daden's blog

The high price of medicine

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:03:00 -0500

I'm watching the "Making a Killing" video available on the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) site which I would highly recommend. It is amazing the amount of money involved in pushing drugs and the disasterous results that stem from all the drug use. While there are likely many things contributing to the high price of medicine these days, there are a couple of obvious simple steps that could be taken to immediate reduce overall costs:

Knock off the straight to the public advertising of drugs -- the public should have all the INFORMATION and DATA available about presciption drugs -- but advertising is not information, it is advertising. They are different things.
Knock off the widespread drugging of Americans, particularly children, with psych drugs. Just saving the cost of the drugs would be a good thing but the drop in overall medical cost would far exceed the cost of the drugs -- which is not inconsiderable -- as it would also lessen so much other collateral damage.

As a small business owner, I know how much it would help to have more affordable health insurance -- it is about time that obvious areas of greed and no results be cut out of the medical systems for which we all pay too much.

How to Force an Expensive Drug on the Unsuspecting...

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:05:00 -0500

Fascinating article that gives a quick history of the marketing (not medical) efforts of Big Pharma to push off dangerous, expensive drugs: Drug research: To test or to tout? It's a good article, though a point missing from this is that none of these drugs actually cure anything that has an proven reality. So, while the marketing ploys are criminal and should be prosecuted, the bigger picture is that the whole question is a sham: none of these drugs (neither the old nor the new) cure anything that has any identifiable physical basis.

More government sleaze

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:26:00 -0500

I wrote the following letter to my senators and reps about the attempt to ram mental health parity through with the economy bailout bill. What the two have to do with one another, I don't know. It just seems that some Congressmen will use any excuse to push their insane agendas -- I guess what they can't win in the court of public opinion, they'll try to get through under the cover of a national crisis. Here's my letter: News reports indicate that Mental Health Parity has been stuffed into the economic bail-out bill. WHEN WILL CONGRESS GET AN OUNCE OF INTEGRITY AND STOP SLEAZING CONTROVERSIAL THINGS THROUGH BY BURYING THEM IN OTHER ISSUES? Right now Congress is under scrutiny to do the right thing. In this moment of intense scrutiny and national crisis, it should make a least an attempt to climb out of the gutter. Mental health parity is a bad idea, is controversial, has broad and credible opposition and will cost businesses and the taxpayer alike. It should die a deserved death. But apparently, Congress doesn't take the national economic crisis seriously enough to deal with it head-on; instead it is used as an opportunity to get through pork-barrel for an industry (Big Pharma and psychiatry) which itself is under attack. Please quit playing around -- get mental health parity and any other pork and sleaze out of the economic bail-out and deal with the issue to hand. And, by the way, I don't think the economic bail-out has had enough study. It should NOT be passed now until we have had a chance to examine the current problem and the proposed solution thoroughly.

Alabama takes it to Big Pharma

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:15:00 -0500

Not sure how long this link will remain active, but here's a great story on the state of Alabama going after the drug companies for the money they swindled out of the state: Jere Beasley aims at billion-plus in settlements with drug makers He's won some great cases and now the state is offering the drug pushers a one-time only opportunity to settle. Here's the first couple of paragraphs: "Having won multi-million-dollar awards against three large drug manufacturers, the state of Alabama is now offering 67 other pharmaceutical companies the opportunity to settle out of court and save the companies millions of dollars. At the same time, the state could add more than $1 billion to its bottom line and markedly improve funding for Medicaid which serves the poor, the elderly, children and the disabled in Alabama. "Lead attorney Jere Beasley of Montgomery says that Attorney General Troy King has sent letters to the remaining drug companies, giving them 30 days to settle all claims or face trial in Montgomery County Circuit Court. "After 30 days, we ain't going to negotiate with any of them," Beasley said." This guy should be applauded and the rest of the states should get in line and do the same -- only then might the drug pushers begin to realize that they can't push drugs the way they have been.

Polar opposites

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:15:00 -0500

Came across an interesting comment in L. Ron Hubbard's book Science of Survival. It is to the effect that the rougher the condition a person is in, the gentler must be one's approach when trying to help them. So, if you wanted to try to help someone who is obviously psychotic, your approach or the technique that you might use must be that much more gentle and "light" than your approach could be to someone in good shape. The basic idea is that someone in good shape is better able to handle more things and so is more capable of confronting serious problems or difficulties they may have. This seems so obvious that it almost seems trivial to say. It even applies in life -- and we apply it intuitively. You meet a guy you'd known in high school and he's doing well at his job, family is fine and you can tell he likes to joke around. You might exchange friendly insults with him, perhaps even crack on his momma, the loss of his hair of the new belly he's sporting. A week later you run into him again and he looks horrible. You find out his wife and children were killed by a drunk driver. Unless you are a complete idiot, you don't start teasing him about his loss of hair. You tread lightly. You let him do the talking, if he wants to. You even tend to talk more quietly and want to try to keep things calm around him. You might even ask if he needs anything like food or help around the house since you know there's a good chance he's ignoring the basics of life at the moment. All natural reactions and appropriate. He's what the shrink does: If someone is doing okay in life, they might just have a conversation with the person, though they are just as likely to try to find something wrong. But, if the person is having a rough time, the shrink's inclination is to molest the person with mind altering drugs. Not, mind you, the inclination that every other sane person might have which would be to keep things calm and gentle - psych drugs are an assault with horrible, disturbing side effects. If that doesn't work and the person is doing even worse, the shrink ups the violence and sends 120 volts of electricity through their head to CAUSE a grand mal seizure (something everyone else in the medical profession tries to avoid). If that doesn't work and the person is even worse off, the shrink might stick the guy in restraints. And, for the really bad off, the shrink decides it's time to really get serious and permanently maim the person (as if the electric shock didn?t already accomplish that) by cutting out portions of the brain. It is so absurd, it doesn't compute. It doesn't line up with obvious, common experience. I think the major mistake the rest of us make is deciding "there must be something I don't know because they are obviously an expert at this" instead of facing up to the obvious which is "these shrinks are so insane that they do the opposite of what any rational human being would do and they do it to the most vulnerable amongst us -- they must be criminally insane themselves." And, guess what? If we took that second attitude some kindness, gentleness and, yes, even sanity, might enter into the field of mental health and we might start to see success rates as were being achieved in the 1800's when that type of approach WAS used with the mentally ill. Wouldn't that be a nice change of pace? What a novel thought - treating those who are having a rough time of it with some kindness!

Psychiatry and Pharma Unholy Alliance Info

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:36:00 -0500

An interesting site with info on psychiatry's unholy alliance with Big Pharma is now avaialble at PsychConflicts.org. The videos are revealing and the conflict disclosure information for psychs speaking at the American Psychiatric Assocation (APA) annual meetings is staggering. American Pharma Association would be their more correct name. It is great to see these guys finally beginning to be held responsible though the exposures, investigations, lawsuits, etc. need to go even faster.

Kiddie Drugging Doctor Bribed by Big Pharma

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:53:00 -0500

Whenever you read about the 8 million US kids on mind-screwing shrink drugs, you hear about the "controversial" Dr. Joseph Biederman of Harvard and Mass General Hospital. He's the SOB who pushed drugging of little kids, who extended the definition of made-up diseases to little, defenseless babies. Now it comes out that he and his colleagues received more than a million dollars each from drug companies who benefited from his "research." Let's be blunt. This guy should be prosecuted criminally, the FDA should put an immediate halt to the drugging of kids based on his "research" and, to the parents whose babies have been screwed up by this guy I say "let the suing begin!" He should be sued into bankrupcy and beyond just to add variety to his criminal conviction. The unmitigated criminality of taking that much money from companies who then profit by drugging babies is unbelievable. Next should come the stoogies who have been standing up for him, praising him and using his "research" to justify mutilation of kids. When are we going to get the message that the "drug every problem" mentality is a created marketing idea that only serves big financial interests?

Reality of psychiatric think

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:00:00 -0500

In thinking about the experience of the family member pushed to drug a kid with brain altering chemicals after the kid had been molested, I re-realized the absurdity of psych think and how important it is to understand what they are really saying. The bottom line of Big Pharma-driven psych theory is that chemical imbalances are the cause of mental "illnesses." Not experience, not our decisions, not what we do, not our viewpoints of things, just chemical imbalances. That is SO contrary to what the average person believes and the way the average person views the world that keeping it in place takes billions and billions of dollars of promotion and PR. Here's what it means -- that none of the following are causes of anything: 1) If your wife runs off with your best friend and your feel devastated. 2) Your business fails and your feel disgraced and lost. 3) Your child dies in a horrible car accident. 4) You see your country alienating the entire world through an inability to think creatively and constructively. If these or other things occur and you feel depressed, they are not the cause of feeling depressed, some chemical imbalance in your brain (which can't be verified objectively) is the cause. That this is their view is obvious because the prescription to deal with any of the above is not to help you deal with the experience or the reality but is to drug you to to treat a mythical chemical imbalance. No one in their right mind -- and without a huge vested interest -- would deny implicitly or overtly that those kinds of experiences might affect a person. Of course any of those problem and a thousand more that could be named have an effect on people. It is obvious that the experience and reality of being human and being alive includes things that affect us mentally and emotionally. Everyone knows and understands that. The shrink is so incapable of helping a person with any of those things that he has moved to the point of denying they have any importance, opting to say instead that chemistry is all important. No wonder it takes billions of PR dollars to try to make us think their way, to try to convince us that chemical imbalances are "real diseases" that should be legislated into existence (an actual effort on Big Pharma's part). Strip away the "I'm smarter than you claptrap", the holy authority in which they wrap themselves, the complicated latin mumbo jumbo and you see that their view on life is so warped and foreign to common experience that it is unbelievable.

Psychiatric insanity

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:00:00 -0500

I heard a story about a family member that is well worth repeating as it demonstrates a hole in psych thinking that one could drive a cruise ship through. A young boy was molested by the father of one of his friends. The victim became very skittish, unable to deal with life, constantly on edge, withdrawn, etc. He was about to be put on pills prescribed by a psych when a family member managed to intervene and direct the kid's mother down a safer path. Let's think this through a bit. According to shrinks, mental illness is caused by a chemical imbalance that is remedied by giving their victims powerful mind-alterning, brain chemistry impacting drugs. At least that is the justification for paying them billions of dollars to drug 8 million US kids and countless millions of other people around the world. So, if the kid needed drugs to handle the condition, the shrink was obviously saying that a chemical imbalance was present. If not, there would be no justification for attacking the kids brain. But, doesn't that mean that the emotional experience of being molested caused the chemical imbalance? The kid was fine before being molested. He was not fine afterwards -- the molestation is the obvious point that lead to the change. So, how do they reconcile giving a kid drugs that don't help deal with the experience but only adjust a supposed chemical imbalance? The molestation is the obvious starting point for the problems. I guess we can only conclude that experience causes chemical imbalances. But, if experience causes chemical imbalance, then the chemical imbalance is obviously NOT the cause of the mental problems, the experience is. In that case, where do they get off saying that chemical imbalances are the cause of mental illness and why don't they pay more attention to the experiences that might underlie problems? Perhaps they might say that the chemical imbalance was latent, just waiting for something to mysteriously cause it to kick in. Even then, wouldn't the logical point of address still be the experience? I mean if experience can cause a chemical imbalance to kick in, why couldn't a different kind of experience cause the chemical imbalance to "kick out"? In either case, the real point of attack, the real point of interest is the experience, not the chemistry. Unless of course, the chemical imbalance has nothing to do with it and the only real intent is to just drug the kid into a stupor that denies the whole experience. In that case, why not give him a daily healthy dose of bourbon? It's cheaper and less immediately brain-damaging. Even with that suggestion I'm probably being generous and assuming that care for the kid enters into it at all. Perhaps the intent is closer to: "let's put the kid on a drug that will make him a patient and cash cow for life. The drug has to stifle him enough or deaden his feelings enough so he's less trouble because then no one will notice there's a problem and they'll keep paying for the drugs and for my high boat payments."

7 killed in Japan

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 10:09:00 -0500

There's a story today about a man driving a car into a crowd, getting out and stabbing people. In typical media fashion, intending to create the most fear possible, the article goes on to list all the stabbings that have occurred over the last few years in Japan. This is typical media -- make things as scary as possible, make the threat to life and limb appear to be as widespread as possible and don't ever get close to trying to trace the problem or solve anything. With even some slight intent to make things better, media could use the large set of data available to them to help identify patterns, to identify some underlying causes and perhaps improve something. Obviously, that is a suggestion of a possible purpose for the media that is WAY off the line of current media actions; instead, they revel in making causes as obscure as possible so as to promote more fear and death. Having said that, he's a prediction -- the man was on psych drugs. And so were a good number of the other stabbers listed by the article. Here's a pattern they could observe if they had a couple of brain cells to rub together: a remarkably high percentage of the horribly violent criminals that do these kinds of things are on psych drugs that -- wait for it -- are consistently linked to this kind of violence. Doesn't mean there aren't crazy people in the world who are in a pitiful state, just that they don't very often seem to take up arms to kill multiple innocents without being on psych drugs that drive them to it. As the data rolls out about this story, we'll see if the psych drug record of the perpetrator is released.

Look to your left, your right -- one of you is brain damaged

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:50:00 -0500

The brain is big, big, BIG business. According to a few hair-brained Congressmen, every third American you run into has some kind of brain damage or injury. Look to your left, your right -- one of you is brain damaged. The exact quote from their press release is "With nearly one in three Americans suffering from some kind of neurological illness, disorder, or injury..." (the quote goes on to plead the case for fantastic sums of money to be spent to help us poor brain damaged vegetables). Senator Domenici is the source of this wisdom. Okay, maybe it doesn't quite say anything overtly about us being vegetables, but let me ask this "how stupid do they think we are?" How is it possible that one in three Americans suffer from some kind of neurological illness, disorder or injury? And are American's unique or is the rest of the world affected? If this is only Americans then I'd like to suggest that at least 90% of the third got that way by listening to stupid politicians who blubber horse patties like these guys. And, if a third of the earth's population is brain damaged, let me suggest that someone is probably calling a naturally occurring condition a "disease." Oh, but there's the problem -- naturally occurring conditions don't result in any profits for drug companies and aren't at all useful for labeling people: without labels, how would the labelers ever feel superior and how would the labelees ever be excused their bad behavior? Come, on -- let's stop assuming the emperor is wearing clothes when he is obviously naked as a jaybird. One third of Americans are NOT brain damaged and do NOT require immediate intervention from the medical monopoly complex. Perhaps the medical monopoly complex wants to extract money from at least one third of us by stuffing more drugs into us but let's not pretend claims like "one third of the country is brain damaged" have any bearing on any reality besides hoped-for corporate profits. Oh, in case you're wondering who else was quoted in the press release about how brain damaged we are and the need for more money -- you probably guessed it: an organization that coincidentally represents the industry that happens to make money by treating people with such problems. Of course, they have only our best interests in mind!

Psychology -- A Random Bag of Stupid Human Tricks

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:07:00 -0500

I've heard a couple of stories on the radio recently that helped clarify for me what psychology aims to be -- a random bag of stupid human tricks designed to make someone do something. It is not a quest into who we are or how the mind works or -- god forbid! -- how to improve the mind or fix it when it has problems. At its best it would appear to be a marketing tool. "If you do this, this and this, you'll sell more stuff." "If you put things on the shelf in this order, play this kind of music, put this type of smell into the air and do the following with the lights, your sales will go up a few percentage points." In other words, it studies stimulus response -- what buttons can we push to get a reaction. Notice that none of that has anything to do with helping someone. It might be justified as "if we provide what people want in a way that encourages them to buy it, we're helping them because we're helping them get what they want." Yeah, right. Remember this is a group that studies the behavior of highly breed white rats and thinks that that somehow informs anything having to do with people. What are they saying? That men and woman are essentially the same as a rat? Perhaps just a slightly more complicated rat that dresses itself and can talk but otherwise is merely a rat? If that's what they think (and it would appear to be otherwise why bother studying rats?) it also leads to the conclusion that their power of observation is pretty poor. Just because people can be starved, suppressed or badgered into stimulus-response doesn't mean that is their basic nature. It really doesn't take very much observation to notice that although people are capable of acting like rats that they are not limited to only acting like rats. I'm sorry but a Beethoven symphony is not just a more complicated nest. For the average person, not converted into psych think, that's pretty easy to see. I suspect that some people assume that psychology is an attempt to understand Man (and Woman), to find out something basic about who we are, where we're going and what makes us tick. I think that thinking about it that way would be a fundamental mistake. It is, in its most benign incarnation, just a large, somewhat contradictory collection of stupid human tricks intended to allow someone else to push your buttons in a way that encourages or (in the ideal psychology world) forces you to do something which may or may not be in your best interest. (Of course, its less benign forms include rationalizing and "improving" practices such as water boarding -- there's the ideal psychology experiment -- the unrestrained freedom to use force in connection with a really stupid human trick.) Perhaps we should treat it the same way we do the unwelcomed telemarketing call at dinner time: hang up on it.

Killing the elderly

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:46:00 -0500

A report indicates that upwards of 23,000 elderly in England may be dying prematurely due to off-label use of shrink drugs. The report, Drugs 'kill 23,000 Alzheimer's victims a year', is an interesting commentary on how the shrink drug pushers prey on the most vulnerable or those with the least voice. Children, elderly, Alzheimer's patients, criminals (they like to drug prisoners) and minorities (they have a long history of targeting minorities disproportionally) -- all are targeted for drugging. It is a hopeful sign that media, attorneys general, legislators and public advocacy groups are waking up to the shrink drug assault -- it just needs to move faster!

Text Messaging Disorder

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:00:00 -0500

A new mental illness is on the way -- a journal article talks about text messaging as a mental illness, also involved is Internet addiction. It's in the American Journal of Psychiatry. First of all, let's be clear about what this means. If the shrink brain trust votes this disease into existence (voting is the way shrinks confirm a disease -- it's so much easier than doing pesky scientific studies) potential patients will be told that overuse of the Internet shows they have a chemical imbalance which needs to be treated with a shrink drug. No studies were referenced on the brain tests to show such an imbalance, yet the direction of treatment will be towards drugs. But the real kicker is that the doctor who is pushing this, the article discloses, has a patent on a device to limit access to the Internet. Mmmm. There's obviously no vested interest there, is there? Okay, so he gets rich on his patent and helps out some drug companies for all the other folks who don't buy his device -- everyone wins! (Except, of course, for the drugged out customers.) Hey, if the shrink wants to promote and market his device and even scam people into believing that they have a mental illness, let him try. The real message here is to expose the bottom dwelling ways of the American Journal of Psychiatry -- anything with a potential buck associated with it is obviously their best friend.

The way shrinks seem to think about things....

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:12:00 -0500

I recently read a fascinating commentary by L. Ron Hubbard from the late 1950's that goes a long way towards explaining the barbarities shrinks carry out with their trademark lack of concern. First some context -- just think about the "treatments" their history is filled with:

Bleeding people nearly to and to death
Pulling out healthy teeth en masse
Putting people into insulin shock
Poisoning people with drugs that cause seizures
Frying brains with more than 100 volts of electricity
Poisoning people with animal de-wormers
Mutilating healthy brain tissue with ice picks
Drugging children with mind altering drugs shown to increase and suicide

Forget for the moment that we're talking about shrinks here -- that list in any other context would read as torture, extreme criminality and/or psychopathic behavior. While a certain number of shrinks are probably themselves nothing more than psychopaths who relish destroying people, there's probably others who go through the sad cycle identified by Mr. Hubbard: it begins with the conviction (for this is a matter of belief, not science) that absolutely nothing can be done about mental illness (a belief their history is filled with). Beginning with the "knowledge" that "nothing can be done about it" leads them to believe that since nothing can be done about it, it doesn't matter what you do. Obviously, if you can't do anything about a problem, it doesn't matter what you try. If they left it there, it would be fine for the rest of us, even if it is depressingly fatalistic, because they would just be a sad bunch of ineffective do-nothings. But unfortunately they take the next step and come to the conclusion that because it doesn't matter what you do, you can do anything. Again, their history is strewn with that line of "thinking." They claim that mental illness is bad and so beyond anyone's ability to do anything that it justifies doing anything. Torture, maiming, mutilation then are explained and justified. "Any extreme measure is justified because it doesn't matter what we do because, unfortunately, nothing can be done about it anyway." Sick as that might be on its own, the magnitude of the crime increases when you find out that history shows that the staring point is completely false -- you can do something about it. There was an approach to mental illness in the 1800s that had true success rates anywhere from 60% to 80% and it had nothing to do with bleeding to death, poisoning, electroshocking, cutting healthly brain tissue or drugging into a stupor. Hey, even today, in underdeveloped countries that do not have the "resources" to pay for shrinks, the success rate for curing mental illness is better than in the United States. The moral is, if you're going to get a mental illness, have it happen in a 3rd world country because you have a better long term prognosis. Contrast the successful treatment program of the 1800's with the shrinks' own admission that they can neither objectively confirm any mental illness nor cure any. See the CCHR film on this. It must be a sad state of affairs for the individual shrink, caught in the degrading state of believing that any crime against humanity is justified. But, sadder still, is the lot of those the shrinks torture in the name of "help."