So what?

They shrug their shoulders while muttering, "So what?"

This seems to be the general consensus of not only drug regulators and the business of psychiatry but also of the largely apathetic general public.

Sure, we see the familiar faces on Twitter and Facebook banging the drum, but what about others? You know, the "so what" lot?

Twitter went into a frenzy earlier this week with news that immigrant children are being forcibly injected with drugs at the Shiloh Residential Treatment Center near Manvel, Texas.

Those who don't normally tweet or retweet drug abuse stories were doing so in droves. I couldn't quite understand why people who don't normally discuss the dangers of drugs felt compelled to tweet this news? Do they lean to the left and feel that sharing America's ills will somehow score them brownie points? Or perhaps tweeting or Facebooking about the Shiloh Residential Treatment Center abuses of minority children will make them appear that there isn't a racist bone in their body? Maybe some sort  of  "Look, I'm spreading the news about abusing immigrants and, therefore, I care about others different from me." 

Here's some news: forcibly drugging children in "care" has been going on for years. Why is it only now highlighted when it involves immigrant children?

I suppose I should see the silver lining as I watch people take a break from their hectic schedules, vacations, etc., to post news they typically don't bother posting. Perhaps their tweets will reach an audience that might now be prompted to reevaluate the drug industry, psychiatric industry, and their own government regulators. If so, great.

In a recent blog post, The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs, I shared a video which noted more than 6,000 children in the UK are prescribed drugs that were never approved for children's consumption. There's a warning on the boxes of these products that states suicide is an increased possibility (a "side effect") whilst taking the products. Although the blog post was popular with fellow advocates, it drew little attention on Facebook and Twitter, certainly nowhere near as much attention as the Shiloh Residential Treatment Center story generated.

It was met with a 'so what?' attitude from the largely apathetic general public. I can't quite get to the bottom of why people seem compelled to respond when a story of immigrant children on bad drugs hits the news, yet stories of far more children on many more bad drugs goes astray in their wine and dine world. Perhaps their one tweet met their monthly one good deed quota?

Apathy, as Polystyrene (X-Ray Specs) once said, is a drag.

If news of immigrant children caught your attention and you felt the need to retweet or Facebook it then stop and think before you pat yourself on the back for your good deed of the day.

I'm guessing those same wine and diners didn't feel the need to post or, indeed discuss, the latest news from the dodgy world of drug companies. Purdue Pharma, reports CNN, used deceptive sales tactics for OxyContin. In 2007 they pleaded guilty and were fined $630 million. However, last week a whistleblower who used to work for the Connecticut-based company, stated the company continued to illegally market their product by inventing disorders even after the fine.

Just so the wine and diners know, the opioid crisis has killed more than 200,000 people, and I'm fairly certain some of them were also immigrants.

Carol Panara is a former sales rep for Purdue Pharma and this week she revealed how the drug company made up names of disorders in order to sell more of their product. This from CNN...

But amid skyrocketing addiction rates and overdoses related to OxyContin, Panara claimed the company taught a sales tactic she now considers questionable, saying some patients might only appear to be addicted when in fact they're just in pain. In training, she was taught a term for this: "pseudoaddiction." 

She went on to tell CNN that company bosses told her the cure for "pseudoaddiction" was higher doses of opioids. CNN asked her if this concept of pseudoaddiction came with studies backing it up? Panara replied:

"We had no studies. We actually -- we did not have any studies. That's the thing that was kind of disturbing, was that we didn't have studies to present to the doctors."

A 2015 study published in Current Addiction Reports found "no empirical evidence" to support "pseudoaddiction" as a diagnosis.

If these two stories above aren't enough then check out an old video recently uploaded to YouTube. The video, just over three minutes in length, is a pastiche of people giving evidence to the FDA about their experiences with SSRI drugs. It's from the 90's and it really highlights how the SSRI suicidal/homicidal problem has been shelved all these years. I imagine after seeing it there will be little outrage and no tweeting from those who tweeted this week about the forced drugging of children in Texas.

Here's the video that is, seemingly, less important than a handful of immigrant children in Texas.

People die horrific deaths on psychiatric drugs ~ so what?

Bob Fiddaman