VIRGINIA TECH AND BEYOND: AN EXPLOSIVE INTERVIEW WITH A REBEL PSYCHIATRIST

Q: Why do you doubt the psychiatric drugs?

A: They're toxic and injurious.

Q: Which ones?

A: All of them.

Q: And in particular?

A: The antidepressants. Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, and so on. They are not showing, on balance, good results, and patients have been experiencing adverse effects.

Q: Such as?

A: Sleeplessness, nightmares, erratic behavior, highs and lows, crashes, attempts to commit suicide, exacerbated depression, violence, dramatic personality changes.

Q: Why do you think this is happening?

A: To be honest, I don't know. But my sense is, in general, that the drugs interfere in unpredictable ways with various neurotransmitter systems. I also believe they can work extreme changes in blood sugar levels and electrolyte levels. You know, it's not hard to create these effects with chemicals. The body is not able to integrate them in its normal functioning. I would compare it to suddenly setting up all sorts of roadblocks and detours and forced lane changes on a busy highway. You will get big trouble.

Q: Have you tried to communicate your concerns to colleagues and medical groups?

A: For a short time, I did. But I was given the cold shoulder. I got the distinct feeling I was being treated like some wayward child who had his facts all wrong.

Q: Who do you blame for this drugging catastrophe?

A: At the moment, everybody. The doctors, the drug companies, the FDA, the psychiatric teaching institutions, even the press. And at some point, patients are going to have to take responsibility and not follow the orders of their doctors.

Q: Do you believe that doctors should cut back and give the drugs to some people and not others?

A: That sounds good, but there is no way to know what effects the drugs will cause in any given individual, especially as time passes. Even in the short term, I have seen some frightening things.

Q: Do you believe the profession of psychiatry has made some kind of overarching deal with the drug companies?

A: Yes. The drug companies are everywhere. They stick their noses into everyone's business.

Q: What lies about the drugs have you had to purge from your own mind?

A: The main one is that they're some kind of miracle breakthrough. Another one is that I can rely on the judgments and certifications of the FDA. We're playing Russian Roulette out here. It's a very dangerous situation.

Q: Do you believe that some of the school shootings have resulted from children being on the antidepressants?

A: I didn't, until one day a sixteen-year-old patient of mine showed up for his appointment with a 9mm handgun. Then I began to comb back through reports on a bunch of those shootings. I can tell you, it focuses the mind to see a young patient sitting across from you---you've put him on an antidepressant and now he's talking about "a new day" and he takes the gun out of his pocket and lays it on a table next to him by the Kleenex. You think to yourself, "I may have created a killer and his first victim could be me." People want to outlaw all guns. I'd start with the drugs.

Q: How about the diagnosis of depression itself?

A: I've come to realize that you can't do an interview with a patient and then come out with a shorthand assessment. It's wrong. It reduces all sorts of problems down to a label, and then you have your official gateway into the drugs.

Q: Your colleagues think you're over-reacting?

A: I think I'm under-reacting. I think we have an epidemic on our hands, but it has nothing to do with mental disorders. It has to do with the chemicals we're facilitating.

Q: This boy with the gun---were you able to talk him down?

A: I spent two hours with him that day. I told him he was having a reaction to the drug. At first, it made no sense to him. He was on a manic sort of ride. That really scared me---that I couldn't make him see what was happening to him. He was in the middle of an episode and he couldn't stand outside it. Finally, he eased up a little. He began to weep in my office. It wasn't really crying. Tears just ran down his cheeks while he was talking. He didn't seem to notice them. He had almost stopped being human. He was a...creature. He was on a mission of some kind. His view of the world had totally changed. In his mindset, destruction was the only course of action.

Q: And then?

A: He calmed down a little. I was afraid to ask him for the gun. He just picked it up and put it back in his pocket. After he left, I called his mother. She went home from her job and met him. I had asked her to call the police but she wouldn't. Later, she told me she sat and talked with him for a long time and then he handed over the gun. It was a very tense situation. I had her remove the bottle of pills from her medicine cabinet. Then I had to follow up. I weaned him slowly from the drug. It took two months. He finally sort of returned to being the person he was. Even then I wasn't sure he'd be okay. He was definitely addicted to the drug. Luckily, I didn't cut him off suddenly. He might have killed people during the withdrawal cycle.

Q: Did you continue to see this boy as a patient?

A: I did a nutritional assessment with the help of a doctor who is very good with that. We found the boy was having strange reactions to certain soft drinks that have speed-type boosters in them. We gradually weaned him off them. Then we discovered he was reacting to dyes and other chemicals in junk food. So we had to change his diet. That wasn't easy.

Q: He was addicted in several ways to chemicals.

A: That's right. There was peer pressure for him to keep eating junk. All his friends did. They called him weird for going off the food they were eating every day. Finally, I discovered that, five years before I saw him, he'd been on Ritalin for almost a year. You know, for ADHD. He'd been driven into depression by that. He basically felt, at eleven, that his life was all over. All paths and interests were closed to him.

Q: How is he now?

A: Much better. But he's not all the way back. I wish he were.

Q: Do you think there is permanent brain damage?

A: I don't know. He's now living outside the US with his father. I get reports once in awhile.

Q: How does he [the son] feel about his own experience?

A: He wants it to be an example to other families.

Q: You didn't go into medicine to deal with this.

A: No. In school, my ideals were high. But I allowed myself to be led down the garden path. I fell for the sales pitch. I'm telling you, this is not a good situation. We are a society on the brink. Something has to be done.

Q: How do you feel about Bush's mental health screening program for all children?

A: All in all, it may turn out to be the worst thing he's done as president. It's just a tip of his hat to his pharmaceutical supporters. But the long-range consequences---if this plan gets rolling---will be devastating.

Q: Is there some underlying principle at work here? Some paradigm that everyone is accepting that is putting us into a bad situation?

A: You know the answer to that. It's the combination of easy diagnosis plus the drug fix. The pill craze for everything. Take a drug and everything will work out. I see it as the classic street-drug promotion. Feel good. Take this drug and you'll feel different and better. Combine that with the basic immaturity of most people and you have the interlock. Why work out your problems and strive to have the life you want when you can arrive at the best destination with a pill? I'd take this a step further. If you stacked up all the tranquilizers and antidepressants, for adults, next to, say, marijuana, as a way of dealing with stress, I'd say that a very modest amount of a mild marijuana would be more successful than all those other drugs at the levels they're normally prescribed. If I were forced to recommend one or the other, I'd go with the marijuana. And I'd say the drug companies know this. Which is one reason why, in the US, the enforcement on marijuana has been stepping up. But again, you're always dealing with an individual. Each person is different. I've seen people who react very badly to pot. It affects them like a psychedelic.

Q: You're saying the science behind the antidepressants is false.

A: Absolutely. Judging by the effects of the drugs, it has to be. It may sound good and proper. All the right words are used. But I don't care about that anymore. I go by results. My eyes have been opened.

Q: Then why are the drug companies pushing these drugs?

A: I'm not an expert to speak to about that. Certainly there is the profit motive. But I think there is also the myth of progress.

Q: What do you mean?

A: That myth states that technology must keep making advances. It's the legend of forward motion. If technology is to be seen as good, it has to keep turning out better advances---otherwise something is wrong. And there can't be anything wrong.

Q: It's like a hectic race.

A: Yes. If you stop, you might fall down. Secrets might be exposed. Shortcomings might show up. So you have to keep pushing. You have to keep saying you're doing better and better. I'm sure you can see where this gets you. You make new mistakes to cover up old mistakes. You become careless. You lie. You hire promotion people to tout your work. You keep the whole thing rolling forward, no matter what. That's where we are.

Q: And you were carried on that wave.

A: For many years. But now I've stopped.

Q: Is it uncomfortable?

A: Not so much anymore. But at first I was very upset and angry. I was blaming everyone but myself. I felt like I was in chains, that my whole education and career were at stake. And I WAS my career. What else did I have? Getting off the boat was quite difficult. I had every advantage this society has to offer. I was---

Q: The expert.

A: Yes. That's a powerful feeling. People come to you with questions and you have the answers. If you don't, then you're thrown down in the pit with everyone else. Part of being a doctor is being above the pit, out of the problem. You're the solution. You don't want to fall. And the only thing that keeps you from falling is what you've learned. Your knowledge. When you see that that's based on lies, you don't know what to do. It's like being a priest and realizing that everyone gets to the far shore by his own means. You don't want to let go of the doctrine that put you on the pulpit.

Q: So what would a new paradigm look like?

A: For mental health? We have to get rid of all the old classifications and disorders. We have to let all that go into oblivion. That was wrong. That was largely fantasy.

Q: It was a story.

A: We told it, and now we have to stop telling it. Because we've ended up intervening in people's lives in a very pernicious way.

Q: Part of the story necessitated that kind of intervention.

A: Yes. And, not to take myself off the hook, but people want that kind of story, as you say. They want that "expert story." They want someone else to come in and tell them what to do and what to think and what drug to take.

Q: Why do you think that is?

A: Because people have taken the easy path. They have opted for what I would call a flat version of reality. If they started adding dimensions on their own---

Q: They would be forced to tell their own story.

A: In the terms you're using, yes. That's what would happen.

Q: And how would society look then?

A: Much different. Much more risky, perhaps, but much more alive. Psychology and psychiatry don't allow for that kind of outcome. All mental disorders are constructs. They're named by committees, as I'm sure you know. They're a form of centralized pattern. In this context, the word "shrink" is very appropriate. That's what we've been doing. Shrinking down the perception of what reality and the mind are all about.

Q: Can you imagine what would happen if the lid were taken off?

A: I work with that idea every day now.

Q: And how does it look?

A: More and more appealing.

(From this point on, the material is new, dated April 9-17, 2007.)

Q: What are your thoughts about all the revelations of cheating and lying in medical-drug studies?

A: It doesn’t surprise me. I expected that that sort of thing was going on, and that it was pervasive. The drug companies don’t want to admit failure. They wants their billions. I’ve come to see them as much more cold-hearted.

Q: How complicit are the medical journals that publish these studies?

A: I blame them as well. If they really wanted to, they could police what comes into them much more carefully. They could publicize cheaters. They could blackball them. But drug advertisers keep some of these journals afloat.

Q: So vows of ethical behavior on the part of the journals?

A: Half-truths and lies.

Q: If you can’t believe the journals…

A: I believe my patients. I listen to them. I work with them, not on them. I trust my own observations.

Q: Do you prescribe psychiatric drugs?

A: Never.

Q: Could you get into trouble for that?

A: Yes. It’s hard to say exactly which brand of trouble, but yes.

Q: Do you diagnose patients with the conventional mental-disorder names and labels?

A: Never. Not anymore. I don’t divide up the brain or the mind of the patient into fictional categories.

…Q: What do you think about the Virginia Tech shootings?

A: It’s horrible. I don’t know what else to say.

Q: Were you reminded of that boy who brought a gun into a session with you?

A: Reminded? It was like a hand on my throat.

Q: Do you think the accused killer had been on antidepressants?

A: It’s possible. I have no way of knowing. But if he was, there will be efforts to downplay it or cover it up.

Q: Would you say some of his behavior leading up to, and including, the shootings, is consistent with the effects of the SSRI antidepressants [Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, etc.]?

A: Consistent? Yes. That could have been the way it played out. I’m not saying there were no other factors. But to push him over the brink from ideation to murder…yes. The drugs can do that.

Q: So it’s quite possible that, in the absence of the drugs---

A: He would have thought about it, but he wouldn’t have done it.

Q: There are some very messed-up people out there who think about doing all sorts of things.

A: Yes. And they don’t do them. And then you have lots of other people who just fantasize. They imagine destruction, but they’re quite healthy. They…you see, as a society, we’re creeping closer to the official premise that no healthy person imagines destruction, and therefore if you do that, you’re sick. That’s a crock. It’s not only a crock, it’s a pretense. It’s an attempt to construct a delusional model of what a healthy human being is. But a person with no destructive thoughts is a doll in a toy store. Meanwhile, you have men who go out with semi-automatic weapons and kill harmless animals. What is that? Is that supposed to be normal? How many rounds do those weapons fire every second? The thrill of the hunt? What thrill? It’s like driving over a beetle with a tank.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

CHO, THE VIRGINIA MURDERS, AND THE DRUG QUESTION

APRIL 18, 2007. Reports have surfaced that the accused murderer of 33 people at Virginia Tech was briefly under medical care for depression. So the question naturally arises: was he taking SSRI antidepressants? Prozac? Zoloft? Paxil?

These drugs are known to cause suicides and murders. That is, the person taking them kills himself or others.

Glaxo, the maker of Paxil, has been under the gun for some time now, because it knew Paxil had problems and concealed those problems from the FDA and doctors and the public.

The lawsuits against Glaxo, sitting in line like ships waiting to dock, have mainly concerned so-called “discontinuation syndrome.” This is a fancy euphemism for “withdrawal effects.” In other words, the drug makes addicts. And when people try to withdraw from it, even gradually, all sorts of hell can break out.

But under the surface, there is more. I’ll lead up to that by quoting from an excellent April 26, 2006, article published at Scoop, and written by Evelyn Pringle. My comments are in brackets.

“The [Paxil] withdrawal syndrome is real and in fact, it is now known that infants of women who take SSRIs in the last 3 months of pregnancy, may experience symptoms of withdrawal, including convulsions, according to a study published in the February 4, 2005 issue of the journal Lancet.

[DID YOU GET THAT? CONVULSIONS IN INFANTS. JR]

“In addition, experts warn against the use of Paxil and other SSRIs with children. According to Fred Baughman Jr, MD, an adult and child neurologist in private practice for 35 years, ‘most antidepressants have not proved effective in treating depression in children and some studies suggest they may cause some children to become acutely suicidal.’

“Yet in 2002, Dr Baughman says, ‘nearly 11 million prescriptions for the drugs were given to children, 2.7 million of them to children under 12.’

[IT ISN’T JUST STREET DRUGS, FOLKS. JR]

“A report by an expert witness [in a lawsuit against Glaxo], previously sealed with a protective order, reveals how Glaxo concealed and manipulated data concerning Paxil-induced suicidality and how suicide attempts in studies by patients on Paxil were underreported and attempts by people taking a placebo were inflated.

[HELLO. GLAXO SAID SUICIDES WERE FEWER THAN THEY WERE. THEY ALSO CLAIMED SUICIDE ATTEMPTS IN THE CONTROL GROUP, THE PEOPLE TAKING A SUGAR PILL, WERE HIGHER THAN THEY REALLY WERE. TO MAKE IT SEEM THAT PAXIL DID NOT POSE A THREAT TO COMMIT SUICIDE. GET IT? JR]

“Excerpts from the report were published by psychiatrist, Peter Breggin, MD, in Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, (Volume 8, Spring 2006, pp. 77-84). Dr Breggin is a founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP) and the author of the Antidepressant Fact Book (2001).

“His report also documents how Glaxo hid the incidence of akathisia (agitation with hyperactivity) and stimulation, which he says, are known risk factors for suicidality and violence.

[VIOLENCE. LIKE KILLING SOMEBODY. JR]

Dr Breggin’s original report was based on a 3-day review of Glaxo’s sealed files, and was written for the California case of Lacuzong v GSK, and attached to a July 21, 2001, affidavit submitted in a case filed by the widow of a man who drowned their two children and himself in a tub after taking Paxil for three days.

[A MAN TAKES PAXIL FOR 3 DAYS AND THEN KILLS HIS CHILDREN AND HIMSELF. JR]

“At Glaxo’s insistence, the report remained sealed. However, in the more recent case of Moffett v Glaxo, in the US District Court for the South District of Mississippi, the report was filed in the public record.

“’The drug companies,’ says Dr Breggin, ‘settle almost all legal cases brought against them in order to seal incriminating scientific data.’

[IN ORDER TO HIDE THE TRUTH. THE DRUG COMPANY AGREES TO PAY THE PLAINTIFF A LOT OF MONEY, ON THE CONDITION THAT THE DETAILS OF THE RELEVANT REPORTS ARE BURIED. JR]

“’The publication of a previously sealed medical expert report is a rare event,’ he [Breggin] explains, ‘the first in my experience.’”

End of Scoop snip

How do you like those apples? “Well, sure, some people who take our drug kill themselves or other people, but that’s OUR information. We don’t have to tell anybody about it. I mean, the drug is our property, so then all the information pertaining to it that we discover is ours, too.”

So the question again: was Cho taking one of these SSRI antidepressants?

Following me so far? I hope you are. I have one more wrinkle to feed you.

The drug companies definitely do NOT want a very clear law to pass WITH MUCH PUBLICITY---a law that states they CAN conceal any information they want to about their drugs. Why not? Because then it would be open hunting. People, doctors, whoever, could say, “Screw you. Since you can hide any adverse effects you want to, we won’t use your drugs.” The drug companies want to slime along the fence in the dark, without publicity, without notice. They want to exist in a gray area between some revealing and some concealing. And they’re willing to pay for this privilege with big cash settlements in lawsuits. They know the numbers. They’ve figured out how much they can give away and still make out like bandits on the sales of their drugs.

An interesting business, the drug business.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

ENTER THE "EXPERTS"

APRIL 18, 2007. And now come the profilers. Seems the Secret Service (??) did a 2002 study on school shootings in the US. Based on the results, MSNBC reports that:

"In more than three out of four school shootings, the attacker had made no threat against the schoolteachers or students. But most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the incident that caused others concern or indicated a need for help. The attackers posed a threat even though they hadn't made a threat."

[PERFECT DESCRIPTION]

"'Schools can do a lot more to deal with such concerns,' said one of the authors of the study.

"'The notion that a concerned teacher who tries to get someone to counseling and that there are no other options if the student refuses to go — that seems much too limited,' one of the report’s co-authors, psychologist Robert A. Fein, told MSNBC.com on Wednesday. He has consulted with federal agencies on targeted violence, including terrorism, school shootings and workplace violence.

"'I understand that students in college are not high school kids,' Fein said, 'but schools should be able to do better than that. This is not to cast blame on anyone. There's no cookie-cutter solution, and there probably are lots of "right ways," but the notion of having a team that can gather and examine information and determine "we may have a problem here" and then work to figure out what to do, or ask others, or keep working on it, still makes sense to me.'"

end of MSNBC snip

The idea here is that the “team” of teachers, dept. heads, counselors, psychologists and cops would---working from a profile match provided by teachers and students---anticipate a crime and a criminal.

You can see what would evolve, given that the basic profile is so vague. Another item emerged in the MSNBC story. Administration concerns at Virginia Tech about Cho---before he went on his rampage---could not be reported to his parents. There is some law against that. Wonderful. Suddenly, the student is cut loose from his family. Who the hell thought up that one? Colleges are worried about whether their insurance covers parents suing them for “wrongful pre-concern” about their kid?

Anyway, the snitch culture just got another boost.

“Fred just posted a poem about me at MySpace. It was a sullen poem. I think he imagines me when he, you know, does himself. And he flashed his cell phone at me the other day outside the dorm. I don’t know whether he took a picture of me or not. I thought you should know. I hear he’s spent the last three Saturday nights alone in his room. He won’t drink beer at pep rallies. I saw him carrying a copy of Catcher in the Wheat, or whatever that porno book is…”

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

STUDENTS: FROM NOW ON, WRITE ABOUT FRUIT

APRIL 18, 2007. Suddenly this kid Cho is not only a murderer, he’s a writer. NBC got an eyeful today. Everybody has an interpretation. Persecution complex. Dark soul. No one can know what pain he felt. Madman. Profane. Twisted. Malevolent. Thinks he’s Jesus.

I can just hear a creative writing teacher somewhere out in a college in Indiana: “Mr. Jones, what did you mean when you said ‘America kills its own.’”

“Were you feeling angry when you wrote that? Where do you think that anger comes from?”

“Have you considered seeing a psychologist? Because it seems to me you’re expressing some borderline dangerous ideas in your piece.”

“Excuse me, I have to call campus security.”

“We have a WRITER here who has made some threatening comments in an essay he turned in. All the other students wrote about bananas and how good they taste, or the bed and breakfast they stayed in with their parents on summer vacation in New Hampshire…”

“And by the way, he also made a reference to President Bush. He said his IQ was on a par with a lamp. Do you want to call the Secret Service…oh, Homeland Security. Good. We’ll all be here. I don’t think he’s armed.”

That’s the teacher. The student is thinking: “Should I leave that sentence in my story? The instructor might think I’m a nutcase. And what about this phrase over here? Maybe I’d better re-write the whole thing. Make it about bananas.”

Cho, the accused murderer, and Cho the writer. The crime was murder. The writing was writing. Of course, everyone’s a psychologist now. Everyone has a handle on inner problems, and the right phrases to describe them. Clinical phrases. Bullshit phrases.

“Dear Louella, Last night I went to a rock and roll concert. The lead singer took off his pants. I thought it was disgusting. But my feelings aside, do you think it might have been a symptom of something more troubling? Might he be getting ready to do something violent? I believe in prevention. If there is a way to stop people before they do terrible things, we should intervene. How else can we protect ourselves? Anyway, cleanliness is next to godliness. The lighting in the arena was dim, but I thought I saw a stain on his underwear.”

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

MORE BACKGROUND ON THE VIRGINIA KILLINGS

April 19, 2007. Dr. Peter Breggin, psychiatrist and author, has probably contributed more to the true understanding of psychiatric drugs and their harmful effects than any other person in the world. His site is www.breggin.com

He has also taken on drug companies as an expert witness in lawsuits, where a person on these drugs has committed murder.

In a conversation he and I had some years ago, he pointed out that some children, prescribed Ritalin for ADHD, become depressed. Then, the doctor diagnoses these kids with clinical depression---claiming the sadness has nothing to do with the Ritalin---and gives them an antidepressant like Prozac, Zoloft, or Paxil. The results of this drug piling-on can be devastating. Suicide or homicide are possible.

Once again, we are waiting to find out whether the accused murderer in the Virginia killings had ever been given psychiatric drugs.

Here is an abstract of an article written by Dr. Breggin, in which he proposes that psychiatric drugs can create a spellbinding effect, in which the person doesn’t recognize what is happening to him. (You can read the full article as a PDF file at Dr. Breggin’s site.) The implications of his observations are enormous. The usual sorts of feedback that would tell a person the drugs are causing grave problems may be missing or unobserved. So the person can plow ahead, thinking things are getting better. If the drugs are stimulating all sorts of grandiose destructive schemes, he would view these changes as “good.”

Intoxication Anosognosia:
The Spellbinding Effect of Psychiatric Drugs
by Peter R. Breggin, M.D.
ABSTRACT
Why do so many individuals persist in taking psychoactive substances, including psychiatric drugs, after adverse mental and behavioral effects have become severe and even disabling? The author has previously proposed the brain-disabling principle of psychiatric treatment that all somatic psychiatric treatments impair the function of the brain and mind. Intoxication anosognosia (medication spellbinding) is an expression of this drug-induced mental disability. Intoxication anosognosia causes the victim to underestimate the degree of drug-induced mental impairment, to deny the harmful role that the drug plays in the person's altered state, and in many cases compel the individual to mistakenly believe that he or she is functioning better. In the extreme, the individual displays out-of-character compulsively destructive behaviors, including violence toward self and others.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorfakenews.com

MEDICAL DRUG DEATHS, PROZAC AND MURDER

APRIL 19, 2007. INTRODUCTION----Let’s look at what even conventional medical sources have to say about the effects of pharmaceuticals on the population.

I have posted numbers before. But it’s worth a brief review. I’m now quoting from “Drug Industry Scandal a ‘Crisis,’” written by Ritt Goldstein and published by the Inter Press Service on October 2, 2004:

“The highly respected British medical journal, 'The Lancet', published a 1998 study by University of Toronto researchers showing that adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are ‘a leading cause of death.’ It noted the study examined ‘only ADRs attributed to drugs that were 'properly prescribed and administered'. The study's authors suggested, ‘many adverse reactions result from the use of drugs with unavoidably high toxicity,’ and that medicine ‘cannot expect to reduce this burden until drug-induced illness is actually defined as a problem.’

“In the May 1 2002 issue of the 'Journal of the American Medical Association' (JAMA), five physicians from Harvard Medical School reported adverse drug reactions ‘are believed to be a leading cause of death in the United States’…

“Lexchin, who consults on pharmaceutical policy for groups such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and governments including Australia and Canada, estimated that in the last five years, ‘biased research, suppression of negative studies, over-publication of positive studies and, all their (the pharmaceutical industry's) promotional activities, which includes their funding of continuing medical education,’ has meant, yearly, ‘one death per 1,500 people’ in the general population. That translates into 6,670 deaths a year for every 10 million of a nation's populace. For perspective, about 3,000 people died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

“In contrast, the 1998 'Lancet' article viewed it likely that adverse drug reactions ‘could account for more than 100,000 (in-hospital alone) deaths in the USA each year, making them the fourth commonest cause of death.’ The figures are likely ‘much the same’ throughout the developed world, it added.”

End of Goldstein quotes.

In my last article on the Virginia murders, I traced some of the effects of the antidepressant Paxil. Here are a few descriptions relating to Prozac.

The following summaries of court cases are offered by David Healy, at his site, www.healyprozac.com Healy is a British psycho-pharmacologist and the author of the definitive work on the history of antidepressants. He is also the author of Let Them Eat Prozac.

Fentress et al v Shea Communications et al
This was the trial following the murder spree of Joseph Wesbecker at his place of work in Louisville, Kentucky, which led to the death of 8 employees at the Standard Gravure plant there followed by his own suicide. Wesbecker had been on Prozac. An account of the legal manoeuvrings before, during and after the trial can be found in Chapter 4 of Let Them Eat Prozac.

Forsyth v Eli Lilly and Company
After 10 days on Prozac, William Forsyth stabbed his wife, June, 15 times before impaling himself on a serrated kitchen knife up on a chair. The remaining Forsyth family took out an action against Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac. See Chapters 5 and 7 of Let Them Eat Prozac.

Tobin v SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals
With a prior history of a poor response to an SSRI, Don Schell was put on Paxil. Forty-eight hours later he put three bullets from two different guns through his wife, Rita’s, head, as well as through his daughter, Deborah’s, head and through his granddaughter, Alyssa’s, head before shooting himself through the head. See Chapter 10 of Let Them Eat Prozac.

End of Healy passage.

I know these are grisly descriptions. But they convey what can happen to people on this drug. As of this writing, we do not know whether the accused Virginia Tech murderer, Cho, was on one of these antidepressants. But if he was---even if only briefly---he could have sustained the kind of damage that eventually made him translate his fantasies into action.

I make this speculation: I believe that right now, in Virginia, hired hands of several drug companies are carrying on their own investigation and mission. They are trying to find out what psychiatric drugs, if any, Cho had been on. They want to minimize fallout. Commercial fallout. I also suspect that, behind the scenes, drug-company operatives are making connections they hope will be able to deflect the police from looking too carefully at this drug issue.

Potentially, billions of dollars are at stake. For drug companies, what do 33 deaths matter, when put up against all that money?

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

A NATION PROGRAMMED TO GRIEVE AND CONCEAL THE CRIME

APRIL 18, 2007. Do you ever get a weird feeling when the candlelight vigil and the healing slogans come zooming in so soon after the mass crime? I do.

Who sets up these phony ceremonies? And why?

Speaking for myself, I’d be monumentally pissed off after a mass murder. I’d be shocked, sure, but I’d also want to find out what really happened. Wouldn’t you?

Don’t you think the 25,000 students at Virginia Tech want to know a few things, before they hold hands and sway to the sounds of some authority-figure summing up the whole deal for them?

But you see, anger is out of fashion. We’re supposed to be smug---or in the absence of that, grief-stricken. The smug people are the ones who are bankable. They have their cars and their houses and their security systems and, most of all, their professional reputations. They think they know something. They really know very little, but that doesn’t stop their Onslaught of bullshit pretense. They’re crafty enough to realize they can’t afford to get down in the dirt and really investigate a crime of this kind.

A crime is an interesting thing. It has answers. You can find them if you look hard enough. The cops normally don’t look very hard. They assemble a pile of crap details, most of which are irrelevant. They have to look like they’re working. Sometimes, they have to cover for other people.

I wonder what the 25,000 students at Virginia Tech would think if they learned that this kid had been taking SSRI antidepressants---and if on top of that they found out those drugs cause some patients to commit murder. I wonder what they’d do. Probably nothing. Because they were zombies before they became Zombies.

Students are mostly zombies.

The grief vigil and the artifact called mass healing are jive. Let’s face it. They’re a lot like religion: a truckload of promises and not much delivery. Mainly, people just tell themselves healing is happening.

“Well, 33 people died, but in the aftermath I did make a few new friends, so that was good.”

Welcome to the new and improved America.

“The networks are covering the vigil tonight. Let’s go.”

These events are, of course, staged to deflect people from the crime. They’re fill-in. They substitute for the truth. On many levels.

Maybe the drug companies have reps to handle setting up the candles and the lights and the guitar player and the word in the president’s ear that he should fly down and offer a few meaningless mumbles out of his mumble jar.

LET’S FIND OUT WHO REALLY DID THIS or LET’S FIND OUT WHY HE DID IT is replaced quickly by LET’S ALL GRIEVE TOGETHER and LET’S HEAL.

I see it as shoveling dirt on top of the corpses as fast as possible.

And if one or two parents of the dead students fly into a rage, there are people who show up to advise them: channel your emotion into more gun control.

STUDENT---PSYCHIATRIC DRUG---MURDERER….learning that mantra must be prevented…can’t let that cat out of the bag.

I don’t care if someone found God in the aftermath. I really don’t. I don’t care if people think they feel better because they lit candles. I don’t care what the authorities are phoning in. I don’t care what the suddenly sad-sack newscasters are laying on.

The nation has to heal together and move on. When did that horseshit start? What happened at Virginia Tech isn’t about the nation. It’s about whoever pulled the trigger.

Assuming this kid Cho did it (and I never automatically believe what I see on the tube), what made him kill people he didn’t know? What made him blow half of his own head away? What made him so proficient with two guns? Start there. Forget “the nation.” The nation is going down the toilet all on its own.

Meanwhile, down in Virginia, the grief counselors are riding over the hill with the remedies. It’s all about post-traumatic stress and other related mumbo-jumbo. Calm everybody down. Get some of these kids on SSRIs.

I’m waiting for the mass shooting where a few of the survivors, newly loaded on the drugs, feel their brains scramble and then go out and do the same thing. Gives a new meaning to the term serial murder.

This is all about mass conditioned response. Ring the bell, the dogs drool. A few dozen people die, let’s have a grief/healing ceremony and come together. And then “pick up the pieces and move on.”

You can do that, you know. You can condition a whole population to respond in the way you want them to, no matter how insane it is. Stage enough grief vigils after mass murders and people EXPECT that to be the sequence.

“Now is the time for grief, sharing, caring, and healing.”

“Oh, goody. I can do that. Let’s go.”

And then if you DON’T go along with the prescribed response, people say, “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to do the right thing? Don’t you want to show sympathy and support? Are you indifferent? Are you inhuman?”

It’s all a stage play. And this one will close down after a few weeks. Short run. Until the next time.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

THE VIRGINIA TECH SHOOTINGS: A PSYCHIATRIC DRUG CONNECTION?

APRIL 18, 2007. We can expect a number of outcomes from the Virginia Tech shooting. Among them, so-called teachers of writing will be working closely with psychologists and school counselors to pounce on any kid who writes essays or poems in a dark and “abnormal” fashion---because the accused murderer of 33 people did “that kind” of writing.

This will put a lid on what students dare to write, because the consequence may be mandatory counseling and psychiatric drugs and “suspicion of a tendency toward murder.”

MSNBC.com is now stating that the shooter at Virginia Tech, according to other reports, was (or may have been) under the care of a doctor for depression and was taking medication.

See below my 1999 essay, SCHOOL SHOOTINGS IN AMERICA, available all over the Internet. It details the connections of shooters to SSRI antidepressants (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, etc), and it shows, as other authors have, the ability of these drugs to scramble the brain and evoke violence, including homicide.

So, a result of Virginia Tech, we may have a new funnel here: at a young age, those who seem to exhibit abnormal behavior (whatever the hell that is) in their artistic and creative output will be shoved into taking the very drugs that can and do cause violent behavior.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

When you have a population (and mental professionals) who haven’t the slightest idea what creativity and imagination are all about, because they are terrified of finding it in themselves---TERRIFIED--you get this sort of reaction:

“He was writing dark things; therefore he was always a threat to kill people.”

That’s the level of understanding. ZERO.

Whereas instead: LOOK AT THE DRUGS. LOOK AT THE DRUGS. WAS CHO TAKING PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS? FIND OUT WHAT HE WAS TAKING? WAS HE TAKING PROZAC? WAS HE TAKING ZOLOFT? WAS HE TAKING PAXIL?

You want killers? Look at the companies who are making this stuff and lying about it and selling it. Look at the arrogant and insulated doctors who are prescribing it.

I’m an artist. I’ve been writing and painting for 47 years. I write and paint anything I want to. And I don’t have the least interest in killing anybody.

In the days to come, you’ll read and hear and see more about the supposed connection between this kid and what he was writing at school and his rampage. All manner of idiots will comment on it. As if they know. They are robots at the gate. They have nothing at stake except to promote the leveling down of everyone to android status. That’s the way more and more people in this country are making their living these days.

“Jimmy? Oh, he wants to go to school and major in criminology. Isn’t it wonderful? He wants to spy on everybody and put everybody in jail. Then we’ll have a noble and religious nation, just as our forefathers hoped for at the beginning. If he can’t get into school, he’ll join the Army and go kill some people overseas. We’ll fly the flag and pray for his safe return.”

Have fun. Good luck.

When you turn a nation in the direction of becoming one enormous bureaucracy, you get a truly perverted form of caretaking-surveillance-monitoring-enforcement that floats like a foul bilge on the water. Everybody and his brother automatically think they are experts on behavior. It’s all a lab run by self-inflated types who’ve had no real contact with life.

They fake that contact. They are transparent. They learn only one lesson: control.

That’s called the end of empire.

Here is my 1999 report----

WHY DID THEY DO IT?
An Inquiry into the School Shootings in America
by
Jon Rappoport
(c)1999 Jon Rappoport.

WARNING: Do not attempt to withdraw from psychiatric drugs suddenly. This process should be done gradually, with guidance by someone who really knows how to handle it. Sudden withdrawal can cause EXTREMELY serious adverse effects. See www.breggin.com

The massacre at Columbine High School took place on April 20, 1999. Astonishingly, for eight days after the tragedy, during thousands of hours of prime-time television coverage, virtually no one mentioned the word "drugs." Then the issue was opened. Eric Harris, one of the shooters at Columbine, was on at least one drug.

The NY Times of April 29, 1999, and other papers reported that Harris was rejected from enlisting in the Marines for medical reasons. A friend of the family told the Times that Harris was being treated by a psychiatrist. And then several sources told the Washington Post that the drug prescribed as treatment was Luvox, manufactured by Solvay.

In two more days, the "drug-issue" was gone.

Luvox is of the same class as Prozac and Zoloft and Paxil. They are labeled SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). They attempt to alleviate depression by changing brain-levels of the natural substance serotonin. Luvox has a slightly different chemical configuration from Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft, and it was approved by the FDA for obsessive-compulsive disorder, although many doctors apparently prescribe it for depression.

Had Eric Harris been on other drugs as well? Ritalin? Prozac? Tranquilizers? As yet we don't know.

Prozac is the wildly popular Eli Lilly antidepressant which has been linked to suicidal and homicidal actions. It is now given to young children. Again, its chemical composition is very close to Luvox, the drug that Harris took.

Dr. Peter Breggin, the eminent psychiatrist and author (Toxic Psychiatry, Talking Back to Prozac, Talking Back to Ritalin), told me, "With Luvox there is some evidence of a four-percent rate for mania in adolescents. Mania, for certain individuals, could be a component in grandiose plans to destroy large numbers of other people. Mania can go over the hill to psychosis."

Dr. Joseph Tarantolo is a psychiatrist in private practice in Washington DC. He is the president of the Washington chapter of the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians. Tarantolo states that "all the SSRIs [including Prozac and Luvox] relieve the patient of feeling. He becomes less empathic, as in `I don't care as much,' which means `It's easier for me to harm you.' If a doctor treats someone who needs a great deal of strength just to think straight, and gives him one of these drugs, that could push him over the edge into violent behavior."

In Arianna Huffington's syndicated newspaper column of July 9, 1998, Dr. Breggin states, "I have no doubt that Prozac can cause or contribute to violence and suicide. I've seen many cases. In a recent clinical trial, 6 percent of the children became psychotic on Prozac. And manic psychosis can lead to violence."

Huffington follows up on this: "In addition to the case of Kip Kinkel, who had been a user of Prozac [Kinkel was the shooter in the May 21, 1998, Springfield, Oregon, school massacre], there are much less publicized instances where teenagers on Prozac or similar antidepressants have exploded into murderous rages: teenagers like Julie Marie Meade from Maryland who was shot to death by the police when they found her waving a gun at them. Or Ben Garris, a 16-year old in Baltimore who stabbed his counselor to death. Or Kristina Fetters, a 14-year old from Des Moines, Iowa, who stabbed her favorite great aunt in a rage that landed her a life sentence."

Dr. Tarantolo also has written about Julie Marie Meade. In a column for the ICSPP (International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology) News, "Children and Prozac: First Do No Harm," Tarantolo describes how Julie Meade, in November of 1996, called 911, "begging the cops to come and shoot her. And if they didn't do it quickly, she would do it to herself. There was also the threat that she would shoot them as well."

The police came within a few minutes, "5 of them to be exact, pumping at least 10 bullets into her head and torso."

Tarantolo remarks that a friend of Julie said Julie "had plans to make the honor roll and go to college. He [the friend] had also observed her taking all those pills." What pills? Tarantolo called the Baltimore medical examiner, and spoke with Dr. Martin Bullock, who was on a fellowship at that office. Bullock said, "She had been taking Prozac for four years."

Tarantolo asked Bullock, "Did you know that Prozac has been implicated in impulsive de novo violence and suicidalness?" Bullock said he was not aware of this.

Tarantolo writes, "Had she recently increased the dosage? Was she taking other drugs? Drugs such as Ritalin, cocaine, amphetamine, and tricyclic antidepressants (Tofranil, Pamelor, Elavil) could all potentiate the effect of the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors include Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil)."

In layman's language, mixing these drugs could tinker in ignorance with basic brain chemistry and bring on horrendous violent behavior.

Tarantolo is careful to point out, "A change [in Julie's drug-taking pattern] was not necessary, though, to explain her behavior. Violent and suicidal behavior have been observed both early (a few weeks) and late (many months) in treatment with Prozac."

The November 23rd, 1996, Washington Post reported the Julie Meade death by shooting. The paper mentioned nothing about Prozac. This was left to a more penetrating newspaper, the local PG County Journal-the Maryland county in which the shooting took place.

Why did the Post never mention Prozac or interview any of a growing number of psychiatrists who have realized the danger of giving these drugs to children (and adults)?

Is it because major media outlets enjoy considerable support from pharmaceutical advertisers? Is it because these companies have been running successful PR campaigns to keep their drugs' names quiet when suicides and murders are reported?

Another small paper, The Vigo Examiner (Terra Haute, Indiana), looked into the May 21, 1998, murders in Springfield, Oregon. The shooter, who had been on Prozac, Kip Kinkel, was a 15-year-old freshman. First he killed his parents, then walked into his school cafeteria and gunned down fellow students. He killed 2 and wounded 22. He is awaiting trial.

Vigo Examiner reporter Maureen Sielaff covered this story. Showing straightforward independence where many big-time reporters just don't, Sielaff researched the book, Prozac and Other Psychiatric Drugs, by Lewis A. Opler, MD. She writes, "The following side effects are listed for Prozac: apathy; hallucinations; hostility; irrational ideas; paranoid reactions; antisocial behavior; hysteria; and suicidal thoughts." An explosive cocktail of symptoms.

A day or two after the Littleton, Colorado, shootings, a teenager in Los Angeles, depressed about Littleton, hung himself. The boy had been under treatment for depression. Did that mean Prozac? Zoloft? Luvox? Will any reporter look into that incident?

The Jonesboro, Arkansas, school shooting took place on March 24, 1998. Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, apparently faked a fire alarm at Westside Middle School. Then when everyone came outside, the boys fired from the nearby woods, killing four students and a teacher, wounding 11 other people. Charged as juveniles, the boys were convicted of capital murder and battery. They can be held in jail until they are 21 years old. Dr. Alan Lipman, of Georgetown University, one of the experts interviewed on network television after Littleton, remarked that at least one of the boys who committed murder in Jonesboro had been, before the incident, treated for violent behavior. Treated how? With Prozac, with Zoloft, with a combination of antidepressants? The action of these drugs-altering the supply of the brain neurotransmitter serotonin-is touted by some people as a potential cure for violence. The only problem is, there is no acknowledged proof within the broad psychiatric profession that serotonin is a causative factor in violence. That is an unproven theory.

Not that unproven theories stop the dedicated from experimenting on brains of the young.

We must get a complete review of the medical history of the two Littleton shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

In the aftermath of other school shootings, have parents tried to find answers? With what responses have their efforts been met?

In Olivehurst, California, on May 1, 1992, Eric Houston, 20, killed 4 people and wounded 10 at his former high school. Houston was sentenced to death.

On January 18, 1993, in Grayhurst, Kentucky, Scott Pennington, 17, entered Deanna McDavid's English class at East Carter High School and shot her in the head. He also shot Marvin Hicks, the school janitor, in the stomach. Pennington was sentenced to life, without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

In Richmond, Virginia, on October 30, 1995, Edward Earl Spellman, 18, shot and wounded 4 students outside their high school.

On February 2, 1996, in an algebra class at Frontier Junior High School in Mose Lake, Washington, Barry Loukaitas, 14, killed his teacher and 2 teen-aged boys with an assault rifle, and wounded a girl. Loukaitas was sentenced to 2 mandatory life terms.

In St. Louis, Missouri, on February 29, 1996, Mark Boyd, 30, fired into a school bus when its doors opened, killed a 15-year-old pregnant girl and wounded the driver.

On July 26, 1996, Yohao Albert, a high-school junior, shot and wounded 2 classmates in a stairwell at his Los Angeles school.

On February 19, 1997, in Bethel, Alaska, Evan Ramsey, 16, shot and killed his high school principal Ron Edwards and one of his classmates, Josh Palacious. Two students were wounded. Ramsey was sentenced to 2 99-year terms. Authorities later accused 2 students of knowing the shootings were going to happen.

On October 1, 1997, in Pearl, Mississippi, Luke Woodham, 16, started shooting in his school cafeteria. He killed 2 students, including his ex-girlfriend, and wounded 7 others. He also killed his mother. Woodham was sentenced to life. Authorities later accused 6 friends of conspiracy.

On December 1, 1997, at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, Michael Carneal, 14, found students coming out of a prayer meeting. Using a stolen pistol, he shot 8 of these students and killed 3. One of the wounded girls is paralyzed.

On December 15, 1997, in Stamps, Arkansas, Joseph Todd, 14, was arrested in the shooting of 2 students outside their high school. The students recovered from their wounds. Todd faces trial.

In Edinboro, Pennsylvania, on April 24, 1998, Andrew Wurst, 14, allegedly shot and killed his science teacher, John Gillette, at the JW Parker Middle School at an 8th grade dance. Two students and another teacher were wounded. Wurst is awaiting trial.

In Fayetteville, Tennessee, on May 19, 1998, several days before graduation, Jacob Davis, 18, allegedly shot and killed Robert Creson, a classmate at Lincoln County High School. Creson was dating Davis' ex-girlfriend. Davis, who was an honor student, awaits trial.

A CNN story, dated May 21, 1998, authored by its Justice Dept. correspondent, Pierre Thomas, offered the following statistics: "Ten percent of the nation's schools reported one or more violent crimes in the 1996-1997 school year, including murder, suicide, rape, robbery and fights involving weapons." Even if these Justice Dept. figures are self-serving and overblown, they point to a chilling landscape.

The availability of guns to kids is relevant. No question.

The saturation of violence on TV is a cause. No question.

The breakup of families is a cause. No question. So is outright child abuse.

The compartmentalization of children from their parents is a cause.

The absence of a good education is a cause.

The growing poverty and its atmosphere of hopelessness in America is a cause.

The presence of lunatic ideologies (Nazism, Satanism) in the landscape is a factor.

You can't assign numbers to these causes. You can't say one of the above is a 23% cause or a 3% cause.

But is there another factor in pushing kids over the edge? Are some children, angry and desperate and in proximity to weapons, who are nevertheless quite able to maintain moral equilibrium, being jolted by chemicals which are scrambling their brains and intensifying their impulses and amplifying their dark thoughts?

The bulk of American media appears afraid to go after psychiatric drugs as a cause. This fear stems, in part, from the sure knowledge that expert attack dogs are waiting in the wings, funded by big-time pharmaceutical companies. There are doctors and researchers as well who have seen a dark truth about these drugs in the journals, but are afraid to stand up and speak out. After all, the medical culture punishes no one as severely as its own defectors, when defection from the party line threatens profits and careers and reputations, when defection alerts the public that deadly effects could be emanating from corporate boardrooms.

And what of the federal government itself? The FDA licenses every drug released for public use and certifies that it is safe and effective. If a real tornado started at the public level, if the mothers of the young killers and young victims began to see a terrible knowledge swim into view, a knowledge they hadn't imagined, and if THEY joined forces, the earth would shake.

After commenting on some of the adverse effects of the antidepressant drug Prozac, psychiatrist Peter Breggin notes, "From the initial studies, it was also apparent that a small percentage of Prozac patients became psychotic."

Prozac, in fact, endured a rocky road in the press for a time. Stories on it rarely appear now. The major media have backed off. But on February 7th, 1991, Amy Marcus' Wall Street Journal article on the drug carried the headline, "Murder Trials Introduce Prozac Defense." She wrote, "A spate of murder trials in which defendants claim they became violent when they took the antidepressant Prozac are imposing new problems for the drug's maker, Eli Lilly and Co."

Also on February 7, 1991, the New York Times ran a Prozac piece headlined, "Suicidal Behavior Tied Again to Drug: Does Antidepressant Prompt Violence?"

In his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry, Dr. Breggin mentions that the Donahue show (Feb. 28, 1991) "put together a group of individuals who had become compulsively self-destructive and murderous after taking Prozac and the clamorous telephone and audience response confirmed the problem."

Breggin also cites a troubling study from the February 1990 American Journal of Psychiatry (Teicher et al, v.147:207-210) which reports on "six depressed patients, previously free of recent suicidal ideation, who developed `intense, violent suicidal preoccupations after 2-7 weeks of fluoxetine [Prozac] treatment.' The suicidal preoccupations lasted from three days to three months after termination of the treatment. The report estimates that 3.5 percent of Prozac users were at risk. While denying the validity of the study, Dista Products, a division of Eli Lilly, put out a brochure for doctors dated August 31, 1990, stating that it was adding `suicidal ideation' to the adverse events section of its Prozac product information."

An earlier study, from the September 1989 Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, by Joseph Lipiniski, Jr., indicates that in five examined cases people on Prozac developed what is called akathesia. Symptoms include intense anxiety, inability to sleep, the "jerking of extremities," and "bicycling in bed or just turning around and around." Breggin comments that akathesia "may also contribute to the drug's tendency to cause self-destructive or violent tendencies ... Akathesia can become the equivalent of biochemical torture and could possibly tip someone over the edge into self-destructive or violent behavior ... The June 1990 Health Newsletter, produced by the Public Citizen Research Group, reports, 'Akathesia, or symptoms of restlessness, constant pacing, and purposeless movements of the feet and legs, may occur in 10-25 percent of patients on Prozac.'"

The well-known publication, California Lawyer, in a December 1998 article called "Protecting Prozac," details some of the suspect maneuvers of Eli Lilly in its handling of suits against Prozac. California Lawyer also mentions other highly qualified critics of the drug: "David Healy, MD, an internationally renowned psychopharmacologist, has stated in sworn deposition that `contrary to Lilly's view, there is a plausible cause-and-effect relationship between Prozac' and suicidal-homicidal events. An epidemiological study published in 1995 by the British Medical Journal also links Prozac to increased suicide risk."

When pressed, proponents of these SSRI drugs sometimes say, "Well, the benefits for the general population far outweigh the risk," or, "Maybe in one or two tragic cases the dosage prescribed was too high." But the problem will not go away on that basis. A shocking review-study published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases (1996, v.184, no.2), written by Rhoda L. Fisher and Seymour Fisher, called "Antidepressants for Children," concludes: "Despite unanimous literature of double-blind studies indicating that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos in treating depression in children and adolescents, such medications continue to be in wide use."

In wide use. This despite such contrary information and the negative, dangerous effects of these drugs.

There are other studies: "Emergence of self-destructive phenomena in children and adolescents during fluoxetine treatment," published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (1991, vol.30), written by RA King, RA Riddle, et al. It reports self-destructive phenomena in 14% (6/42) of children and adolescents (10-17 years old) who had treatment with fluoxetine (Prozac) for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

July, 1991. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Hisako Koizumi, MD, describes a thirteen-year-old boy who was on Prozac: "full of energy," "hyperactive," "clown-like." All this devolved into sudden violent actions which were "totally unlike him."

September, 1991. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Author Laurence Jerome reports the case of a ten-year old who moves with his family to a new location. Becoming depressed, the boy is put on Prozac by a doctor. The boy is then "hyperactive, agitated ... irritable." He makes a "somewhat grandiose assessment of his own abilities." Then he calls a stranger on the phone and says he is going to kill him. The Prozac is stopped, and the symptoms disappear.

Recently I spoke with a psychologist at a major university about the possibility that Prozac could have provoked some of the school shootings. He said, "Well, in the case of Columbine High School, that couldn't have been the case. The boy had a whole plan there. Prozac is more of an impulse-causer." I said, "Suppose the plan was in the realm of a maybe-fantasy and then Prozac pushed the whole thing over the edge." After a pause he said, "Yes, that could be." As mentioned above, grandiose ideas can be generated by a person taking Prozac, and in the literature there is also mention of a "delusional system" being the outcome in a case of a patient on the drug.

A December 1, 1996, newswire story from Cox News Service, by Gary Kane, states, "Scores of young men and women across the country are learning that the Ritalin they took as teen-agers is stopping them from serving their country or starting a military career."

Kane continues, "All branches of the armed forces reject potential enlistees who use Ritalin or similar behavior-modifying medications ... And people who took Ritalin as teen-agers to treat ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder], an inhibitor of academic skills, are rejected from military service, even if they no longer take the medication."

Was this the case with Eric Harris? Was he rejected by the Marines only because of the