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Secret Moderna Trial Documents - Dr. David Healy
This post by Peter Selley details yet another Selley triumph. It's extraordinary what focus and persistence can achieve. I am dedicating this post to Nikki Rutman, twenty years an analyst with the FBI, who currently heads up Moderna’s Global Intelligence Division. Moderna’s shares have plummeted since its 2021 Covid heyday. This appears unrelated to my
Safety or System? - Dr. David Healy
Samizdat has just been graced with Gene Larkin's Seeking Soteria accompanied by Bill James fabulous artwork (graced is the best word). For reasons that will become clear, the title of this post picks up on the last post Unsafe Safety. Gene can be heard talking about Soteria with colleagues on a Mad in America Soteria
Unsafe Safety - Dr. David Healy
On March 20th, Senators Tina Smith and Ben Lujan, and Representatives Andrea Salinas and Becca Balint, sent a letter to the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy, expressing concern about his promotion of disproven and outright false theories about mental health medications. In separate comments, Senator Smith indicated
Six Weeks to Recover a Grin - Dr. David Healy
I am among those who can be blamed for the disastrous MHRA supported drug label and messaging for antidepressants, along with Guideline recommendations that tell doctors and patients that it can take 6 weeks for antidepressant induced recovery to take place. This idea has been interpreted by MHRA and lots of psychiatrists and family doctors,
An Appleby a Day Keeps the Doctor Away - Dr. David Healy
Tangled up in Bureaucracy flagged a Signal for the Goose Signal for the Gander as a sequel. That was before the Gary Bullivant comments on Tangled up in Bureaucracy. If you don't normally read comments on post, the Bullivant-Kingston comments are in this link; they are worth reading. GB's comments fit nicely in with a
Tangled up in Bureaucracy - Dr. David Healy
In response to Thomas Kingston’s death, Katy Skerrett, the coroner at his inquest, wrote to the MHRA (Britain’s medicines regulator) and to NICE (Britain’s guideline body) suggesting that their communications around antidepressant hazards appeared to downplay the risks of suicidal reactions to SSRI antidepressants, perhaps contributing to his death. See Aunts, Ants and Regulators, and
The Respiratory Syncytial Virus Challenge - Dr. David Healy
This post by Peter Selley centres on a Moderna RSV vaccine trial, the Rhyme trial, in young babies that was stopped last year when 7 out of 40 babies between 5 and 8 months of age developed severe lung disease, compared to 1 in 20 controls. Moderna had good reason to think its vaccine could
Antidepressants Alcohol and Anne-Marie - Dr. David Healy
Among the greatest triumphs linked to RxISK was Anne-Marie Kelly's discovery that SSRI antidepressants can cause alcohol misuse. A Hero Anne-Marie's story was first told in Out of My Mind Driven to Drink, which featured here in March 2012. This led to a post on RxISK Driven to Drink. Between them the posts have over
Kingston’s Rule - Dr. David Healy
This post is written by Dr Pedro who is watching events unfold from 10,000 miles away - with some extras added at the end. The UK Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has been asked by Katy Skerrett, Senior Coroner for Gloucestershire, to respond to her Regulation 28 report to Prevent Future Deaths, after the
A Turning Point in History - Dr. David Healy
That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. Shakespeare Sonnet 73 These lines came to mind recently when walking by a school playground crowded with young children on
The Darkness and the Light - Dr. David Healy
A Darkness the Light cannot Master A priming note for Secular and all non-Xtian readers - what Xtians call the New Testament has 4 Gospels. Three open with variations on what most folk from Hollywood to the Vatican would view as the conventional Xmas Nativity story – cold time of year, manger, donkeys, star. The
Probity Blockers and Trans Medicine - Dr. David Healy
Never before in human history have so many had to entrust their lives and wellbeing to so few and been so betrayed. Inspired by Winston Churchill The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it Inspired by Winston Smith Probity Blockers, a term originally coined by Dee
Aunts, Ants and Regulators - Dr. David Healy
Thanks for this post goes to Annie Bevan who for over a decade has made some amazing contributions to DH and RxISK. None more so than finding a document sitting in front of all of us for two decades that should make regulators blush, squirm and wish the ground would open and swallow them. Thomas
Medical Assistance in Dying - Dr. David Healy
After 6 deaths, 6 years ago, on November 17, two days ago, the New Zealand Herald featured an article reporting on an inquest into these deaths. The original with photos of the 6 children is linked. The text is below the link. The action in this post happens right at the bottom of the NZH
Clearing the Deck Post-Prozac - Dr. David Healy
Prozac (fluoxetine) went off patent in August 2021. In July 2000, FDA approved Sarafem (fluoxetine) for use in Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). In June 2010, Lilly stopped marketing Sarafem. In August 2023, Lilly informed FDA they wished to Withdraw Sarafem and its PMDD indication. It is not exactly clear what withdrawing its PMDD indication means. Presumably
The Prozac Era. What Next? - Dr. David Healy
In 1963, Hoffman la Roche launched Valium, the brand name for diazepam, a benzodiazepine. It followed hot on the heels of Librium - chlordiazepoxide - another benzodiazepine. This was like one company producing 2 SSRIs and able to get them to numbers 1 and 2 in the charts. Arthur Sackler of Purdue and Oxycontin fame
American Veterans Can Save Healthcare - Dr. David Healy
FRIENDLY FIRE Michigan Veterans Harm Reduction Summit David Healy Thanks to Derek Blumke for asking me here today. It's a great pity not to be there in person. There is a fabulous group of speakers. Most of us sense that US Vets, more than any other group in society, may be able to move things
Truth is Stranger than Fiction - Dr. David Healy
GK Chesterton and then later Mark Twain said that Truth is Stranger than Fiction - it has to be because Fiction has to make Sense. But Fairy Tales are also Stranger than Fiction. Most of what we call Fairy Tales began life as Moral Tales - where the story might be incredible but the Truth
Drug Dysregulation or Iatrogenic Insanity? - Dr. David Healy
This recent Mad in America Webinar on Stopping Antidepressants introduced the idea of SSRI Dysregulation. Terms like Dependence etc band people with problems on SSRIs in with 'substance abusers'. Substance Abusers do not get a good deal from services that do not recognize the mainstream services and the drugs they hand out have often caused
Swans, Psychopharmacology and Religion - Dr. David Healy
After qualifying in Medicine in Dublin in 1980, I went to Galway on the West Coast of Ireland. Galway was very small compared to Dublin, but I’d heard the university had a new pharmacology professor, Brian Leonard, and interesting things might happen there. The world in 1980, and Ireland in particular, looked very different to
Interoception or Neuroplasticity - Dr. David Healy
Mad in America recently ran a Webinar on Neuroplasticity as a way to manage one of our greatest challenges - Protracted Withdrawal Syndrome. The presenters, as described by Mad in America, included: Ben Ahrens, a chronic illness recovery expert, TEDx Speaker, and CEO of a brain retraining program Re-Origin. This program stemmed from his use of
Ghost, Cyborg or Mystery – Fidere Aude - Dr. David Healy
Nearly 400 years ago Rene Descartes dramatically changed our view of ourselves in ways that have caused problems ever since. The change is caught in this famous image which illustrates what Descartes viewed as an obvious fact we could depend on. If our foot strays too near a flame, an image of the flame runs
Challenging My Media to Disclose - Dr. David Healy
At the end of most articles in the Guardian newspaper you find this: This is what we’re up against. Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see. Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and
Truth, Trust and Health - Dr. David Healy
Geoff Wilson invited me to give this lecture in Lexington Kentucky at a Medicating Normal meeting in May to a group of healthcare professionals. Don Marks gave me the chance to repeat it a few days later at Kean University's Psychology Department. Both groups were also asked to comment on Challenging My Doctor to Disclose.
Damsels Dying from Distress or Dysphoria? - Dr. David Healy
This post, which opens with a photo of Noelia Voigt navigates between last week's Cass and Cassandra, which features Distressed Damsels and Dudes, and RxISK's post this week - Is Your Treatment Making you Suicidal, which features Dysphoric Damsels and Dudes - dying from drug induced dysphoria. Noelia was until this week Miss USA 2023.
Cass or Cassandra: Doctors Bearing Gifts - Dr. David Healy
CisMedicine – TransMedicine While The Once and Future Immunity about vaccines for RSV was being drafted last week, the Cass Review on Gender Medicine hit the news headlines. Cass trenchantly critiques gender medicine as it has been practiced in the Western world in the last decade. These 2 items intersect as hopefully this post will
The Once and Future Immunity - Dr. David Healy
This post is mostly Peter Selley's. Covid flooded us with talk of immunity and vaccines. The word vaccine was redefined so mRNA agents could be called vaccines, even though they do not confer immunity or stop transmission as traditional vaccines do. The RSV vaccines are the latest. Given to older folk, they meet traditional
The Creation Narrative and God Complex - Dr. David Healy
This post continues Zen and Psychopharmacology and An Archipelago of Realities. I am going to rewrite a rewrite of Genesis. Here is the rewrite to be rewritten: The six days of Creation were divine and bright. But on the seventh day God broke down. On the seventh day he felt the unknown texture under his
An Archipelago of Realities - Dr. David Healy
The post follows on from last weeks Zen and Art of Psychopharmacology and links with Potentially Inappropriate Deprescribing PID on RxISK. Tullio Giraldi and I first e-met in 2009. Introducing himself, he painted an unusual background. He had been a pharmacologist but now his interests lay in Buddhism and psychotherapy. I learnt later that he
Zen and the Art of Psychopharmacology - Dr. David Healy
This post outlines an article that will appear in the next issue of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry - Zen and the Art of MoodCycle Maintenance - borrowing from the title of a semi-philosophical book with Zen and MotorCyles in its title that was well-known when some of us were young. The full article with
The Great Silence and Moral Injury - Dr. David Healy
Assuming things around 1998 in the graph below were what most of us would have figured until recently was what normal should look like – by that I mean as we might have expected things to be – there has been a dramatic change since 1998. See Conspiracy of Silence. No one, until recently, would
The Welfare State Conspiracy of Silence - Dr. David Healy
This graph recreates history. In Britain by 1935, Fertility Rates had fallen below 2.1 – the number of children women have on average - 1.8 and stayed there. The national replacement rate is 2.1. Given the steep slope down from 5.0 to 1.8 over less than 50 years, there is little reason to think in
Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up - Dr. David Healy
I was asked by Mandy Payne at Health Sense to review Bad Therapy due to be published today and agreed because an earlier book by Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage, had worked for me. Reviews of Bad Therapy are tumbling out at the moment - the Daily Mail has two - one by the Mail -
It’s Health’s Illusions I Recall - Dr. David Healy
There is a core concept shaping the ‘market’ in health, the concept of an assay. Few doctors or patients understand it. This article explains what assays are, how they entered healthcare and the consequences of failing to grasp the role they play. This post by Harriet Vogt and David Healy is an illustrated version of
Efficiency is not the Supreme Virtue - Dr. David Healy
I was staying in Aubervilliers last November for a “Whistleblowers” Lanceurs d’Alerte conference. Aubervilliers is in the North-East of Paris – not one of the tourist areas. Some French friends suggested the reason Paris was hosting the Olympics was because it offered the authorities an opportunity to flatten that part of the city and regenerate
TAIL Wags God – Technology and Morality - Dr. David Healy
AiDA - Assistance in Dying Altruistically - featured in Liberty Equality and Fertility. Here's AIDA's picture. It likely depends on your mood as you look at the picture. She might make an AiDA option look attractive or add to its horror. Some people, particularly mothers, can be extraordinarily altruistic, and might think they could sacrifice
Liberty, Equality and Fertility - Dr. David Healy
This post is partnered with a Timeline on Sex, Fertility, France and Serotonin on RxISK MAiD I am on a listserve that includes Trudo Lemmens a vocal opponent of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada. Canada seems to be going about MAiD particularly enthusiastically. Quite apart from Trudo being a long standing friend, I
Pharmageddon and Our HealthCare Climate - Dr. David Healy
This post centers on one member of our twin greatest problems - the changing climate of healthcare - as do HealthCare Gone Mad and Pharmageddon and Fertility., and older posts - Healthcare and the Global Climate and all posts in the Politics of Care Forum. There are linked posts on RxISK.org, starting with The Cradle
God Does Not Roll Dice. Should Doctors? - Dr. David Healy
This lecture If God Doesn't Play Dice, Should Doctors was given at the invitation of Leeza Osipenko and Consilium Scientific on May 18th 2023. Consilium are playing a big part in encouraging us all to think more about the quality of proofs we turn to in medicine in particular about Randomized Controlled Trials. There are
Freeing Teresa – Uplifting 2024 - Dr. David Healy
I was asked by Shepherd Books to list my 3 favorite books for 2023. My list is Here - Freeing Teresa came top, followed by Wonder Drug and Escape from Model Land. The overall Shepherd Best Books for 2023 List Is Here. Freeing Teresa is different to anything else. It's uplifting as well as dramatic.