The Prime Minister’s Office announced yesterday the MHRA‘s intention to advise prescription drug users to report adverse reactions to pharmaceutical products, in response to a petition started by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) in London, which called for ‘Black Box Warnings’ on psychotropic drugs.

According to CCHR, whose mission is ‘to expose and eradicate psychiatric violations of human rights,’ there have been 119 international warnings against psycho-pharmaceuticals since the year 2000. Included among these are well-known psychiatric drugs such as Ritalin, Prozac and Seroxat.^[1]

Responding to the petition, the Government pointed to the Yellow Card Scheme, which is run by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the Commission on Human Medicines (CHM), and which collects information on side effects and adverse drug reactions.

Supporting the petition’s aim, the Government announced a change to Patient Information Leaflets, rather than on-the-box warnings:

“As part of the MHRA’s strategy to raise public awareness of the Yellow Card Scheme, the Agency is seeking to include a statement in Patient Information Leaflets making consumers aware of the need to report suspected adverse drug reactions. While this is not currently a requirement of European legislation, in the UK it is considered good practice.”^[1]

CCHR supporters highlighted child suicides linked to psychiatric antidepressants at a demonstration in Liverpool last week, in response to the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists which took place at Liverpool’s BT Convention Centre. Supporters included members of the Church of Scientology, which originally founded the organisation with Jewish Professor of Psychiatry Dr Thomas Szasz in 1969.

CCHR is said to be happy with the petition response.

Related Links:

• MHRA
• Yellow Card Scheme
• CCHR UK
• Prime Minister’s Office

First published at NowPublic.com

“[B]enzodiazepines [a class of drugs that includes Valium and Xanax] can produce a wide variety of abnormal mental responses and hazardous behavioral abnormalities, including rebound anxiety and insomnia, psychosis, paranoia, violence, antisocial acts, depression, and suicide.”

For an anti-anxiety medication, it’s pretty worrying that possible adverse reactions to the drug would include anxiety! Furthermore, its listed side effects also include anxiety among the more concerning ones, like “liver problems” and “memory impairment”. If a person is anxious, what the hell are they doing taking something like this?

Chimps are some of our closest relatives, taxonomically speaking. Travis the chimp, who lived in Connecticut, USA, was raised by his owner Sandra Herold, now 70 years of age, as if he was a human child. Seldom causing any trouble in the past, 15-year old Travis was normally mild-mannered and did many things just as humans do, including getting in and out of cars and his house, dressing himself and eating at the table. One day he takes Xanax and flips out. How does that bode for our own race? Well judging by the above, it’s a pretty dangerous narcotic. So “not very well” is the answer as far as anyone prescribed Xanax should be concerned.

It’s beyond me why drugs would be prescribed for this kind of thing anyway. The Scientology Handbook, based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard, shows one source of anxiety (in humans of course) to be the environment in which we live. Solutions for a Dangerous Environment is a chapter and booklet from the Handbook that shows you how to deal with feeling afraid or helpless, as if you can’t do anything about the things going on around you, like the rapes, murders, robberies and so on that you see, read or hear about in the news. And let me assure you there are no drugs involved.

Psychiatrists will prescribe the most random drugs for situations the likes of which occur to many people at some time in their life. Why must every facet of human nature be labelled as a “disorder”? It mustn’t. Don’t let them get away with it. Get the facts; fight back—visit CCHR.org and find out how you can help eradicate psychiatric abuse and clean up the field of mental health.

The US presidential elections are huge news, spanning the globe with their influence. Recently we’ve tuned in to criticism of Sarah Palin, Republican candidate John McCain’s chosen running mate for the potential Vice Presidency. She’s a pro-life Christian and said that evolution and creationism should both be discussed in schools. She’s under heavy fire at the moment and I’m not about to take sides, but she’s been very open about her personal beliefs, which is a bold move in politics. A professor at the Royal Society said that creationism should be taught as a ‘world view.’ He was blasted in readers’ comments because he is also a Christian minister.

All doom and gloom? I don’t think so. Perhaps the most religious people I know are atheists. “What?!” you say. Well if we’re going to talk about ‘religious’ in terms of firmly set beliefs and a kind of stubbornness toward changing them, then to me it’s those who believe that ‘religion’ is nonsense who are the most guilty. I, of course, am willing to deal with that, as I do every day in our increasingly secular society, isolated from religion by an increasing mockery of it in the media. Religion vs. science is a far more heated debate, and I’m not about to throw myself as bait to the likes of Richard Dawkins, who I see as the [un]spiritual leader of the atheist movement. Oh, have a laugh won’t you? Let’s not get serious.

So back to school, as they say. We’re looking here at two viewpoints that have been represented as diametrically opposed to one another. Creationism is defined by Oxford as “the belief that the universe and living creatures were created by God in accordance with the account given in the Old Testament.” Evolution is a bit different. In our sense, we’re looking at what Oxford says is “the process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed, especially by natural selection.”

Genetics is a subject that deals with evolution as a principle. When I studied genetics in biology and additional classes, the process of natural selection was discussed. It was stressed however that this is a theory for which much evidence exists, but which cannot be conclusively proven. Genetic anomalies and the survival of unwanted hereditary conditions such as night blindness, were cited as examples of its unpredictability. In addition, it was postulated that the improvement of modern medical procedures could have had an impact on the process of natural selection, because we can now save the lives of those with traits that would, in theory, have been made extinct by the evolutionary process.

Then there’s creationism. When I was at school, Religious Education was compulsory. I had one good R.E. teacher and he left the teaching profession to become a priest. The rest of my R.E. teachers made lessons boring and restricted thinking during classes so that it just became a chore. For me it became a game: how can I annoy the R.E. teacher today? I would regularly write “God” without a capital “G,” refer to anything but Christianity in my essays, and try to find ways to fault the teacher. Needless to say, I’ve grown up since my school days. But there was always a sense of what I termed ‘ramming it down your neck’ in those lessons. I am emphatically not a proponent of such teaching methods. But even in R.E. lessons, at least during secondary (high) school, creationism was rarely discussed. It was left to the personal beliefs of the students. The one time it was discussed was in debating the possibility that the Bible could be interpreted as symbolic rather than literal, an idea which many Christians I know hold true.

But if evolution says that life changes and adapts, and creationism says that life was created by God, how can the two be positioned in a head-on battle? The simple answer is, they can’t. Creationism is a religious and personal belief about the coming into existence of life and the physical universe. Evolution is a theory postulated by Charles Darwin about which much scientific evidence exists. But nothing in history has succeeded in discounting the possibility that there is another influence on evolution than mere ‘chance’; indeed, it is seldom stated that this is impossible, or even improbable.

The Big Bang is another theory which is almost as difficult to prove as the existence of God. But scientists have clung to it because it explains many phenomena which they see in space. It tends to reconcile the evidence they have before them. You might note that this similar to a line used by some atheists in ‘explaining’ why people hold religious beliefs: “It tends to explain what they see around them.” Either way, many scientists also hold religious beliefs and the idea that you have to be an atheist in order to be a scientist is false, and I cannot stress that enough.

The most important thing in all of this is one’s integrity. In short, this is being true to your observations and knowledge. If you see something and as far as you’re concerned, you know it happened, then that’s fine with me. Just because I didn’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist for you. And it works both ways. If you don’t believe in miracles because you’ve never experienced one, or if you know miracles can be because you have experienced them, then I would say both are equally correct. The problem comes when the two opposing views begin to, well, oppose one another. If I were to criticise everything that I heard about that wasn’t in line with what I personally believed, I would be seen as a bigot, most likely.

What is true for you is what you have observed yourself and when you lose that you have lost everything.
—L. Ron Hubbard, Personal Integrity.

Destruction of an opposing reality is far from the nicest thing one can do. That’s not to say we should be passive about radical ideas that could have a negative impact, nor that we should teach the theory of evolution as a mere ‘belief.’ In a school science lesson however, the possibility of other, perhaps spiritual factors, in shaping the course of evolution, should not be attacked. It probably shouldn’t be promoted either, as this would be seen as unscientific due to the lack of tangible evidence. But there is no tangible evidence for the existence of ‘chance’ either, and scientists should be reminded of this. In my opinion, creationism is not a matter of scientific interest. The Big Bang then, should always be taught as a theory until such a time as more evidence becomes apparent. But the opposition of science and religion should not be brought into the school system and nor should their separation.

Before you get too excited, I moderate these comments. I’d love to hear what you think about this, but let’s not get carried away. I understand this is a touchy topic…

Keynote speaker Piero Bonadeo, UNODC Liaison Officer to the EU, echoed UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa’s words as he spoke about working with security forces to quash supply of illicit substances, while fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with civil society in the battle to reduce demand through primary prevention. Full data on the report can be found at unodc.org.

“The concentration on prevention and treatment in drug-control strategy is bringing health to the forefront of the issue,” said Bonadeo in his address to the representatives of some 30 nations. “There is growing support for the fact that drug control is a responsibility shared by all of us.”

One topic for debate was the figures for drug addiction in the Middle East, highlighting the fact that while countries such as Afghanistan—with its $4 billion (€2.5bn/£2bn) opium trade—are major producers of drugs, rates of users and addicts in neighbouring countries are also rising to a record high.

International drug expert and former Hungarian national drug coordinator Katalin Szomor, opened the event by presenting the history of the UN Day, sharing her experiences from the first UN world conference to address drug demand reduction policies, held in Vienna in 1987. Ms. Szomor told the story of former Colombian Justice Minister Enrique Parejo Gonzales, who cheated death after being shot in the head three times by a cocaine gang, going on to lead that initial conference which gave rise to the first UN International Day Against Drugs on 26 June 1988.

Speaking at the workshop on Thursday was Minister Plenipotentiary of the Colombian Embassy, Renato Salazar, who presented Colombia’s ‘Shared Responsibility’ initiative, which aims to raise awareness of the ramifications of the country’s illegal drug trade, pointing out the ‘ecocide’ committed as drug manufacture and trafficking damages not only the lives of users but also the environment.

While Afghanistan and Colombia deal with reducing supply by cutting down on cultivation and production of illicit substances—the theme of this year’s UN Day—it remains that focusing only on this element of the problem has not produced desirable results. Testament to that are last year’s record period of opium cultivation in Afghanistan and the 27% surface increase of coca cultivation in Colombia between 2006 and 2007.

Presenting the only stably successful alternative cultivation programme in the world was Thai native and Buddhist monk Phra Sudhiñanavides. As he showed, The Royal Project eliminated illicit cultivation in Thailand over a period of several decades, spearheaded by the King’s own initiative and on-the-ground research and consultation, indicating that something can be done to reduce cultivation without harming the livelihood of farm workers.

Speaking on behalf of FDFE, Dr. Christian Mirre presented the work of his organisation and the importance of primary prevention in tackling the global drug problem.

“Drugs are a plague in the world today,” said Dr. Mirre, former Fellow of the CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research). “They fuel sexual abuse, violent crime, perpetuate war and—perhaps most importantly—destroy individual lives. It’s a problem we all face whether directly or indirectly, and if we all work in the same direction, we can do something about it.”

FDFE also unveiled a series of anti-drug video ads produced last year as part of an international prevention campaign supported by FDFE and its sister organisation Foundation for a Drug-Free World. The four films have the theme “they lied,” referring to peer-pressure on young people to try drugs. In one straightforward film aimed at both parents and young people, a boy dies after one hit of a drug. “They said one hit wouldn’t hurt,” says the boy. As his face is covered by doctors, his mother appears on screen. “…They lied,” she says. “Get your kids the truth about drugs.”

Participants at the workshop included international drug prevention professionals, diplomats from Western and Middle-Eastern countries, anti-drug NGOs, religious groups and municipal administrators. The interactive workshop offered a chance for officials and group leaders to exchange experiences with drug prevention initiatives across Europe and how they can effectively contribute to creating a drug-free society.

Tying in national, European and international issues, the workshop also featured Filip De Sager, drug policy coordinator from the Belgian city of Ghent, and Ugo Ferrando, President of Narconon South Europe. Mr. Ferrando presented a short video describing the recent establishment of residential centres for drug rehabilitation in Iran and Pakistan, and the many challenges his organisation has overcome to get them running and to begin taking care of the millions of drug addicts in those areas. “We are winning,” Ferrando said, “little by little—but we are winning.”

FDFE was formed in March 2004 with the purpose of uniting and coordinating the efforts of members of civil society involved in fighting Europe’s drug problem. Last October FDFE was selected by the European Commission to be a member of their Civil Society Forum on Drugs in the European Union. Among the members and advisors of the Foundation are people from different ideological, religious and cultural backgrounds, who share the common goal of ridding society of the drug epidemic. For more information visit www.fdfe.org.