Addictive tranx drugs recklessly over-prescribed long ago are linked to lasting brain damage

Yesterday's Independent on Sunday article informs us that the link between benzodiazepines and similar psychotropic drugs and brain shrinkage was made years 30 years ago and the Medical Research Council agreed in 1982 there should be large-scale studies done, but they were not done. I urge you to read the article.

The IoS tells us that Catherine Hopkins, the legal director of Action against Medical Accidents, has stated, "The failure to carry out research into the effect of benzodiazepines has exposed huge numbers of people to the risk of brain damage. This research urgently needs to be carried out, and if the results confirm the suspicions of the 1981 expert group, it could lead to one of the biggest group actions for damages against the Government and the MRC ever seen in the courts.""

I remember these extremely harmful, extremely addictive tranquilliser and hypnotic drugs - Valium, Librium, Mogadon, et al being prescribed with reckless abandon for all kinds of purported conditions. I remember people taking them in the 60s and 70s - taking them in good faith - and some of them becoming Zombie-like in consequence. Years later I took them myself (they were mainly prescribed to women, in a ghastly example of rampant medical sexism), along with amitriptyline, a dangerous anti-depressant, as the caring professions played a cruel game of pretending that my agonising toothache was 'really' Depression - still a favourite 'diagnosis'/insult used to cover up dental/medical negligence. Read my Mensa article on Cruelty, Clinical Negligence and the Abuse of Power in the NHS

It took me 8 months of monumentally difficult struggle to wean myself off the Mogadon, which is reportedly far more addictive than heroin. Some poor souls took these drugs while pregnant and have had to live with the corrosive guilt of irreparably damaging their babies while they were still in the womb. Many unfortunate victims are still addicted to tranquillisers today, decades after starting to take the drugs, and incredibly, doctors are still prescribing these drugs. I would strongly advise anyone to decline to take any of this pharmaceutical junk. It is far more likely to harm you than to help you.

The country should be grateful to Esther Rantzen, who on her programme, That's Life, fought to curb the terrible consequences of the medical profession's love affair with tranquillisers. Until she took up the matter, doctors, guided by profit-motivated, not-to-be-trusted drug company reps, were assuring patients who reported their dreadful symptoms of addiction that the drugs had not caused their symptoms and that they should continue to take them.

Irresponsible prescribing of diazepam/Valium is again on the rise in UK

The Sunday Telegraph reports that prescriptions for diazepam aka Valium are rising dramatically. The benzodiazepine family of drugs, which includes Valium, are extremely addictive yet were heavily over-prescribed in the 1970s, and have destroyed the lives of millions of people, mainly women. Were it not for Esther Rantzen and her investigative television programme “That’s Life” this horrifying damage to innocent people would have continued to escalate, as the drug companies assured their medical dupes that the dreadful symptoms their patients were suffering were not caused by the drugs, but by the putative underlying illness. See the article in The Independent of 31 October 2009 where we read that:

"In 1980, an item on Esther Rantzen’s BBC TV programme “That’s Life” detailing the difficulty some people had withrawing from Valium, provoked the biggest response in the programme’s history, exposing a problem on a huge scale that had gone unnoticed by doctors. GPs had until then assumed, when patients complained of symptoms of withdrawal, that this was the anxiety returning - and prescribed more drugs. “That’s life” was later celebrated as the TV programme that changed the course of medicine.

In 1988, doctors were warned by the Committee on Safety of Medicines that prescriptions for the benzodiazepines should be limited to a maximum of four weeks . The warning was re-iterated by Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government’s Chief Medical Officer in 2004."

That irresponsible GPs are adding to the already huge numbers of innocent victims of these harmful drugs is hard to credit. Their freedom to prescribe these drugs should be curbed by Law and there should be severe sanctions against any further flouting of the guidelines about it.

In my informed opinion, prescription drugs cause most of the avoidable illness and disability in the UK and in the USA.

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

Evidence-based medicine? - You're joking...)o:

Medical 'experts' who assert their arrogant, prejudiced views with no scientific evidence to back them do terrible harm. Unfortunately there are far too many people who lack the courage to dare to believe them to be other than saints...)o: - Their biased opinions should not be called evidence at all. Very often their 'diagnoses' are mere guesswork. But doctors are extremely powerful and most people are scared of criticising them in case they 'get into trouble' in some way for doing so.

Think back to what doctors used to advise about how babies should be placed in their cots. - They used to advise mothers to lay their babies on their stomachs. - There was no EVIDENCE for the correctness of this advice. It was later shown that it is safer for babies to be laid onto their backs and not their stomachs. - Were there any apologies from the medical profession? - Of course not! - It was Anne Diamond who, after sadly losing a baby to cot death, fought for the truth to be told about how best to lay a baby down, and since her successful campaign there has a significant fall in the incidence of cot death in the United Kingdom. - Many people have reason to be profoundly grateful to Anne Diamond and her 'Back to Sleep' message.

Similarly, it was Esther Rantzen that fought to curb the terrible consequences of the medical profession's reckless overprescribing of tranquillisers, which even decades later are still wreaking havoc on many, many lives.

I am myself struggling to draw attention to the horrific harm that prescribed steroids, HRT and many other drugs do when prescribed by doctors unfamiliar with the side-effects and negligent about monitoring patients who innocently take these dangerous drugs because the doctor has prescribed them. My website is www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk

If you visit my website you will see that there has never been any scientific evidence to support the usual medical advice about how to reduce obesity. See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html and Obesity and the Salt Connection

I wrote to the Power Inquiry about the abuse of power by the medical profession, but they did not pursue the matter at all...)o:

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)