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By Evelyn Pringle (about the author) Page 6 of 8 page(s)

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Young Mark Taylor was shot between 6 and 13 times, by Eric Harris during the Columbine shooting spree, while Harris while on SSRIs.

When testifying Mark told the panel: "The measure of a man is not his strength or how much money he has, or how good he looks or how strong he is, or how powerful he is. The measure of the man is how noble he is."

"I want to ask you guys," he said, "are you really being noble with your choices, or are you just allowing the drug companies to squeeze by you just because they have a big pocketbook?"

"I am amazed that you guys are even standing here supporting these drug companies," he told the panel. "I mean this has never happened in the history of America," Mark said, "this is a shame and it ought to be stopped today, not next week."

Mark is right, most of the children involved in violent events in recent years have been on SSRIs. Eighteen-year-old, Jason Hoffman, was on Celexa and Effexor when he shot three students and one teacher at a California High School.

"I want people to know that what happened was not the real me," Jason wrote in a letter from his jail cell. "I was just angry, maybe my medication. It was a fluke of the moment," he said. "The person was not the true Jason Hoffman."

On Oct 29, 2001, deputies found Jason dead, hanging from a vent screen in his jail cell.

Kip Kinkel, was 15 and on Prozac, when he killed his parents and then drove to school where he shot and killed two of his classmates and injured 22 others.

Sixteen-year-old, Jeff Weise, was on Prozac when he shot his grandfather and his female companion, and then went and shot 5 students, a teacher, and a security guard at a school in Minnesota, before killing himself, according to school employee, Gayle Downwind.

What most people don't realize is that the experiences of these children don't represent unknown behaviors. The drug companies and the FDA have known about many of these side effects since before the drugs came on the market.

The British Medical Journal recently received a series of in-house Eli Lilly documents and studies concerning Prozac from an anonymous source. The BMJ forwarded the documents to other authorities, including Congressman Maurice Hinchey and the FDA.

Congressman Hinchey distributed the materials to others, including Dr Breggin, who reviewed the documents and issued the January 12, 2005, report, An Examination of Eli Lilly and Company's Contentions that the BMJ Prozac Documents were Never Missing and Have No Significance.

The first study Breggin reviewed, "Activation and Sedation in Fluoxetine Clinical Trials," dated November 8, 1988, reported a 38% rate of stimulation in the patients, even though many of the patients were sedated and even though many parameters of stimulation were not counted. This study was requested by the German regulatory agency but Lilly never gave it to the German agency or to the FDA.

The second set of documents Breggin examined related to a July 1985 in-house analysis by Lilly in which the company found a large statistically significant increase in suicide attempts for patients taking Prozac during their placebo controlled clinical trials.

Breggin discovered that there were 12 suicide attempts found in the Prozac group and only one in each of the control group and comparison drug, a tricyclic antidepressant.

According to Breggin, "even after the company winnowed out six of the suicide attempts, the remaining 6:1 ratio was alarming." Furthermore, Lilly hid many of the suicide attempts under false categories and did not turn this study over to the FDA either.

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