Latest From CCHR Florida

Re: Update from CCHR Florida: Senate Committee Hearing on "ECT" Bill

Last week we sent you a briefing about Florida Senate Bill 112, a bill to outlaw the use of ECT (Electro-Convulsive "Therapy") on anyone under the age of 18. A hearing was held on Wednesday, Feb. 21 in Tallahassee, before the Senate Health Regulation Committee. The psychs—pushing their lies about how ECT is "harmless and safe"—attempted to get the bill killed outright. But in the face of heart-rending testimony from Linda Andre, an ECT victim whose memory and professional career was destroyed by ECT years ago, and who currently heads up a group of 500 similarly harmed ECT victims, as well as Dr. Lee Sheldon, of CCHR Florida’s Orlando Chapter, and the many hundreds of emails received by the members of the committee in favor of passing this bill, the Committee decided against killing it, and instead amended it to provide for a study of the issues, in order to clear up the false data presented by the psychs. We will keep you posted as further developments occur.

The next bill of extreme interest is a bill which would legally enforce "full informed consent" before any parent can give permission to putting their child on psych drugs in the State of Florida. CCHR Florida is part of the Florida Coalition for the Protection of Parental Rights, a coalition of over 100 grassroots parents groups and health professionals (including MDs, psychologists, and even a few psychiatrists) who are totally against the psychiatric drugging of children.

Sometime within the next weeks we are expecting committee hearings on this bill to be scheduled. Please stand by for your next Call to Action.

As you well know, this bill is vital, as exemplified by the recent death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley, killed by a psychiatric drug cocktail she had been on, under the "care" of her family psychiatrist, who is now facing murder charges.

CCHR Florida is on the job. Our growing membership is proof that our local community is increasingly supporting us. But we need unanimous support from everyone who is aware of the role psychiatry plays in suppressing the society and keeping the civilization in a state of turmoil and unrest.

If you are not already a contributing member of CCHR (under $1.00 per day), please make your intentions known and join us in our goal to fully eradicate psychiatry as the major source of suppression of our environment.

If your membership is out of date, please go to www.cchrflorida.org and sign up. Or better still, call CCHR Florida right now at 727-442-8820 to join or renew, with a small monthly membership or single membership donation of any size. How much is it worth to you to have CCHR Florida out there, on the front lines, protecting our future generations, and making the possibility of a New Civilization really possible for all of us here in Florida and the rest of the country.

Contact:

CCHR Florida

1217 No. Ft Harrison Avenue

Clearwater, Florida 33755

727-442-8820

e-mail: info@cchrflorida.org

website: www.cchrflorida.org

FDA Is Lapdog Rather Than Watchdog

How concerned is the FDA about your health? Here's a story that illustrates the problem, on a different stage than our usual soapbox about psychiatric drugs. This is an exerpt from the Washington Post article. Read the whole story by clicking here.

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The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency's own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people.

The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine's last defenses against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals.

The American Medical Association and about a dozen other health groups warned the Food and Drug Administration that giving cefquinome to animals would probably speed the emergence of microbes resistant to that important class of antibiotics, as has happened with other drugs. Those super-microbes could then spread to people.

Echoing those concerns, the FDA's advisory board last fall voted to reject the request by InterVet Inc. of Millsboro, Del., to market the drug for cattle.

Yet by all indications, the FDA will approve cefquinome this spring. That outcome is all but required, officials said, by a recently implemented "guidance document" that codifies how to weigh the threats to human health posed by proposed new animal drugs.

The wording of "Guidance for Industry #152" was crafted within the FDA after a long struggle. In the end, the agency adopted language that, for drugs like cefquinome, is more deferential to pharmaceutical companies than is recommended by the World Health Organization.

Cefquinome's seemingly inexorable march to market shows how a few words in an obscure regulatory document can sway the government's approach to protecting public health.

Industry representatives say they trust Guidance #152's calculation that cefquinome should be approved. "There is reasonable certainty of no harm to public health," Carl Johnson, InterVet's director of product development, told the FDA last fall.

Others say Guidance #152 makes it too difficult for the FDA to say no to some drugs.

"The industry says that 'until you show us a direct link to human mortality from the use of these drugs in animals, we don't think you should preclude their use,' " said Edward Belongia, an epidemiologist at the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation in Wisconsin. "But do we really want to drive more resistance genes into the human population? It's easy to open the barn door, but it's hard to close the door once it's open."

The FDA knows how hard it can be to close that door. In the mid-1990s, overriding the objections of public health experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the drug agency approved the marketing of two drugs, Baytril and SaraFlox, for use in poultry. Both are fluoroquinolones, a class of drugs important for their ability to fight the bioterror bacterium that causes anthrax and a food-borne bacterium called campylobacter, which causes a serious diarrheal disease in people.

Before long, doctors began finding fluoroquinolone-resistant strains of campylobacter in patients hospitalized with severe diarrhea. When studies showed a link to poultry, the FDA sought a ban. But while Abbott Laboratories, which made SaraFlox, pulled its product, Baytril's manufacturer, Bayer Corp., pushed back.

"They fought this tooth and nail. It took years," said Kirk Smith, an epidemiologist at the Minnesota Department of Health.

Finally, late in 2005, Bayer gave up, but not before fluoroquinolone resistance had spread even further.