Rob: Yeah.
RW: ...and then she died at 56. Well I asked this question to some people who know about the -- I'm talking about psychiatrists -- who know a lot about some of the problems that they're seeing with kids on these drugs, and I said to them -- how long is the kid, you know, who is age 5 who's put on an atypical antipsychotic and stays on the drug -- and by the way once they get on the drug they're often put on a 2nd, 3rd -- it's just...they end up on these cocktails -- I said how long can we expect them to live? And one doctor said -- well I really don't know but that is the question we should be asking, and we should be looking at mortality rates as if they have a disease because all these symptoms are signs of an extraordinary deterioration in the capacity of the body to function; and he said I don't know but my guess is 30, 35 we'll see them dying in droves. So if you put that whole story together in which you have pharmaceutical companies identifying children as a market to expand these atypical...for atypical antipsychotics, and then you see a leading doctor at Harvard Medical School reconceiving, sort of, temper tantrums or oppositional defiant disorder or whatever you want to call that...into a brain disease that needs to be medicated for life -- I know many, many parents who've been told after their kid acted up -- Oh, he has bipolar disorder and he will need to be on medications for life, atypical antipsychotics for life because they're fixing a chemical imbalance like insulin for diabetes -- all of that's bullsh...all of that's false; and then their own studies show that once this happens, these kids tend to become rapid cyclers, they tend to become severely ill -- so if you look at what happens in terms of just their "bipolar symptoms," they become severely ill and you'll see people who do the studies saying -- Oh, these people are going to become chronically ill as adults and that's also associated with cognitive decline, physical illness, early death, and sort of a diminishment of the capacity to feel the world. Well, I'll let you do the moral calculations but in my opinion, when you put that whole story together, it's the most extraordinary attack on American children that you can imagine. It is, in essence, taking their lives away -- their God given right to grow up and live and try to make something of themselves, and instead turning them into lifelong consumers of psychiatric medications. And to let you know the extent of this now, something like 1 in every 16 American children now hits age 18 and is said to be seriously mentally ill, and in need of drugs for life. So that's the extent of this sort of pathalogizing of American childhood and getting them to become lifelong consumers of psychiatric medications. So you can do the moral equations, but I don't know of any greater betrayal that could be possible than turning kids, who have a right to live and a right to become something and a right to experience life, and a right, sort of, to grow up free, so to speak, and turning them into consumers -- I think this is one of the worst horrors ever.
Rob: Okay, now, I want to take a step back.
RW: Okay.
Rob: I agree with you. Now, in preparing for this interview I was going to ask you about the morality of this and where the malignancy is...where the evil is in this. My impression is it's the pharmaceutical companies; it's the psychiatrists....the academic psychiatrists who take a lot of money to speak for the pharmaceutical companies; it's the American Psychiatric Association that has intentionally attempted to establish this biological, medical model of drug prescription...am I on the right track here?
RW: Yeah, and here's the only thing I'd say...yeah, you're on the right track. The betrayal, in my opinion, really has to be placed with the academic psychiatrists....and why with them? Because that's the group that in our society in entrusted with our health so to speak. And our understanding of academic psychiatrists is they have devoted....academic physicians at medical schools is they have devoted their life to advancing science...right...and advancing medical treatments, and that's their motivation etcetera, and that they're going to be true to science, and they're going to be true in terms of telling us what's wrong -- you know, what they have come to learn, come to understand, and they will think critically about their medications or their treatments and they will try to improve them -- and we expect that to be done in this arena of honest, open science.
The reason I honestly don't blame the drug companies so much is I don't think...in our society we expect...we don't entrust the drug companies with the expectation that they will be honest with us. I mean, they're not doctors -- they're chemical companies that we know they try to make a profit and I think we almost expect them to try to use PR to exaggerate the safety and efficacy of their products. Now it may have gone overboard and that's why in many places they're now getting, you know, huge settlements for illegal marketing of the atypical antipsychotics, for lying and doing it off label and that sort of thing...
Rob: I'm sorry, but I do expect more from companies that the Supreme Court has now given a corporate personhood to. They do have the obligation to be honest and tell the truth, and even if the Supreme Court, or other courts, may have decided that it's okay for companies to lie, morally they corrupted by giving the money to these academics and I don't see...I mean, so we're going to disagree on that to some extent.
RW: Okay, you know, and I guess...I hear you Rob. I guess what I am trying to say is -- and maybe why I'm going too far the other way is -- it seems like we're too quick to....you know, so when I go around giving talks, people get real angry at the pharmaceutical companies as they're being the root of all evil. And all what I'm trying to, sort of, as I say this is -- again, in terms of if you want to put the biggest betrayal is -- I do put it with the academic psychiatrists, and actually with the APA as an organization because...
Rob: Okay.
RW: ...they nevertheless are the ones that we expect to be honest with us and that we entrust our health with...to. And so, for example, I'll just give you a very concrete example. I mean, the betrayal really runs through this whole story of telling these false stories about chemical imbalances, of hiding the long term data that shows problems -- I mean, you could see study after study that shows, you know, people not doing well and does that get published? Does that get promoted? No, they hide that, they keep it from the public. So you see this sort of betrayal at all lines of the information story -- when the drugs were tested you see that the story is told falsely...I'm talking about even at the short term trials; and then when they do their long term studies and they find, say, that unmedicated patients are doing better, they don't make those study results known. We have this early death in your...
Rob: Alright, now...
RW: Go ahead, go ahead.
Rob: Because we're not going to have that much more time but you have agreed to come back and do another show with me. I'd like to do it soon because I really haven't touched on a lot of the questions that we discussed so I'm hoping that maybe we can continue this conversation soon and keep this going.
RW: Yeah, my pleasure.
Rob: I did ask you, have you had...has there been any blowback for you on this, and I really never got an answer from you. Have the pharmaceutical companies or any of the people...or the organizations or groups that you criticize come back at you in any way?
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