FDA/Pharmas: Conspiracy to Keep Us Addicted, Not Cure Us

Photos

The 7.30 Report

see larger image

uploaded by stvalentine

• 

  uploaded by stvalentine | add comment

• 

  uploaded by ari | add comment

• 

  uploaded by dunkelberg | add comment

• 

  uploaded by Christopher Byrne | add comment

• 

  uploaded by Newspartnergroup | add comment

• 

  uploaded by Babel-Fish | add comment

• 

  uploaded by NewsBlogger | add comment

• 

  uploaded by dysamoria | add comment

• 

  uploaded by Jessica L. Hernandez | add comment

Here's a tale about the FDA, GHB, Pharmaceuticals and our government, Corporate Amerika.

GHB (Gamma-Hydroxybutyrate or Gamma-Hydroxybutyic acid), demonized as "the date rape drug," is a chemical compound that exists naturally in your brain. It's responsible for many normal functions in the brain. It's illegal to make, possess or consume in the USA, thanks to events during and caused by the Clinton administration. Therefore, your brain is illegal (to paraphrase one of the many neutral web sites on GHB).

As you can just click and browse on the GHB link above (to WikiPedia) or Google GHB for endless information, what I will attempt to focus on specific humanitarian, political, economic and "general conspiratorial facets" of GHB and related medicinal compounds:

GHB used to be available as an over the counter dietary supplement. It was used to treat the causes of many medical conditions (not the symptoms; the causes). Things such as insomnia, sleep paralysis, clinical depression, narcolepsy, cataplexy, PTSD, fibromyalgia and alcoholism. There are currently clinical trials in progress by the only legal distributor of GHB (more on that below) to see what other conditions GHB can assist, so this list is not exhaustive.

During the Clinton era, GHB was made illegal under pressure of those who believed in the political demonizing of the chemical as "the date rape drug." You will find some familiar names in the pressuring on the FDA and the government. Names of pharmaceutical companies that produce "sleep aid" medications.

Currently, the only company that is legally able to manufacture and distribute GHB is a company called Jazz Pharmaceuticals, as a trademarked name "Xyrem" (chemically known through them as sodium oxybate). To shamelessly cut and paste from WikiPedia, GHB became listed on "Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act in March 2000." Xyrem is Schedule III. Xyrem costs about $600 a bottle. GHB is extremely easy to manufacture. You could do it yourself (Google it). Interesting?

Do you suffer from one of the many "quality of life ruining" conditions such as insomnia or narcolepsy? YES, poor quality of sleep WILL kill you: by loss of the ability to work your job, care for your family or by nullifying your very will to live?

Your doctor can prescribe Xyrem which may help you recover what you've been missing: delta-sleep (slow wave sleep; sleep stages three and four: the times when your brain is the least active and can repair wear and tear and generally recuperate from the stresses of daily functioning, which have become worse in the US society as each decade progresses). GHB and some of the GABA-type medications (similar pharmacology, different effects and less effective in general) are on a VERY short list of medications/chemical compounds that can help a person attain better quality of sleep by providing stages three and four of sleep.

Yes, your doctor can prescribe GHB as Xyrem... if you have "decent," corporate, full-time employment insurance coverage.

If you are on disability, you're basically, and bluntly, screwed. Government healthcare for the disabled flatly refuses to allow access to Xyrem and ALL benzodiazepines because they are all considered schedule one narcotics and are illegal and abuse(able?) substances. Funny how corporate amerika can get you the medication, but the government wont lift a finger.

Case in point: Patient has been on Xyrem successfully in past without difficulty. Unfortunately, the combination of PTSD, stress, insomnia/narcolepsy, psychiatric abuse at work, relationship disasters, etc., all conspire to ruin the patient's health and then career; corporate health care is no longer available. Patient gets on government health care assistance and is refused the Xyrem on a basis of needing a "pre-authorization" provided by a doctor to Medicare. Meanwhile, Jazz Pharmaceuticals and an organization named NORD run a "Xyrem success program" which is designed to aid patients in acquiring legal access to Xyrem without corporate sanctioned health coverage. Trouble with the NORD people is that they want one of only THREE word-for-word diagnoses or they will dismiss the request immediately as being "an off label use and illegal under FDA law." That pre-authorization to Medicare? Dismissed out of hand.

Medicare will not allow (pay for) victims of life-threatening health conditions (such as to get better over time with GHB therapy). Disability does not, therefore, provide access to the METHOD of getting OFF disability for some disabled people. Catch 22.

Notes of particular conspiratorial interest:

• GHB (almost impossible to get while on government subsidy) is one of the only known substances to increase slow wave sleep (the most vital element in the sleep cycle).

• GHB is not addictive and has few side effects in comparison to medications mass marketed and easily attained such as Effexor XR (more about that drug below). When taken as prescribed, GHB can increase quality of sleep, depression and bodily aches and pains without addiction (physiological), without intolerable side effects (though it can make you feel nausia if increased in dose too quickly or overdosed), and without intolerable withdrawal effects (some report headache and upset stomach, but this seems to relate to improper usage). It will not make you into a drug addict, destroy your credit, your family or turn you into a raging monster (again, more about Effexor XR below).
  
  
• GABA-type medications (easy to acquire legally) are far less effective and not targeted at the same places in the brain and therefore will do very little to recover lost slow wave sleep. The trouble with GABAs is that they have very small impact and decrease in efficacy as dosage increases. They are not addictive, but due to biomass availability and the way the body processes the compound, someone looking to increase the effects of GABAs will find themselves spending more time using the water closet than sleeping if they increase their dosages.
  
  
• Serotonin is a neurotransmitter in your brain that is manipulated by pharmaceutical corporations with medications classed as SSRI/SSNRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) for the supposed purpose of "treating depression and social anxiety." Note that this definition is blatently wrong. It does not treat the cause of these conditions; it treats the symptoms. An SSRI does not help your brain PRODUCE serotonin; it blocks the proper usage of serotonin in a brute force attempt to keep more of it free flowing in the brain (it's a serotonin antagonist, if you will, so that it cannot be used and consumed, allowing levels to continue to rise as the brain slowly manufactures it).

• An SSNRI medication like Effexor XR, made by Wyeth is extremely physiologically addicting. The list of side effects is vast and the list of withdrawal effects worse. (visit the following websites for forums where users post their experiences and horror stories at their use of, and attempts to stop using, Effexor XR: pandamedicine.com, the effexor activist's message board, and topix.com). A few notable quotes:

“I too am a victim of this horrible drug--a so-called 'medicine' which was passed by the FDA for public consumption on the strength of (count 'em) 2 clinical trials. Both were only short-term (3 months) and involved between 2-5000 people. It took me 3 tries to get off effexor and many horrible symptoms. Before I took effexor I was a healthy man who seldom saw a doctor. Since, I am almost constantly sick with something or other. My health hasn't been the same. "

And:

“Wyeth has insidiously turned trusting consumers seeking relief from depression into drug addicts that are forced to take their product."

• Effexor XR is literally pushed at "depressives" and other patients by doctors who are not educated about the pharmacological implications and long term effects. Young children are even on it.

So the "golden calf"of the current "understanding of mental health" is SEROTONIN.

• Serotonin cannot be supplimented. The molecules will not pass through the blood brain barrier (which is why SSRI medications attempt to block to uptake of serotonin to build amounts over time).
  
  
• Melatonin is a neurotransmitter used in your brain for, among other things, sleep regulation. You can legally take suppliments of it, over the counter, and it DOES pass the blood brain barrier. Melatonin is manufactured in the brain by way of consumption of serotonin. If you have low levels of serotonin, you cannot manufacture much melatonin. If you have an SSRI medication blocking the uptake of serotonin, you cannot manufacture melatonin (normally or at all).
  
  
• Tryptophan, or 5HTP, is another neurotransmittor in the brain most commonly known by people who eat too much turkey for Thanks Giving Dinners because they become sleepy. Turkey meat contains high levels of 5HTP. 5HTP is another component used in the manufacturing of serotonin in the brain.
  
  5HTP was freely available on the market and then was removed in a similar "shock schlock" tale of death caused by overdose. In reality, the container of tryptophan in question was TAINTED and it was NOT the actual tryptophan that caused the death. However, pharmaceutical companies took great advantage of the shock of this "overdose death" to assault the market of over the counter dietary suppliments and encouraged (we will assume you know what a lobbiest is) the FDA to ban it. It has since become available, legally once more. Currently, the pharmaceutical companies are continuing efforts to pressure the FDA to ban all dietary suppliments with horror stories. The most horrible event is that these pharmaceutical companies are losing potential profit to users of these competing, non-prescription products.
  
  
• The "depression/suicide link" was discovered via studies of brains of successful suicides. When compared to brains of non-suicide deaths, it was recognized that there was a great deal LESS serotonin in the brains of the suicides. This was an opportunity to attempt treating what was perceived as depression by way of increasing serotonin in the brain.
  
  
• GHB, already present in the brain naturally, is one of the only known substances which can be administered externally to encourage the brain to PRODUCE serotonin.

Important questions to ask:

• What was, if any, the result of observing melatonin, 5HTP and GHB levels in the brains of these suicides as compared to the non-suicides?
• Were they observed at all and/or Recorded?
• Anyone interested in doing the research? (what you read here is from years of research and exhausts me continually, so assistance would be appreciated)
  

• There are MANY hypnotic-sedative agents on the pharmaceutical market such as Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata and others.
• The makers of one of the brand name pharmaceuticals has a specific commercial which feeds the viewers DISinformation (sometimes called "lies"). In specific, the medication commercial declares that the drug increases a person's amount of R.E.M. sleep (Sleep Stage Five, dream sleep). This may be true. The disinformation is when the commercial states the following: "... R.E.M. Sleep is the most restorative of the stages of sleep..." (disclaimer: this quotation may not be word for word but the claim is the same). R.E.M., or stage five of your sleep cycle is the time where your brain is THE MOST ACTIVE and therefore the LEAST able to do restorative work.
  
• From each of these companies, you will find the incorrect definition or description, again, of "treating [insert problem here]" instead of "treating the symptoms of [insert problem here]."
  

The "conspiracy" elements of note:

• The pharmaceutical companies are fighting/pushing on/obstructing competing markets (the dietary suppliment market), manipulating the US Government's FDA and conducting vast infighting.
  
  
• They push medications that address symptoms, NOT causes.
  
  
• They push these medications to children as readily as adults, despite the fact that there are no known studies or statistical data to tell what the long term effects of using these medications are on adults or children, especially in the brain's plasticity stages of childhood to late twenties.
  
  
• They push medications that are addictive both emotionally and, worse, physically.
  
  
• The FDA has forced black box warnings that SSRI medications can increase the risk of suicide ideation or even lead to suicide itself (nice side-effect for an "anti-depressant"), but the FDA does NOT seem to have attended to the vast majority of other life-destroying side effects such as those found at the websites listed above. Worse:
  
  
• The FDA apparently does not address the issues of addiction and withdrawal in relation to these medications (including SSRI/SSNRI, benzodiazepines, non-benzo-hypnotics, etc).
  
  
• The FDA quickly approves said medications for commercial use but the government refuses to allow access to CERTAIN types of medications for those persons on disability and other government healthcare aid. Why?
  
  
• The managed health care companies accessed by full-time employed citizens are willing to approve the use of these medications while the US Government Disability offices are NOT at all willing to provide access, even under their own claimed pre-authorization rules, to unemployed and disabled citizens (exception: Effexor XR passes without a hitch; maybe because the government knows all too well that people are likely to die in withdrawal or that massive amounts of citizens withdrawing from Effexor XR might turn into violent mobs?).
  
  
• Pharmaceutical companies push medications that do not address the CAUSES of the ills they proclaim to treat, yet they do not state to their victims that the medications only treat the SYMPTOMS. Read the paperwork, and please, correct the wording on the countless Wikipedia pages out there.
  
  
• Pharmaceutical companies fight against, decry and villify medications and suppliments that DO address the CAUSES of the ills which compete with these billion-dollar-making pharmaceutical corporations. They go so far as to use their seemingly God-like resources to force a government agency such as the FDA to illegalize substances which would defeat the very purpose of many addictive pharmaceutical products being pushed at billions of people worldwide. Why would they do that if the health of their customers was their actual priority? The truth is, the health of their customers has nothing to do with their corporate mission. Making money, continuously, without obstruction by, say, curing ills, is the true goal.
  

These are facts.

I admit that my research does not include the academic citation my detractors will demand. I admit I am biased as a sleep disorder sufferer. I admit that WikiPedia is a lousy research device, but it's free, accessible and often generally correct. I do not like conspiracy theories, but when something looks and smells like dead fish...

The FDA and several pharmaceutical companies need to have a heavy fist of citizen outrage come crashing down upon them. There are countless victims of medication side-effects that are outraged enough to have hired lawyers, but the best option is a class action lawsuit encompassing as many victims/complainants as possible.

We now supposedly have a new government. Barack Obama says "Change has come to America."

Has it?

What will President Obama do about this insidiously slow destruction of the lives of US citizens at the hands of pharmaceutical corporations and the uneducated doctors who prescribe without forethought or patient education?

What will you do, Mr. President?

-Intransitivus of Dysamoria.com