New book by Grace Jackson. Below is a description with permission from the author to reprint:
Under the influence of declining birth rates, expanding longevity, and changing population structures around the world, the global prevalence of senile dementia is expected to increase more than four-fold within the next forty years. Within the United States alone, the number of affected individuals over the age of 65 is expected to rise exponentially from 8 million cases (2% of the entire population in the year 2000), to 18 million retirees (roughly 4.5% of the national census in the year 2040). Although they are striking, these statistics quite likely underestimate the scope of the coming epidemic, as they fail to consider the impact of under-diagnosis, early-onset disease, and the potential for a changing incidence of illness in the context of increasingly toxic environments.
In the face of this imminent crisis, concerned observers have called for policies and practices which aim to prevent, limit, or reverse dementia. Drug-Induced Dementia: a perfect crime
A first-of-its-kind resource for patients and clinicians, the book integrates research findings from epidemiology (observational studies of patients in the “real world”), basic biology (animal experiments), and clinical science (neuroimaging and autopsy studies) in order to demonstrate the dementing and deadly effects of psychiatric drugs.
Highlighted by more than 100 neuroimages, slides of tissue specimens, and illustrations, the book uniquely describes:
- the societal roots of the problem (target organ toxicity, regulatory incompetence, and performativity)
- the subtypes and essential causes of dementia
- the patterns, prevalence, and causes of dementia associated with antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, mood stabilizers, and stimulants
and
- the actions and reforms which patients, providers, and policy makers might immediately pursue, in an effort to mitigate the causes and consequences of this iatrogenic tragedy.
Dr. Grace E. Jackson is a board-certified psychiatrist who graduated summa cum laude from California Lutheran University with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a Bachelor of Science in Biology, as well as a Masters Degree in Public Administration. She earned her medical degree from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, in 1996, then completed her internship and residency in the U.S. Navy.
Following her transition from military service to civilian status in the spring of 2002, Dr. Jackson has worked for the North Carolina Department of Corrections, the Veterans Administration, and as a clinician in private practice.
An internationally renowned lecturer, writer, and forensic consultant, she has submitted testimony to governmental agencies and authorities on behalf of patients’ rights, medical ethics, and health care reform, and she has served as an expert witness for the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (a non-profit organization based in Anchorage, Alaska).
Dr. Jackson’s first book, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent
For a review and excerpt on and from Grace Jackson’s first book on this site click here.
Wow thanks for the tip on Grace Jackson I have done some digging and found this which gives me hope. You can bet there will be plenty lining up to take shots at her I can’t help to be worried for her as I think we all know how low some of these folks are. Either way wish her luck as her input is sadly needed. I sure hope some other doctors with her courage will step up and support her.
This is what I have found:
Open Letter to the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research
by Grace E. Jackson, M.D.
April 12, 2009
Dear Federal Coordinating Council:
This statement is written with respect to the allocation of money (1.1 billion dollars) from the 2009 Recovery Act fund for the purpose of achieving Comparative Effectiveness Research.
Recommendation #1 Prioritize the End of Corporate Fraud
Research into the comparative effectiveness of medical treatments is a laudable goal, but only if it does not repeat the same errors of the past. When, in the early 1990s, medical journals, medical schools, residency and postgraduate training curricula, and health care facilities came under the influence of Evidenced Based Medicine (or EBM), the favored treatments in American medicine came to reflect the following values and priorities:
1) symptom suppression (rather than elimination of root cause of illness)
2) short-term studies (e.g., Randomized, Placebo Controlled Trials)
3) fraudulent research designs (e.g., placebo washout/lead-in)
4) concealment of data unfavorable to the interests of the drug industry
5) academic censorship (e.g., non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements)
6) distortions in the medical literature (ghostwriting, file drawer effect)
7) treatment by consensus (rather than treatment based upon science)
Each of these developments contributed to the hegemony of sham standards of care.
Effectiveness Research will be meaningless if it repeats these errors of the past.
Recommendation #2 Focus Upon Basic Science and Biology
The current system for approving new medications and medical devices emphasizes proof of efficacy in principle, rather than proof of effectiveness in fact. This system has given rise to the introduction and widespread use of one, after another, copycat therapies based upon dubious definitions of benefit (e.g., checklists of subjective symptoms in psychiatry; measurements of “risk factors” and surrogate endpoints as substitutes for real progress in ameliorating the symptoms of chronic disease). Most critically, the past 20 years of American medicine have diverted attention away from the study of basic physiology and the mechanisms of disease.
Unless and until the treatment paradigm in American medicine returns to an emphasis upon root causes of illness and disease, and upon the eradication or amelioration of those causes, the system of healthcare will continue to reflect interventions which are largely futile for patients.
What might be done:
1) identify environmental sources of illness and map the epidemiology of risk factors and diseases related to same [e.g., the U.S.A. needs a national equivalent of Green Cross International]
2) re-evaluate national healthcare policy with respect to HPDP [Health Promotion / Disease Prevention]
— verify or refute high cholesterol as the necessary and sufficient cause of heart disease
— verify or refute the existence of cumulative safety thresholds for diagnostic radiology
— verify or refute the long-term harmfulness of the current immunization schedule (particularly, with respect to autoimmune dysfunction, diabetes, asthma, obesity, and neurobehavioral syndromes)
— verify or refute the long-term harmfulness of fetal ultrasound
— verify or refute the long-term hazards of fluoridation
— verify or refute the validity of Gallo’s work, positing HIV as the cause of AIDS
[see Nortin Hadler’s books: The Last Well Person and Worried Sick]
Recommendation #3 Prevent and Mitigate Iatrogenic Harm
The allopathic model of medicine is failing America because authorities will not acknowledge the unnecessary harmfulness of synthetic chemicals. All of the existing training programs, textbooks, Board Certifications, and treatment algorithms emphasize the use of pharmaceuticals that are based upon short-term drug trials, and short-term studies in lab animals. Yet, human subjects (at least, in the U.S.A.) are increasingly encouraged to consume multiple medications for life. This philosophy of lifetime, prescription drug dependence ignores the scientific realities of what happens to patients under the influence of chronic medication.
Unless and until health care providers, policy makers, and regulators recognize the problems of allostatic load (the body’s adaptations to therapy which ultimately result in diminishing benefits or worsening disease) and prioritize the avoidance, amelioration, and/or reversal of target organ toxicity, no amount of “effectiveness research” will be meaningful.
What might be done:
1) effectiveness research must involve considerations of treatment UTILITY ( Benefits and Hazards)
2) effectiveness research must include considerations of Target Organ Toxicity [e.g., how various treatments harm the diseased organ] and allostatic load [e.g., how various treatments induce changes in gene expression which may result in delayed but potentially long-lasting effects]
3) effectiveness research must include considerations of treatment effects upon the environment (e.g., xenobiotic diffusion via sewage; air pollution from hospital incinerators) and environmental effects upon treatment (proximity of treatment facilities and patients to radon, radioactive waste, Superfund or other toxic waste sites, petrochemicals, etc)
Recommendation #4 Recruit the Best Treatments from Around the World
The federal government gives lip service to the importance of research in the areas of complementary and alternative systems of health care. However, the U.S.A. has become a pharmaceutical oligarchy which permits no challenge or rival to allopathic medicine. No amount of effectiveness research will be meaningful unless and until the yoke of pharmaceutical authoritarianism is broken. Ideally, effectiveness research will incorporate the “best treatments” (herbs, diet and lifestyle modification, environmental modification) from around the world.
Recommendation #5 Protect the Privacy of Patients and Physicians
Given the pervasiveness of corporate fraud and the denigration of integrity within the American health care system — particularly, as these have progressed in the era of Evidence Based Medicine — patients and physicians require protection from harmful practices. Treatment facilities, insurance companies, and State Medical Boards mandate compliance with a corporately shaped, corporately biased Group Think. Clinicians have lost the right to practice medicine by using their best clinical judgment, informed by an understanding of basic science, direct observation, and the consideration of the unique circumstances of each and every patient.
It is extremely unlikely that America’s pharmaceutical oligarchy will ever be displaced or transformed into the kind of system which serves mankind, rather than profit and power. This being so, the results of effectiveness research must not be allowed to infringe or violate the privacy of patients, nor the rights of clinicians who desire the freedom to honor the ethical principles of patient autonomy, physician beneficence, and physician non-maleficence.
What might be done:
1) patients and providers must be allowed to opt out of electronic medical records system, health care registries, and other databases where biological and social information can — and most likely will — be used to ration health care, restrict employment or travel, or reduce entitlements
2) patients must be protected from medical tyranny (i.e., medical blackmail — the allocation of therapies or benefits based upon compliance with dubious and potentially harmful treatments)
3) health care providers must be protected from medical tyranny (i.e., medical blackmail in the form of Pay-for-Performance programs, “Consensus” Statements, Sham Peer Review/Disruptive Physician proceedings, etc).
Summary
Effectiveness research is a laudable goal, but only if it is conducted in a way which avoids the tragic errors of the past (i.e., the corporate medical fraud which has gained traction under the influence of EBM, the Daubert decision of 1993, the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, the Bayh-Dole Act, Direct-to-Consumer Advertising, etc), and only if it anticipates new challenges of the future.
Particularly in the context of emerging technologies (brain mapping, gene mapping, high-speed information exchange), there will be ever more opportunities for the leaders of allopathic medicine — and for the leaders in government — to enslave, rather than to serve, the providers and consumers of health care.
Ultimately, effective health care must also be ethical health care. This will require a return of integrity in the conduct of American medical research. It will also require a health care system which prioritizes the delivery of services that are consistent with fundamental human rights, and with the human species’ duty to protect (rather than to plunder) the planet’s biosphere.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute these ideas and opinions.
Respectfully,
Grace E. Jackson, MD
Wilmington NC 28405
After years on major psychiatric drugs I can no longer read fiction. Reading was sure a joy in my life. I finally gave away my 800+ books.
I can still read some factual non-fiction so will give this book a go.
Thinking of sending this book to my former shrink with chapter on psyche drugs making clients worse highlighted.
In today’s newspaper the column called “People’s Pharmacy” said Abilify was a serious concern for the elderly causing confusion.
It is scary that nursing homes give anti-psychotics to so-called “problem patients” to make zone out all the time.
wow! sounds like an amazing book, by an amazing author!
what is it with ex-military medics? somehow they seem a load more clued-up than their civvy-street cousins. maybe it’s because they, more than many, have seen first hand how Authority abuses its Power.
There was a funny story from the south of England in 2003. A Royal Navy aircraft carrier bursting with troops had set sail for the Persian Gulf for the “Showdown on Saddam”. As it sailed out of the English Channel, the ship received a surprise order from Whitehall, the HQ for Her Majesty’s Ministry of Defence.. the order read that “one has decided that all of one’s subjects aboard one’s vessels must be injected with one’s anthrax vaccines”
it is common knowledge that the anthrax vaccine is highly toxic. it often maims and sometimes kills. the atmosphere on ship was close to mutiny, not least from the medics themselves who were also expected to be jabbed up.
and so the medics quietly agreed that each serviceman could inject himself in the privacy of his own cabin…… three weeks later and 10,000 unused phials of anthrax vaccine were washed ashore. the men had thrown all the vaccines overboard, saving their own health! that’s the spirit! the story was scarcely reported by the BBC, the British government’s noxious propaganda department, lest it encouraged others to snub the Crown’s orders!
then there was another story of an ex-military medic who shrugged off his training to start thinking outside-the-box.. the medic is an ex-US Navy shrink.. his name is Olmsted…. Thomas R. Olmsted. He’s well worth a google to appreciate his alternative narrative, and the strange parallels it may have to the mysterious event of 1st June….
If that’s what military action does to mind-blown medics – turns them into free-thinking leftfield radicals – then bring ’em on, as a Mister Bush once said!
Joan,
I’m really sorry about your mom…that must be awful to watch and more awful to have to hold your tongue around your family…
Joan…I was diagnosed at the end of the Thorazine era and did a stint on it too!! Ugly shit…but truly not uglier than the new stuff contrary to popular opinion…
My mother was given Thorazine back in the days when the prevailing attitude was “if a little bit helps, a lot will help a lot more”. Now aged 76, she’s got brain atrophy and there are studies showing that it’s the Thorazine that caused it. I can’t begin to say how angry I feel, how much it hurts that the psychiatric system is taking her away from me AGAIN. I don’t tell the rest of my family because it would serve no purpose except to cause them pain–it’s not like there is anything we can do about it. But she’s still on drugs–she just put on Abilify because she has “run out of” anti-depressants that work. My sister, who is her primary caregiver, is a great believer in the whole medical model and talking to her about this is like talking to a wooden post–she refused to hear. The only thing I could get her to do was promise me she’d keep an eye on mom’s blood sugar because among other things Abilify can cause diabetes.
Too often, much of what causes dementia in elderly people could be drugs, especially psychiatric drugs. Too often, these drugs are deceptively marketed as preventing or ameliorating dementia. But instead, they make it worse. However, nursing homes often give it to their elderly prisoners to make them more easily controlled. But these drugs are often more implicated in dementia than old age.
Laura,
I think this book has to do with the trend of the whole population being on drugs that will LEAD to dementia for millions of new people….young people…who will develop dementia as a result of drug exposure…
but yes, what you say is all true as well…
I have not read this book yet…but that is my understanding.
Gi- I know, and that makes me so sad for you… at the same time, as you wrote in your letter to your old doc, your life is still unfolding in a beautiful way… but I know you don’t need me to tell you that.
By undoing damage, I just meant the psychological damage done to me by all the party lines. I mean, it’s everywhere you look! And I need something to counter that.
yes…it should be a refreshing read in many ways…but these books are always upsetting too…her first book confirmed and validated so much of what I suspected…that is both wonderful and fuel too for anger at the injustices happening all around us.
You know, I want to cite this guy, geez, I can’t remember his name but he’s done a bunch of studies that are ‘scientific’ and he shows how water can change on the molecular level depending on what is literally said to it (the water). Water that is degraded becomes chaotic and shattered looking on the molecular level. (i.e.-i hate you) Water that is wooed transforms into gracefull molecular structures that resemble beautiful snowflakes. (i.e.-i love you) I think its important to ask forgiveness of your body and to make promises to it and talk to it as if it were a lover. You might be surprised at how much damage you can reverse. 🙂
I’m so excited to read Grace Jackson, I’m going to my library tomorrow..hopefully I can find a copy in the system!
oh I don’t mean we can’t heal…but the damage of medicating a generation has occured..that’s all I mean…of course we can heal…that is one of the messages of this blog…but I won’t get my 20 years back, now will I?
Informed consent. What a novel idea! And what a great heads up. Thanks…Grace Jackson is new to me. Have to pick those two up.
undoing damage…I’m afraid too much damage has been done…but stopping further damage…perhaps by some small measure, yes, we can hope…
Legan,
I don’t remember how I came upon it anymore, but Grace Jackson’s work is a large part of how I got to where I am today…I actually think it was my neuro-psychologist who recommended it…
I ordered it. I’m hoping it will undo a lot of damage.
Yes, Grace Jackson is an example of a true psychiatrist. I hope with her outstanding courage and integrity she will lead others to follow her. We , psychiatric survivors, would find more healing and strength if there were many others who sought to heal not harm.