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

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) was founded by members of the Church of Scientology, which is how I became aware of it and its mission. The following is a news article about a demonstration staged by CCHR in Liverpool…

Attendees arrived at the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Liverpool yesteday, amid fierce protest from human rights watchdog the ‘Citizens Commission on Human Rights’ (CCHR), whose supporters donned black t-shirts and waved placards with photos of children who have died as a result of psychiatrist-prescribed medications or psychiatric abuse.

CCHR’s national spokesperson Brian Daniels pointed to the example of Adrian Keegan from Shropshire, a 19-year old boy who hanged himself after becoming suicidal as an apparent “side effect” of the antidepressant Seroxat.

“While it can’t be denied that children and adolescents do experience problems, that some can be argumentative, boisterous or even disruptive, psychiatry’s fixation on labelling such difficulties as a mental ‘disorder’ is not only unscientific but medical fraud,” argues Daniels. “Representing that these troubles can only be alleviated with dangerous pills is dishonest, harmful and deadly.”

Founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and Dr Thomas Szasz, former professor of psychiatry and author of the infamous critical text ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’, CCHR recently celebrated four decades of campaigning to eradicate abuse in the mental health profession.

Some psychiatrists in attendance welcomed the protesters’ stance against ambiguous drugs such as Ritalin, prescribed for the controversial ADHD—Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder—which CCHR describes as “a fraudulent label” with “no scientific basis”. One psychiatrist said they felt “intimidated”.

This week also sees a five-day stopover in Liverpool of CCHR’s travelling exhibition ‘Psychiatry: An Industry of Death’, modelled on the permanent museum of the same name, which is housed at CCHR’s international headquarters in Los Angeles.

One visitor gave an emotional account of her own brush with what she felt was psychiatric abuse as she was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility whilst pregnant.

“I took the pills the first time and I just felt dead,” said the woman from St. Helens, Merseyside. “I pretended to take the rest and just had to act a bit nutty so they wouldn’t notice. It was horrible.”

Psychiatrists and others in attendance at the Royal College’s meeting were also invited to visit the exhibition, which is open to the public at the Friends Meeting House in Liverpool city centre until this Friday.

To report a case of psychiatric abuse of human rights, contact CCHR in confidence—details at www.cchr.org.uk.

First published on NowPublic

Dmitri Guzner of Verona, New Jersey pleaded guilty to charges of cybercrime against the religious organisation and related websites, which began in January 2008. The “Denial-of-Service” attacks involved using several computers to flood the websites with up to 220 Megabytes of malicious traffic every second, resulting in the websites being unavailable to legitimate visitors.

Guzner, who entered his plea at a New Jersey court on Monday 11th May, is due to be sentenced on 24th August. Some sources have suggested he may face up to 10 years in prison if handed the maximum sentence. Guzner was a member of the underground hacking group “Anonymous”, whose mostly teenage members began attacking the Scientology movement last year. In response to the initial attack, the Church of Scientology released a new information website, the “Scientology Video Channel,” which went online on 13th March to coincide with their annual celebration of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday.

Syndicated from 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.

It’s not just Scientologists who are artistic, but there are a lot of Scientologists in the North who are, so it makes sense that we hold a regular evening performance here in Manchester. There was everything from a traditional tambourine song (think morris dancing) to a contemporary dance solo.

I opted for the acoustic singing performance, and by all accounts we pulled it off pretty well. Michael and I performed four songs, two of which I sang with his guitar and backing vocals and two of which were sung and played by Michael with my accompaniment on some Turkish hand percussion (interesting mix). I sang an acoustic version of Sorrow by Bad Religion, based on an acoustic performance by Greg Graffin; and Time of Your Life by Green Day, as a sort of reprise of my last days of vocal performance, which were back at college when I recorded that for A-level music. Michael sang Nothing Compares to You by Sinéad O’Connor and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You by Frankie Valli.

In the middle of the evening there was a sale and auction with donated items such as an electric violin, a signed letter from the late L. Ron Hubbard, and various art-related items such as photos, poetry books and so on. All the proceeds went toward the renovations of the new Church of Scientology building in Trafford, Manchester.

All in all it was a good fun night, but I must say that for me the star of the show was Becky Langley, a young singer/songwriter from Prestwich, Manchester, who sang her own recently-written song a cappella. It was a beautiful song and she has a very high quality voice with a very soulful feel, unusual for a young white girl. It reminds me of Lou Lou’s black gospel voice which, if you hadn’t seen her face, you’d think was coming from an African, Afro-Caribbean or Afro-American. I say good luck to Becky, we may well be hearing her on the radio in years to come.

I thought this by L. Ron Hubbard essentially summed things up with regard to art, so I’ll leave you with a quote from the book Science of Survival:

A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists—L. Ron Hubbard

Sex education. ‘What’s that?’ I wondered. Necks tilted, we watched the small television screen mounted to the wall in our classroom, the teacher’s eyes as fixed as ours on the moving images. We were learning the ‘proper words’, you know, like ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’. How unexciting. More amusing was the trenchcoat-clad cartoon American detective who would go on to tell us about the thousands of bacteria that we would be harbouring if we didn’t wash our hands after going to the toilet. Hygiene was perhaps the most important thing they taught. We were 10 or 11 years old.

A nurse came to the school with some choice props, and all the boys were ushered into another classroom with our male teacher. While the young ladies were being prepared to deal with menstruation, us lads were given a heart-to-heart by our very real and caring teacher, a happily-married father of two. No doubt then, he was speaking from experience.

Recalling that neck-straining educational video once more, I think we all found the ‘wet dream’ scene strangely amusing. I don’t think any of us appreciated it fully, and at such an age we were at varying stages of physical development. The girls had started wearing bras in a minority of cases, but no-one was growing beards in Year 6, and we weren’t really at the stage where we would have to put this education into practice. Even then it was pretty early.

And what of teenage pregnancy? Well in subsequent years the girls had opted for older boyfriends who had already had the secondary school PSE (Personal and Social Education; now Personal Social and Health Education, PSHE) lesson with the ‘Durex Demonstrator’ and the free condoms. By the age of fourteen I knew several girls who were sexually active, two years before it was legal. They weren’t getting pregnant, they were applying what they’d learnt from that first lesson at age 10 or 11: contraception is easily available and sex is okay as long as it’s safe. While these statements certainly ring true, is this the kind of candid truth we want our youngest to discover? Perhaps in all honesty we do, but it is certainly not the whole truth.

Morals are a subject often referenced as being in general decline. As science is increasingly used to ‘disprove’ religious beliefs, humanists and evangelists are locked in a head-on struggle, each going to further extremes to make themselves right by making the other party as wrong as possible. Neither of them would say that morals are a bad idea, but both would criticise each other’s idea of the subject. Yet morals are neither exclusively religious nor secular in nature. They are simply agreements based on common sense.

The sexual abuse of children, rape, promiscuity—these are considered by many to be immoral. They go against the widely-held views of society that children are children, adults are responsible for themselves, and one should be faithful to his or her sexual partner, with some differences in areas where polygamy is part of the culture. But the old law of the omitted data comes into play very quickly in this arena:

WHERE THERE IS NO DATA AVAILABLE PEOPLE WILL INVENT IT.

This is the Law of the Omitted Data.

A vacuum tends to fill itself. Old philosophers said that “nature abhors a vacuum.” Actually the surrounding area of pressure flows into an area of no pressure.
—L. Ron Hubbard, 1972

If we choose to let our children be taught about sex, it has to be within the social context. In addition, it has to be at a time and in a manner that can be identified with by the children. Your average five-year old boy hates girls and thinks they’re from another planet, or is scared to death of them. He’s not interested in what he can do with his manhood, unless he needs the loo. At that age, that’s all it’s useful for. The unfortunate reality is that the entire social fabric could be corrupted by premature sex education, compounded by the inadequacy of moral standards.

My opinion, which I am sure is shared by parents across the country, is that this is a case of upbringing and not necessarily one of primary education; parents should be able to educate their children on the facts of life when their children are ready for it, when they enquire, or when mummy and daddy decide it’s time for a talk about ‘the birds and the bees’. And seldom will this be at five years old.

Real problems that grip the youth of today’s society are broken families and alcohol and drug abuse. Ill sexual health and teenage pregnancy tend to fall somewhere alongside or between these issues, and are more of a symptom than the cause. Areas that are lacking in British schools, per my recent experience, are effective drug education and instilling a general sense of responsibility in students. These are not simple tasks, but their ramifications if skilfully implemented are wide-ranging.

By the will of ill-informed psychologists, teachers are being advised to leave more and more to the whim of students, even if their instinct tells them this would be irresponsible. Harm minimisation is a drug education concept, but is mirrored in sex education and in general in today’s school system. It doesn’t work to improve anything, but is a way of passively giving in to the idea that ‘change is impossible’. Consider this: children who underperform in some secondary school subjects are entered into lower ‘tiers’ of examination, for which they are taught to aim for a limited level. Even if a student decides he or she is going to get all the answers on the exam paper correct, and even if he manages to, he will never attain the top grade if his teachers have entered him into the ‘intermediate’ or ‘foundation’ tier. Most tiered subjects have a ‘higher’ paper in which it is possible to attain an A*-D grade, and a ‘foundation’ paper in which the highest grade is C. Some have a third (‘intermediate’) in the middle of the two, which can deliver grades B-E. This is ‘harm minimisation’ at work in academic subjects.

The question remains, is it moral to teach the very young about a subject they cannot and should not use until they are older? Try teaching a five-year old neurology and let me know how it goes. Until then, I’ll reserve judgement, and say no.

News Articles

• MPs call for sex education in primary schools (WalesOnline)
• Compuslory sex education for children under five proposed (Daily Telegraph)
• Young children should be taught about sex, MPs say (Times Online)

Related Links

• Morals for a Modern World (The Way to Happiness)
• History of Harm Reduction – Provenance and Politics, Part 1 (Institute on Global Drug Policy)
• Real Life Drug Education (Foundation for a Drug-Free World)
]]> http://sam-butler.name/2008/08/26/sex-and-children-a-recipe-for-disaster/feed/ 0 http://sam-butler.name/2008/08/10/in-memory-of-isaac-hayes/ http://sam-butler.name/2008/08/10/in-memory-of-isaac-hayes/#comments Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:08:15 +0000 Sam http://sam-butler.name/?p=8 Continue reading →]]> Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. (August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008) was perhaps one of the most influential black musicians of the late 20th century. Providing entertainment through his songwriting, his singing, his acting, and later as the voice of South Park’s infamous ladies’ man Chef, Hayes kept us dancing, singing, laughing and generally feeling good throughout his diverse career. He died at home today, aged 65.

Hayes has been a Scientologist for a long time, and he often performed at major international gatherings. In 2005 I was lucky enough to be at Saint Hill in West Sussex, England, the headquarters of the Church of Scientology in the UK. Every year, around October 7th, Scientologists and their friends from around the world gather at Saint Hill to mark the anniversary of the International Association of Scientologists. As a Church staff member, I attended the Charity Concert evening on the weekend of the event, and Hayes was one of the performers.

Stepping onto the stage in a gold sequin jacket, accompanied by a troupe of female dancers and supported by the Church’s Golden Era Musicians, Hayes performed what will likely be remembered as his all-time most famous song, the theme from Shaft. His energy was tremendous and he really got the audience going. Being as it was a charity function, there were a lot of civic leaders, businessmen and others, whether or not they were Scientologists, and this kind of audience takes some cracking! This is the only time I recall seeing Hayes live, but I have seen recorded live performances he’s done at other Scientology events and he always managed to put a smile on my face.

As the media reported, he was rapping before there were rappers and he laid the groundwork for disco, for what became known as ‘urban-contemporary music,’ and for romantic crooners like Barry White. Before making his début as a solo artist in 1967, Hayes was writing and arranging for the likes of Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, even writing the classic soul hit, Soul Man with songwriting partner David Porter.

As a Scientologist, Hayes was involved in human rights advocacy and activism for religious freedom. In addition, in 2001 he collaborated with fellow Scientologist Doug E. Fresh on the album The Joy of Creating – The Golden Era Musicians And Friends Play L. Ron Hubbard, an album I hear played very often in Scientologists’ homes, in Churches of Scientology, and as the best hold music you’ll ever hear! (At the Church of Scientology International.)

All in all the man was a legend, and while I’m as shocked and surprised at his passing as anyone else, I know he achieved much in his lifetime and made a difference to the lives of many people in various ways. I hope the memory of what he has done lives on through his art, and I encourage others to celebrate what he did rather than mourn his loss, for here was an example of a great being.

A civilization is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists.—L. Ron Hubbard, The Science of Survival (1951).

]]> http://sam-butler.name/2008/08/10/in-memory-of-isaac-hayes/feed/ 0 http://sam-butler.name/2008/07/02/woman-dies-on-video-in-psychiatric-centre/ http://sam-butler.name/2008/07/02/woman-dies-on-video-in-psychiatric-centre/#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:37:28 +0000 Sam http://sam-butler.name/?p=3 Continue reading →]]>

NEW YORK—A video was released today of a woman in need of medical attention who died in a hospital waiting room after collapsing on the floor. The woman was ignored by medical and security staff and died before they tended to her.

The patient was identified as 49-year old Esmin Green from Jamaica, who had arrived at Kings County Hospital Center’s psychiatric emergency room on 19 June this year. After collapsing on the floor, Ms. Green is seen in the video to have been ignored by a security guard and medical staff, who took almost an hour to realise she needed urgent attention. By the time someone came to her aid, she had already died. Reports indicate Ms. Green had waited almost 24 hours after being involuntarily committed to the psychiatric centre the previous morning.

The incident comes as a blow to the state facility in Brooklyn, New York, after its psychiatric centre was criticised last year by the New York State Mental Hygiene Legal Service and the New York Civil Liberties Union, who filed a suit against the hospital calling the psychiatric centre “a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger.”

Deaths in psychiatric care or under treatment with psychotropic drugs is at an all time high, with correctly administered medications in the top five causes of death in many countries, including the United States. In the case of Ms. Green however, the problem arose after she was not treated for the physical condition that led to her collapse. Involuntary commitment to the psychiatric centre for what was described as ‘agitation’ would eventually lead to her death.

The practice of involuntary commitment is described as “using legal means or forms as part of a mental health law to commit a person to a mental hospital, insane asylum or psychiatric ward against their will.” The controversial practice is permitted by law in many countries, and has met criticism from human rights groups, physicians and former psychiatrists.

Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry Thomas Szasz wrote that “all history teaches us to beware of benefactors who deprive their beneficiaries of liberty…. There is neither justification nor need for involuntary psychiatric interventions.”

In a paper on involuntary commitment procedures, Dr. Lawrence Stevens, J.D. writes “Of course, mental “hospitals” are jails for all persons detained there against their will.  Furthermore, they are places where people may be incarcerated with no showing of prior illegal (or otherwise harmful) conduct – only “mental illness”…”

Psychologist and professor Dr. Jeffrey Schaler is another respected professional to have spoken out against the psychiatric industry. “The controversy regarding the myth of mental illness and psychiatry is not about science or medicine; it’s about power,” he said.

One thing however is free from doubt on all sides—the death of Ms. Green arose out of negligence and ignorance, and could well have been prevented were she given the appropriate care. Six people lost their jobs at Kings County over the incident, and the video has been passed on to prosecutors in the case against the hospital. Arrangements are being made for her body to be flown to Jamaica, where a funeral service will be held.

For more information regarding psychiatric abuse, visit the Citizens Commission on Human Rights

]]> http://sam-butler.name/2008/07/02/woman-dies-on-video-in-psychiatric-centre/feed/ 0 http://sam-butler.name/2008/06/27/unodc-launches-2008-world-drug-report-in-brussels/ http://sam-butler.name/2008/06/27/unodc-launches-2008-world-drug-report-in-brussels/#comments Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:41:41 +0000 Sam http://sam-butler.name/?p=4 Continue reading →]]> BRUSSELS—The 20th UN World Drug Day was observed in Brussels on Thursday 26 June, at a European workshop on drug prevention for international diplomats and anti-drug professionals, that included the launch of the UNODC’s 2008 World Drug Report, concurrent with the official release in New York. The workshop was held at the Maison des Associations Internationales by the Brussels-based Foundation for a Drug-Free Europe (FDFE), a member of the UNODC’s Vienna NGO Committee on Narcotic Drugs.

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.

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