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Before you take that
antidepressant, visit this site...
http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Before-You-Take-That-Antid-by-Martha-Rosenberg-100103-313.html
Before You Take That Antidepressant, Visit This Web Site
/For OpEdNews: Martha Rosenberg - Writer/
With our national love of drugs, sex, celebrities and violence you'd
think SSRIstories.com would be more popular.
The 12-year-old web site lists 3,500 crime related news reports linked
to the use of SSRI antidepressants with celebrities like Wynona Ryder,
Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, Anna Nicole Smith, Heather Locklear, Glen
Campbell, Carrie Fisher, Sharon Osbourne, Phil Hartman, Princess Di's
driver, Patrick Swayze's Sister, O.J. Simpson and the Crown Prince of
Nepal generously sprinkled in.
You can search and sort stories by drug--Lexapro, Celexa, Luvox, Prozac,
Zoloft and Paxil and the related Effexor and Cymbalta--date, location,
type of violence and the articles about school shootings, famous cases
and legal cases won on SSRI defenses are color coded.
You don't even have to read the whole article.
SSRIstories founder and manager Betty Henderson pulls out and
*boldfaces* the story's drug-related citation like Lynyrd Skynyrd
harmonicist Mike Caruso's remark that, "the doctor put me on Cymbalta.
That turned me manic," and Oklahoma murder suspect Ronson Bush's remark,
"I killed my friend when I took these. I'm not going to take them," when
offered SSRIs at the Grady County Jail.
The site even has medical journal credibility, cited in an article in
the spring 2009 Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons in which
author Joel M. Kauffman, Ph.D wrote, "Since no clinical trial involving
multiple homicides is ever likely to be run, no firmer evidence [of SSRI
dangers than SSRIstories] is likely to be found."
Pharma and the FDA may still be agnostic about SSRIs causing violence
but 700 murders, 200 murder-suicides and 47 postpartum depression cases,
including the 2006 case of Andrea Yates who drowned her five children on
Effexor, don't lie.
Nor do 51 school shootings incidents including Columbine, where shooter
Eric Harris was on Zoloft and Luvox, Red Lake where shooter Jeffrey
Weise was on Prozac, and Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University
where the shooters were reportedly affected by antidepressants. Nor do
hundreds of suicides--including children--lie and veteran-related
violence like the May 11 death of five at a combat stress center near
Baghdad allegedly committed by Army Sgt. John Russell who was on
antidepressants-- eerily presaging the shootings at Fort Hood's Soldier
Readiness Center.
Of course, there have always been murders, suicides, postpartum
depression and veteran despondency. But parents killing children,
children killing children, children killing parents and people killing
/their whole families/ wasn't news-as-usual before SSRIs appeared in
1988 say anti-SSRI advocates.
"There are two cases of women who stabbed a man close to 200 times and a
case of a man who stabbed his wife over 100 times and then went next
door to the neighbor's house and stabbed the neighbor's furniture about
500 times," says Henderson, a retired teacher who lives in Texas. "There
is also a case of a woman close to 80-years-old who stabbed her husband
56 times and then stabbed herself to death. This kind of energy, rage
and insanity was not seen before SSRIs."
Just as startling as the ferocity of the SSRI-related violence is its
bizarre, often unprovoked nature: A Midwest City, OK woman who accepted
a cup of tea from an elderly nurse she had just met--and then strangled
her. A 12-year-old boy left in his cousin's car while she shopped at
Target--who killed her 5-week-old daughter for no earthly reason.
SSRIs also produce kleptomania as seen with the Ryder/Zoloft case
observes Henderson, pyromania as seen in an English millionaire who
burned down his own house and immolation suicides and a "strange kind"
of nymphomania. "SSRIstories has 10 cases of women school teachers who
molested their minor male students. The O'Reilly Factor has said it's
receiving one case a week of this same kind of new crime."
Just as dangerous as SSRIs themselves, is/ withdrawing/ from them says
the site in a prominent warning. "It is important to withdraw extremely
slowly from these drugs, usually over a period of a year or more, under
the supervision of a qualified specialist."
Henderson began SSRIstories as a message board in 1997 after
experiencing side effects to Prozac, prescribed to her to quit smoking,
that were so severe she was hospitalized. Soon she was joined by two
other anti-SSRI activists, one whose daughter had killed herself on the
antidepressants, and they began posting SSRI stories from news sources.
Henderson has spoken on the radio and at FDA hearings and the site has
been cited by the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.
But it plays David to the "Goliath" of pharma funded sites like WebMD,
emedicine, Medicinet, Righthealth and Everydayhealth with their
ubiquitous "Are You Depressed?" ads. In fact Eli Lilly was a founding
partner of WebMD according to the Washington Post.
No, SSRIstories just archives 22 years of important drug related stories
that the 72-year-old Henderson researches and verifies as a public service.
More of a public service than the FDA which has yet to withdraw the
drugs named in the 3,500 stories--or even call them dangerous.
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