Posts Tagged ‘deaths’

Prescription Pill-Popping By Far a Leading Killer as Florida’s Drug Deaths Spike 20%

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

FlaglerLive.Com
July 1, 2010

Oxycodone, the addictive prescription pain-killer also known by its Purdue Pharma brand name OxyContin, directly caused more deaths in Florida in 2009 than cocaine, heroin and morphine combined. Prescription drugs as a whole are killing far more Floridians than illegal drugs, with some 8,600 deaths last year involving at least one prescription drug, according to an annual report released today by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission.

That’s 5 percent of all deaths in Florida in 2009, when 171,300 people died in the state.

The number of people killed by prescription drugs is a significant 20 percent increase over last year’s 6,200 deaths attributed to overdoses. Much of the increase is due to a spike in oxycodone addiction. The increase in prescription-drug addiction continues a trend that began in Florida 10 years ago, when prescription drugs overtook illegal drugs as leading causes of drug-related deaths.

Alcohol is also included in the examiners’ analysis, and it leads the way of all drug-related deaths, with 4,046.

The annual report is a stark look at the effects of legalized drug addiction and over-prescription of drugs, both of which affect a far larger segment of the population than recreational or illegal narcotics.

For the first time in 2009, the commission tracked deaths by region. In Flagler County’s district, which includes St. Johns and Putnam counties, 22 deaths were attributed to oxycodone (the fourth lowest number in the state’s 23 districts), with 13 of those deaths directly attributed to the drug, and nine cited as being present among other drugs that contributed to death.

Hydrocodone claimed 16 lives in the district. Cocaine contributed to 19 deaths in the Flagler district, though only four cases were directly attributed to the drug. In 15 cases, cocaine was present in the body in conjunction with other drugs that proved lethal. Overall in Florida, cocaine-related deaths (including the majority of cases where cocaine wasn’t directly the factor but was present in the body at the time of death), have fallen from a peak of 2,179 in 2007 to 1,462 in 2009. (Again, cocaine was the direct result of death in 529 cases out of those).

Ken Kramer, a researcher with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Florida, says the numbers underestimate the extent of the problem, because medical examiners do not track deaths attributed to antipsychotic drugs or to antidepressants, both of which carry black-box or black-label warnings. The warnings on antidepressants, required by the Food and Drug Administration, state that the drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents and young adults up to age 24. (Antidepressants include Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, Lexapro and Celexa.)

Anti-psychotic drugs carry a variety of black label warnings of increased mortality in elderly patients (including a death rate almost twice as high for people taking Risperdal, for example). Those drugs, prescribed and often overprescribed in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, include Abilify, Clozaril, Geodon, Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa.

“Certainly, the actual number of prescription drug deaths is higher than the annual report states,” Kramer said. “It is unknown just how much higher because the Medical Examiners Commission does not track these classes of drugs.”

Two years ago Kramer got his concern heard by the commission following an email exchange with a commissioner in which he argued that antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs’ contributions to mortality should be part of the annual report. He was rebuffed. One examiner vsaid he had not seen “more than the occasional death caused by these types of drugs,” according to the minutes of the Aug. 13, 2008 meeting of the commission.

Read entire article:  http://flaglerlive.com/7256/florida-prescription-drugs-deaths-oxycontin-oxycodone

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Public reports reveal psychiatric drugs linked to 64% of all suicides in Sweden

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Public reports reveal psychiatric drugs linked to 64% of all suicides in Sweden

The One Click Group
By Janne Larsson
June 29, 2010

This unique report presents data about the preceding psychiatric drug treatment for all persons who committed suicide in Sweden 2007. The conclusion is that a large percentage of the persons who committed suicide had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of and close to the suicide.
Public reports reveal psychiatric drugs linked to 64% of all suicides in Sweden.

This is a report about suicides committed in Sweden (with around 9 million citizens) in 2007 and the psychiatric drug treatment that preceded these suicides.

The report has three main parts:

• It gives unique data about all suicides committed in 2007 and the psychiatric drugs that the persons received within a year of the suicide.

• It compares these data with autopsy reports about psychiatric drugs found in the blood (of 98%) of all the persons who committed suicide in 2007.

• It gives extensive information about the psychiatric drug treatment given within a year to the subgroup of persons who committed suicide in 2007 and then were reported to the National Board of Health and Welfare by reason of law 3 – one third of all suicides committed that year.

The data presented on these pages should have been published by the responsible national authorities.

A large percentage of the persons who committed suicide in Sweden in 2007 had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of their suicide.

The idea that persons who are depressed are suffering from “chemical imbalances” and are deficient in the substance serotonin has been marketed by the pharmaceutical companies selling antidepressants (in the class of antidepressant drugs called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, SSRIs, such as Prozac, Paxil/Seroxat, Zoloft) for more than a decade. The intensive marketing has led persons to believe that their low mood is a deficiency disease – and that it is vital to supply the substance that corrects this deficiency – the antidepressant drug.

But there is no scientific evidence that a low mood is caused by a ”chemical imbalance” in the brain. The hypothesis has been rejected with the following words by one of the most well known names in the field, Dr. David Healy,“The serotonin theory of depression is comparable to the masturbatory theory of insanity.”

The Swedish medical agencies and their psychiatric consultants have used old data from forensic toxicological screenings to mislead the public and to heavily increase the use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs.

The most important information in this area is the patients’ medical history; the treatment history. Antidepressants, neuroleptics and other psychiatric drugs may cause harmful changes in the brain and these brain dysfunctions do not vanish when the drugs are discontinued – in many cases they cause chronic dysfunction to the brain, exemplified by the known neurological harm caused by neuroleptics. Many patients also get serious withdrawal reactions; reactions that can be so severe that they can lead to suicide.

Better sources of information are the unpublished clinical trials of psychiatric drugs done by pharmaceutical companies, and the important studies done by independent researchers. A number of these studies show that antidepressants and neuroleptics increase the risk of suicidal behaviour and directly cause effects that lead to suicide.

Download and read the full report here; http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/ME-CFS_docs/Psychiatric%20Drugs%20&%20Suicide,%20Sweden%202007.pdf

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Freedom of Information Act request made to Pentagon officials regarding alarming drug overdoses in our armed forces

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Air Force Times
By Andrew Tilghman and Brendan McGarry
June 6, 2010

Prescription drug cocktails have lead to at least 32 accidental overdoses among Marines and soldiers since 2007, bringing military medical practices for treating physical and psychiatric problems under scrutiny.

At least 30 soldiers and two Marines overdosed while under the care of Army Warrior Transition Units or the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Regiment, created three years ago to tightly focus care and attention on troops suffering from injuries as a result of combat.

Most of the troops had been prescribed “drug cocktails,” combinations of drugs including painkillers, sleeping pills, antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, interviews and records show. In all cases, suicide was ruled out.

Army officials say the deaths are often complicated by troops mixing medications with alcohol, taking their own medications incorrectly or without a prescription.

It is unclear how many troops across the entire military have died from drug toxicity. Pentagon officials have not provided information about accidental drug deaths across the military despite a Military Times Freedom of Information Act request submitted nearly two months ago. Data on military deaths is compiled by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and maintained at the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower Data Center.

The Army deaths have shocked that service’s medical community and prompted an internal review. But despite a “safety stand down” in January 2009, the number of fatalities continued to rise last year — to 15 in 2009, up from 11 the year before. Meanwhile the total number of soldiers assigned to the 29 WTUs nationwide dropped from about 12,000 to about 9,000.

The internal review found the biggest risk factor may be putting a soldier on numerous drugs simultaneously, a practice known as polypharmacy. According to an Army analysis from June 2009, about 9 percent of WTU patients — 800 soldiers — were prescribed a combination of drugs that included pain, psychiatric and sleep medications.

As a result, the Army medical community has begun to question the widespread practice of polypharmacy and has quietly overhauled the way it prescribes, distributes and monitors the riskiest drugs.

Read entire article:  http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2010/06/military_drug_deaths_060710w/

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Memorial Day 2010: Psychiatric drugs triggering deaths of U.S. soldiers treated for PTSD

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Examiner.com
By Jed Shlackman
May 26, 2010

Andrew Tighman, writing in the Marine Corps Times, recently described the investigation of Fred A. Baughman Jr., M.D. into the deaths of military personnel taking multiple psychotropic medications. Baughman was alerted to a series of soldier deaths upon reading a May 2008 article in the Charleston [WV] Gazette titled “Vets Taking Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Drugs Die in Sleep.” Baughman, a retired neurologist known previously for his criticism of medication treatments of ADHD and other mental health disorders, suspected that the reported cases could be part of a much larger problem. In the cases of four West Virginia veterans who died in their sleep in 2008 Baughman found that the deaths were not due to overdoses. The veterans were apparently normal upon going to bed, yet all died in their sleep after taking a combination of prescribed medications that included Paxil, Seroquel, and Klonopin. Each case involved a sudden cardiac incident and resulting death.  This adds to growing concern about serious adverse effects of psychiatric medications commonly prescribed to emotionally disturbed or traumatized soldiers.

Research reported by Ray, et. al in the January 2009 New England Journal of Medicine noted that antipsychotic drugs doubled the risk of sudden cardiac death, while another study disclosed in March 2009 by Whang, et. al. found that antidepressant drugs also increase the rate of sudden cardiac death. A literature review of studies from 2000-2007 titled “Sudden Cardiac Death Secondary to Antidepressant and Antipsychotic Drugs” published in Expert Opinion on Drug Safety; 2008, No. 2, March 2008, pp. 181-191(14), found that “Antipsychotics can increase cardiac risk even at low doses, whereas antidepressants do it generally at high doses or in the setting of drug combinations.” In an Army Times article by Gina Cavallaro in February 2009 it was reported that more than 70 soldiers assigned to the Army’s warrior transition units had died, with at least 50% of the deaths attributed to natural causes that included a high number of cardiac deaths.

In one case investigated by Baughman an Army private was found dead in his barracks at Ft. Carson, Colorado, with sudden cardiac death reported by EMTs on the scene followed later by the death being re-classified as a suicide. Baughman suspects that there is an attempt to cover up the dangers of these psychiatric drugs, as the U.S. military, doctors, and drug manufacturers could be held accountable if it became apparent that these dangerous drug combinations are being used despite published evidence of the hazards.

Read entire article:  http://www.examiner.com/x-12517-Miami-Holistic-Health-Examiner~y2010m5d26-Memorial-Day-2010-Psychiatric-drugs-triggering-deaths-of-US-soldiers-treated-for-PTSD

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Earth Times: Neurologist Fred Baughman—Vets Sudden Deaths Due to Antidepressant & Antipsychotic Drugs

Monday, May 24th, 2010

EarthTimes.org
By Fred A. Baughman, Jr.
May 24, 2010

Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD today announced the results of his research into the “series” of veterans’ deaths acknowledged by the Surgeon General of the Army.

Upon reading the May 24, 2008, Charleston (WV) Gazette article “Vets Taking Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Drugs Die in Sleep,” Baughman began to investigate why these reported deaths were “different.”  And, why they were likely, the “tip of an iceberg.”

Andrew White, Eric Layne, Nicholas Endicott and Derek Johnson were four West Virginia veterans who died in their sleep in early 2008. Baughman’s research suggests that they did not commit suicide and did not “overdose” leading to coma as suggested by the military.  All were diagnosed with PTSD.  All seemed “normal” when they went to bed.  And, all were on Seroquel (an antipsychotic) Paxil (an antidepressant) and Klonopin (a benzodiazepine).

They were not comatose and unarousable ? with pulse and respirations or pulse intact, responsive to CPR, surviving transport to a hospital, frequently surviving.  These were sudden cardiac deaths.

At the time, Stan White, father of Andrew White knew of eight such cases in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia.

In a February 7, 2008 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army’s surgeon general, said there has been “a series, a sequence of deaths” in the new “warrior transition units.”

In April 2005, the FDA warned that Seroquel put elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis at increased risk of death.

On January 15, 2009, Ray et al, reported that antipsychotics double the risk of sudden cardiac death.  On March 17, 2009, Whang et al reported that antidepressants, as well, increase the rate of sudden cardiac deaths.

And yet, in an August 14, 2008 analysis of two of the four Charleston-area deaths, the Inspector General for Veterans Affairs concluded (Report No. 08-01377-185): “Although antipsychotic medications have been identified as possible causes of cardiac rhythm disturbances, a 2001 review…found no association with olanzapine (Zyprexa), quetiapine (Seroquel), or risperidone (Risperdal) and Torsades de Pointes (a fatal heart rhythm) or sudden death… we are unaware of any clinical practice guidelines recommending baseline or periodic electrocardiogram monitoring in young, healthy patients on quetiapine (Seroquel).”

However, in a literature review covering the years 2000-2007, entitled Sudden Cardiac Death Secondary to Antidepressant and Antipsychotic Drugs: [Expert Opinion on Drug Safety; 2008, Number 2, March 2008 , pp. 181-194(14)] Sicouri and Antzelevitch conclude: (1) “A number of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs can increase the risk of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death?” (2) “Antipsychotics can increase cardiac risk even at low doses whereas antidepressants do it generally at high doses or in the setting of drug combinations,” and (3) “These observations call for?an ECG at baseline and after drug administration.”

Read entire article:  http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/fred-a-baughman-jr-md,1312839.shtml

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The London Times: “Brittany Murphy, Michael Jackson, Heath Legder… America’s fatal addiction to prescription drugs”

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

The biggest killer drugs in the States right now are legal and have been prescribed. Here’s how easy it is to score and to get hooked

The Sunday Times
By Kate Spicer
May 2, 2010

I went to my appointment with “Dr C’ in Los Angeles with a shopping list of the most commonly abused types of drug: pain relievers, tranquillisers, stimulants and sedatives. Beforehand, a local addiction specialist, Bernadine Fried, had briefed me on how to approach your doctor like an addict and still come away with fistfuls of pills.

The script went like this: “Say, ‘I just went to my first NA meeting, I’m struggling with my addiction. I’m super anxious, but I also have these pain issues from an old injury.’” Fried stops to think. “Right, what do we have there? He should have given you an opiate [painkiller], Xanax [benzodiazepine tranquilliser, a new-generation Valium] and maybe an antidepressant. Now we just need a stimulant, such as Adderall, and a sleeping pill. Say, ‘I’m having a hard time focusing and my work is so important to me and it’s all that’s keeping me going at this difficult time.’ Oh, and then say, ‘I can’t sleep.’”

The appointment with Dr C, a psychiatrist on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, costs about £230, but if I had health insurance, that would cover the fee. I go in and act normal, apart from jiggling my foot around (to denote anxiety) and staring out of the window (to suggest a poor attention span). Dr C asks if I am depressed. “No,” I say. “Are you sure?” he says. I forget to talk about the painful old injury, but towards the end of the appointment, he asks, “Any pain?” That’s my invitation to the highly addictive opiate party.

An hour later, I’ve paid £110 to a nearby pharmacist and my handbag is rattling like a maraca. I’ve been prescribed two Adderall a day, Klonopin (another new-generation Valium) to take “as required, when anxious”, and sleeping pills. The next morning, I take a quarter of the prescribed dose of Adderall. I focus better, but I’m buzzing. I chain-smoke — at 8am — and I’ve lost my appetite. As highs go, it definitely isn’t fun, and the drug has made me feel anxious. I take another quarter after lunch.

Within a few hours, I decide to have half a dose of the Klonopin, to take the edge off my tooth-gnashing, rubbish-talking, Adderalled personality. Then I go for a drink, but after one glass of wine I’m grappling to control myself. Messy is the technical term. Yet I am still legal to drive. I go home and take a sleeping pill. I watch television and through the sludgy fog I get tunnel vision. Famished, I eat a big bag of crisps and pass out. In the morning, I feel thick-headed and slow. An Adderall will sort that out…

Prescription-drug abuse is widespread in the States. Plenty of recent high-profile deaths have been linked to prescription drugs: Corey Haim, Brittany Murphy, ­Casey Johnson, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Chris Penn, Anna Nicole Smith, Kevyn Aucoin. When Britney Spears was rushed to hospital after a public meltdown in January 2008, reports said she had ­taken more than 100 prescription pills and washed them down with a “purple monster”: vodka, Nyquil (an over-the-counter flu remedy) and Red Bull. Her condition owed little to illegal drug use.

Read entire article:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7109253.ece

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“When 6 people die from peanut butter we shut factories down…at least 87 military men died on Seroquel… & no alarm sounds”

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

OpEdNews
By Martha Rosenberg
March 24, 2010

Sgt. Eric Layne’s death was not pretty.

A few months after being prescribed a drug cocktail with the antidepressant Paxil, the mood stabilizer Klonopin and AstraZeneca’s controversial antipsychotic drug Seroquel, the Iraq war veteran was “suffering from incontinence, severe depression [and] continuous headaches,” according to his widow, Janette Layne, at FDA hearings for new Seroquel approvals last year.

Soon he had tremors. ” ” [H]is breathing was labored [and] he had developed sleep apnea,” said Janette Layne, who served in the National Guard during Operation Iraqi Freedom along with her husband. On the last day of his life, she testified, Eric stayed in the bathroom nearly all night battling acute urinary retention. He died while his family slept.

Sgt. Layne had just returned from a seven-week inpatient program at the VA Medical Center in Cincinnati where he was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A video shot during that time, played by his wife at the FDA hearings, shows a dangerously sedated figure barely able to talk.

Sgt. Layne was not the first healthy veteran to die after being prescribed medical cocktails including Seroquel for PTSD.

In the last two years, Pfc. Derek Johnson, 22, of Hurricane, West Virginia; Cpl. Andrew White, 23, of Cross Lanes, West Virginia; Cpl. Chad Oligschlaeger, 21, of Roundrock, Texas; Cpl. Nicholas Endicott, 24, of Pecks Mill, West Virginia; and Spc. Ken Jacobs, 21, of Walworth, New York have all died suddenly while taking Seroquel cocktails.

Death certificates and other records collected by veteran family members suggest more than 100 similar deaths among Iraq and Afghanistan combat vets and other military personnel, many on PTSD cocktails with Seroquel and other antipsychotics, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, sleep inducers and pain and seizure medications.

Read entire article:  http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Are-Veterans-Being-Given-D-by-Martha-Rosenberg-100324-925.html

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UK Professor of Psychology “Psychiatry – The Nightmare of the People”

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Psychology Articles
By Stephen Myler
March 2010

In this paper I want to review the investigations from the Citizens Committee for Human Rights in Mental Health. It is this organisation in the United States and other countries that have consistently brought the dangers of psychiatry to the attention of the general public who by and large are the victims of a marriage between pharmaceutical companies and their paid distributors of lethal drugs, psychiatrists. This alliance has been based on the greed for money, profits and kudos all in the name of a science that as one leading authority called – “hokum”

Introduction: A Short History

The history of psychiatry is strewn with the deaths; torture and misadventure that would make any sane person wonder why it has been allowed to continue to practice this black art for so long. Of course the anti-psychiatry movement has been around for almost as long as the profession itself. How did this all begin? You have to go back to the days of the asylums that grew up in the early part of the 1800’s particularly in England and the USA. These places were no more than prisons for the mad, those souls that could not function within the societies norms that dictated how one should act and behave. The head of the asylums was a medical doctor, the first psychiatrist. This man caged the mentally ill in cells, with no heating, little food but rotten scraps and in order to cure them of their madness the inmates were tortured by flogging, burning, immersion in water and many other inhumane acts called treatment. The down fall of the asylums started in England with the York Retreat a Quaker run institute for the mentally ill run on very different lines from the asylums that were government institutions. In the York retreat the inmates were given jobs to perform, were helped by keeping simple rules and rewarded for following them.

Read entire article:  http://www.freepsychologyarticles.com/psychiatry-the-nightmare-of-the-people.html

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US Should Follow UK in Crackdown on Killer Tranquilizers (Xanax, Valium, Ativan, etc) after 33 % increase in deaths

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Express.co.uk
Lucy Johnston
February 7, 2010

A RANGE of powerful tranquillisers could be put under strict controls after being linked to a series of high-profile deaths.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to investigate the harm caused by the drugs, which have been linked to the deaths of Michael Jackson, Brittany Murphy and Goldsmith heiress Robyn Whitehead.

The news comes as official figures show the number of deaths associated with tranquillisers has hit 230 – a 33 per cent increase over three years.

Up to one and a half million patients are prescribed tranquillisers on a long-term basis, while many others are using them illegally as recreational drugs.

Labour MP Jim Dobbin, chairman of the all-party Parliamentary Group on Involuntary Tranquilliser Addiction, said: “Thousands of people are addicted to tranquillisers and hundreds have died. We want these drugs seen as agents that people need to be warned about.” It is now being proposed that all tranquillisers should be reclassified from class C to class A substances under the Misuse of Drugs Act which would mean users or suppliers could face prison.

Read entire article:  http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/156700/Crackdown-on-the-killer-tranquillisers-

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Rampant illegal psychiatric drugging of elderly/nursing home patients: 1,200 violations involving 2,900 patients

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Sam Roe
Chicago Tribune
October 27, 2009

Frail and vulnerable residents of nursing homes throughout Illinois are being dosed with powerful psychotropic drugs, leading to tremors, dangerous lethargy and a higher risk of harmful falls or even death, a Tribune investigation has found.

Thousands of elderly and disabled people have been affected, many of them drugged without their consent or without a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis that would justify treatment, state and federal inspection reports show.

Lloyd Berkley, 74, was in a nursing home near Peoria for less than a day before staff members held him down and injected him with a large amount of an antipsychotic drug, according to a state citation. A few hours later he fell, suffering a fatal head injury.

One woman was given a psychotropic drug partly because she refused to wear a bra. Nursing home staff administered an antipsychotic medication to an 87-year-old man because he was “easily annoyed.”

In all, the Tribune identified 1,200 violations at Illinois nursing homes involving psychotropic medications since 2001. Those infractions affected 2,900 patients.

Read entire article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-nursing-home1-psychotropics-oct27,0,4539632.story

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