SSRI's: Unsafe At Any Dose national awareness campaign kicked off by SSRI Citizen
Nutty Professor
SSRI Citizen announces antidepressant “Unsafe At Any Dose” national
awareness campaign.
(PRWEB) August 11, 2004 -- In a bold move reminiscent of Ralph Nader’s 1960’
s “Unsafe At Any Speed” campaign a consumer activist group which calls
itself “SSRI Citizen” has launched a national awareness campaign designed to
educate the general public about the serious health risks associated with
the use of popular antidepressants such as Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor and
Prozac.
The group’s web site (see http://www.ssriCitizen.org) sells bumper stickers
emblazoned with drug names followed by the warning ‘Unsafe At Any Dose’.
“Our hope is the proliferation of the stickers will help raise public
awareness of the dangers these drugs present and encourage people to visit
our web site where they will discover drug safety information and other
resources which heretofore have not been readily available to the consumer,”
said Rob Robinson, the organization’s founder and spokesperson.
“Given the lengths we know pharmaceutical companies will go to guard the
commercial profile of multi-billion dollar profit generators like Paxil,
Zoloft, Effexor or Prozac it is surprising we haven’t been contacted by one
of these companies."
The group is also challenging SSRI drug company promotions which position
celebrities such as actress Delta Burke (Effexor) and former NFL star Terry
Bradshaw (Paxil) as drug spokespersons. “These individuals, who are paid
handsomely for the use of their name and influence, are not spelling out for
the public the extraordinarily serious risks associated with their drug of
choice,” Robinson said. “Its ‘Trojan horse’ marketing … get the pills into
medicine cabinets of America using glitzy ads and slick Hollywood stars. But
don’t tell the public what really might be lying-in-wait for them inside
those innocent-looking pills.”
“The bottom line is these drug companies are driven by shareholders to
increase sales of these drugs and thus increase profits,” Robinson said. “In
the case of GlaxoSmithKline its ‘If we can make three billion dollars a year
off Paxil … why not four, five or more?’ Its that kind of rationale that led
to GSK’s pivotal role in the creation of another ‘Trojan horse’ marketing
stratagem called ‘TMAP’ or the Texas Medication Algorithm Project. Through
TMAP, GSK and other drug companies methodically compromised the decision
making of elected and appointed public officials to gain access to captive
populations of mentally ill individuals in prisons and state mental health
hospitals.” For more information see
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/07/07.html
In another marketing ploy GlaxoSmithKline is using Terry Bradshaw to lead
the Paxil marketing charge in a program called ‘The All-Stars at Work’ which
targets ‘mental health in the workplace.’ “The ‘program’ is supported by an
unrestricted ‘educational grant’ from GlaxoSmithKline,” Mr. Robinson said.
“We considered sending Mr. Bradshaw a complimentary case of bumper stickers
that say “Terry Bradshaw Says Eat More Paxil” to hand out to workers. Maybe
it would make him think twice about his continued promotion of the drug. At
least, we’d like to think so.”
Mr. Bradshaw is also traveling throughout the country under the aegis of GSK
to promote the use of Paxil through a series of speeches, albeit without his
former Paxil sidekick Ricky Williams. (Mr. Williams, another football star,
parted company from GSK last year and was recently quoted in the press as
saying ‘Marijuana is 10 times better for me than Paxil.’) The web site GSK
formerly maintained for the duo at www.rickyandterry.com has vanished and
been replaced by another dubbed www.terryinyourtown.com All mention of Mr.
Williams has been expunged from GSK’s web site at www.gsk.com
“Although Mr. Bradshaw claims his GSK-backed ‘depression tour’ is ‘the
coolest thing he’s ever done in his life’ his tour schedule is not posted at
his web site. If you contact GSK or the public relations firm responsible
for coordinating Mr. Bradshaw’s appearances all you get is an answering
machine asking you to leave your contact information. But no one ever calls
back,” Robinson said. “If Mr. Bradshaw’s promotion of Paxil is, as he puts
it — ‘so cool’ — wouldn’t GSK want everyone in the world to know where Mr.
Bradshaw is going to be, and when, so the public can have an opportunity to
hear him talk about Paxil?”
SSRI Citizen is demonstrating against Mr. Bradshaw who is slated to speak in
Chattanooga, Tennessee at the Trade Center on November 18th, 2004 from 6:00
p.m. E.S.T - 8:30 p.m. E.S.T. His topic will be "Why Not Be Your Best: The
Winning Strategy of Conquering Depression." For more information contact
Marianne Edwards at (423) 763-4626. Individual tickets are $65. A table for
eight is $500. Paxil victims as well as families who lost a loved one to a
Paxil-induced suicide are encouraged to attend and participate in the
protest. Concerns over the planned protest have already caused the sponsor
to cancel a book signing session that was to follow Mr. Bradshaw’s speech.
The group’s public awareness campaign follows the announcement of a suit
filed in June, 2004 by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer which alleges
Paxil’s manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, engaged in repeated and persistent
fraud by concealing and failing to disclose to physicians critical
information about Paxil’s safety and efficacy relative to its use in the
pediatric population. “Doctors should have access to all scientifically
sound information so that they can prescribe appropriate medication for
their patients,” Spitzer said. "By concealing critically important
scientific studies on Paxil, GSK impaired doctors' ability to make the
appropriate prescribing decision for their patients and may have jeopardized
their health and safety."
Other states may soon follow Spitzer’s lead.
But Spitzer is late bringing Glaxo (et al) to the bar of justice.
Previously, over 5,000 individuals in the United States and more than 2,500
in Britain have sued GlaxoSmithKline after they became addicted to Paxil —
and then suffered what in many cases were severe and sometimes
life-threatening drug withdrawals. “But for every individual represented by
counsel there are probably a minimum of a hundred or more people who are
not … but who should be. Many victims addicted to Paxil never grasp what has
happened to them until they tried to stop taking the drug — and then could
not do so without suffering severe withdrawal symptoms. And if they
contacted GlaxoSmithKline for help they were advised the drug was not the
problem,” Mr. Robinson said. “Yet in Britain GSK has dropped the claim on
its patient leaflet saying Paxil is not addictive. Logically, one can only
conclude the company knows and concedes that Paxil can be addictive. Why
else would they drop the claim?”
In July, 2004 in another civil action involving SSRIs a suit was filed in
California by attorneys Karen Barth-Menzies and Ronald Goldman on behalf of
Roberta Madison, a nurse and doctor of Public Health, acting as a Private
Attorney General. That suit alleges Zoloft’s maker, Pfizer, misled
physicians and the public regarding Zoloft’s safety and efficacy,
particularly with regard to suicidality and withdrawal symptoms caused by
the drug. Ms. Barth–Menzies said “We have been trying for years to raise
public awareness about these issues. We believe that the truth has been
suppressed for too long and as a result there has been an enormous waste of
money, thousands of people have been harmed by these drugs and many lives
have been shattered. We hope this lawsuit will be a significant step toward
exposing the fraud.”
For more information visit http://www.ssriCitizen.org
# # #
--
"The only valid cure for any kind of depression is the acceptance of real
suffering. To climb out of it any other way is simply laying the foundation
for the next depression."
-Helen Luke
Contrarian
> awareness campaign.
from "Nader's glitter" by Thomas Sowell
: ... Nader does indeed have a glittering record. But all that glitters is
:not gold.
:I [TS] must confess to being taken in by Ralph Nader when he first hit the
:headlines, back in 1965, with his book "Unsafe at Any Speed," which is what
:put him on the map. The thesis of this book was that American automobiles in
:general were unsafe and a new car called the Corvair was especially unsafe.
:Since I was driving a Corvair at the time, this book really got my attention
:-- and, for a while, my belief. Over the years, however, facts began to
:emerge and tell a very different story.
:Anyone studying the art of persuasion might well begin with "Unsafe at Any
:Speed" as a classic of that art. It managed to insinuate into the public
:mind many spectacular -- even glittering -- conclusions, with hard evidence
:being neither asked for nor given.
:Nader's first sentence in the preface says it all: "For over half a century
:the automobile has brought death, injury, and the most inestimable sorrow
:and deprivation to millions of people."
:He denounced the Corvair in particular and blamed "engineering and
:management operations within General Motors which led to such an unsafe
:vehicle."
:Let's do something that slick lawyers hope we never do -- stop and think.
:Death and injuries are caused by many things: electricity, boats, knives,
:matches, vaccinations, etc., etc.
:Why do we have such things then? Because they also provide benefits, and
:adults in real life weigh benefits against costs, since nothing is 100
:percent safe. The automobile is no exception.
:As for the Corvair, being a rear-engine car, it was more prone to certain
:kinds of accidents. Nader stressed those accidents, with gory details. On
:the other hand, front-engine cars are more prone to other kinds of
:accidents. Nader ignored such trade-offs.
:Some critics said that the Corvair was hard to handle. Nader quoted them.
:Others said the Corvair had great handling. Nader ignored them. It was the
:simplicity of great art.
:Years later, extensive government tests showed that the Corvair's safety was
:comparable to that of similar cars of its era. But, by then, the Corvair was
:extinct -- killed off by the crusade that earned Nader a place as a kind of
:secular saint in the media....
:For decades before Ralph Nader came on the scene, automobile fatality rates
:were declining, despite more cars on the streets and highways, traveling at
:faster speeds. The automobile fatality rate per miles driven was less than
:one-third as high when "Unsafe at Any Speed" was published as it was back in
:the 1920s.
:But facts never carry as much weight as a dramatic vision of "corporate
:greed" sacrificing helpless consumers until they are rescued by "consumer
:advocates" and federal regulations. For the left, Nader was playing their
:song and they danced to it.
:Although the term "consumer advocate" has acquired a certain halo in the
:media, there are no qualifications whatever required to be called a consumer
:advocate. Moreover, Nader was never a consumer advocate in any real sense.
:He was a Nader advocate then and he is a Nader advocate now, when he runs
:for office oblivious to his friends and supporters.
:In one of his earliest writings, Nader said, "the consumer must be protected
:at times from his own indiscretion and vanity." In other words, he wanted
:the Ralph Naders of the world to be able to dictate to consumers and
:producers alike. It's all about him. So is running for president.
:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20040303.shtml
If anyone reading this can't draw the parallels, too bad.
BTW, Nader has been hanging out with Patrick Buchanan. I don't
care for either of them.