May 8, 2002

RUNAWAY MEDICALIZATION

CHALLENGING A WELL-ENTRENCHED BELIEF SYSTEM

By Nicholas Regush

I won’t bore you with all the details of my messed-up ankle and knee, but I will tell you this: From the very moment that I injured myself, people were crawling out of the woodwork telling me to see a doctor. "Why aren’t you seeing someone?" "I know a terrific orthopod." "You should get X-rays." "You’re being foolish not getting this checked out." "I hate to tell you, man, but you really should see someone."

Or they were asking me what medicine I was taking for the pain. "Are you taking Tylenol?" "You should take Aleve. It works wonders for me." Have you tried Glucosamine. It helps reduce pain and improves joint mobility."

Although this attention amounted to an assault. I couldn’t really blame friends for caring. They were, however, projecting their own strong dependency on medicine.

And it’s a dependency that has grown to the point of madness. We are medicalized from the moment of birth until death.

Modern obstetrics is now high-tech Central. Surveillance and monitoring of the patient are commonplace. It’s all technological protocol. For all practical purposes, the doctor is now embedded in the technology. And the high-tech is for the most part more of a cost center for a hospital than it is a service for serving any real practical need.

It seems that pregnancy and childbirth are envisioned as abnormalities that require a wide range of medical services.

Where women are concerned, menstruation, menopause, contraception and infertility are all seen as requiring high-powered medical intervention.

In fact, many aspects of human development and behavior are similarly medicalized.

Psychiatry’s turf is the "mind," where all sorts of needs exist for intervention. Even in the realm of sex, psychiatry has a long list of "practices" seen as aberrant and in need of treatment - for sickness or depravity.

Schools are increasingly medicalized, with new specialists doling out drugs for children who are said to have a psychiatric disorder that equates inattention and restlessness with illness.

Old age is also medicalized. Doctors are now the guides to visions of immortality. Of course, a large part of that guidance results in drug prescriptions.

It only seems right that death too is medicalized. Keeping people alive when there is little or no life left runs side by side with efforts to end life or what’s left of it by injection or benign neglect.

Supporting medicalization is a giant industry that has become bloated with even greater expectations that there will be new ways to intervene in every aspect of human life, with a therapy, pill or potion.

Meanwhile, with the exception of a relatively small number of people, the target market for all this enterprise is crying for more.

In educating themselves about a disease, people become more enmeshed in the technical jargon that some of their doctors.

Medicalization is both the anchor and the springboard for the new consumer society.

And keep in mind that medicalization applies to both conventional and alternative forms of healing. There are powerful trends emerging that suggest that so-called ‘"alternative" medicine will become as exploitive as the conventional mode - and from birth until death.

See the target, pitch the target, and sell the target. And do whatever it takes. The more products the better. The more interventions the better. The more recipes the better.

Well, I’m not keen on being a target of either conventional or alternative "medicalization." This doesn’t mean that I won’t indulge when I feel the time is right. But it will be my choice.

By the way, the knee and ankle are healing well. I did absolutely nothing, except give them rest and time.

CONTROVERSY: Is There A Link Between Abortion And Breast Cancer?
By Jane Sprague Zones

ORACLE: Are AIDS Vaccines Worse Than Useless?

REDFLAG ALERT: MMR Vaccine - Follow The Money!

May 1, 2002

COLUMN: Autism Research Takes A Wrong Turn
By Howard Urnovitz, Ph.d

CONTROVERSY: Return Of Bowel Drug Lotronex
By Fintan Dunne

DRUG WARNINGS: Serious Side-Effects Discovered Very Late

SELLING OUT: ABC News Medical Correspondent Does Tylenol Commercial

April 24, 2002

ON CONFUSED PSYCHIATRIC THEORY AND MEDICAL FASCISM

THE CASE OF FORCED DRUGGING

By Nicholas Regush

Well, well, he’s forcing ahead. E. Fuller Torrey, the well-known psychiatrist, won’t give up on his passion: to make certain that everybody who is said to need psychiatric drugs gets them — whether they like it or not.

Torrey is a piece of work. On the one hand, he is a huge player in the movement to drug people with force, if necessary (supposedly to protect them against themselves and to protect society), and on the other hand, he has strongly been pushing for a view of mental illness that challenges the very basis upon which most psychiatric drugs are given.

When I interviewed him at length (for much of a day) a few years ago for ABC News, he was in the process of conducting research with a team at Johns Hopkins that was certainly moving against the psychiatric grain. Torrey has long argued that mental illness can be triggered by microbes. He has been involved in research that is examining the possibility that certain genetic sequences in our cells (sometimes considered to be remnants of ancient infections) might be activated by a virus to cause damage to brain cells. Related research includes the possibility that some herpes virus might be involved in "mental illness."

I remarked on this research in my book, The Virus Within, because I felt that Torrey and his colleagues were trying to focus attention on some intriguing possibilities of how brain damage can occur. This, I should add, is not popular psychiatric thinking because it violates the long-held notion that some combination of genetics and socialization (usually vaguely stated, at best, accompanied by speculation) leads to brain distress and chemical abnormality. Allowing for all that, the fact is that there is thus far very little evidence for this long-held viral view that Torrey has been spouting for many years.

So, in the first place, where does Torrey get off advocating certain forms of standard drug treatments for psychiatric patients, when, by his own admission, the discipline of psychiatry does not have a correct handle on how "mental illness" develops? Given his leanings, how can he possibly feel comfortable with a "mental illness" model that he, in principle, has disagreed with for many years? Let me put it another way: As is the case with his psychiatric colleagues of various stripes, he is very much at a loss to explain "mental illness," let alone argue, on convincing scientific grounds, for forcible use of the powerful psychiatric drugs that can have horrific and lasting side-effects.

What’s also intriguing to me is that Torrey’s viral model — the one he’s been pushing very hard for many years — has also been a rather insidious centerpiece for his views on forced drugging. On this score, he once asked in an editorial for the journal, Psychiatric Services, whether psychiatry can learn from tuberculosis treatment. His point was that many people with TB have been forced to take medications in order to help themselves and to prevent spreading of disease. So, what was he driving at? That noncompliance issues are similar in TB and mental illness? That "mental illness" is some sort of infection? Is that what he really believes? If so, giving people any of the powerful psychiatric drugs in use today is not likely going to get at the root problem.

Given the logic underlying Torrey’s long fight to have viruses recognized as important players in "mental illness," one might expect to see a campaign sometime in the future to give everyone anti-viral drugs, maybe to fight off a retrovirus, or perhaps some herpes virus that Torrey and his researchers think triggers brain disorganization. Not having that kind of evidence in tow just yet, then, hey, why the hell not just go with the standard psychiatric drugs until science can figure out how the "disease" really works in the brain?

The point here is that Torrey and his pals at the National Alliance For The Mentally Ill are playing with fire, as they try to push laws through that will force people to take powerful and highly toxic psychiatric drugs against their will.

Yes, there are many people who may need society’s help in dealing with their day-to-day lives. And yes, some of them will commit violent acts — and so arguments to drug them in order to protect them from harm and protect society may appear very rational — until you examine the scientific foundations for that kind of program. Particularly Torrey’s mixed scientific messages.

He stated recently, for example, that people (his opponents) are ignoring "30 years of research into the organic nature of mental illness." And what type of research might that be, please? Viral? Chemical? Some yet unpublished thesis on the combination of the two?

What you see here in the mission of E. Fuller Torrey is not something that hangs on science. For reasons only he can compute, he appears not to be capable of separating science from ideology. That type of mission can only end in "medical fascism."

ENVIRONMENT BATTLES: The EPA Ombudsman Calls It Quits

MEDIA WARS: Online VS Establishment Press

April 17, 2002

MYSTERY DISEASES: WHY DOCTORS HAVE TROUBLE DIAGNOSING SO MANY PATIENTS.

By Nicholas Regush

Small wonder that mainstream medicine is loosing credibility — and fast. Here is today’s example of why this is happening:

What may seem at first to be a reasonable effort by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) to confront the notion of what a disease is and what it is not, unfortunately becomes a parody of the state of medical know-how.

Recently, the journal ran a "vote" to identify "non-diseases." The BMJ wanted a debate to help encourage examination of the "tendency to classify people’s problems as diseases."

So the top 20 list, we are told, includes "aging, jet lag, cellulite, and anxiety about penis size." The journal notes that some of these non-diseases "already appear in official classifications."

BMJ also tells us that people may benefit if their problem becomes listed officially (somewhere) as a disease: "Immediately, you are likely to enjoy sympathy rather than blame…"

There is also a downside to having your problem listed as a disease: "You may be denied insurance, a mortgage and employment."

In sum, according to the journal’s editor, Richard Smith," we are not suggesting that the suffering of people with these ‘non-diseases’ is not genuine…but surely everything is to be gained and nothing lost by raising consciousness about the slipperiness of the concept of disease."

Now to the uncritical and great admirers of lightness of mind, Smith may be seen as pointing to something big here. But it’s nothing of the sort. What BMJ is indulging in is grand obfuscation of a major problem that continues to plague medicine: the overspecialization of medical practice — the carving out of one niche territory after another in the name of disease (psychiatry is a major example) and leaving aside a vast chasm of human symptoms and feelings that cannot be reduced to easily identifiable patterns.

What should be obvious to Smith and his like, light-minded colleagues at BMJ and elsewhere in the medical mainstream is that medicine is creating more and more classifications because it has lost touch with the idea that the body functions as a whole in relation to everything around it.

The public, meanwhile, has unfortunately learned that calling something a disease can bring some social benefits and often ignores the social problems that BMJ describes as resulting from disease-creation.

The public then becomes annoyed when the medical profession cannot deal effectively with the disease states that they study and treat out of context of total body functioning. The army of medical specialists deal with "disease" without respecting the vast network of extraordinary complexity that defines the human body. This complexity cannot possibly be reduced easily to simple disease categories.

For example, there is really no such thing as heart disease per se. The heart interacts with the brain, with the gut and with the entire body. Unfortunately this type of message has become lost in the motor mechanics shop of modern medicine which tends to see dynamic body processes in largely static and highly-localized terms.

What BMJ should be looking at and encouraging is the need for medicine to shed its fixation on body parts and begin to adopt a method of analysis and treatment directed at the whole individual.

But, of course, that’s easier said than done, and while there are some signs of movement in this direction, it will take many years for the specialized model of medicine to integrate and blend with methods to tap the larger picture of what is going on in the body at any given time.

One major reason why so many doctors throw their hands up in the air when they examine patients with what they feel are "mystery" ailments is because these doctors haven’t a clue about how to focus on body dynamics. The only thing they can do is run a few standard tests and then refer the patient to a specialist.

So, BMJ, next time you want to focus on what is or what is not a disease, take the big step and deal with the tough issues. Leave the silly stuff for the light-minded.

WITHOUT INFORMED CONSENT: Sign Up Your Elderly And Ill Parents For Medical Experiments

HERBAL FORMULA OUTRAGE: Popular Herbal Formula Used By Cancer Patients Is Spiked With Three Prescription Drugs
By Ralph Moss
 

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April 10, 2002

LUPRON AND FERTILITY TREATMENT: ONE WOMAN’S AGONIZING ODYSSEY

By Nicholas Regush

Introduction

When we first met Lynne Millican in January, when this series on Lupron was launched, we learned that she still suffers a range of serious ailments more than a decade after injections of the drug, Lupron, for treatment of endometriosis. Millican, a registered nurse and paralegal, believes her problems are associated with Lupron.

Millican’s numerous symptoms have included the development of a noncancerous tumor, breast cysts, cardiac arrythmias, pain, dizziness, swelling and fatigue.

She is one of many women treated for endometriosis who have complained over the years about these and other lingering symptoms they believe are related to Lupron. Other symptoms include depression and confusion, bone pain, vision loss, high blood pressure, and nausea.

Endometriosis is a condition in which pieces of the lining of the uterus are found in other parts of the body, especially in the pelvic cavity. These pieces of endometrium respond to the menstrual cycle and bleed. Because the blood cannot escape, it builds up and causes the development of small or large painful cysts.

Lupron is a synthetic hormone that is said to act on this process by suppressing the ovaries and is supposed to temporarily interrupt estrogen output. This creates a drug-induced menopause. The goal of treatment is to shrink any lesions produced via endometriosis.

The FDA first approved Lupron in 1985 for treatment of men with advanced prostate cancer, and then approved it for treatment of endometriosis in 1990 and, in 1995, for the pre-operative treatment of anemia resulting from heavy bleeding associated with fibroids.

TAP Pharmaceuticals Inc, Lupron’s manufacturer, says its product is safe and that the normal function of the pituitary-gonadal system is usually restored within three months after Lupron injections are discontinued. The U.S. Food And Drug Administration (FDA) agrees with the company.

However, Lupron is also widely used as a fertility drug in most In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) clinics. This use is not approved by the FDA. But once the FDA approves a drug for a specific indication, doctors can use it for any purpose.

As Lynne Millican personally discovered, the use of Lupron as a fertility drug comes with little scientific knowledge of its safety and efficacy and little or no informed consent. As she puts it, based on a decade-long odyssey to call attention to these facts, "No one really seems to care about this blatant lapse in regulation."

Lynne’s Story Continued

Lynne Millican wanted a child and because of her long-term infertility, the only hope she felt she had was to undergo fertility treatment at an IVF clinic. She was particularly concerned her battle with endometriosis would require her to have a hysterectomy. "So I decided to give IVF a shot. I really wanted to have a baby and time was running out on me."

But this meant more Lupron, one of the widely used fertility drugs. She had already associated numerous symptoms with the drug during treatment of her endometriosis. But the medical opinion was that her symptoms had nothing to do with Lupron and the medical team continued the injections.

The idea of using Lupron for fertility treatment is that the drug suppresses female hormones that normally can produce one mature egg. Shutting off the body’s production of hormones enables the IVF doctors to use hormonal preparations that can lead to multiple egg development.

The attempt failed. There was no egg development. And her physical ailments continued.

"I wanted to try again, only I wanted to do so without Lupron," Millican explained. "My doctor told me that if I wanted IVF, I had to have Lupron. His exact words were, ‘You must use Lupron,’"

Millican was again assured that Lupron was indicated and effective and that "it had been used successfully around the world and was harmless."

So why did she agree to take Lupron again? "I knew my opportunity was limited and so I went ahead once more."

The result: no egg development and more of the side-effects that had been plaguing her.

Millican was to try one last time — without Lupron, but to no avail. "I think my body was pretty much incapable of responding," she said.

To this day, Millican believes that Lupron should not have been forced on her for IVF.

She also believes that women are being given the drug for fertility treatment without proper informed consent.

"I am concerned that women who undergo these procedures are not being sufficiently informed about Lupron’s side-effects," she said.

Millican has spent the last decade "attempting to expose the plight of the Lupron victims and the claims and science behind Lupron."

On March 28, 1995, for example, she testified before the Massachusetts House of Representatives on behalf of a bill she and a colleague had help to present in 1992. The Act was aimed at regulating IVF.

Among her statements:

*This drug (Lupron) has been investigated since the 1970s as an ovulation inducing agent yet has never gained FDA approval for the indication of ovulation induction. This fact is significant.

*National IVF failure rate of 86.7% and no long-term studies of women and children exposed to these fertility drugs or assisted reproductive technologies should speak to the experimental nature of these procedures in and of itself.

*It is the repeated and deliberate misrepresentations made by this industry (fertility industry) that "IVF is safe, is effective, is proven, is non-experimental" and "the fertility drugs are safe and effective and proven" that epitomizes the plea for regulation.

*If I were writing that consent form, what I would say to that woman is that you will have daily injections of medications, that this will require multiple visits for monitoring, and there is an unknown future risk to the receipt of these medicines — it’s not been established or identified, but we don’t have the data that says it’s completely innocuous.

*Women in Massachusetts (and throughout the world) have a fundamental right to be provided informed consent. Women need to know that the safety and efficacy of assisted reproductive technologies and the safety and efficacy of fertility drugs has not been proven.

In 1997, and again in 1999, Millican presented testimony to lawmakers in Massachusetts, exploring similar issues in regard to Lupron and IVF.

" There really was no response," she said.

TO BE CONTINUED

RECONSTRUCTING BREASTS: Tissue Flaps And The Potential Dangers

LAWSUITS AND THE INTERNET: Efforts To Suppress Opinion?