In an episode of the Charlie Rose Show a psychiatrist at Columbia University
named Jeffery Lieberman suggested that "antipsychotic" drugs are
neuroprotective agents that might in some way protect against a
neurodegenerative process. Robert Whitaker believes this to be an idea
that's taking hold and in this post tries to find scientific grounds
for this idea. I have to say it's an extremely disturbing idea if you've
ever been exposed to some quacks neuroprotection or if you think you might
be any time in the future. It's something I'd like to comment more about
on this weblog.
During the show Eric Kandel gave a brief history of psychiatry since
Hippocrates, the great Greek Physician of 5th century who spoke of depression
and manic psychosis and indicated they were medical illness. This is something
he did indeed:
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
pleasures, joys, laughter and jests... Those who are mad through phlegm
are quiet, and neither shout nor make a disturbance; those maddened
through bile are noisy, evil-doers, and restless, always doing something
inopportune.
Hippocrates
What you have in the 5th century is almost exactly like what you have today
in modern psychiatry. What you have is the bio-medical reductionism
you'll find today and if
you substitute serotonin for phlegm and dopamine for bile you pretty much have
modern theories for psychiatric illnesses. So mentioning Hippocrates was very
relevant for viewers of Charlie Rose show, it puts modern day theories in
historical context for them.
Eric Kandel goes on with his brief history describing beliefs about the mad
during medieval times and the emergence of moral therapy mentioning
Philippe Pinel.
He ends his short story with one of the 'grandfathers' of modern day
psychiatry, Emil Kraeplin.
Emil Kraeplin was the first quack to do things that resemble modern day
psychiatry. One of which was compiling symptom checklists and apply a label
after showing that people have the symptoms on the checklist. His symptom
checklist consisted of 36 groups of psychic symptoms and 19 types of bodily
symptoms. Diagnosing illness with these checklists resulted in his patients
being placed in what are called dysjunctive categories. Two different patients
could have the same diagnostic label and have two completely different sets
of symptoms. This is something that continues in modern day psychiatry with
the schizophrenia label. To receive a diagnosis of schizophrenia today using
the symptom checklist found in the DSM-IV you need two of five symptoms --
hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized or
catatonic behavior, and negative symptoms. There are 15 ways two people
can be labeled with schizophrenia and have nothing in common under the 1994
DSM-IV's criteria for schizophrenia. He also placed people in categories based
on outcomes. He claimed that dementia preacox was a chronic degenerative illness
that people didn't recover from. When they did they were placed in the other
category. Making the whole thing really really silly. It's so much like modern
day psychiatry, 110 years ago!
A very important figure and his insights were not included in Eric Kandels
brief history. That figure was a French psychiatrist named Pierre Deniker
and his serendipitous discovery that the drug chlorpromazine sent mental
patients into what he described as hibernation. A state that caused his
patients to become apathetic and indifferent to their surroundings. A state
where his patients were still experiencing symptoms but were just less
interested in them. He believed that the drugs medically induced a brain
disease that ameliorated the effects of patients naturally occurring illness.
He observed that the medically induced brain disease he inflicted on his
patients had striking similarities to lethargic encephalitis. He found the
drugs reproduced all the symptoms of lethargic encephalitis and thought that
it would be possible to cause true encephalitis epidemics with the new drugs.
His discovery began a pharmacological revolution in psychiatry.
Recently, 58 years after Pierre Deniker's history making discovery we have
Columbia University's Jeffery Lieberman discussing neural circuits on the
Charlie Rose show. What's known now that wasn't know when Pierre Deniker
made his discovery is that chlorpromazine acted on the neural circuits that
Jeffery Lieberman talks about. In the 1950's the effects of these drugs were
described as a chemical lobotomy. In the 1960's psychiatry's view of
the drugs began to change. During that period what Sheldon Gelman describes
in his book Medicating Schizophrenia as a "new vision of medication"
took hold.
This occurred after a study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health
in 1964.
The studies authors thought
that agents like chlorpromazine should be regarded as "antischizophrenic"
agents because they reduced the symptoms their patients displayed. After this
antischizophrenic or antipsychotic idea took hold it became associated
with a theory of how the medication worked. It was later found the medication
acted on a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Since the medication was
antipsychotic and it had an effect on dopamine levels the medication was
theorized to work by correcting
an imbalance of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Following that line
of reasoning the drugs are correcting the neurochemical cause of
schizophrenia. Further
along that line of reasoning the drug is halting a degenerative disease
process by correcting
the neurochemical cause of schizophrenia. That's the very same line of
reasoning that Jeffery Lieberman is following 46 years after the NIMH
collaborative study when he talks about a lack of treatment leading to
a progression of the illness. The drugs used in his practice aren't very
much different than the ones used in 1964. They're a little cleaner,
meaning they
bind to targeted receptors more specifically while producing pretty much the
same effect.
The difference is analogous to the use of something resembling a surgical
instrument rather than something like an ice pick taken from a psychiatrists
bar to perform a lobotomy.
I'm sure psychiatrists would prefer to be seen as circuit fixers and
not brain disease inflicters. No one would want to go see some horrible
quack who inflicted brain disease like dysfunction, misery, sickness,
horror and
death on people. Psychiatrists would be disliked, would they not?
In Peter Breggins book Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry he
argues that psychiatric therapies continue to be the type of brain disabling
therapies employed by Deniker.
They're attacking me for being an activist. People are just too brainwashed
and naive to understand that. The psycho-pharmaceutical industry makes big
money on very harmful drugs. They have to keep people brainwashed about mental
health issues so they keep taking psychiatric drugs. For a bit of insight
into how an organization like a drug company might identify an activist you
can look to one of the books written by a public relations expert that works
doing public relations for the drug industry. A really interesting book is
Denise Deegan's book Managing Activism. Here's a passage:
One of the benefits of quantitative research is that in investigating
opinions it is possible to identify the public likely to become activists.
This can be done by adapting Grunig's situational theory. This identifies
three types of public, namely, latent, aware and active. The latent public
does not recognize a situation as problematic. When it recognizes a problem
it becomes aware. It becomes active when organises to do something about
the problem.
Psychiatry and psychiatric drugs are extreamly problematic. It's about keeping
people unaware of the problem so they don't do anything about it. I know for
a fact that the folks at Eli Lilly and Company are aware of my desire to make
people aware of the problematic nature of their products. It's no secret that
I want to point out how problematic those psychiatric quacks are.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted an extreamly effective program
to neutralize activism in the 1960's called COINTELPRO. The very same tactics
are being used. It's logical for me to assume that they're doing what they're
doing to neutralize me as an activist threat. While doing that they committed
a number of criminal and civil wrongs that they probably want to evade taking
responsibility for. I'll just assume that, nobody likes getting sued or being
put in prison for long periods of time. Unless of course they're truly filled
with remorse over what they've done. They're the same tactics, have a look at
Frank Donner's book The Age of Surveillance. Another book worth checking
out is Jim Redden's Snitch Culture.
The things being said about me are untrue. They're being said by people involved
in a crime against me. I am not making any comments about performing oral sex
on anyone at all. It's malign slander and sexual harassment. I'd advise
anyone approached by someone claiming that I said something about them not
to tell them anything sexual about me or themselves. They're attacking me.
They can use the information against you and me. They can attack me and if
you in some way become problematic they can use the information to attack you.
They'd fuck you to say some vicious thing about me. Anyone getting into any
sexual business of mine isn't a friend of mine.
On a recent PBS television show Columbia University's Jeffery Lieberman
presented a series of brain scans of persons with schizophrenia which showed
enlarged ventricles due to a loss of grey matter. Lieberman suggested that
people labeled as schizophrenic have a degenerative brain disease. Robert
Whitaker checks the scientific literature to see if this idea is well grounded
in science on the Mad in America Blog. His post is here.
In the same program Jeffery Lieberman starts talking about what's really
a hypothesis formed the same way the serotonin hypothesis of depression
was formed. It's presented to the audience as fact, supposedly grounded in
science. Jeffery Lieberman from the transcripts:
These stresses cause a dysfunction of these neural circuits which is
result in the dysregulation of the chemicals that Elyn was referring
to, but in this case involving dopamine. And this stimulation becomes
excessive and leads to the psychotic symptoms that Elyn was experiencing,
the hallucinations, the delusions in the brain.
This is what's called the dopamine hypothesis. Psychiatry claims the neuroleptic
drugs reduce the symptoms of psychosis, that they're anti-schizophrenic.
The drugs disrupt the functioning of
the neural circuits Jeffery Lieberman is talking about. So what they did is
reason that the dopamine circuits are over active, then go on to claim they
fixed something disrupting the functioning of those circuits. If you follow
the line of reasoning that led to the hypothesis you can go on to reason that
the drugs halt a degenerative disease by fixing the schizophrenic
dopamine circuits that cause the disease. Is there any real scientific evidence
to support this hypothesis apart from the claim that the drugs are antipsychotic
in nature? The answer is no.
The show also got into the genetics of schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder.
Early in the program Eric Kendal mentioned that it's beginning to emerge
that some of the genes are shared by the two illness. The evidence for this
claim is most likely taken from family studies like this one. Keep in mind
no schizophrenia or bi-polar genes were identified. It's evidence taken from
family studies that suffer from the methodological flaws that would cause an
investigator to turn to studies of identical twins. Stephen Warren goes on to
talk about genetics later in the program. He mentions the the 50% concordance
rate taken from studies of identical twins. This 50% concordance rate is
disputed by Jay Joseph in his book The Gene Illusion.
I still have a situation with surveillance, slander and harassment here in
Syracuse. There has never at anytime been any consent to any form of
surveillance. If there is anyone with audio or video recordings of me they
were made completely without any consent from me. Any surveillance being
conducted where I live is completely without my consent. It's something I
want prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It would be criminal.
It's something criminal being done by someone I want no contact with,
someone stalking me. Someone with absolutely no legal right to do anything
but leave me alone. What's being said about me is coming from someone
committing a crime, a stalker. It's something I've said over and over again
on this weblog.
I think the person responsible might be some kind of sick fucking psycho.
Whoever it is is making false accusations because he associates his
thoughts with me. Whoever is making the accusations is doing it malignly.
I think this person might be running around claiming that I think I have
magical powers or that something gave me magical powers. There's nothing
for the accuser to base that accusation on. I've never had any beliefs like
that so it couldn't have been based on anything I've ever said to anyone. The
accusation is purely based on the accusers own thoughts. They couldn't
possibly have anything to do with anything else. The accusations are
malign. These accusations were made after the accuser realized that what I
believed might have something to do with archetypes. They're malign false
accusations that involve projection. It happens over and over again. This
person is someone I want nothing to do with. It's someone who should be
minding his/her own business in a prison some where. It's someone I want
fully prosecuted.