The biggest drug dealer on campus

[Guest guest]

10/17/2002

 

The biggest drug dealer on campus

 

 

 

 

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/290/living/The_biggest_drug_dealer_on_campus+.\

shtml

 

 

 

 

 

By Alex Beam,

Globe Columnist

 

 

 

 

 

Just as I was about to send you the information on the campaign Wyeth

Pharmaceuticals (of Fen-Phen and Redux fame) has out on college campuses to push

Effexor, Alex Beam of the Boston Globe took the words right out of my mouth in

describing the abomination within our halls of learning. I refer you to his most

excellent article below.

 

The one thing Alex does not understand, along with the majority of the

population and far too many physicians, is that the serotonin THEORY behind the

SSRIs is backwards and because of that no one is indeed being " helped " by these

drugs as so many have been lead to believe.

 

What a shame that so few understand this or have even heard! But why bother to

read research when you have drug companies to tell you what is true.

 

The truth is that when serotonin metabolism is impaired, as every one of the

SSRIs do - this is thought to be their " therapeutic effect " - it has been shown

for decades of medical research to produce impulsive murder and suicide.

 

At this point we have a decade and a half of these drugs being used on the

general population as proof that the research from the past several decades is

indeed correct. Counting the dead from the SSRI induced impulsive murder and

suicide will take a very long time.

 

As if the problems with these drugs were not already bad enough, if Wyeth has

their way we can just use college campuses as microcosms to help us see what

adverse effects these drugs have upon a very vulnerable group within our

society.

 

It was in the spring of 2000 that Elizabeth Shin set herself on fire under the

influence of Celexa in her dormitory room at MIT.

 

But Wyeth's Effexor has been in the news so much this year you would think

someone might have noticed some red flags popping up.

 

To list only a few:

 

First we had Andrea Yates go to trial for killing her five children while under

the influence of both Effexor and Remeron at maximum dose of each drug.

 

Then this past spring a woman, who worked for Wyeth, died in a terrible

murder/suicide. Her job was to take calls on adverse reactions to Effexor. Her

husband, Michael Burgess, while on Effexor, chased her, her daughter and her

parents through the house and grounds of the home they shared killing them all

before killing himself.

 

Now, if your job consists of listening to these reactions at work all day long

and recording them for the drug maker, and you STILL don't see the warning signs

clearly enough to save your own life and the lives of your family, why would we

expect anyone else to notice?

 

Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, Executive Director,

International Coalition For Drug Awareness

www.drugawareness.org and author of Prozac: Panacea

or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare (800-280-0730)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is an article of faith among my friends and neighbors who troop off to vote

for Robert Reich, or to pay top dollar for genetically unaltered foods, that

large drug companies are Bad. Instinctually, I would disagree. The fairy tales

of Volvoland, like the finely tuned cars its inhabitants favor, are foreign to

me.

 

But maybe this once, the whole foods crowd has it right. Big Pharma, as the

Mercks, Pfizers and GlaxoSmithKlines are known to their enemies, has managed to

outrage even me with their brazen marketing of depression to innocents at home

and abroad. America's $12 billion antidepressant market has, as they say,

matured. It's time to start pushing the pills to kids and foreigners!

 

This is a subtle issue. Depression is very real, and immobilizes tens of

thousands of Americans. It is treatable, or at least its symptoms can be

alleviated by a variety of drugs now so common that everyone knows their names:

Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, etc.

 

Big Pharma has a vested interest in selling more and more lucrative

antidepressant drugs, and they are cynical and merciless in doing so. Take, for

example, Madison, N.J.-based Wyeth's forthcoming campus promotion, ''Depression

in College: Real World, Real Life, Real Issues,'' a 90-minute forum designed to

introduce students to the antidepressant Effexor. (''We refer to it as an

educational campaign, not a promotion,'' Wyeth spokesman Douglas Petkus tells

me.) The promotion features doctors, psychologists, and Cara Kahn, a star of the

MTV reality show, ''Real World Chicago,'' who takes Effexor to combat her

depression.

 

How insidious is this? Millions of college students feel lousy, for any number

of reasons: they are far from home; college is an unfamiliar and sometimes

threatening environment; the object of their affection is inattentive. God knows

we all have been there. Do they need a $120- a-month Effexor fix to see them

through these tough years? Probably not. But who could be more suggestible, or

vulnerable, than a boy or girl making the transition to adulthood? You can get a

feel for Wyeth's campaign at the Web site www.GoOnAndLive.com.

 

Wyeth says four colleges will be hosting its forum and one, which it declines to

identify, has demurred. In last week's Wall Street Journal, Harvard provost

Steven Hyman spoke out against allowing these sharks on campus. Hyman is a

doctor who used to run the National Institute of Mental Health and knows a thing

or two about this subject. ''In the case of celebrities speaking, who are

actually being paid by the company, there is a risk that inappropriate marketing

will go on,'' he said. ''It's a slippery slope I do not believe universities

should take.'' Wyeth notes that they weren't planning to come to Harvard anyway.

 

(As if by coincidence, the Journal ran a similar story the previous day,

reporting on drug companies' attempts to open up the culturally resistant

Japanese market to antidepressant pills. One tactic: eschewing the pejorative

Japanese word for ''depression'' and substituting a word that loosely translates

as ''the soul catching a cold.'' Remember: it's education, not promotion.)

 

(As if by coincidence, a recent Newsweek cover story on teen depression touted

several drugs, including Effexor, Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Celexa, and

Desipramine, as potentially helpful in combating depression. The same issue had

a 24-page ''Health and Fitness'' advertorial replete with full-page ads from

Wellbutrin maker GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Schering, and other huge drug

companies. Remember: it's education, not promotion.)

 

Why do these campaigns revolt me? Because I know that I could easily become

addicted to Big Pharma crack. I am angry a lot of the time; I am chronically

pessimistic; I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I know the psychiatrists' bible,

the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, well enough to know

that I could get an internist or a psychiatrist to put me on an antidepressant

with a snap of my fingers. But who would be there to help get me off the dope?

 

I have the tools to make reasonable decisions about my mental health. But many

young people don't. Lay off the kids, Wyeth & Co.: pick on somebody your own

size.

 

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam

 

 

Gettingwell- / Vitamins, Herbs, Aminos, etc.

 

To , e-mail to: Gettingwell-

Or, go to our group site: Gettingwell

 

 

 

 

Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now