Thursday 15 December 2005

Mandatory Drugs for Everyone?

Psy-screening and Mandatory Drugs for Everyone? The Genesis of President Bush?s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health: "The ?Expert Consensus Guideline? is explained by Allen Jones: ?Essentially, TMAP opted to ?establish? new drugs as the best drugs for various illnesses by surveying the opinions of doctors and psychiatrists of TMAP?s own choosing. No hard science, no patients, no study review, and no clinical trials ? just the ?Expert Opinions? of persons TMAP elected to survey.?"

...This consensus was generously supported exclusively by 6 pharmaceutical companies: Eli Lilly and Co., Janssen Pharmaceutica, Inc., Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, Pfizer, Inc. and Zeneca Pharmaceuticals.
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So, we put into this speech, and it survived the edit process, a line that Candidate Bush spoke, ?And if I'm elected, I will convene a Commission, to look at why our public sector and our mental health system are not able to do the job our citizens deserve,? or some such....anyways, he said ?I'm havin' a Commission?. We had him on the record, once he was elected it took awhile, alot of r-e-m-i-n-d-e-r-s had to come to him that he had said this, we had to keep pushing this message and ultimately Senator Dominici had to r-e-m-i-n-d him that he had promised this. But indeed, a Commission was convened..."

...lynn was quoted at that 2004 AACAP Meeting as saying, "One of the things that we did was to mail a copy of our report "Catch Them Before They Fall" and we mailed a model resolution, ahh, to all the 50 states, we sent this as a very friendly, ?Here's some information you might like to use since you're on a health committee? ? we mailed it only to people who were in key committees ? ?you might like to have this resolution, to introduce the notion that every child should be screened for mental illness, at least once in their youth, in order to identify mental illness and prevent suicide.? So we offered them up some language and some tools, and a surprising number of folks, in fact, introduced it exactly the way we sent it and made some real strides with it."

Drugging Babies in Ohio

In a Columbus Dispatch article dated April 25, 2005, the headlines read, ?EVEN BABIES GETTING TREATED AS MENTALLY ILL; Prescriptions on the rise even though they haven't been tested on children?.

The Dispatch reported, ?Nearly 40,000 Ohio children on Medicaid were taking drugs for anxiety, depression, delusions, hyperactivity and violent behavior as of July [2004]. For the entire year, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services paid out about $65.5 million for kids' mental-health drugs.? They also reported that 696 Ohio children, ages newborn to 3 years old, received sedatives and powerful, mood-altering, mental-health drugs through Medicaid in July of 2004.

Valid research shows that ages 0-3 are the most critical years for the development of children. Combine that data with the recent FDA black box warnings on these drugs that list the physical side effects ranging from headaches, nausea and weight gain to heart attacks, liver damage, suicidal ideations and sudden death.

...Medicaid Funding Crisis in Ohio

Medicaid spending in Ohio currently accounts for 37 percent of the state's $49-billion budget. Ohio is spending $2 billion this year alone on prescription drugs - a 94-percent increase since 2001. In 1999, under Hogan?s direction, Ohio?s version of the costly TMAP program was implemented in the state. It?s called OMAP, which was put into place in conjunction with Janssen Pharmaceutica, Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca. The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Ohio-NAMI were two of the primary movers of this program.

In an interview with WIMA-AM Radio in November 2005, Hogan had this to say on OMAP in Ohio: ??frankly it didn?t work very well for us and we?ve discontinued it?..Increasingly it?s clear that the scientists don?t have pretty good information to give the doctors about which works best??So we thought, and frankly I thought at one point in time that this kind of algorithm where you?d give the docs, ?Try this first, try this second,? would be a good idea but it just hasn?t worked that well.? That must have been a pretty expensive lesson in Ohio.

...According to a September, 2005 Pittsburgh Post Gazette story headlined: ?FIERCE OPPOSITION ARISES TO MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING IN SCHOOLS?, Hogan complained about opposition from a "curious coalition of people".


Hogan now says that "my skin is a little thin" after being accused of being a "pill pusher and worse".

Brace yourself Mr. Hogan, the curious coalition is expanding and curiously coalescing.

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or a copy of the references for this article, please e-mail Sue Weibert at: info@teenscreentruth.com


Or go to the website listed here:
http://www.teenscreentruth.com/new_freedom_commission.html

Independent journalist, Doyle Mills, contributed to this report

Sue Weibert is an investigative journalist, mother of six and resides in Western NY.

Editor's note: OpEdNews has run a series of articles on Teenscreen. Here are links to a few:

TeenScreen - Angel of Mercy or Pill-Pusher

TeenScreen - Another Gross Distortion


TeenScreen Sets Up Shop In Illinois


August 24 DC Protest - Activists Against TeenScreen Will Attend


Parental Consent : TeenScheme Sets The Record Wrong

Ken Kramer - Crusader Against Mass Drugging of Kids-- A Big Pharma Plot
TeenScreen - Who Pays For Treatment & Drugs?