Vioxx -- It Keeps Getting Worse

The Vioxx scandal keeps escalating. What does this have to do with a blog about killer psychiatric drugs? Vioxx is (or was, before they finally took it off the market) a painkiller. But the Vioxx case strikes a very familiar chord regarding the drug companies and their cavalier dismissal of public safety.

This isn't some kind of debatable thing. This is Robber Baron behavior being practiced by Big Pharma. A standout big corporate crime in the early 1900s was when mine workers went on strike in a mining town in Colorado. Rockefeller, who owned the mine, prevailed upon the governor to send in the National Guard, at Rockefeller's expense, to put the strike down. The military opened fire on the miners and their families and burned their tent city to the ground, killing 20 people, more than half of whom were women and children, as young as 2 months old.

This was outrageous at the time and had a strong effect on the public. But it's kid stuff compared to what is happening now with the "science" of psychiatry and its benefactor, Big Pharma. Between 1950 and 1985, more people died in mental institutions that have died in all of America's wars, from George Washington to George Bush. While the news faithfully reports the number of American soldiers who die each day during a period of war, the victims of psychiatry and Big Pharma are ignored.

Back to Vioxx.

We've long known that Big Pharma does tests of their drugs, but that they pick and choose among these tests to report the results to the FDA and the public. Believe it or not, this is "legal". A bad test where people die is swept under the rug, and a test with good results is finally submitted as proof that the drug is safe.

But in the case of Vioxx, there is a new and even more damning twist. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, data regarding the cardiac side effects of the drug were withheld from test results that were submitted! In other words, they didn't even keep trying till they got a "good" test. Instead they deleted the bad data from a bad test and called it good!

There is a lot of evidence that this sort of thing has occurred with Prozac and other psychiatric drugs of the Prozac genre, described as SSRIs. These drugs cause suicidal and homicidal behavior, but manipulated testing procedures covered this up. Now we're reaping the results. The young people that walk into their school and start shooting, the mothers who kill their children, the men who walk into their workplace and take out their bosses and co-workers are almost always victims of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs.

The illogical result is that people become suicidal and homicidal after they get their psychiatric care, not before. If psychiatric care and drugs actually helped people, why would so many who have done no harm become killers after extended treatment with drugs and techniques that are supposed to improve their sanity?

The world is starting to take notice. This writer's prediction: Within a very few years, people will be indicted for manslaughter based on their participation in covering up the murderous side effects of these drugs.

In the meantime, the Vioxx scandal is leading the way. It's not even an SSRI drug. But it's still Big Pharma -- Merck & Co. in this case -- and the leopard doesn't change his spots. The testing on Vioxx was manipulated and people died. Merck is in trouble. We can't say we're sorry. The case will be fascinating to watch.