Forrest Labs “quietly” settling antidepressant liability lawsuits? Not so fast…..

Yesterday we posted an article from the St. Louis Post Dispatch regarding Forrest Laboratories quietly settling a slew of lawsuits with parents who claim the antidepressant drugs Celexa and Lexapro caused their children to become suicidal/violent. Well our question is this: Why is this story remaining quiet? Are the press not aware that 10 of the recent school shooters were under the influence of psychiatric drugs? That Columbine ringleader Eric Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox? Or that Red Lake Minnesota school shooter was on Prozac, as was Springfield Oregon shooter Kip Kinkel? And those are only the cases where their toxicology reports were made public. The FDA admits these drugs can cause mania, psychosis, violence, and in the case of the antidepressant Effexor, “homicidal ideation.”

Psychiatric Hospital staff ‘puzzled’ by teenager’s fatal overdose—maybe they should brush up on their drug warnings

A teenager who was under psychiatric “care” was found dead with two antipsychotic drugs in his system. The consulting psychiatrist says he is “puzzled” about his death and that they have “no explanation at all.” Really. Perhaps the good doctor should brush up on the international drug regulatory warnings for the drugs they are prescribing. CCHR’s psychiatric drug database contains 24 international drug regulatory warnings on Antipsychotic drugs, and 49 international studies citing side effects including diabetes, obesity, blood clots, heart problems, cardiac events, cancer, tumors, death/sudden death.

Antidepressant Found ‘Ineffective and Potentially Harmful’

While some (often the manufacturers) claim that there is a lot of research supporting a drug, it can sometimes be the case that the published research does not tell the full story. Sometimes there exists other research that is not so supportive of the drug being tested—research that may not have seen the light of day. Drug companies want to publish supportive studies and shelve more-negative findings. There is an expression for this practice—publication bias. Publication bias has gone on for decades but only relatively recently have some members of the scientific community taken steps to stamp it out.

Forest Labs settling wrongful death & personal injury lawsuits from parents of kids who took Celexa & Lexapro

Fifty-four lawsuits, mostly involving suicides and attempted suicides by teenagers in various parts of the country, accuse the New York-based pharmaceutical company of concealing a negative pediatric study on Celexa, duping physicians about the drug’s clinical trials, and targeting children in aggressive promotions of Celexa and a sister drug, Lexapro. Four of the cases were settled Friday, and two additional cases were settled in recent weeks. A surge of related settlements, which could total millions of dollars, is expected in the months ahead as the pharmaceutical company attempts to move beyond the controversy surrounding its marketing of antidepressants to children.

US Soldiers’ Suicides Caused by Prescription Drugs?

Over 4,000 published reports of violent and bizarre behavior of people affected by antidepressants on the Web archive ssristories.com reveal the same out-of-character violence and self-harm in civilians that is currently seen in the military. Twenty people set themselves on fire. Ten bit their victims (including a biter who was sleepwalking and a woman, on Prozac, who bit her 87-year-old mother into a critical condition.) Three men in the 70s and 80s attacked their wives with hammers. Many stabbed their victims obsessively—one even stabbed furniture after killing his wife—and 14 parents drowned their children, a crime seldom heard of before the 2001 Andrea Yates case. Yates, who drowned her five children, was on the antidepressant Effexor, which manufacturer Wyeth (now Pfizer) “issued no public warning” about [the possibility of violent behavior], says the Associated Press.