Michael Moore Interview: Possible GAME CHANGER

[Pointshoot]

Hi guys. I heard about this interview today with Michael Moore. It absolutely was not what I expected. It completely blew me out of my chair. Take the time to watch the whole thing. But, if time is short pay particular attention at what is said from around 11 min 30 sec into the video. And then, please pass it on to others. Thank you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZpihECO6xs

[Pointshoot]

I just wanted to add that this type of information could very well be a game changer to mount an offense against these attacks on the 2A. As important as this, is protectiing the kids - including those affected by these medications. This has got to stop !

Please pass it on to as many people as possible.

P.S. - I sent this link to my Congressman.

[Pond, James Pond]

Interesting and not all that surprising, but...

You would need a major Epidemiology study or many to uncover whether or not there is a correlation between these drugs and violent behaviour and whether or not there is over-prescription or an actual increase in these illnesses.

There is a measurable difference in brainwave activity between a "normal" person and one diagnosed with ADHD.

Then you would also need to find the root cause of any increase in ADHD/other disorders whcih could be social, or environmental (food additives, for example).

Not to say it isn't a factor and shouldn't be investigated but too early to say it is the game changer you might hope it to be.

[Pointshoot]

No - all you would need is to put this out there and turn the tide of the rush to pass these new laws (or executive orders). There are already plenty of studies out there, including that done by the drug companies themselves and hidden. The point is to change from defense to offense. The point is that a man who was a major anti gun voice and is well known, has changed his viewpoint entirely.

Many don't buy the 'reality' of so called ADHD and other maladies at all. My mother had a poodle. A nice little dog who was about 10 months old when my mother asked her vet if the dog would settle down in a few years. (Of course, being a pup and an energetic breed, the dog was very active.) The vet suggested that the dog be put on Prozac. I told my mother that the vet was an idiot and to ignore her 'diagnosis'. Seems the drug companies are even pushing their junk to vets. Afterall, money is everything.
Regards, - - - -

[Xfire68]

There are some antidepressant drugs on the market that have "Homicidal thoughts" as a listed side effect! What more do you need?

[Aguila Blanca]

I have had medications prescribed to me by the VA hospital for things such as dermatological treatment that list "possible suicidal thoughts" as a side effect. I flushed them down the toilet. (I live in the country, so they won't reenter the water supply.)

[Pond, James Pond]

possible suicidal thoughts

"Homicidal thoughts" as a listed side effect! What more do you need?

The FDA in the US and EMEA in Europe and other organisations around the world require, based on GCP and the EU Directive on Clinical Trials, that any "adverse event" that a patient experiences must be recorded in detail.

They are usually hundreds or thousands of subjects enrolled in a trial that measures safety and efficacy. There can be tens of thousands of patients in studies over the course of a drug's clinical evaluation.

An adverse event that results hospitalisation or death (amongst other criteria) is reported as a "Serious Adverse Event" and is treated very seriously by drug companies and investigated as fully as the recruiting physicians are able.

Unless they can categorically say that that Serious Adverse Event was due to something other than the drug under investigation it goes down as related or possibly related to the drug in question, by default.

So if one patient in a trial out of 2000 kills themselves it will be pretty hard to categorically discount the drug from involvement (the prime information source being dead, and all that...) and bingo, you have "possible suicidal thoughts" as a possible side effect.

Not a difficult scenario to imagine is one of the indications for your panic attack meds is also major depressive disorder...and a medication for, say, stomach upset or some other seemingly unconnected condition can also have licenced use in CNS disorders. The safety/side effect profile does not change between different indications.

Not to mention any post licence reporting.

This is not to say there is no connection, but is to say that there could well not be so, again, it takes more than what is on a patient info leaflet to turn the anti-gun tide...
This is noteworthy, but not some wonder cure to the current gun debate.

Seems the drug companies are even pushing their junk to vets.

Junk... of course... because modern meds never cured or relieved anything...

Are Pharma companies now the new #1 public enemy?
Just checking to keep up with the current trends.

[Pointshoot]

Just do some research. Look what is common among just about all the shooters in these mass shootings. Look at the level of our troops that are put on these drugs - including some combat troops. Look at the level of suicide rates among our military and how more die from suicide than are killled in combat now. Read the drug insert data that warn of these dangers. All the information is out there. Look at the video again, the physicians state that the information is out there in published journals and studies.

Pond said: "Junk... of course... because modern meds never cured or relieved anything..." <roll eyes>

that is an obvious straw man argument - no one said anything about the idea that no medications are good & effective. If you have evidence of the need and effectiveness of the use of Prozac on energetic pets . . . lets see it. I'm sure our new vet would disagree.
Some pharma company sold that first vet on using Prozac on energetic poodles. Do you not understand the implications of that ?

[tyme]

Originally Posted by Pond, James Pond

Unless they can categorically say that that Serious Adverse Event was due to something other than the drug under investigation it goes down as related or possibly related to the drug in question, by default.

So if one patient in a trial out of 2000 kills themselves it will be pretty hard to categorically discount the drug from involvement (the prime information source being dead, and all that...) and bingo, you have "possible suicidal thoughts" as a possible side effect.

This is entirely the problem. In the sample size for blind studies, there are simply not enough adverse effects to ever be statistically significant. However, when psychiatry decides to prescribe the same medicine to millions of kids, and kids who end up going on killing sprees are almost always on one or another anti-depressant/ADD/ADHD medication, it's too late to assign cause; the drug companies and doctors will insist that those kids were bad anyway, and that the fact that almost all of them were on drugs is a good sign: they came to the attention of the medical establishment before they became violent, even if the treatment didn't work.

There are also strange killings by children and young-adults which don't fit typical motives (jealousy, revenge, crime-related, gang-related), where these drugs might be implicated. Because of medical privacy laws, and because those events would still be statistically insignificant in the small cohorts involved in blind trials, even suicides/violent non-mass-murder behavior are unlikely to be definitively linked to a particular drug. And again, once they are widely prescribed, causation is next to impossible to determine.

[Evan Thomas]

Sigh. Yet another one-size-fits-all, "master-molecule" explanation (and a literal molecule this time... how nice) for actions carried out by complex human beings, each of whom is unique.

It's been known for some time that giving these drugs to adolescents or young adults can increase the risk for suicide or other violence. And, yes, they are overprescribed -- sometimes just as a way of controlling unwanted behavior. But -- ADHD is a real illness, and is treatable by these same drugs; depression is a real illness, and is treatable by antidepressants -- and in both cases, the treatment must be closely supervised by professionals who know what they're doing and are able to augment the drugs with other forms of treatment.

Here's a scenario: take an adolescent male who's seriously depressed, hostile, unable to function, no friends, poor schoolwork -- miserable and headed downhill, in other words. Now add a health system that's geared to short-term results of the kind that can be achieved with drug treatment, without other, long-term therapies that are typically needed to deal with major depression, and which many insurance companies don't cover. (Assuming the kid is insured at all.)

So he's on meds, and they start working. But his depression was caused by more than just brain chemistry -- he feels inadequate relative to parental expectations, or he may have been abused at home, or feel like an outcast at school -- whatever. Now he has more energy, but his problems haven't gone away.

This is an adolescent male we're talking about, remember? Raging hormones, poor impulse control, brain development not yet complete... Is it that surprising that every so often one of these kids acts out whatever he's thought about while depressed, now that he's sufficiently activated by the meds? Most likely suicide, but maybe revenge on a world that doesn't understand him?

It's not useful to look for a single cause for these events. I've seen statements to the effect that young shooters are always on one or other of these drugs, but I've yet to see anything other than anecdotal evidence for such a sweeping generalization. And even if it turns out to be true, it's worth remembering that the drugs were prescribed for a reason, whether good or bad -- whether the patient is seen as having problems or as being a problem.

It's also worth remembering that most violence is less dramatic than these mass shootings... if we want a safer society, we need to look at violence, and its multiple causes, as a whole, rather than focusing on a tiny but spectacular fraction of the homicides that take place every week in this country.

I also find it curious, perhaps ironic, that folks on both sides of this debate turn so readily to explanation-by-commodity, putting the blame on products (guns or drugs) that are widely used in large part because they're heavily marketed by the corporations that profit from their sale. I don't know what this means, except as a symptom of what a consumer-oriented society this has become -- but I find it interesting.

[Pond, James Pond]

no one said anything about the idea that no medications are good & effective.

Yes: you did when you made baseless, sweeping generalisations:
"Drug compainies": plural, non specific.
"Their": plural, non specific.
"junk" non-specific.
"Vets": plural, non-specific.

at the level of our troops that are put on these drugs - including some combat troops. Look at the level of suicide rates among our military and how more die from suicide than are killled in combat now.

Are you seriously suggesting that we should blameanti-depressant use ahead considering the short and longterm psychological effects of a combat environment and all the horrors that accompany it in the context of suicide amongst armed services personnel?

If you have evidence of the need and effectiveness of the use of Prozac on energetic pets . . .

Good grief...
I've made no claims about effectiveness in pets, I was just responding to your absurd assertion that Prozac is junk!
It has helped countless people and is clearly not junk.

If, indeed, the vet did have Prozac for prescription to pets, than clearly there is a licence for it.
If there is a licence to prescribe then there is evidence that it works.
Simple.

Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps the vet was being sarcastic with your mother?

Sigh. Yet another one-size-fits-all, "master-molecule" explanation (and a literal molecule this time... how nice) for actions carried out by complex human beings, each of whom is unique.

Precisely.

[Pond, James Pond]

This is entirely the problem. In the sample size for blind studies, there are simply not enough adverse effects to ever be statistically significant.

Not so.
A few year back Pfizer were in the process of testing a potential hypertension medication called Sildenafil citrate. There were side effects reported in statistically high enough numbers from their patient population to warrant re-evaluation of the drug.

So much so that they changed the indication altogether.
We now know it as Viagra...

[tyme]

Originally Posted by Vanya

Sigh. Yet another one-size-fits-all, "master-molecule" explanation (and a literal molecule this time... how nice) for actions carried out by complex human beings, each of whom is unique.

You don't have to believe that a pill is literally taking over someone's mind in order to believe that the pill causes increased violent behavior. You even outlined a plausible scenario.

The drugs didn't cause the killing? The underlying social problems/depression did? There is no single cause. There are a confluence of factors. Getting rid of social outcasts in school is difficult. Stopping over-prescription of psychoactive drugs is relatively easy, if society wants that.

Either you believe that a few mass killings, and some less-spectacular murders and suicides on top of that, are worth it to treat what in millions of cases is mild depression or agitation, or you don't.

Here's another scenario: that depressive kid in your hypothetical quits school, goes off and finds himself, and becomes a famous artist. If he's medicated for life, maybe he graduates, goes to college, and ends up retiring after a life in middle management, with a white picket fence, 1.3 dogs, 1.8 kids, never having examined his own life very carefully.

In which scenario is he better off? In which scenario is society better off? Nobody can make those kinds of determinations, and yet that's exactly what millions of parents are doing for their kids.

ADHD is "real"? Of course it is. It's defined by the medical establishment. In the same way that Aspergers was defined... until recently. They draw a line across the spectrum of behavior at 5% or a few percent, whatever they think is right, and everyone in that category is diagnosed and gets medicated. We can play this game forever, on different axes of behavior. Something wasn't defined, but now it is. Now it's defined, tomorrow it's not.

For every case where a kid is having trouble functioning at a reasonable level (but that's the catch... parents and teachers think it's reasonable to want perfect behavior and perfect grades) without medication, there are several cases of kids wanting medication to focus better to get better grades, or parents who want their kids drugged so they don't have to work as hard at handing the emotional strain of being parents of teenage children.

[LockedBreech]

Every once in a while a medication discussion pops up and I get to see people who don't believe in ADHD.

I was diagnosed at 17 with ADHD and anxiety. Medication literally turned my life around. I went from being an impulsive, cagey, emotionally volatile ball of energy to getting 4 straight years of As in college and going to law school. I'm hardly perfect but I'm a heck of a lot better than I was. Pills made that possible.

Over diagnosed does not = fake.

[Pond, James Pond]

.... I get to see people who don't believe in ADHD.

Very true. It is a disease. Doubters should watch this excellent youtube clip that illustrates beautifully the difficulties of ADHD sufferers.

It is from a UK health education presented by 3 GPs, called Embarrassing Bodies. In this episode they devoted a slot to ADHD.

I agree that over-prescription and over/misdiagnosis does not mean the condition does not exist.

[tyme]

Originally Posted by Pond, James Pond

Not so.
A few year back Pfizer were in the process of testing a potential hypertension medication called Sildenafil citrate. There were side effects reported in statistically high enough numbers from their patient population to warrant re-evaluation of the drug.

Obviously -- okay maybe not so obviously, but nevertheless I promise -- I'm not that stupid. Yes, there are lots of drug side effects that are statistically significant.

What I meant was, if you look at certain of these anti-depressant/ADHD drugs, and you look at potential negative behaviors like suicides, murders, mass-murders, even if you assume that every known instance of those behaviors carried out by people prescribed those medications, they're still rare. Rare enough that if you go back and conduct blind trials with typical sample sizes, even looking specifically for those consequences, you're probably going to have trouble proving with p<.05 that any such events occurring in the trials are caused by the drugs, at least without recruiting lots and lots of people for the blind trials. And then ethics problems appear. Ethics may dictate shutting down blind trials before you get p<.05.

At what point do you say that, although other factors clearly are involved, certain drugs increase the risk of suicide, murder, or mass murder, and they increase that risk in a way that the medical establishment can't predict or prevent? Do you never say that, because there are other factors?

Vanya, going back to your depressive example, what if human/primate evolution specifically selected for people to get depressed when they felt enough social pressure so that they wouldn't get violent? Early tribes probably didn't like it when someone went berserk with a club, so they exiled them, from the tribe and from the gene pool. If that selected for depressive behavior and lack of focus under stress, and if that's what's seen in adolescents in modern society, and we're trying to counter that with medication, then these rare but vivid and horrific events should be no surprise.

[Pond, James Pond]

Obviously -- okay maybe not so obviously, but nevertheless I promise -- I'm not that stupid.

I, in no way, meant to imply you are stupid.

My initial point was in response to the expressions of shock at some of the reported adverse events in drug leaflets, and that the presence of that warning may have been due to one single incident that could not be totally excluded as a possible factor at some point in the clinical evaluation process. Some asserted that with this as a warning, then they (drugs) must be to blame for shootings.

At what point do you say that, although other factors clearly are involved, certain drugs increase the risk of suicide, murder, or mass murder, and they increase that risk in a way that the medical establishment can't predict or prevent? Do you never say that, because there are other factors?

Companies, despite licencing and sales, still continue to collect data from patients and institutions to add to their analyses. The issue I see with your scenario is that if there were an affect by a drug that could cause these behaviours, or make people more prone to them, they would manifest in other ways too. Aberrant behaviour manifests in many ways. They would all be pooled in. That would increase the statistical power.

I am not a statistician, by any stretch though: checking my shopping bill gives me a headache, so stats are not my strong suit!

[LockedBreech]

Originally Posted by Pond, James Pond

Very true. It is a disease. Doubters should watch this excellent youtube clip that illustrates beautifully the difficulties of ADHD sufferers.

It is from a UK health education presented by 3 GPs, called Embarrassing Bodies. In this episode they devoted a slot to ADHD.

I agree that over-prescription and over/misdiagnosis does not mean the condition does not exist.

Thanks for that Pond.

[JN01]

Michael Moore has proven himself to be a liar and propagandist who produces phoney documentaries, telling certain audiences what they want to hear, in order to line his own pockets.

Why would anyone give credibility to anything he says?

[TheFacts]

Agreed regarding Michael Moore. He, like so many opportunists in this potent emotional diatribe, are quick to look for easy scapegoats for an issue that has intrinsically complicated solutions.

Everyone, let us remember that correlation is NOT causation. The pursuit of truth comes at a price and that price must be paid with patience, logic, and reasoning.


Curiosity yields evolution, satiety yields extinction.

[Evan Thomas]

Originally Posted by tyme

You don't have to believe that a pill is literally taking over someone's mind in order to believe that the pill causes increased violent behavior. You even outlined a plausible scenario.

The drugs didn't cause the killing? The underlying social problems/depression did? There is no single cause. There are a confluence of factors. Getting rid of social outcasts in school is difficult. Stopping over-prescription of psychoactive drugs is relatively easy, if society wants that.

My whole point was that there is no single cause. We like single causes because they require no thought, and they're emotionally comforting.

Are psychoactive drugs overprescribed? Of course, for the same reason. A "magic pill" is a comforting thing to believe in (hence the across-the-board approximate 30% success rate of placebos for treating almost anything), and it requires no analysis of underlying causation.

Moreover, in a for-profit health care system, resources go to what's profitable, not necessarily what works best. (Compare the funding of neonatal intensive care units, which make money for hospitals, with that of the preventive prenatal care that would decrease the need for that level of medical intervention. There's little or no money to be made by providing preventive care -- it's labor-intensive and requires minimal technology -- so it's relatively unavailable even though it's a much cheaper solution to the problem.)

And as I said, we're a consumer society. If we can buy our way to happiness, or to increased productivity, what's not to like? So these drugs are huge money-makers, and one reason they're overprescribed is that they're so very heavily marketed. (Who, fergodsake, thought it was a good idea to allow TV ads for prescription meds???)

All that said, I doubt that these drugs, in and of themselves, cause basically healthy people to become murderers... The question of suicide, which seems to be a more prevalent side effect, is a harder one to answer. But it's also worth remembering that untreated depression can be terminal -- it's not something to dismiss as not worthy of treatment.

Either you believe that a few mass killings, and some less-spectacular murders and suicides on top of that, are worth it to treat what in millions of cases is mild depression or agitation, or you don't.

Oh, c'mon -- it's nothing like that simple. Just for starters, there's treatment, and there's effective treatment. Just as prenatal care is an effective way of preventing much of the perinatal disease that lands newborns in intensive care units, so other forms of therapy, which are not profitable for Big Medicine, are effective in treating mental illness -- alone or in combination with drugs. But insurers won't pay for them, which not only makes them unavailable to many people, but drives many practitioners out of business, which drives up the cost. Vicious cycle.

The problem is that we're a society that looks only at short-term, direct costs -- drugs are a cheap (and profitable) way of getting patients to go away. If their overuse (or, more accurately, misuse) leads to adverse consequences down the road, those represent a delayed social cost that's hard to measure, or indeed for most people to get their minds around. We're not set up, certainly as a society, possibly as a species, to look at the long-term social costs of the choices we make.

Examples of the real costs of this short-term thinking are too numerous to mention...

[Cascade1911]

Back to the OP's point, Moore, may be a pig, lier, these drugs can be wonderful or horrible. I for one would much rather the gun grabbers start fighting over the pros and cons of prozac rather than AR-15's. Wouldn't you?

[Woody55]

Uhhh. No.

Not if they are going to turn it into a requirement that you and all the members of your household must have periodic mental evaluations to own a weapon. Can you imagine how abusive that could be?

[Cascade1911]

Not if they are going to turn it into a requirement that you and all the members of your household must have periodic mental evaluations to own a weapon.

I must have missed where that was part of the original post. Still can't find it.

[Pointshoot]

The point should be that there needs to be an investigation into this. Usually the mainstream media sweeps this under the rug IMO. They seem to be willing to readily assign the 'cause' of these murders to the guns they demonize.

Here's a video report from a physician on this topic (that laypeople can understand):

CAN ANTI-DEPRESSANTS CAUSE VIOLENCE ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyPuE...ature=youtu.be