post with respect to reality rather than
your particular brand of mania; then we will be able to communicate. I'm not
impressed by your ability to copy and paste. I suspect your early homework
assignments were direct encyclopedia copies.
Until then, you are another pseudo-intellectual with a desire to be an
authority and without the credentials or background to do anything but copy
and paste the work of other people taken out of context.
Get back to me when you've actually worked in health care.
John@getstev.com Sir John
> In article <74rdeu48u616lcfqb...@4ax.com>,
> John 'the Man' <DeMan[62]@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > When used appropriately lobotomies were in fact very effective. When
> > abused, you are talking about abuse.
>
> You are a savage, morally indistinguishable from a Mengele. You won't
> get anymore comment from me.
Your lack of knowledge of the subject matter speaks loads...
It was an effective treatment for quite a number of neurological conditions.
Keep to your day job of stirring up emotions in ignoramuses.
John@getstev.com Sir John
As usual.
"slenon" <sle...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:ZDPF8.348468$nc.53...@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com...
slenon
are quite content to stand outside and throw stones. It is apparent that
you didn't see fit to put in the time and effort required to aquire
knowledge and practical experience in clinical matters. Therefore, your
self-proclamations of being an authority fall flat.
When you've developed a personal health plan that doesn't include depleting
your iron stores to the point of anemia, talk to me about healthcare. Until
then, cut and paste all you like; you only emphasize how little experience
you have and how little you understand the articles you claim support your
manias.
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains and schizophrenia."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>You talk a lot of unsupported rubbish.
I call that a temper tantrum.
You entered the smn ng my sig below.
I have last night and today returned the favor. Enjoy the return of
your Karma. You have earned it.
Happy Dog
> > Not to mention the fact that the bizarre hallucinations that are a major
> > symptom of schizophrenia are, themselves, evidence of a biological
> > abnormality. There are also myriad ways that people damage their brains
and
> > exhibit various types of psychosis. If it isn't biological, then what?
>
> exists because it is biological." It's a basic logical fallacy, and it
> simply reflects you unwillingness to accept alternative explanations.
Where did I say "it exists because it's biological"? I said it exists so it
MUST be biological. The disease of schizophrenia has tons of supporting
research that show that it is a diagnosable condition. If you don't like
schizophrenia, how about autism? If you deny that these conditions exist,
then you're crazy. And that's all you can do. Because, if you admit they
exist, and they so obviously do, then what could cause could they have that
isn't biological? Demons?
erf
Happy Dog
> My opinion is much the same as that of Loren Mosher, who was Chief of
> the National Institute for Mental Health's Center for Studies of
> Schizophrenia. It is virtually identical to that of Thomas Sszasz,
> professor emeritus of psychiatry, it is barely different than the
> director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, Dr. Peter Breggin. I
> assume you think, then that they never met a psychotic person.
>
> My father was a psychologist.
>
> You talk a lot of unsupported rubbish.
You, the budding logics expert, are using an argument from authority to make
your idiotic case.
erf
CBI
"Nicolas Martin" <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote in message
news:aia-BBBE05.1...@netnews.attbi.com...
> In article <ac6gsc$o0d$1...@slb5.atl.mindspring.net>,
> "Steve Harris" <sbha...@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com> wrote:
>
> When I'm accused of lying that's where the dialog
> ends.
>
You mean all we had to do all this time was call you a liar? <smacking
forehead>
Liar!!!!
--
CBI, MD
"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it."
-Andre Gide
CBI
"Nicolas Martin" <a...@iatrogenic.org> wrote in message
news:aia-899DD8.2...@netnews.attbi.com...
> As I said, Mr. Harris, when you accused me of lying that was where my
> conversation with you ended.
>
And yet you keep responding. Liar.
Orac
"slenon" <sle...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> > It's a basic logical fallacy, and it simply reflects you unwillingness to
> accept alternative explanations.
> >Nicolas Martin Executive Director American Iatrogenic Association
>
> Rather an apt description of your website, too. Please provide your
> qualifications, academic and otherwise to hold the directorate of this
> "association." Or, are you, like gohde, merely another dropout who wants
> recognition and finds it in creating an organizations that exists mainly in
> his own mind. Another "uncompensated researcher" like Hennessy, the
> watchworm, perhaps?
One wonders if he has ever done any actual research or published his
results in any peer-reviewed journals....
--
Orac |"A statement of fact cannot be insolent."
|
|"If you cannot listen to the answers, why do you
| inconvenience me with questions?"
David Wright
Well, according to Our Boy Nicholas, I think it must be that they're
choosing to see thing. If I've understood his weltanschauung
properly, there is no such thing as mental illness, the doctors made
it all up, and everyone with any kind of so-called mental problem is
doing it on purpose.
It couldn't possibly be that in a system as complex as the brain,
sometimes it doesn't work quite the way we want. Every other organ in
the body can malfunction, but not the brain.
-- David Wright :: alphabeta at prodigy.net
These are my opinions only, but they're almost always correct.
"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants
were standing on my shoulders."
Ilena Rose
<Or...@mac.com> wrote:
**One wonders if he has ever done any actual research or published his
**results in any peer-reviewed journals....
**
one wonders if after Stevie Barrett became a "peer reviewer" for ACSH ...
if "peer review" had any credibility at all!
Peter Bowditch
Ilena (who was going to disappear but didn't) is obviously unaware
that Nicholas Martin used to work for ACSH. He still talks about it as
though it is a reference, so I guess he thinks the organisation has
some merit.
--
Peter Bowditch pet...@ratbags.com
Mad - Quintessence of the Loon http://www.ratbags.com/loon
Bad - The Millenium Project http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
Sad - Full Canvas Jacket http://www.ratbags.com/ranters
John@getstev.com Sir John
news:gobgeu8bhduljur0p...@4ax.com...
> Ilena (who was going to disappear but didn't) is obviously unaware
> that Nicholas Martin used to work for ACSH. He still talks about it as
> though it is a reference, so I guess he thinks the organisation has
> some merit.
The only contact information for this organization is:
American Iatrogenic Association
2513 S. Gessner #232
Houston, Texas 77063-2096
That could easily be a Mail Box Etc. address.
Nicolas S. Martin, Executive Director is the only person identified.
Payments are accepted through PayPal, which means he incurs no expenses
accepting donations. That says to me a very low budget operation.
No other information about the organization is given. What does this
organization do with the donations? No information is given.
To me Nicolas S. Martin is obviously using his informational website, which
is mostly inflammatory, to extract money from people. He probably has a day
job. And, simply goes from ng to ng at night stirring up business.
slenon
>To me Nicolas S. Martin is obviously using his informational website, which
is mostly inflammatory, to extract money from people. He probably has >a
day job. And, simply goes from ng to ng at night stirring up business.
Sound like anyone else we know?
What degrees? What institutions?
And what happened to Nicolas being your ally against people like me?
John@getstev.com Sir John
ever had the pleasure to run across.
I attribute your Evilness to your taste for killing baby Gooks.
Once a Jock, always a Jock.
Once a Gook Killer, always a Gook Killer. :-(
"slenon" <sle...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:4W7G8.544066$K52.92...@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com...
slenon
>There is no doubt in my mind that you are the most Evil person that I have
ever had the pleasure to run across.
>I attribute your Evilness to your taste for killing baby Gooks. Once a
Jock, always a Jock.
>Once a Gook Killer, always a Gook Killer.
If I'm your example of penultimate evil, you've led, and continue to lead,
an extremely sheltered and uniformed life. I'm thrilled that running across
me pleasures you. It is obvious that there is little enough pleasure in
your life otherwise. But, if what you see as evil is cause for pleasure,
seek help from a local mental health provider. Perhaps the watchworm or
Nicolas can offer you referrals.
For your information, I was never a Jock. I had and have absolutely no
interest in team sports and the glorification of overpaid, undereducated
gladiators. You obviously have confused me with one of your many other
detractors. Read for comprehension, not for auto-confusion.
I don't recall making any claims regarding killing people. Such claims
exist only in your head. I was a medic. But then, you don't have any more
knowledge of war and things military than you do of medicine or nutrition;
because you didn't do any national service time, just as you didn't
undertake any medical or nutritional education. So as well as lacking
personal knowledge, you've misinterpreted what you might have read or
overheard again. There seems to be a pattern here. What part of your
website makes you an "authority" on war?
The hole you've dug for yourself keeps getting deeper. Must be hard to see
daylight from the bottom. What degrees? What institutions?
Michael Jameson
Much of what you've written seems spot on to me. I like the website, have
several of the articles myself, and commend you for presenting a particular
view so insistently and comprehensively. However, when I read this -
> I believe
> that most people who behave "schizophrenically" (badly, crazily) do so
> because they simply have problems coping.
I thought "That's one of the most astoundingly stupid and callous
oversimplifying generalisations I've ever read". The rest of the post was
interesting and again presented useful and insightful points so I'm at a loss
to understand the above sentence in light of your broader comments. Do you
sincerely believe that hallucinations and delusions can be entirely explained
as 'having problems coping'?
Mick.
--
"You are the music while the music lasts" - Antonio Damasio (after TS Eliot).
Steve Harris
>I doubt that my answer will sound sufficiently mechanistic. I believe
>that most people who behave "schizophrenically" (badly, crazily) do so
>because they simply have problems coping.
Do YOU act schizophrenically when you have problems coping? Hear voices?
Manufacture paranoid delusions? Fail to be able to read other people's
emotional states?
The problem with your "explanation" for mental illness is that it just
pushes the problem into one more step of regression. We all have stress, but
not all of us go crazy. We all have our crosses to bear, however, only SOME
of us hear the voices of angels telling us that we're the latest incarnation
of Jesus, and that the government has developed an electronic device to
control the thoughts of most people so that they cannot see the obvious
truth, which is that unless we act now, the Earth is soon to be taken over
by a combination of UFO people and International Bankers.
SBH
--
I welcome email from any being clever enough to fix my address. It's open
book. A prize to the first spambot that passes my Turing test.
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>I like the website, have
>several of the articles myself, and commend you for presenting a particular
>view so insistently and comprehensively.
The website does indeed provide good information, even if it exists
only to extract money from people.
I will study it for the good points, address it to a certain extent on
my website, and then go on with my life.
Steve Harris
>>take a guess how many deaths would occur without the
>> intervention of said physicians and drug companies.
>
>That is puerile. It's like the bumper stickers that say, "If your kid
>can read, thank a teacher." The average American doctor has about as
>much to do with scientific medical progress as Moniz, who, for those who
>don't know, won the Nobel in physiology/medicine for inventing the
>lobotomy.
And for hyperthermic therapy for neurosyphilis, in the era before
penicillin.
As for applications and development, they are two different things, and some
doctors do one thing, others do another, and some do both. The number of
physicians doing research reflects the faction of medical dollars going into
research, which is a couple of percent of the total budget. This is
ridiculously small, but that's what the public wants.
>Most docs are ordinary people who go to school, work a day
>job, and make no special effort to keep up with the literature and seem
>clueless about how to avoid misusing antibiotics.
"Make no special effort to keep up with the literature?" This is something
of a meaningless statement. How much of an effort is a "special effort"?
You are aware of the CME and board recertification programs, yes?
"Seem clueless as to how to avoid misusing antibiotics." Seem clueless to
you, the expert? Seem clueless to who? Explain.
>>Rather than cite
>> numbers of nosocomial infections, provide the percentage of patients vs
>> total patient visits who actually acquire a nosocomial infection. Your
>> facts are skewed and your viewpoint biased.
>
>Am I alone? Does CDC agree with me or you? Why are numbers of infections
>not useful?
In part because nosocomial infections are not reducible to zero, unless you
go to P5 containment systems that nobody could afford. So the comparisons
cannot use 0% as the gold standard, because that's not attainable. Relevant
questions should not involve percents, but comparisons between good and bad
hospitals-- ie, why aren't all hospitals doing fairly close to as well as
the performance of the best ones.
>If airplanes were crashing every day, would you say, "But
>those 300 deaths a day are just 0.02 percent of total airline
>passengers?" That would would convince a lot of people, I'm sure.
It would if they were flying to escape death or severe illness. Compare
apples and apples.
Also, there's a difference between airline passengers and hospital
patients-- hospital patients are really sick. In fact, they're often so ill
they should be in a hospital. And the older and sicker you are, the more an
error means.
Suppose the airlines were not permitted to replace parts, but had to use
airplanes 65 years old, on average, which were in poor repair because the
means to repair them perfectly did not exist. And let us say these planes
are of all types and models-- you would never know as a pilot if you'll get
an old DC-3, a new 777, or an old Ford Tri-motor. And airlines are required
to fly all such planes until they crash, one way or another. And your
ability to chicken out because of weather would be limited-- all these
machines have to be flying because suspended animation does not exist.
Now-- many airplanes and passengers would die in this world from mechanical
failure. Also, however, there would be many crashes and deaths due to what
we'd ordinarily call "pilot error." The pilot has no experience in this
airplane-- how could he if it's a one-of-a-kind model? Also, it's old and it
can barely fly as it is. This leads to a combination of unforgiving
circumstances, and unavoidable pilot inexperience. That means disaster. Are
such disasters avoidable? Only in theory.
Nicolas Martin
"Happy Dog" <happ...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> You, the budding logics expert, are using an argument from authority to make
> your idiotic case.
> erf
Not at all, I'm merely responding to your demagogic claim that I stand
in isolation. The position isn't correct because of who supports it,
they support it because it is correct.
At least I KNOW who the authorities are, and the arguments they make,
and the studies that support them.
Your position, as you have presented it is based on nothing more than
your superstition.
Nicolas Martin
"Happy Dog" <happ...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Where did I say "it exists because it's biological"? I said it exists so it
> MUST be biological. The disease of schizophrenia has tons of supporting
> research that show that it is a diagnosable condition. If you don't like
> schizophrenia, how about autism? If you deny that these conditions exist,
> then you're crazy. And that's all you can do. Because, if you admit they
> exist, and they so obviously do, then what could cause could they have that
> isn't biological? Demons?
> erf
Problems in living. Simply problems in living. (Autism I know little
about.) The worst demons they must confront are the coercive treatments
of psychiatrists.
What do we do with the countless theories that have "proven" over the
years that "schizophrenia" is biological? Are they discretely deposited
where we forget they existed and the damage they caused? There were
plenty of people, like you, who bullied the world into accepting their
scientific validity, but the theories were all just pseudoscientific
effluent. Like the present one, and the next one. And you will be there
to defend them all.
One of the oddest things about defenders of biological psychiatry is
that they always (tediously, predictably) claim that their opponents
"deny" the existence of the problems that people have. Not at all, as
I've repeated ad nauseum. We simply deny that biology explains those
problems.
I spent last evening with the former chairman of the Psych department at
the University of Kentucky, cited as one of the "25 most important
skeptics of the 20th Century." He gave me of a copy of a letter he wrote
in which he notes that "what the shrinks are doing is anything but
scientific!"
Maybe that's an appeal to authority, or just to the good sense of a man
who practiced and taught psychology for 50 years.
I doubt you have read a single book by a single critic of biological
psychiatry. It's your therapeutic dogma.
I've got a book on my bedside table I think you would enjoy. It explains
how "neurotic gingivitis" is cause by anxiety reducing blood flow to the
gums, a "fact" that was endorsed by some of the most prominent
psychiatric quacks of 1948. It also tells all about the "infantile"
attention-seeking people with peptic ulcers and the "masochistic"
diabetics. All those diseases were the products of mental illnesses.
Very impressive science. Naturally, those who challenged this "science"
were crazy.
Nicolas Martin
il...@san.rr.com (Ilena Rose) wrote:
> one wonders if after Stevie Barrett became a "peer reviewer" for ACSH ...
> if "peer review" had any credibility at all!
Funny you should mention that. I used to work for ACSH, and edited a
pamphlet written by Steve Barrett. He also published an article under
my byline in one of his publications. Of course, he didn't question my
credentials because he agreed with my conclusions. For most people an
expert is a person with whom they agree. And psychiatry, the science of
social control, is especially pernicious in this regard.
I shouldn't worry. Part of the psychiatric strategy is scapegoating. It
wouldn't matter if I was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard or an
ex-mental patient, the attack would be the same. They have at me instead
of discussing the nature of this bogus science. One person accuses me a
resorting to the fallacy of authority, the next two people want to know
what credentials prove my authority! Which way should I turn?
All critics need to keep asking is, "what biological test is used to
confirm a diagnosis of the 'brain disease called schizophrenia?" And,
after all the years, and all of the theories, the answer is still,
"none."
The "science" offered to support biological psychiatry is so poor that
the best strategy would be to guffaw if it were not forced on unwilling
people and didn't brutalize and dehumanize so many of them.
All the authority of psychiatry was mustered in support of American
eugenics, with its forced sterilizations, in support of Nazi
extermination facilities, and in support of imprisonment of epileptics
in colonies. As Whitaker shows in "Mad in America," psychiatry is the
longest-running act of self-mutilation ever perpetrated by human beings,
even outliving communism. The worst may be yet to come.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.
-- Richard Feynman, American physicist
And psychiatry is the belief that the experts can impose even the most
barbarous "treatments" on unwilling victims, so long as they are called
"sick." The constant refrain is that "mental illness is just like any
other illness." But what other physicians besides psychiatrists force
their treatments upon people who do not ask for them? What
non-psychiatric ailments justify imprisonment, forced drugging, methods
of physical control that often kill?
(Deadly Restraint: A Hartford Courant Investigative Report;
http://courant.ctnow.com/projects/restraint/day1.stm
"Roshelle Clayborne pleaded for her life...Slammed face-down on the
floor, Clayborne's arms were yanked across her chest, her wrists gripped
from behind by a mental health aide...I can't breathe, the 16-year-old
gasped...Her last words were ignored...A syringe delivered 50 milligrams
of Thorazine into her body and, with eight staffers watching, Clayborne
became, suddenly, still. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth as
she lost control of her bodily functions...Her limp body was rolled into
a blanket and dumped in an 8-by-10-foot room used to seclude dangerous
patients at the Laurel Ridge Residential Treatment Center in San
Antonio, Texas...The impulse to control, coerce, and dehumanize reveals
itself in almost every one of the pro-psychiatry postings. One person
says that the homeless should be lobotomized, the next says that only
"crazy" people would disagree, the next that only experts are qualified
to judge. This is the precise point where history has shown science to
be fraught with danger."
And the psychiatric experts, who almost unanimously support forced
treatments, were mute.
This is a sample of what medical authority has offered:
Cecil's Textbook of Medicine was the standard med school textbook in the
early 1940s. About epileptics it said:
"Between attacks, the frank epileptic is usually a constitutional
psychopath of the most disagreeable sort . . . [Epileptics] are
self-centered, unable to grasp the view point of others, and childishly
uncomprehending when forced to accept the opposite view . . . Like manic
depressives and other psychotics, they are apt to adjust their
depressions through this means [alcoholism], and are likewise easy
victims of delirium tremens...Institutional treatmentment properly
directed along strictly modern lines affords the best possible means of
handling [epileptics]...In properly conducted institutions the
epileptic...is taught to view his malady in its proper light, and learn
to enjoy the inestimable advantages of outdoor life."
How could argue with the most authoritative textbook in the land? You
would have had to be "crazy" to think that epileptics should not be
imprisoned in "colonies," right?
In 1960, the famous Harvard expert on epilepsy, William G. Lennox, wrote:
Epilepsy belongs to the specialty of neurology, but the need for
custodial care of public patients has caused epilepsy to be bracketed
with the psychoses in state departmentes of mental disease and in the
American Psychiatric Association..."Thou shalt not kill" and "Be ye
merciful." Can the two commands be combined in mercy killing?...Society
systematically and cruelly kills its best members by the means called
"war," and unmercifully prolongs the lives of its hopeless liabilities
[idiotic epileptic children]
(Both cites from "Cruel Compassion: psychiatric control of society's
unwanted," by Thomas Szasz.
Who would have had the temerity to argue with the experts, and to oppose
the tortures inflicted on epileptics. Does medical authority ever give
way to moral authority?
I recognize no expert authority to impose any treatment on any person
who does not agree to be treated. if the patient volunteers he can have
anything from a high colonic to a lobotomy, so far as I'm concerned. The
issue is the reliance of psychiatry on violence to have its way. The
fake science is used in the service of brute force.
Psychiatric coercion has been a feature of every "modern" society.
Soviet psychiatrists tortured and imprisoned political dissidents,
Castro's psychiatrists have tortured and imprisoned political and
(homo)sexual dissidents, and the American psychiatrists have gone after
the epileptics, the homosexuals, the unhappy, the homeless, the
criminal, the children. All in the guise of expertise, of course. Who
challenges the expert when he injects insulin to induce coma, or damages
brains with electricity, or dunks people in ice water, or feeds toddlers
amphetamines? I, for one.
Who were the experts, the Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals, or the doctors
who were the architects of the Holocaust? Who had the right to challenge
the experts?
By the way, didn't the peer-reviewed journals show for decades that
ulcers were caused by a stress disorder? Did peer review prevent
millions of people from receiving this bogus psychiatric diagnosis?
Didn't the peer-reviewed studies demonstrate over and over that
homosexuality was a disease? (The the Am. Psychiatric Association
eventually voted that it was not a disease (after public pressure). How
often do other specialists vote on what is or is not a disease, and
respond to public pressure in deciding?)
--
Nicolas Martin
Executive Director
American Iatrogenic Association
Nicolas Martin
Peter Bowditch <pet...@ratbags.com> wrote:
> Ilena (who was going to disappear but didn't) is obviously unaware
> that Nicholas Martin used to work for ACSH. He still talks about it as
> though it is a reference, so I guess he thinks the organisation has
> some merit.
I mentioned it again, and I think ACSH has merit. It also has some
serious problem that I am happy to address. I quit working for ACSH
because I found the criticisms accurate that it was a mouthpiece for
industry. For instance, a chocolate company did the in-house printing of
a brochure on sugar and health, but that was never made public. A large
brewery assisted in editing a report on alcohol and health, but that was
never made public. The director of ACSH, Beth Whelan, said in my
presence that a brochure on lawn chemical safety wouldn't be produced
unless the Professional Lawn Care Association gave a donation to ACSH.
(The many scientists who act as ACSH advisors are not told these things,
either. I told the mostly scientists on the board after I left, but they
did nothing of which I am aware.) Whether the alcohol reports were right
or wrong is a different issue.
So far as I know, I am the only former ACSH insider who has publically
criticized the organization for these ethical breaches. I mention that I
worked for ACSH because it is a fact, and it gives me some insight into
the politics of science. I agree with some things that ACSH supports and
disagree with other things.
For instance, I don't agree that there should be controls over the sale
of nutritional supplements. I don't agree with government anti-smoking
efforts. I'm not as sanguine as Beth Whelan about "junk food." I don't
agree that antioxidants are worthless, or that "multiple chemical
sensitivities" is a psychiatric disorder. As I say, I brought my easily
confirmable complaints to a board with some highly respected scientists
(including one Nobel winner) and they chose not to investigate. That was
one important lesson in the fallibility of scientists, and their
willingness to live with dishonesty. (When I say "easily confirmable," I
mean that they could proven what I told them about the sugar and alcohol
booklets by making a couple of phone calls to the companies involved.)
The dishonesty is specifically that ACSH claims that it never allows
companies to influence the organization's reports, and that industry is
never asked to donate for a self-serving project. I think the lawn
association being asked to donate for the production of a lawn safety
report qualifies as self-serving. Does anyone disagree? (I can't speak
to what has happened in the years since I left.)
I do agree with some of the positions ACSH takes, though. I think many
health and environmental risks are exaggerated. Probably some of the
people who think I have right to challenge psychiatry are happy to have
me challenge environmentalism.
I have these dreadful habits. I think for myself, and I will only work
with people I consider ethical. They don't have to be angels, but they
had better not flagrantly lie in public about things like quid pro quo
funding.
--
Nicolas Martin
Executive Director
American Iatrogenic Association
Nicolas Martin
<mFWF8.31724$Vm2.1...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
"Sir John" <Sir Jo...@GetStev.com> wrote:
> To me Nicolas S. Martin is obviously using his informational website, which
> is mostly inflammatory, to extract money from people. He probably has a day
> job. And, simply goes from ng to ng at night stirring up business.
The rest is complete nonsense, but I completely agree that the website
is inflammatory, and happily so. I think the Declaration of Independence
was, to the English, inflammatory. That's not an insult, it's not a
compliment. it depends upon the facts adduced.
Among these dozens of posts I have supported my views with citations
from the famous peer-reviewed journals, and from the CDC and other
relevant agencies. Not one other poster has, to my recollection, posted
a single scientific citation, except for the person who apparently
thinks that bufotenine may cause schizophrenia.
For people who claim to defend science, you sure aren't very interested
in the science. Character assassination is a sad substitue for
intellectual argumentation and some good citations. But then what else
does psychiatry rely upon but this sort of attack? There has never been
a public critic of psychiatry who hasn't been smeared. It's the game,
and we all know how to play it.
If psychiatry is scientific, then defend it. That shouldn't be so hard.
It's a little harder than making wild, unsupported accusations against
me, though.
--
Nicolas Martin
Executive Director
American Iatrogenic Association
Nicolas Martin
"CBI" <00...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Liar!!!!
About what?
Happy Dog
> > You, the budding logics expert, are using an argument from authority to
make
> > your idiotic case.
>
> in isolation. The position isn't correct because of who supports it,
> they support it because it is correct.
Yayah! At any rate, you said:
> My opinion is much the same as that of Loren Mosher, who was Chief of
> the National Institute for Mental Health's Center for Studies of
> Schizophrenia. It is virtually identical to that of Thomas Sszasz,
> professor emeritus of psychiatry, it is barely different than the
> director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, Dr. Peter Breggin. I
> assume you think, then that they never met a psychotic person.
>
> My father was a psychologist.
That's a classic argument from authority.
>
> At least I KNOW who the authorities are, and the arguments they make,
> and the studies that support them.
Of course you do. You just said so.
>
> Your position, as you have presented it is based on nothing more than
> your superstition.
You weren't even responding to me. My position is that you're a nutbar with
an axe to grind. You and you used an argument from authority when it was
pointed out that your position on psychotic people is untenable.
erf
Happy Dog
> il...@san.rr.com (Ilena Rose) wrote:
>
> > one wonders if after Stevie Barrett became a "peer reviewer" for ACSH
...
> > if "peer review" had any credibility at all!
>
> Funny you should mention that. I used to work for ACSH, and edited a
> pamphlet written by Steve Barrett. He also published an article under
> my byline in one of his publications. Of course, he didn't question my
> credentials because he agreed with my conclusions.
What's your take on Scientology's position on psychiatry? Just curious.
erf
Happy Dog
so it
> > MUST be biological. The disease of schizophrenia has tons of supporting
> > research that show that it is a diagnosable condition. If you don't
like
> > schizophrenia, how about autism? If you deny that these conditions
exist,
> > then you're crazy. And that's all you can do. Because, if you admit
they
> > exist, and they so obviously do, then what could cause could they have
that
> > isn't biological? Demons?
>
> about.) The worst demons they must confront are the coercive treatments
> of psychiatrists.
Learn a bit about schizophrenia. It often appears fairly suddenly. It
appaers often in people who don't have any undue "problems in living".
EVERYONE has problems in living. And most don't ever see a psychiatrist
until they are well and truly insane and unable to apprehend the world in
the way that most other "stressed" people do.
>
> What do we do with the countless theories that have "proven" over the
> years that "schizophrenia" is biological? Are they discretely deposited
> where we forget they existed and the damage they caused? There were
> plenty of people, like you, who bullied the world into accepting their
> scientific validity, but the theories were all just pseudoscientific
> effluent. Like the present one, and the next one. And you will be there
> to defend them all.
Get stuffed. I'm only arguing against your idiotic claim that all people
who, in a short period of time, develop debilitating psychotic symptoms have
no biological disorder. When you're done spewing paranoia about "people
like me", how about some studies that show that schizophrenia is not a
result of a biologically based brain disorder?
> One of the oddest things about defenders of biological psychiatry is
> that they always (tediously, predictably) claim that their opponents
> "deny" the existence of the problems that people have. Not at all, as
> I've repeated ad nauseum. We simply deny that biology explains those
> problems.
"Biology" isn't an explanation you cretin. The claimis that the symptoms of
certain psychiatric disorders are so sudden and bizzarre that their origin
must lie in biological causes.
> I spent last evening with the former chairman of the Psych department at
> the University of Kentucky, cited as one of the "25 most important
> skeptics of the 20th Century." He gave me of a copy of a letter he wrote
> in which he notes that "what the shrinks are doing is anything but
> scientific!"
>
> Maybe that's an appeal to authority
No. It absolutely is. And an anecdotal one at that.
> I've got a book on my bedside table I think you would enjoy. It explains
> how "neurotic gingivitis" is cause by anxiety reducing blood flow to the
> gums, a "fact" that was endorsed by some of the most prominent
> psychiatric quacks of 1948.
Sorry, I'm way ahead of you. I'm still quoting references from the previous
century.
erf
John 'the Man'
rambled on about "Re: iatrogenic pains."
Our champion de-medicalising in sci.med.nutrition retorts, thusly ...
>> To me Nicolas S. Martin is obviously using his informational website, which
>> is mostly inflammatory, to extract money from people. He probably has a day
>> job. And, simply goes from ng to ng at night stirring up business.
Your website is somewhat inspirational.
Your Iatrogenic Yahoo Group started about one year ago.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iatrogenic/
You have posted over 500 posts, each of which could consistute a
separate webpage on your website.
Collecting money is perfectly legal. My complaints with your website
and postings are:
1)You have globalized the meaning of iatrogenic to the point
where it could mean almost anything. I see no reason to change the
narrowly defined dictionary definition.
2)You basically just rant. You remind of Roy Masters. You jump
around so much on your topics that it is very time consuming to even
to attempt to read through your rantings, since you follow no logical
organization.
3)You seem to specialize in reporting anything NEGATIVE, such as
post #540 on the Poor Quality of Pot. What does that have to do with
iatrogenic?
4)Your organization seems to be composed of one person: YOU.
And, you do not disclose your qualifications or credentials, like I
do. See: http://contact.naturalhealthperspective.com/info.html
>The rest is complete nonsense,
The purpose of quoting is to refresh memory. You didn't quote, so
your comment is just plain stupid.
>For people who claim to defend science, you sure aren't very interested
>in the science. Character assassination is a sad substitue for
>intellectual argumentation and some good citations.
Excuse me, but you entered smn attacking my sig below and trying to
assassinate my character. You have yet to post your credentials.
Mine are fully disclosed on my website.
>If psychiatry is scientific, then defend it. That shouldn't be so hard.
>It's a little harder than making wild, unsupported accusations against
>me, though.
I have no interest PRO or CON in the subject of Psychiatry. It
certainly is *not* my priority.
slenon
>4)Your organization seems to be composed of one person: YOU. And, you do
not disclose your qualifications or credentials, like I do.
Forget it, gohde, Nicolas is not going to be your ally no matter how much
you grovel now. You two and watchworm provide comic relief and
misinformation across a broad spectrum of usegroups.
What degrees? What institutions? It is a simple question you seem unable
to answer.
Nicolas Martin
"Happy Dog" <happ...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> You weren't even responding to me. My position is that you're a nutbar with
> an axe to grind. You and you used an argument from authority when it was
> pointed out that your position on psychotic people is untenable.
> erf
If it is untenable then it is time for you to provde the evidence for
the biological tests that prove a person has schizophrenia. The ad
hominem is boring. I don't care if you are mad as a hatter, you can
still offer some evidence for you position.
What test? How is it administered?
I know that's your position, but it ain't science, it's just the
standard fall-back position of people who buy into psychiatry, that all
who disagree must be insane. Let's pretend you have a higher standard of
intellectual integrity and deal with the evidence.
You must be the 6th person who has claimed in this threat that I'm
insane. Since so many fans of psychiatry know insanity when they read
it, then, by definition, we don't need a test, so we? There we have the
essentials of the "science." The proof will eventually come, in the the
meantime let's diagnose and treat people who we believe are crazy.
I see this over and over. After nearly a half-century of observing this
phenomenon, my diagnosis is that people drawn to psychiatry are
authoritarian types who fear and loathe people who don't confirm. That's
why psychiatry is able to serve the interests of totalitarian states so
handily.
What test confirms any psychiatric diagnosis? How is it adminstered?
Nicolas Martin
John 'the Man' <DeMan[62]@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 3)You seem to specialize in reporting anything NEGATIVE, such as
> post #540 on the Poor Quality of Pot. What does that have to do with
> iatrogenic?
> 4)Your organization seems to be composed of one person: YOU.
> And, you do not disclose your qualifications or credentials, like I
> do. See: http://contact.naturalhealthperspective.com/info.html
>
> >The rest is complete nonsense,
>
> The purpose of quoting is to refresh memory. You didn't quote, so
> your comment is just plain stupid.
>
> >For people who claim to defend science, you sure aren't very interested
> >in the science. Character assassination is a sad substitue for
> >intellectual argumentation and some good citations.
>
> Excuse me, but you entered smn attacking my sig below and trying to
> assassinate my character. You have yet to post your credentials.
> Mine are fully disclosed on my website.
Let's see. If a person is attempting to ameliorate his pain with a
medication (pot), and the drug is poorly manufactured, then he doesn't
get the proper benefit of the medication. What does that have to do with
iatrogenic? Perhaps you would get it if the drug were made by Lilly and
used to treat insulin.
Whether an argument is effective has nothing to do with who makes it.
I'm not persuaded that there is a god, despite the immense historical
authority "proving" it. I'm not persuaded that psychiatry is a science
despite the immense social authority it has. Every culture has its
myths, and the myths are often supported by authority. (Even colonic
irrigationists have their credentialing.) I see that as more of a reason
to be suspicious than accepting. Do you recognize the difference between
science and scientism?
How does the full disclosure of your credentials on your website (I take
your word for it, I haven't been there) prove that psychiatry is
scientific? Is your CV substantive evidence? How does you resume help us
to know what test can be administered to confirm a psychiatric
diagnosis? If it helps then I need to know how, to understand the link.
You are an authoritarian, I am a libertarian. We have no intersect
point. You trust authority, I mistrust authority. You believe that
credentials (proof of authority) are meaningful, I think they are
interesting but prove nothing. Yesterday's authority is today's error
(because science recognizes no authority). Today's fringe idea is
tomorrow's proof that ulcers are caused by a bacterium.
The specialization is negative? Yes, that is true. Addressing iatrogenic
illness requires dealing primarity with the negative. The point is to
report on problems associated with medicine, just as, say the Institute
of Medicine's "Too Err is Human" is entirely negative. The patient
visits a physician gets are negative in that all involve a complaint.
Very few people pay for visits to explain how great they feel. One hopes
for positive outcomes by dealing with the negative. I can't imagine how
else you think it should be. How useful would "To Err is Human" have
been had they padded it with facts and stories about the glories of
medicine? It isn't my purpose to hype medical success, just as it isn't
the business of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to tell everyone about great
German vacation spots.
I've found that there are vociferous "iatrogenic deniers," just as their
are "holocaust deniers." But the evidence is rather strong for both. And
for the grizzly history of psychiatry in its practitioner's words.
Could the lot of you have a conference and decided whether authority
constitutes proof. I'm confused with one side arguing that my arguments
are flawed because I refer to authorities, while the other side says my
arguments fail because I'm not, in their view, an authority. Which is it?
Or perhaps there the old cognitive dissonance is going around, and the
result is that both positions are held at once.
I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what test is used to confirm a
psychiatric diagnosis. If no such test exists then it's a bogus science.
So far, the only evidence adduced is that bufotenine may cause
schizophrenia because one study shows people so diagnosed have higher
urine levels. That alone shows how pathetic the proof for psychiatry is.
If there is some scientific proof, it is time for you folks to trot it
out.
What biological test is used to confirm any psychiatric diagnosis?
Nicolas Martin
"slenon" <sle...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> What degrees? What institutions? It is a simple question you seem unable
> to answer.
And I will not until you offer some argument that credentials prove an
argument right or wrong. When Marshall and Warren argued that ulcers
were caused by a bacterium they were greeted with derision since every
important ulcer expert in the world knew that ulcers were caused by a
reaction to stress. Science proves experts wrong. One of the key
purposes of the scientific process is to eliminate the influence of the
researchers. Science has never been kind to authority.
In the absence of scientific evidence, and nobody has offered any, there
is this interesting and inevitable resort to resume wars.
Since this has become like arguing with homeopathists, who offer no
proofs for their magic, it is getting tedious. I will keep talking the
science and you keep talking credentials.
When you finally get bored with that, tell me what biological test
confirms any diagnosis of psychiatric illness?
I'm curious. Do you think psychiatrists did the right thing by
imprisoning and sterilizing epileptics? I'm trying to get somebody here
to talk about the "science" of psychiatry, but so far no takers.
Please use your credentials to read this study and tell me why it's
conclusions are wrong:
Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo: A Meta-Analysis of
Antidepressant Medication
Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein, Prevention & Treatment, Volume 1,
Article 0002a, June 26, 1998
http://journals.apa.org/prevention/volume1/pre0010002a.html
I accept any definition of authority that you offer. I accept any
credentials that you say are important as being so. And I contend they
offer no help at all in deciding the validity of an argument, scientific
or otherwise.
BluePeter
[...]
> In the absence of scientific evidence, and nobody has offered any, there
> is this interesting and inevitable resort to resume wars.
>
> Since this has become like arguing with homeopathists, who offer no
> proofs for their magic, it is getting tedious. I will keep talking the
> science and you keep talking credentials.
>
> When you finally get bored with that, tell me what biological test
> confirms any diagnosis of psychiatric illness?
>
> I'm curious. Do you think psychiatrists did the right thing by
> imprisoning and sterilizing epileptics? I'm trying to get somebody here
> to talk about the "science" of psychiatry, but so far no takers.
You'll get a better discussion in a psychiatry or psychology group. Try the
psychiatry-research group on yahoo -
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/psychiatry-research
BP.
--
Strength - the ability to break a block of chocolate into small pieces and eat
only one.