The Highwire with Del Bigtree - ANTIDEPRESSANTS AND MASS SHOOTINGS: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

Despite findings of increased suicide risks and homicidal ideation linked to antidepressants, the widely used drugs have been spared from the discussions around mass shootings. Is it time we reevaluate the national conversation along with the real history surrounding this class of drugs?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Let's focus on one product line of pharmaceutical products, and these would be products for mental health issues. We're talking about, let's go Adderall. This is breaking news. This is out of the JAMA Journal American Medicaid. I'm sorry, Journal of the American Medical Association. This is the headline here. One in four students misuse ADHD drugs in parts of U.S. study fines. So this is really concerning because these drugs are being handed out like candy.

They have been. and especially during the COVID response, you saw mental health disorders and prescriptions being filled for these just skyrocket. So we have like really big widespread misuse up to 25% there of kids using these off. I mean, and that doesn't include all of the, you know, the kids that are on the drugs being pushed by these doctors. And I'm sure it just doesn't get to be enough.

These are uppers you're giving how many of our kids. I mean, they are turning our children into drug addicts. Caliph is telling us if we could just get. more contact with the drugs into the society, we'd be better. They are drugging our kids and low and behold, shocking that they turn to the streets to get heavier doses, more doses. You're creating entire environment, moving on to Oxycontin. This is all sorts of other things.

I mean, you want to talk about gateway drugs. How about gateway drug pushers? Your pediatricians are drug pushers now. Right. And this is almost like the largest quiet experiment on the central nervous systems of Americans and it's tough because you know it's it's it's a quiet so you don't see it's not overt and so let's also focus on this the antidepressants that's prozac Paxil uh Zoloff le Prexo so let's look at some of the headlines here let's talk about how many Americans are

taking these now this was in 2016 one in six Americans take antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs study finds and it's hard to find the actual numbers of people taking it but in the new York times here we found some some basically some quotes from this and the title is the age of distraction, so distraction and depression. It says antidepressants continue to be the most commonly prescribed of these medications in the United States. And their use has become only more widespread since the pandemic began with 8.7% of an increase from 2019 to 2021 compared with 7.9% from 2017 to 2019. So going up pretty much the whole time, but it also goes on to say about how many prescriptions are being filled. IQVIA, a global health technology and clinical research firm, found

that in 2021, a total of 337,054,544 prescriptions were filled. But here's the kicker, Dell. This is when we start drilling down to the really dangerous parts of this. For some age groups, that change has been more pronounced since 2017. That's years before the pandemic. There has been a 41% increase in antidepressant use for teenagers included in the Express Scripts data. So that was a study of 19 million kids.

41% same thing happening in the UK. This is what's going on over there with their antidepressant use. One in eight people taking antidepressants as pandemic blues linger. Now, this is a study we have not talked about is one of the most important studies on this topic that has ever been published. And you probably didn't see it on NPR government-funded agency or the, you know, CBC. Here's the headline. The serotonin theory of depression, a systemic umbrella review. view of the evidence. The author's aimed to basically evaluate the evidence on whether depression is associated with lower serotonin concentration or activity in the brain. So when we think about depression, most people just have this reflex action. They don't

really know where it came from. Oh, yeah, it's chemical imbalance. Chemical imbalance. There's chemicals off, serotonin. And we don't know really where that came from. So these researchers, they looked at basically three of the major research databases. And they looked at from the inception of when these ideas were found in the databases all the way up till December of 2020. And listen to what they wrote. They say this. Our comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with are caused by lower serotonin concentrations or activity. Remember, this is the whole point of these medications. It's like, you know, what, over a decade of exactly what you're saying. We've just

all written it off as it's been proven. It's a lack of serotonin. It's got to get your, you know, chemical imbalance. And this is where, you know, when you get in the work, we do, you start realizing everything is built on a pile of bull crap, assumptions, desires by the pharmaceutical industry to push an agenda because they have a product that can boost serotonin, whether it's good for you or not, let's make billions of dollars off of it. And now when you finally start looking at it, they have no science to back it up, you know? And then, you know, you ended up having someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson show up and tell you, well, the consensus says. Right. Consensus is following a lie.

We're looking at it for specifically for antidepressants over three decades of this idea. And this is why this piece of research right here is so important. So these authors go on to say this, even more damning quotes. This review suggests that the huge research effort based on the serotonin hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression. This is consistent with research on many other biological markers. We suggest it is time to acknowledge that the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated. Now, one of the authors went on to do an interview with a magazine, and you can read that

here, and he spoke a little more freely outside of that study. This is the title, depression is probably not caused by chemical imbalance in the brain. New study. He goes on to say this. It is important that people know that the idea that depression results from a, quote, chemical imbalance is hypothetical, and we do not understand what temporarily elevating serotonin or other biochemical changes produced by antidepressants due to the brain. We conclude that it is important. It is important. possible to say that taking SSRI depressants is worthwhile or even completely safe so del i ask you this how the heck did we get here well it appears to be kind of the same um calculation the same equation as how we got here with opioids how we got here with big tobacco marketing marketing marketing so

in the british journal of psychiatry there was this headline the 25th anniversary of the launch of prozac gives pause for thought. Where did we go wrong? And the author of the writer says this, the uptake of Prozac. Prozac was the first antidepressant on the market. The uptake of Prozac became almost a cultural phenomenon comparable with the fashions for high protein and low carbohydrate diets to lose weight. Quote, Washington City Full of Prozac, headlined the New York Times in 1994 City Full of Prozac. Just imagine, he writes, I am not aware of comparable historical claims for any other pharmaceutical agent, penicillin included. He goes on to say, how do we account for this success? It was partially a result of relentless marketing undertaken

with an intensity, not here to scene in pharmaceuticals. By 1993, Lilly had 1,600 sales representatives in the field in the USA, surpassed only by Smith-Klein-Beacham's 1800 reps for Paxil. That was another antidepressant. So understand that they were flooding the market, flooding people out there, talking to your doctors, talking to the ad agencies, and just putting as many people, on the streets as possible to tout this thing and say it's the greatest thing ever. So we have Prozac, which was fluoxetine. That was approved by the FDA in December of 1987 and was launched to the market in January of 1988 by Eli Lilly under the name Prozac.

So, Del, let's get to the nitty gritty here. We're all aware of these school shootings. We're all aware of increase in mass shooting at the United States. We're all looking for answers. And the reflex action has been to blame firearms. but why? Why are we blaming firearms? Why are we leaving one of the key components off the table of this conversation every time? And the Washington Post wrote an article recently and revisited a very important event that happened in 1989. This is the headline here. One of America's first workplace shootings had an unlikely suspect, Prozac.

Now they're talking about the standard Graveyor shooting in 1989. So printing company in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Joseph Westbecker walked in with, an assault rifle, killed eight people, injured 12, and then unfortunately also killed himself. And this was the deadliest mass shooting in Kentucky history. And so this really did, this, this unfortunate watershed moment kicked off an era of mass shootings in the Prozac window now. We have this window that started. And this is what that looked like in the news. For the first time America really saw this through the lens of an antidepressant. Take a look. It was one ambulance after another bringing in the victims of the shooting spree to the emergency room at University Hospital.

The hospital was in its Code D disaster emergency plan, mobilizing doctors and nurses to assist the critically wounded. We needed a lot of personnel, doctors, nurses, x-ray technicians, operating room, personnel, recovery room. So we had to mobilize a lot of people. Jefferson County EMS assisted Louisville's emergency medical services, but there were so many victims that some were brought to the hospital in police cruisers. All together, we were faced with 15 patients who were, many of them critically ill, some of them not so seriously injured. I'd say at least half of those patients needed things done right away.

That would be IV fluids, resuscitation, major operations, big tests to see if they had certain injuries. Family members began arriving at the hospital to check on their loved ones. Some were overwhelmed with grief. For others, the news wasn't so bad. Jeff Seidenfighten says his father David did not realize he had been shot in the chest. As far as he knew it was an explosion, he didn't know he was being shot or anything. I'd heard from some of the other people in there that I was talking to, that their family members had played dead, that they, you know, were the first to be shot,

and they played dead so that they wouldn't get killed. I mean, these stories never get easy to hear, but in that moment it was like a rarity. And I feel like, I don't know with the exact numbers, but it feels like we're looking at a mass shooting now in America, almost, you know, I don't know if it's every day, but certainly every week, you know, there's something going on. It's really bad. Right. Right. It's, you know, it's almost like war reporting, but from a health aspect because of these health connections to these. And I want to be clear, because, you know, you and I both know, we will be attacked for even, you know, venturing into this conversation, but let me be perfectly clear. I'm not saying drugs

should be off the table. When I'm saying, I mean, that guns should be off the table, but drugs should certainly be on the table. And this is happening in almost every important conversation we need to be having here in America and around the world. When we talk about vaccines, which we do in COVID vaccine and all the excess mortality, I'm not saying that COVID itself, the disease isn't, you know, causing that or might be a part of it, but you can't take the vaccine that you gave everybody off the table when you start seeing rises to death after COVID is gone. I mean, it's the farm, and behind all, this is the pharmaceutical industry, the most powerful industry in Washington. It owns, your television set, it owns your government, so every time you want to have a decent conversation

here, you're ridiculed and called, you know, insane for daring to say, wait a minute, what are these SSRIs doing to the brains of people who are already depressed? We've always had depression. Why do we start seeing school shootings? Why do we start seeing mass shootings? We've always had guns. Why do we suddenly start seeing all these mass shootings? What was the actual change in our society. Oh, I don't know. It just happened to start like with Prozac. Right. And I'll use the same ideology that I've heard CDC ASIP voting members do for vaccines. If this vaccine can save just one person, right, we have to put it on the market. So flipping that around, if these antidepressants caused just one of these shootings, we have to have this discussion and really have it seriously here.

So let's go back to 1990, the summer of 1990, the Chicago Tribune. This was the reporting. Remember, Prozac was just put on the market in 1988. We have this headline. Suits take aim at Prozac, widely hailed Lily Drug. And it says, in the last two weeks, after 30 months on the market, the drug's glittering reputation has begun to tarnish amid a mounting outcry about alleged negative effects. Lawsuits claim that Prozac caused one user to embark on a murderous rampage in Louisville and a Louisville printing plant last year and that it prompted another recipient to repeatedly

attempt suicide. It goes on to say Edward West, a spokesperson. Get ready for this, Del. A spokesman for Lily declined to comment on the suits, which together asked for $300 million and damages from the firm. The company, he said, contends that information about the drug should be communicated to people by their health professionals, not the media. Where have we heard that before?

I mean, we're talking 30 years later, same thing. He says he asserted, however, that an estimated 2 million patients have taken the antidepressant with no notable adverse effects since Prozac received FDA administration approval. in December of 1987. So again, two talking points there that we continue to hear clearly these are talking points. You just deflect to how many people

have taken the drug or how many people have taken the vaccine. Great for the consensus. It's great for the larger group. Let's not focus on this little pesky problem with these ones that seem to get off kilter and go and kill their friends. Right.

And what did this drug company executive or this spokesperson say? The media shouldn't be talking about this. This should be communicated by trusted individuals is this type of information because it's very dangerous. So here we are full circle with Robert Callis saying, you know, again, trust in information. We can't have this misinformation out there. So now let's focus on this lawsuit because, okay, we have Prozac.

We have a lawsuit actually pointing the finger at this drug in a mass shooting. What happened? Well, unfortunately, the people that were trying to pin this on Prozac lost. They lost that. And then Eli Lilly was going around saying, you see, it was found in a court of law that our drug was safe. and they went around with that talking point but now we find this this is the headline prozac maker paid millions to secure favorable verdict in mass shooting lawsuit victims say remember this was the one that could have set the tone for the rest of the world we probably would never hear a prozac again

it would have just been a cautionary tale it says in this article the drug maker that produces prozac the antidepressant that joseph westbecker's victims blamed for his deadly shooting rampage 30 years ago at at standard grievous secretly paid the victims 20 million 20 000 $20 million to help ensure a verdict exonerating the drug company. In Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly vigorously shielded the payment for more than two decades, defying a Louisville judge who fought to reveal it because he said it swayed the jury's verdict. And if that isn't enough, we have, and this, we have from the BMJ missing documents from that trial. So not only did Eli Lilly come in and swoop in and give money to these people to sway their decision,

it appears that some missing documents were taking out of this. conversation. There's the headline here. This was a this was a headline from years ago. FDA to review missing drug company documents. And this this is really bombshell. It says in here the US food and drug administration has agreed to review confidential drug company documents that went missing during a controversial product liability suit more than 10 years ago. The missing documents, which were sent to the BMJ by an anonymous source last month include reviews and memos indicating that Eli Lilly officials were aware in the 1980. that fluoxetine had troubling side effects and sought to minimize their likely negative effects on

prescribing. And then here's where it really gets into the regulatory part. David Graham, currently associate director in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, criticized the analysis of postmarking surveillance data submitted by Lilly to the FDA. After discovering that Lilly failed to obtain systematic assessments of violence and had excluded 76 of 97 cases of reported suicidality, Dr. Graham concluded in a memo dated 11 September 1990 that, quote, because of a parent large scale underreporting Lilly's analysis cannot be considered as proving that fluoxetine and violent behavior are unrelated. And get this, it goes on to say this. One of the people at the FDA that originally approved this drug for use came back and said this. Dr. Caput, the original reviewer of fluoxetine,

told the BMJ, quote, if we have good evidence that we have, that we were misled and data were withheld, then I would change my mind about the safety of fluoxetine. I do agree now that these stimulatory side effects, especially regards to suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation, are worse than I thought at the time that I reviewed the drug. Wow. And this is what we're saying, Delftain. And this is what's amazing about this, is this hypocrisy, right? On the one hand, you have something like 75 million kids, let's say. And so if you're want to say, well, school shootings are rare. It's only, you know, maybe, let's say it's happening

200 times. I just make, you know, somewhere in here hundreds of times. It's tiny in comparison to 75 million. So if you just go with that sort of Neil deGrasse Tyson view of science, which we can keep beating on, which is it's great for the majority. Why focus on this pesky little side effect? Well, that pesky little side effect is claiming space in our news and making us all terrified, trying to lock us down, take away our rights, our first and second amendment rights, well, you know, then we've got to look at this. It is just a small group, but that's all it takes. You know, that clearly, if this has any ability to give you suicidal thoughts or homicidal thoughts,

meaning I feel no reason to live in this earth and therefore nobody else or none of my friends should either. I mean, it's crazy that we cannot have this conversation. Exactly. And, you know, the studies are now coming out. It seems like the researchers are, it seemed to be a little more free to talk about this. This is one of the headlines out of the UK, actually, just recently, a warning over antidepressants, top experts say powerful drugs may raise risk of suicide. It says a team from the University of East London examined nearly 8,000 inquest. These are coroner's inquest that took place in England and Wales over the last few decades, which mentioned the drugs, these SSRI drugs. They found that around half were definitive. ruled to be suicides, demonstrating that antidepressants clearly did not work for thousands of Brits and one in eight of the deaths involved in overdose using antidepressants themselves, showing they can provide a mechanism for killing oneself, the researcher said. So, Del, I want to add the caveat, you know, people watching this, it's very important, and this is all the research will say this, and the medical professionals will say this, too.

You do not want to come off these. If you're on these things, which a lot of people are throughout the world, you do not want to just come off these things cold turkey you need to talk to your doctor you need to to find out a regimen to get off these if you decide to do that this is not something you want to take in your own hands basically yeah i mean i think we have a graph that's to give you a sense of the rise in school shootings in the u.s are on the rise incidents which four more people were killed or injured so here's some numbers for us uh just in 2021 during uh the lockdown 690 mass shootings, 2022, 647. Currently, it looks like in 2023, we're at 131 so far. These are just

really, really sad, horrific numbers. And I am so damn tired of having the pharmaceutical industry controlling our news and our airwaves and every shill that calls themselves a journalist attacking anyone that wants to ask a very important and obvious question. What are these drugs? you're pumping into our kids having to do with this incredible rise in carnage and lack of connection and love for one another.