Academic Regulation of Research: Human Subject restrictions

Joanna Sheldon cjs10 at cornell.edu
Sat Aug 26 18:49:16 PDT 2000


Carrol


>> 'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski Was CIA Mind Control Subject!
>> By Alexander Cockburn
>> 7-9-99
>> Amid all the finger-pointing to causes prompting the recent wave of
schoolyard
>> killings, not nearly enough clamor has been raised about the fact that
many of
>> these teenagers suddenly exploding into mania were on a regimen of
>> antidepressants.Eric Harris, one of the shooters at Columbine, was on
Luvox. Kip
>> Kinkel, who killed his parents and two students in Oregon, was on Prozac.
>
>If someone on insulin died there would be a strong presupposition that
he/she died
>of diabetes or diabetic complications, not that insulin killed. There are
times
>when Cockburn seems promising as a New York Times science writer -- and if as
>irresponsile an article as this appeared in the Times it might well be the
occasion
>for a FAIR alert.
>
>One note on Prozac. *Any* successful treatment for depression will lead to
some
>suicides. No treatment provides instant relief. For any successful
treatment there
>will be a period when the patient feels much better but still suffers.
That is the
>point at which suicide is most likely. In the depths of depression one is too
>lacking in initiative to kill oneself. So most suicides occur during
periods of
>recovery -- and this was the case long before Prozac or any other
treatment for
>depression was available.
>
>Any article which allows the suggestion that anti-depressants have an
*immediate*
>impact on consciousness are very nearly criminal. It is the equivalent of
someone
>claiming that one dose of an anti-biotic will cure TB in 24 hours.
Anti-depressants
>have *no* immediate effect whatever. There are probably people dead today
who would
>be alive if they had not been led by such shit as this to believe that
Prozac or
>some other medication would have the same sort of immediate results as the
various
>mind-altering drugs.

Okay, maybe not immediate. How about almost immediate. After all, my sister, who was prescribed Prozac when she was grieving over the death of her lover, *almost* immediately began having horrendous nightmares involving extraordinary violence, such that she thought she was losing her mind. Those dreams stopped occurring a day or so after she stopped taking the drug.

Some people do well on that stuff, others don't. Perhaps we should admit we don't know everything there is to know about anti-depressants.

depressedly, Jo

www.overlookhouse.com



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