So, lets take it as given that the whole serotonin theory is a complete myth. Not really any argument seeing as neither GlaxoSmithKline or the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in the UK) can substantiate what constitutes a proper chemical imbalance of serotonin in the brain.
So where did it come from? It's pretty much a grey area (pardon the pun) but we all know that grey areas are there to be exploited. If we don't know something for certainty we seek professional help - in this case - we have put our trust in a pharmaceutical company and a medicines regulator who both agree that Seroxat benefits far outweigh the risks in adults over 18.... or is it 24?... or maybe 30? The goal posts have been moved that many times even I am unsure now.
So, the serotonin myth? Was it invented purely to market GSK's baby, Seroxat? But more importantly, did GSK know that patients would become addicted to it, thus earning them pocketfuls of cash?
In layman's terms, you take a drug manufactured to help your depression. This drug replaces serotonin in your brain - serotonin that has allegedly gone missing - never been proven in a human, yet you go along with it.
Sometime later, when you feel the 'depression' has lifted, you decide to come off the drug. The patient information leaflet tells you to wean off it gradually or 'taper.'
Some 18 months later you have weaned from 40mg per day to 22mg per day. The side effects DO NOT tally with what is written on the patient information leaflet - thoughts of suicide and aggression increase and you begin to wonder whether or not you should have stopped your treatment. One thing antidepressants mask is the actual illness, so when should you stop your treatment? How are you supposed to know when you are ready? This is what I like to call GSK's 'Blockbuster Effect.'
This pushes Seroxat up the marketing ladder pretty much in the same way tobacco has done over the years - with tobacco you get assistance (ie, nicotine patches, ironically manufactured by GSK). There are also many support groups to help one wean off the weed. What do we get for Seroxat? Nothing! Not even an acknowledgement from its manufacturer that it causes addiction, even the medicines regulator (MHRA) side with GlaxoSmithKline, despite not having access to the clinical trial data (the negative trial results) that GSK held from them.
Anyway, here we have GlaxoSmithKline's paradox. Claim a drug replaces low levels of serotonin, when it has never been scientifically proven that it does, then once 'hooked' on the drug the serotonin myth becomes a reality. The levels one comes accustomed to whilst administering the drug are severely missed when withdrawing from the drug. That is the chemical imbalance. That is the reason why Seroxat is such a big seller. That is the reason why GlaxoSmithKline will never publically admit Seroxat is the cause and not the cure for a chemical imbalance of serotonin in the brain.
A conspiracy? Maybe. But one that I have had personal experience of and one that echelons of other sufferers have had to, and still do, endure.
So where do we go from here? Would it really be beneficial to us all if GlaxoSmithKline finally admitted the truth? Personally, it would be a help. For years I have had the stigma attached to me for 'playing the system' - a term normally used by occupational doctors for large companies. For years I have been trying my hardest to explain that the Bob Fiddaman people were witnessing was not the real Bob Fiddaman. I'm sure there are thousands of others who feel the same. Without acknowledgement our testimonies mean nothing, without acknowledgement GP's will still continue to prescribe Seroxat, therefore making GSK wads of cash.
The BBC TV Panorama programmes highlighted the subject but within a week or so the public outcry dies as a celebrity makes a fool of themselves on Big Brother, et al.
It is only with constant pressure from blogs such as Seroxat Sufferers and Seroxat Secrets that GSK, the MHRA and the unsuspecting public will eventually sit up and take notice. Seroxat Sufferers blog is being monitored by GSK in Pennsylvania as is Seroxat Secrets and a whole host of other blogs and websites set up by patients.
With an up and coming class action lawsuit in the UK against GlaxoSmithKline there will be a lull before the eventual storm, well one would think/hope that would be the case. Alas, I think GlaxoSmithKline will once again settle out of court, keeping the truth from the public. Some spin will be invented by the clever legal team they employ, probably along the lines of: 'We came to a settlement as to not further any more costs to the claimant.'
In an ideal world, there would be custodial sentences for those involved with the cover up, including those at the medicines regulatory agency who have sang from the same hymn sheet as GlaxoSmithKline.
A chemical imbalance? A GlaxoSmithKline/MHRA imbalance would be more apt.
http://fiddaman.blogspot.com/
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) - The FDA's equivalent in the UK - need a thorough impartial investigation. Their own Chief Executive refuses to budge on his stance that Seroxat (Paxil) is safe.
See http://fiddaman.blogspot.com/ for more information
Ah, Pharma has done a good job with brainwashing the general public. Anyone who has a first hand experience is accused of being a Scientologist. Think about this logically...scientologists don't take these drugs. So anyone with a first hand experience with an antidepressant would NOT be a scientologist.
There are thousand of "non scientologists" suffering through withdrawal from antidepressants, and they are talking to each other. These are teachers, doctors, mothers and fathers, students and yes, even drug reps. This grassroots gathering of stunningly similar symptoms would never had happened, or been identified for what it is without the internet.
The "they are all scientologists" argument doesn't work, much to the dismay of GSK and other manufacturers of antidepressants.
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Laurie Yorke (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 11:48:09 AM
My reply is lengthy, but I believe that it has to be. I believe that the theme of this article and far too many like it is very dangerous. A comment which responds to this article has to be thorough, with examples.
I'm going out on a limb because many of the examples I'm going to use will give away personal information about me. However, if I don't volunteer the personal experience, some twit will respond to this with, "How do you know what this or that is like? Have you ever done it?" It's like someone asking if he or she is a Scientologist because of his or her opinion of big pharma. Reponders always have to get personal to prove the author's bias in writing an article.
I’m 57 years old. I started taking antidepressants in 1994 at the age of 44. It was at that time that I found out that my position with a Fortune 500 global corporation was being “delayered” (Orwell was a genius). This is after I spent 25 years working for this corporation.
So, we think, “Of course you’re depressed. You’re losing a job that made you feel whole; a job for which you received bonuses; a job you grew to love during the 25 years that you had it.”
Well, I didn’t have the Operations Supervisor job for 25 years. I was promoted to Operations Supervisor in 1988, after working my way “up the ladder” between 1972 and 1988.
The job did, indeed, make me feel whole. Everyday when I drove through the gate, I grew up. When I drove through the gate to go home, to either wife number 1, wife number 2 or wife number 3, I became who I had been during the previous years of my life, an irrationally frightened, anxious, depressed and sometimes suicidal person. In fact, I had had been this way before I ever worked for this company.
Why was I anxious, depressed or suicidal? I have no idea.
Why did I cry (like Robert Dinero in “Analyze This”) at puppy commercials on TV? I have no idea.
I had the serotonin thing explained to me by a doctor in 1994 when driving through the gate ceased to become a treatment for my irrational behavior. I knew that, in a short while, it ended up being three years, I was going to lose a job for which I worked very hard and a job which I loved and actually paid well to boot.
I consequently, by the way, began to look into corporations at that time and found out about the 14th amendment and all of the things that have convinced many that corporations are innately evil. I’m not being facetious when I say that I think that most of the CEOs and top executives of global corporations don’t give a damn about people, either workers or customers. I think that big pharma is right there at the top.
After my “retirement”, my back started to bother me. By the time I went to a doctor, I found that I had inoperable degenerative disc disease, as diagnosed by three doctors verses one who said that surgery “may do some good”. I wasn’t going to let one doctor cut me open because “it might do some good” when three other surgeons said it wouldn’t.
I’ve tried chiropractic, acupuncture and probably any other “alternative medicine” one can think of. I don’t know if and what those treatments helped. They certainly didn’t help the chronic and intense pain.
Besides, I’ve looked at my all of the imaging that’s been done of my back and, as all of the doctors have pointed out, every level, bar none, is messed up. Bar none!
In fact, here is a statement of diagnosis from one of the doctors:
“When every single disc is damaged, it is not possible to fix the problem surgically. One simply cannot replace the entire spine.”
I’ve been taking MS Contin, morphine, daily since 2003. I reluctantly began taking this medication because I knew that I’d become “dependent”, another way of saying “addicted” to it. I hated to start taking it and I hate taking it today.
I don’t get “high” from it. I’ve probably built up enough of a tolerance for that not to be an issue. I’m relatively functional. In fact, the pain that’s still there, in spite of the morphine, is what makes me less functional than I used to be.
I’ve tried to stop taking the morphine a couple of times because I hate having to take it. There was indeed some discomfort from titrating slowly from the medication. I was able to put up with that. However, as much pain as I experienced while I was taking the meds, it became abundantly clear that the pain increased exponentially with every drop in dosage. I did stop taking it for a while, got over the “withdrawal” symptoms, but the pain became absolutely unbearable.
I’ve now come to the conclusion that, according to another doctor, “…it sounds as though they (MS Contin) are helping him tremendously, and I, personally, think that long-term narcotics are appropriate for select patients who have good results and who do not escalate the dose over time. This patient would fall into that category.”
Should I stop taking MS Contin because it makes money for a greedy corporate CEO? Are the three doctors working with big pharma because they say that a regiment of strong pain meds is what I need ? Who, I wonder, is touching up the MRIs and X-rays?
Or maybe, as Bill Maher, someone I admire tremendously for most of his social views, would say I’ve eaten at McDonald’s too often and that’s what caused my degenerative disc disease.
However, we were talking about mental illness, weren’t we? So, mental illness isn’t a biologically based disease, right?
Wrong. True, the need for chemical balance in the brain hasn’t been proved as definitively as the need for discs in the back to be healthy. There has been more study than this article implies, though. There has been imaging of the brain which shows chemical levels in the brain. These have given The National Institute of Mental Health a baseline for what is and what is not an appropriate quantity of serotonin, dopamine and other chemicals in the brain. Or maybe it, too, is working hand in hand with big pharma to help it sell unnecessary drugs to people.
I know that I was depressed and anxious many times during my life. I also know that some of my bouts of depression, anxiety and whatever else I had were biological reactions triggered by environmental factors. Sort of like a diabetic whose diabetes would be triggered by the diabetic eating three pieces of cake or drinking four bottles of non-diet Pepsi. Another thing that would trigger it would be for the diabetic to stop taking insulin and just get over it. Don’t let those big pharma CEOs get rich on your diabetes. Just get over it!
I know this has been quite a lengthy comment, but this article is dangerous and I do have one more point to make so that readers don’t believe I’m a big pharma lover or a corporation lover. It seems if one is on the left, one is supposed to hate corporations no matter what they do or what they produce.
Well, no one is more on the left than I. For all practical purposes, I believe in Socialism which is democratically elected. I know that CEOs and top executives of corporations are greedy and slimy and take advantage of their power. I worked for one of those companies for 25 years. This comment is not a defense of big pharma or any corporation.
In fact, although I’ve done no real research and I don’t know this for any kind of fact at all, I believe that big pharma has a cure for cancer. I believe it because I believe that the human body is a machine and, if engineers and mechanics take a machine apart enough times, they can discover almost anything about it. This is especially true in light of today's advanced technology.
I truly believe they have a cure for cancer, but they’re keeping it on the shelf. Why? They certainly would make a ton of money by overcharging for this “piece of gold”, would they not? No. They wouldn’t make nearly the money they make treating cancer and keeping cancer patients alive as long as possible.
As Maher says, they have a boner pill and a anti-balding pill, but not a cure for cancer. I think he’s partly right.
I think he’s wrong, however, as I think the implication of this article is wrong, in implying that most, if not all of the sickness reported in The FUSA (Former United States of America) is due to people eating the wrong food, like fast food. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that Maher, a vegetarian, would say people are sick because they eat meat.
I don’t believe I’m brainwashed. Unfortunately, I believe that many people on the left, of which I am a member, have been brainwashed into believing that, without exception, corporations=bad. Don’t buy anything produced by a corporation. They only produce unneeded stuff and they destroy the environment every time they produce what they produce.
We have to reel in the people at the top of corporations and undo what was done by the 14th amendment. We have to stop handing out corporate welfare. And we have to stop leaders of corporations from hurting the environment and selling things that may hurt members of the public without telling members of the public the risks.
If I sound like a Libertarian, I’m not one of those, either. I believe in a government that protects its citizens, even against unscrupulous leaders of corporations.
However, I guess I believe, as Libertarians do, that certain activities are the responsibilities of the people who engage in those activities. I believe that people should be informed about their activities before they engage in them and I believe that promoters of those activities should be required by law to inform people of the risks. I don’t believe many of the promoters would do that voluntarily.
I do believe that articles which paint anything or anyone with the kind of broad brush that this article does is a dangerous article, whether written by someone on the left, in the middle or on the right.
I apologize for the length of this comment, but, as I mentioned above, this article needed a thorough and, consequently, a lengthy reply.
by
Michael Bonanno (85 articles, 19 quicklinks, 24 diaries, 123 comments)
on Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 2:49:24 PM
I do not believe that medication should always be the treatment of choice for depression and other mental health problems. However, you need to get your facts straight. Seroxat is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. It does not replace the serotonin in the brain it prolongs its availability. Medications that affect levels of serotonin or dopamine and norepinephrine have been found to be effective in depression. As far as I know, none of them is addictive--not physically or psychologically.
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Leon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 7 comments)
on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at 11:16:31 PM
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