Posts Tagged ‘sleeping pills’

After surviving war in Iraq, U.S. troops now being killed by Big Pharma

Thursday, February 17th, 2011

Natural News, February 17, 2011

by Mike Adams, Editor, NaturalNews.com

They survived live fire, explosive devices, terror attacks and grueling desert conditions. But upon returning home to seek treatment for the mental anguish that too often accompanies war, U.S. soldiers are now being killed by the pharmaceutical industry in record numbers.

A recent example is found with the late Senior Airman Anthony Mena, who returned home from Baghdad only to be killed by a toxic cocktail of prescription medications in his apartment in the USA. As the New York Times reports, a toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/u…).

Those drugs included painkillers, sleeping pills, antidepressants and a sedative. The medical examiner concluded that Anthony Mena died of multiple pharmaceutical toxicity. He was only 23 years old.

Big Pharma killing more soldiers than enemy combatants?

Anthony Mena is just one of a fast-rising number of U.S. soldiers who are being drugged to death by psychiatrists and physicians who dish out painkillers and psychotropic drugs with virtually no regard to their chemical interactions.

Those interactions are never tested in clinical trials (yes, never!). The position of the FDA and Big Pharma seems to be that the more drugs a person takes, the better they’ll get, and doctors are trained in med schools to keep prescribing pills with virtually no concern about the extreme toxicity of various pharmaceutical combinations. Their motto is, “For every ill, there’s another pill.”

Now the body count is rising. Today, one-third of the U.S. Army is on at least one prescription medication, and many of those are psychiatric meds used to treat PTSD.

Think about that astounding statistic for a moment: One-third of the U.S. Army is on synthetic chemicals! Some of those chemicals, by the way, have been linked to suicides and violent behavior, especially in young males. What kind of formula for warfare is that, anyway? Take a young male, put a rifle in his hands and a psychiatric medication in his head, then let him loose on the front lines and see what happens?

An Army report says that 101 soldiers have died from toxic pharmaceutical combinations in 2006 – 2009, but that report almost certainly vastly underestimates the true numbers. Most deaths are traditionally written off as organ failure of one kind or another. Very few pharmaceutically-induced deaths are ever accurately tracked back to the drugs involved… unless you’re Michael Jackson, of course.

It makes you wonder: Are more soldiers being killed by Big Pharma than by enemy combatants?

It’s not out of the question. The 9/11 terrorist attacks killed just over 3,000 Americans. Yet, according to well-researched estimates based on published scientific studies, FDA-approved prescription drugs currently kill anywhere from 98,000 – 250,000 Americans a year (http://www.naturalnews.com/009278.html). Remember, that’s every year!

Big Pharma’s link to Nazi concentration camps

Over the last decade, then, FDA-approved prescription drugs have likely killed at least one million Americans and probably many more. That’s approaching the level of a chemical holocaust. The last time so many people were killed with chemicals was in the Nazi era of World War II, when Nazi war criminals gassed Jews to death by the millions.

It’s no coincidence, by the way, that the very same chemical companies that worked for the Nazi war machine are now some of the world’s top pharmaceutical manufacturers. That’s not an internet myth, by the way: It’s an historical fact. Just Google the history of  Bayer and Nazi Germany if you want to learn more: http://www.google.com/search?q=baye…

Or check out the role of IG Farben /Bayer in Auschwitz and other German concentration camps, where this pharmaceutical company relied on slave labor to churn out chemical weapons and experimental drugs used in human medical experiments: http://archive.corporatewatch.org/p…

(You won’t read that in the New York Times, most likely…)

Fast forward to the present. Now the pharmaceutical industry is killing our young soldiers in record numbers. Much of it is due to the insanity that’s inbred throughout the psychiatric industry, which has a long and disturbing history of torturing and maiming patients in the name of “medicine.”

I strongly urge you to learn about the true history of psychiatry through the Citizens Commission on Human Rights: http://www.cchr.org/quick-facts/the…

I have walked through their museum in Los Angeles, and I’ve seen what psychiatric medicine has done to destroy the lives of countless children, adults and even soldiers. What’s happening today with psychiatric medicine is, by any honest assessment, a crime against humanity that makes the casualties of war in Iraq seem tiny by comparison.

And now, even the mainstream media is beginning to see this truth. It’s hard to deny it when young, healthy soldiers start dropping dead from following doctors’ orders and taking FDA-approved medications. These are not overdoses, folks. These are soldiers following orders and “taking their medicine” as directed.

And they’re dying from it.

The New York Times article on this issue is a great read. It’s an example of stunningly good journalism from the mainstream media, and I recommend you read it: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/u…

The NYT, of course, probably won’t go into the history of Bayer and the Nazi war crimes connection, but you can only expect the mainstream media to go so far on these stories. For the whole truth on issues like this, you have to turn to internet sites like NaturalNews which simply aren’t driven by pharmaceutical advertising money. That’s where you’ll find out the rest of the story that the MSM isn’t likely to ever report.

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MomLogic.com “Babies on Antipsychotics?…Why would anyone put a BABY on antipsychotic meds?!”

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

MomLogic.com
By Vivian Manning Schaffel
September 9, 2010

Last week, the New York Times ran a sad yet compelling story about a boy named Kyle, who at 18 months was put on antipsychotic drugs to quell severe temper tantrums.

By the time he was 3, the poor kid had been diagnosed with autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia and “oppositional defiant disorder” (um, isn’t that a fancy phrase for “normal toddler behavior”?). He was on the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and a pill for attention-deficit disorder.

Did you read that?! Prozac! Sleeping pills!

The side effects had Kyle “drooling” and “overweight,” but his mom likened the worst side effect to a coma. “I didn’t have my son,” she said. “It’s like, you’d look into his eyes and you would just see blankness.”

Fast-forward to the present, and you meet a very different kid. Kyle is 6, in first grade and doing very well in school. He’s off the drugs (except for Vyvanese for ADD), and as it turns out, never should have been on all those drugs in the first place.

In fact, the article pointed out that more and more doctors are writing stronger scripts for younger and younger children, citing a 2009 Food and Drug Administration report which stated that over half a million children and adolescents in America are now taking antipsychotic drugs. Yet some doctors warn of the considerable developmental and physical risks these strong drugs pose to younger children, and say that research has not deemed these meds safe for this age group.

Another disturbing nugget of info: A Rutgers University study found that children from low-income families, like Kyle, are four times more likely to receive antipsychotic medicines than children whose parents are privately insured. Why? Because medicating these children is cheaper than asking them to participate in family therapy.

Read entire article here:  http://www.momlogic.com/2010/09/babies_on_antipsychotics.php

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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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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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One Million UK Patients Addicted to Prescription Drugs

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Natural News
By David Gutierrez
March 15, 2010

Approximately 1.5 million people in the United Kingdom are addicted to prescription or over-the-counter drugs, many of which were legally acquired.

In July, the Department of Health launched a review of the problem, after the House of Commons All-Party Group on Drug Misuse called for greater awareness, better doctor training and more treatment options.

Although medical guidelines discourage doctors from prescribing benzodiazepine tranquilizers such as Valium for more than four weeks at a time, many patients still become addicted.

“There are still lots and lots of patients being put on these drugs and kept on them for a long time,” said Pam Armstrong of the Council for Information on Tranquillizers and Antidepressants. “I have some sympathy with [doctors] — they get a lot of pressure from patients who want these drugs. But the problem has been ignored.”

Other highly addictive drugs include sleeping pills and narcotic painkillers. A recent study found that painkillers containing codeine can be addictive within as little as three days.

Read entire article:  http://www.naturalnews.com/028375_painkillers_addiction.html

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