Why don't they blame drug companies?

Famas

New member
Hello - and Happy New Year to all!

This was posted on another forum by an acquaintance whose wife works in a pharmacy. She was given this note by another worker. I thought it was worth sharing:


Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Colombine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.

Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.

Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded. Shooting was stopped when a teacher went to his car and grabbed a pistol confronting the boy.

A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.

Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.
Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic’s file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.

Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.

Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family’s Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara’s parents said “…. the damn doctor wouldn’t take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil…”)

Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002,
(Gareth’s father could not accept his son’s death and killed himself.)

Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family’s detached garage.

Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.

Woody ____, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.


Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.”

Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.

Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.

Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his
New York high school.

Other
Jared Lee Loughner on, age 21…… killed 6 people (AZ congress woman wounded) and injuring 14 others in Tuscon, Az - Unreported multiple psychiatric medications

James Eagan Holmes on, age 24….. killed 12 people and injuring 59 others in Aurora Colorado. Unreported multiple psychiatric medications

Jacob Tyler Roberts on, age 22, killed 2 injured 1, Clackamas OR. Unreported multiple psychiatric medications with multiple reports from psychiatric professionals that he was a severe risk for this behavior.

Adam Peter Lanza on, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct Reported Fanapt and possible other drugs.


This is by no means an indictment of those who require medications, but it does strike me as very interesting to see such obvious commonality being ignored by the press because it doesn't fit their ideological narrative. So why is it that the anti-2nd crowd only see and blame the gun connection?

If anything, this tells me that the selective nature of the antis to blame guns, and only guns, is further proof of their insincerity.
 
I appreciate the sentiment and desire for folks to treat other potential 'causes' the way guns are treated.

But let's not confuse correlation and causation. That's what the left does (intentionally, of course). Were they crazy because they were on drugs, or on drugs because they were crazy? No way to tell.
 
Top Ten Legal Drugs Linked to Violence

Mike40-11
I appreciate the sentiment and desire for folks to treat other potential 'causes' the way guns are treated.

But let's not confuse correlation and causation. That's what the left does (intentionally, of course). Were they crazy because they were on drugs, or on drugs because they were crazy? No way to tell.

While I agree with you some of these drugs are known to bring out violent behavior in otherwise peaceful people. There is no way to know for sure if the drugs prescribed to any of these perpetrators were the cause of their behavior but it is certainly is cause for concern and begs for a thorough study.

Top Ten Legal Drugs Linked to Violence

This article is hardly conclusive but does spark the tinder.
 
You left out Joseph Wesbecker (among others). If you had included him you would have seen what "blaming the drugs" puts you up against in real life.


In the Wesbecker case the relatives sued Eli Lilly over the shooter use of Prozac. Eli Lilly then committed various frauds at the civil trial and paid off the plaintiffs under the table in order to secure a favorable ruling. It is believed that EL paid more than the plaintiffs were suing for in order to get a ruling in their favor. Later the ruling was thrown out and the KY Supreme Court ruled it a "settlement". No punitive action was ever taken against EL or it's attorneys.

That said I do wonder. We have always had insane people in society. The level of mass shooters seems to be at some kind of new high. Given the huge number of shooters who are taking these kind of drugs, the huge increase in administering these drugs in recent years and the relationship seems much more than casual.

Proving it in a court of law or scientifically is another thing entirely.
 
Prozac was the wonder drug of the 80s. However, for all the good it does, and all the people it helps there is also a down side that seldom, if ever gets mentioned. Oh, its in the medical literature that accompanies the drug, somewhere, in all that fine print...

The fact is, that a small percentage of people taking the drug react in virtually the opposite fashion than intended. A "small percentage of people" (some say as high as 10%, but the makers don't say that) become paranoid, delusional, and sometimes violent when taking the medication.

Prozac, Lithium, or some other medication for mental problems has been involved in virtually every mass shooting since the mid 1980s. At schools, mall, factories, or whererever. Many of the shooters have been on multiple prescribed medications (sometimes from different doctors without the doctors knowing about it), and several of the shooters added to the prescribed drugs with street drugs as well.

Professionals are describing this in their journals, and debating if there is any way to proove the drugs are a cause. I believe there is a link, but no of no way to proove it, because after all, we cannot read minds, and since most of the mass killings also include the death of the killer, there is no one left to explain what was on their minds at the time.

One of my relatives was one of the "small number" of those who had the adverse reaction. Instead of helping her be calm, and stable, the drug drove her right over the edge. Screaming fits at petty annoyances and violent reaction to petty challenges. Fortunately, friends, family, and herself did recognise the problem, and she discontinued those meds (against professional medical advice).

It really scared her, what she was becoming, and what she was afraid she would have done, had she continued to listen to the professional she was seeing. She lives a relatively happy and stable life today, without any meds for mental issues. She has to work at it, but tries hard, and generally succeeds.

One thing she is terrified of, is being put back on those drugs. AND, she has a very low opinion of the medical professionals prescribing them, because, in her case, the dr involved simply refused to listen to her, refused to believe (or accept) the plain fact that the meds were NOT working the way intended. IN fact, that Dr insisted that what was needed was a higher dosage! She quit those drugs, and she quit that Dr, and is better off because of it. Now do I think that is for everyone? No. Clearly each person is an individual, and needs individual treatment for their issues. What they don't need is a blanket "happy pill" that makes 97%of the people happy and the rest homicidally ******!

And that is another part of our problem. Wonder drugs are great, BUT...they aren't great for everyone, every time. Drs do the best, generally, but they are humans too (regardless of what some of them seem to think), they do make mistakes.

It is a very complex issue, and what seems straightforward and common sense can't be easily proven to a court, other than the court of public opinion, and that court is all to quick to jump to the wrong conclusions.
 
I have a friend that had an issue after taking Paxil. We were just out of high school, he was the class valedictorian. His mother thought he was getting depressed (his father was murdered a few years before). She took him to a local doctor that is well known for a loose prescription pad. He took the Paxil, a month and a half later he had to be committed. He thought he was Jesus on his second coming, honestly. He has not been the same since. Medicine can really mess with you. I took arthritis medicine that made me paranoid and angry.... I have since quite taking ANY medicine other than glucosamine for it. We have many problems that contribute to these tragedies. The sad part is I doubt we could ever stop them. I do however think there are contributing factors that can be helped, like better mental Heath care. There is no one answer to stop any of this. Firearms are not the blame, people and their multitude of issues are.
 
Why don’t they blame drug companies? Heath care physicians would be blamed too, and then there would be people asking questions about why profits are more important than patient health in our Nation.

Why not Health Care? Maybe because we live in a Corporate Republic and the Heath Care Industry contributed $210,000,000 dollars in 2012 in political campaign contributions?

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/totals.php?cycle=2012&ind=H

That’s why guns will be banned, the ones you owned confiscated, long before anyone dares to look at the connections between pharmaceutics and deaths.
 
I agree wholeheartedly that there is an issue of over, incorrectly, even inappropriately medicating.

In high school, I wasn't the best of students. The school had a bunch of state grant money for assisting underachieving students. They convinced my parents to go along with enrolling me in counseling. Well, guess what, I was told I had ADHD. Here's a prescription for Adderal. Take these pills, they'll balance you out and help you be normal.

Wrong, I couldn't sleep, had no appetite, and was extremely restless. To deal with the restlessness, I had to hyper focus on a task or subject.

After a couple weeks of this nonsense, I threw the pills in the trash and told the doc she was incorrect and where she could take her prescription pad and how to get there. (I was 17 at the time and a little more blunt in stating my opinions then)

I wasn't a poor student because of some disorder. I was bored. High school seemed to be a farce, all the subjects studied were the same material re hashed over and over each year. I would rather have been fishing and camping, or chasing the girls than be stuck inside all day.

There seems to be cycles of fad diagnoses that come and go. When I was in school, if a kid didn't like school, they must have ADD or ADHD. The blanket of criteria was quite large.

Like others have stated earlier, there is big money to be made in drugs and healthcare. If there is money to be made and the margins of expenses at the cost to others are within the limits, the money will be made.

Are there societal, medical, and pharmacological issues that are the real underlying problem? Yes. However, I'm not too optimistic about the crux of the matter being addressed. Certain groups would rather blame the instrument instead of the person who wields it.
 
Our country is convinced that drugs will make anything better. How many times a week do you see a commercial on TV saying, without even describing the symptoms that the drug remedies, -- " Ask your Doctor if 'Screwidol' is good for you?" -- Europe's drug problem is nowhere near ours -- in Europe it is ILLEGAL to advertise drugs on TV.

Want to invest in BIG, MONEYMAKING STOCK FUNDS? -- Try the major drug companys... Oh! Wait, they are not even publicly traded...their stock offerings are only for the annointed few, -- physicians, politicians, Congress, etc.

There's big money in keeping Americans drugged ! And they won't be stopped.
Excuse me, while I go take my 500 mgs. of 'Damnitol'.
 
I don't doubt the adverse affects of many prescription drugs. But don't lose sight that behavioral drugs are merely influences rather than causes. Being on a drug which make someone impulsive or aggressive does not excuse their actions. There is always a rational person in there somewhere who is always to blame for their actions.. or for not discontinuing the drug.
 
famas, 1/2/13

The people you cite are mentally ill and the drugs used are for mental illness. The drugs often do not make a mentally ill person 100% well but usually (not always) make them better. If they become violent it is usually not their medications but their underlying mental illness that is to blame. It's not a simple cause (medication) and effect (violent behavior) outcome.

Happy New Year- oldandslow
 
Oh dear, this is one of the dumbest lists I've seen. There are too many points to touch on and I don't have the desire, but...

Mental illness ( of varying degrees, it's a very comples issue) precedes the prescription of antidepressants. Think about that, is all I ask.

Were sources listed for this information? Somebody verify any of this information is correct?

Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

This is just one example... what a ridiculous sentence. What advers effects? They were "numerous"... what were they? Generally if adverse effects are too bad you stop taking the medication, certainly before you shoot yourself no? But most of all, and this is important; Wellbutrin is not used for "gallstone problems." So really the only part of that sentence that I would readily believe are: "Diane Routhier...shot herself."

Lists like that leave out all the important information, use zero analysis, and only support a point based on emotion. There is no more substance in that list than a list that goes something like:

Eric Harris age 17 and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Colombine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado) using high-powered handguns and assualt weapons with deadly high-capacity clips, killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves.


Adam Peter Lanza, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct Reported weapon used was a high-powered Bushmaster military-style assualt-rifle with a flash-hider and high-capacity clips...


To some people, firearms start to sound like the culprit. To people who aren't familiar to medicine or mental illness... drugs may seem like a culprit, especially when presented like this. It's the same argument.

People have to blame something when bad things happen. Be it guns, drugs, whatever.
 
Maybe it's not the med, but sure would like someone looking into it to be sure. Good read, needs more press time.
 
Good read, needs more press time.

It's a worthless read, and leaves out any and all important information relating to the mental health of any of the mentioned individuals. It should receive zero press time, because its only purpose is to fire people up emotionally, and is completely and intentionally void of potentially meaningful substance. Sound like a familiar tactic by the media?
 
huntinaz I think you may have missed the point. I believe there was a flair of sarcasm in the thread title.

When one looks at some of the viable evidence out there (not just the list in the OP) it is certainly worth a look on the part of the professionals who prescribe these medications. Perhaps a thorough study could identify some red flags for these doctors to educate family members of the patient to watch for. The sad part is many of these meds have warnings in the fine print that most people don't read. I feel the doctors prescribing these drugs should make sure to inform the patient of the risks. If the patient is thought to be at risk of violence a family member should be contacted. I realize privacy is an issue but these folks could only benefit from the support of someone who loves and cares for them.

One has to wonder if depression is an emotional issue and the drug prescribed suppresses that emotion, what other emotions such as empathy, sympathy or compassion might be subdued?

I don't see this as the cause of violent, suicidal or homicidal behavior but it certainly could be a contributing factor in some cases.

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Xparent Green Tapatalk 2
 
It's well documented that some drugs will cause reactions like those in some percentage of people. I have been thinking about quitting smoking and considered taking that prescription drug they advertise on the TV all the time (can't remember the name of it right now). That thought lasted until I read up on it and found out it can make you suicidal or violent. Personally I'm not taking anything that might turn me into a suicidal headcase or maniacal killer.
 
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It's well documented that some drugs will cause reactions like those in some percentage of people. I have been thinking about quitting smoking and considered taking that prescription drug they advertise on the TV all the time (can't remember the name of it right now). That thought lasted until I read up on it and found out it can make you suicidal or violent. Personally I'm not taking anything that might turn me into a suicidal headcase or manical killer.
Today 09:21 PM

Chantix. Thought about it myself and decided to switch to Copenhagen instead. +1 on everything you said.
 
Why don't they blame drug companies?

It doesn't fit their agenda. The plan is to disarm everyone, if there is a large percentage of negative reactions to these drugs, it just facilitates the call for gun control. There is also the money factor, most of the advertising on TV is for drugs. Their lobbying budget must be huge!
 
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