Suicide tips for just €17.50

RNW | Nov 12, 2009

By Robert Chesal

No prospects for the future, tired of life or suicidal? Anyone who wants to take matters of life and death into their own hands can get plenty of information on how to end it all from the Dutch Right to Die Association (NVVE). The association has made suicide tips available on a new website.

Spokesperson for the association Walburg de Jong says the website is meant to give people information so that they can end their lives in a “humane way without resorting to horrific methods like throwing themselves off a roof or in front of a train.”

But doesn’t that encourage people to commit suicide? Not according to Ms De Jong: “Firstly it is only for members, so people can only enter the site with a log-in code.” You only have access to the site if you are a member, which costs €17.50 per year.

But this appears not to be true. This morning, a number of Radio Netherlands journalists managed to log in to the part of the site with these instructions without the log-in code. The association blames this on human error. After we pointed this out to the association, the site was blocked for non-members.

Step-by-step guide

On the site, the association gives detailed information on medicines which can be used for suicide. It also states in which countries they are available and the names they are known under. The methods are also explained step-by-step. This is from the introduction:

There are two main methods for committing suicide using medicines.

In the first method, fast-working and long-lasting sleeping pills are used in combination with a plastic bag over the head, so that you die of suffocation.

In the second method, you take lethal medicine in combination with sleeping tablets and antiemetics, to prevent vomiting. Death is caused by cardiac arrest or apnoea. The information given here only concerns the second method and is based on reliable data, as far as we know.

Huge demand

There are around 1,500 suicides in the Netherlands every year, a large percentage are committed by people over the age of 60. Ms De Jong: “These are people who say ‘my life is over but I do not have a classifiable illness, so I am not eligible for euthanasia’. Or people who are sick, but whose doctor does not want to use euthanasia.”

In the Netherlands both active euthanasia, when a doctor gives a lethal dose of medicine to end the life of a patient, and assisting suicide fall under criminal law. However, doctors who adhere to strict rules are not prosecuted. The doctor has to be convinced that the patient’s request to end his or her life is voluntary and well-considered. The patient has to be suffering intolerable pain with no prospect for improvement. But where many doctors think this refers to physical pain, the Dutch Right to Die Association thinks mental suffering is an acceptable reason for euthanasia or suicide.

Help with suicide

Truus Hoyinck, member of the NVVE since 1991, thinks it is fine for the association to actively help people commit suicide. “I believe in self-determination. Years ago I ordered the Scottish book with suicide tips. I thought it was awful because it said you had to put a plastic bag over your head and wait until you suffocated. So if there is a better way, I’m all for it.”

Aftercare

Suicide can also go wrong. Under the heading ‘Aftercare’ the suicide website says that should the attempt fail, the association’s support service  “is always prepared to talk about the experience.”

Membership of the Dutch Right to Die Association is open to Dutch people and foreigners. A limited amount of information is available in English on the site, but says – after numerous requests from abroad – that it does not prescribe medicines and does not have doctors who offer euthanasia or other help.

NVVE website

Report: WHO to Announce Cell Phone, Brain Tumor Link

AP | Oct 26, 2009

A groundbreaking, $30 million study into cell phones has found a link between long term use and brain tumors.

The World Health Organization is about to reveal that its decade-long investigation has found the devices can lead to cancer — and the internationally-respected body will soon issue a public health message with its findings, London’s Daily Telegraph reported today.

The conclusion goes against years of assurances by cell phone companies and scientists that cell phone use is safe.

But last month, Sen. Arlen Specter, D- Pa., organized Senate hearings to examine health implications of talking on-the-go.

The WHO’s Interphone investigation’s results showed, “a significantly increased risk” of some brain tumors “related to use of mobile phones for a period of ten years or more,” the Telegraph reported.

The study’s head, Dr. Elisabeth Cardis, said, “In the absence of definitive results and in the light of a number of studies which, though limited, suggest a possible effect of radiofrequency radiation, precautions are important.”

Antipsychotics Cause Weight Gain in Kids

WSJ | Oct 28, 2009

By JONATHAN D. ROCKOFF

Antipsychotic drugs widely used in children caused youths to gain as much as 19 pounds on average after just 11 weeks on the medications, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The findings about the drugs, known as atypical antipsychotics, bolster concerns about giving the medicines to patients under 18 years of age. The study’s authors urged child psychiatrists to exercise caution before deciding to prescribe, and to closely monitor patients taking the drugs.

The powerful drugs are used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. They have faced growing scrutiny, not only because of concerns about weight gain that could lead to diabetes, but also because of the aggressive marketing tactics by their makers that have helped make them the highest-selling class of drugs in the U.S.

The study results come as the Food and Drug Administration considers approving younger patients’ use of a few of the drugs. Atypical antipsychotics have limited approval for youths, but doctors are free to prescribe them as they see fit and often give them to children and adolescents, say analysts and psychiatrists.

Psychiatrists turned to the new drugs after they began going on sale in the 1990s because they didn’t cause involuntary facial tics and other problems, as an earlier generation of medicines did. Last year, the drugs collectively generated $14.6 billion in sales in the U.S., according to IMS Health. But a growing number of studies suggest they have their own side effects.

“The weight gain is much larger than we thought,” said Christoph Correll, the study’s lead author, who is a psychiatrist and a scientist at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y. “It’s massive, and it’s the medication” that caused it, he said.

The JAMA study, conducted in 272 youths ages 4 to 19 years, is the largest and most definitive to date to establish a link between the drugs and weight gain, the authors said. Unlike earlier studies, it looked only at patients who hadn’t previously taken the medicines.

The drugs examined were four top-selling atypical antipsychotics: Abilify, sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co.; Risperdal from Johnson & Johnson; Seroquel from AstraZeneca PLC; and Zyprexa from Eli Lilly & Co.

Zyprexa caused the most weight gain, the study found. Over 11 weeks of use, children on Zyprexa gained the most weight on average, nearly 19 pounds, or a 15% increase. The drug was also found to significantly raise levels of blood sugar, cholesterol, insulin and triglycerides, which can lead to diabetes and heart problems.

Patients taking the other three drugs gained from 10 to 13 pounds on average, according to the study. The impact on users’ blood sugar and other metabolic levels varied, depending on the drug.

The drugs’ makers say that the potential for increased weight gain is well known and that they have already updated labels to reflect possible side effects. Atypical antipsychotics are a valuable treatment option for severe mental illnesses, the companies add, and physicians and parents should weigh the risks from taking the medicines against the benefits.

Should the FDA approve Zyprexa’s use in adolescents, physicians should consider prescribing another drug first, a Lilly spokesman added.

In January, Lilly agreed to pay $1.42 billion to settle a federal probe into alleged improper marketing of Zyprexa. And other pharmaceutical companies have come under fire for allegedly promoting off-label uses of atypical antipsychotics and playing down the side effects.

The connection between the drugs and weight gain is poorly understood. As concerns about the side effects have mounted, prescriptions for children have slowed. Dr. Correll encouraged child psychiatrists to be even more careful about giving the drugs to youths and, when they do, to encourage a healthy diet and to check weight and metabolic levels every three months.

“The onset of the weight gain was so pronounced and so significant there’s probably an argument for doing those measurements every few weeks,” said Christopher Varley, a child psychiatrist at Seattle Children’s Hospital, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.

The FDA will soon decide whether to approve younger patients’ use of Seroquel, Zyprexa and Geodon, another atypical antipsychotic. (Geodon wasn’t part of the study because it’s not often used in new patients and too few users enrolled in the trial, Dr. Corell said.) Each drug is currently FDA-approved for use by adults.

Did Autism Rates Double?

A New Survey of Parents Leaves More Questions About Autism Than Answers

ABC | Oct 5, 2009

By LAUREN COX and SARAH SARGENTI

Parents are reporting cases of autism at double the rate of the last U.S. government survey in 2003, prompting calls for more research and spawning doubts about the true number of children affected.

Researchers estimate that now 1.1 percent, or 1 in 91 children, were told they had a disorder on the autism spectrum, according to a parent survey on the health of more than 78,000 children included in the National Survey of Children’s Health. The last survey, conducted in 2003, estimated just 0.57 percent of children had autism.

But whether a change in diagnosis criteria or some factor in the children’s environment, or a combination of the two, led to the jump in reported cases remains unclear.

“This [survey] means that there are a whole lot of families struggling with this and not enough resources,” said Rita Sheffler, a mother of a child with autism and a member of the National Autism Association. “We need more funding and research and need it right away. If children don’t receive appropriate treatments [at a young age], there aren’t enough facilities for adults and society is not prepared if they do not find meaningful treatments.”

Although many doctors are fighting for research dollars to investigate autism, specialists do not necessarily trust the numbers as an official estimate, especially because the survey wasn’t set up to confirm or explore each time a parent reported an autism diagnosis.

“This should not be the ‘official’ estimate,” said Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist at University Hospitals in Cleveland.

“While the authors state that the survey results [and previous surveys] are similar to results of reviews of records, both have a limitation — the assumption that the parent report and the records accurately reflect the diagnosis,” he said

Some of the reporting seemed to match to well-documented statistics, such as the fact that boys were four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls in the survey, a commonly known gender difference in the autism community.

However, the high rate of recovery from autism reported by the parents raised the suspicions of doctors.

Full Story

U.S. autism rates ’shocking’: Advocate

canada.com | Oct 6, 2009

“Shocking” new autism data released in the U.S. on Monday sent reverberations across the border and renewed calls for Canadian government agencies to get a grip on autism rates in this country.

The U.S. data found the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder has continued to increase, and now affects one per cent of children in the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The CDC said it went public with the findings, because they were similar to those published Monday by the Boston-based medical journal Pediatrics, which found that ASD affected one in 91 children — including 1 in 58 boys — in the U.S.

“These data affirm that a concerted and substantial national response is warranted,” said the CDC in a statement.

The published Pediatrics study, done by the Health Resources and Services Administration, surveyed by telephone 78,000 parents with children aged three to 17.

Suzanne Lanthier, of Autism Speaks Canada, said the U.S. data were “shocking” and should motivate Canadian health authorities to focus their energies on dealing with autism.

“We need to start paying attention to that, and putting significant resources into finding out why this is happening,” said Lanthier.

Lanthier said Canada does not have similar national data on domestic autism rates.

Autism advocacy groups in Canada have relied on the previous 1-in-150 rate released by the CDC in 2007, said Lanthier.

“Given what we have seen, there is no reason to believe that Canadian rates would be significantly different from the U.S.,” said Lanthier.

Canadian studies have pegged child ASD rates in Canada at between one in 147 and one in 165.

ASD is a group of developmental disabilities that cause social, communication and behavioural problems. The disabilities include autistic disorder, Asperger’s syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder.

The cause of autism is still a matter of debate.

Italy grapples with accusations of sex abuse by Catholic priests

Gianni Bisoli, foreground, has accused Verona’s late bishop, Monsignor Giuseppe Carraro, of molesting him on five separate occasions while he was a boy attending Verona’s Provolo Institute for the deaf. Carraro is being considered for beatification.Photo: Luca Bruno, AP

“How could I tell my papa that a priest had sex with me? You couldn’t tell your parents because the priests would beat you.”

In a shift for the Vatican, Scicluna acknowledged that priestly sex abuse was an age-old problem.

Associated Press | Sep 13, 2009

By Nicole Winfield

VERONA, Italy — It happened night after night, the deaf man said, sometimes in the priest’s bedroom, sometimes in the bathroom, even in the confessional.

When he was a young boy at a Catholic-run institute for the deaf, Alessandro Vantini said, priests sodomized him so relentlessly he came to feel “as if I were dead.” This year, he and dozens of other former students did something highly unusual for Italy: They went public with claims they were forced to perform sex acts with priests.

For decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priest abuse in Italy, where surveys show the church is considered one of the country’s most respected institutions. Now, in the Vatican’s backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly and fitfully taking hold.

A year-long Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims. The tally was compiled from local media reports, linked to by websites of victims groups and blogs. Almost all the cases have come out in the seven years since the scandal about Roman Catholic priest abuse broke in the United States.

The numbers in Italy are still a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of cases in the court systems of the United States and Ireland. And according to the AP tally, the Italian church has so far had to pay only a few hundred thousand euros (dollars) in civil damages to the victims, compared to $2.6 billion in abuse-related costs for the American diocese or $1.5 billion due to victims in Ireland.

However, the numbers still stand out in a country where reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown a decade ago. They point to an increasing willingness among the Italian public and — slowly — within the Vatican itself to look squarely at a tragedy where the reported cases may only just be the tip of the iceberg. The Italian church will not release the numbers of cases reported or of court settlements.

The implications of priest abuse loom large in Italy: with its 50,850 priests in a nation of 60 million, Italy counts more priests than all of South America or Africa. In the United States — where the Vatican counts 44,700 priests in a nation of 300 million — more than 4,000 Catholic clergy have been accused of molesting minors since 1950.

The Italian cases follow much the same pattern as the U.S. and Irish scandals: Italian prelates often preyed on poor, physically or mentally disabled, or drug-addicted youths entrusted to their care. The deaf students’ speech impairments, for example, made the priests’ admonition “never to tell” all the more easy to enforce.

In this predominantly Roman Catholic country, the church enjoys such an exalted status that the pope’s pronouncements frequently top the evening news, without any critical commentary. Even those with anti-clerical views acknowledge the important role the church plays in education, social services and caring for the poor.

As a result, few dare to criticize it, including the mainstream independent and state-run media. In addition, there’s a certain prudishness in small-town Italy, where one just doesn’t speak about sex, much less sex between a priest and a child.

“It’s a taboo on top of a taboo,” said Jacqueline Monica Magi, who prosecuted several pedophilia cases in Italy before becoming a judge. “This is the provincialism of Italy.”

Breaking the conspiracy of silence, 67 former students from Verona’s Antonio Provolo institute for the deaf signed a statement alleging that sexual abuse, pedophilia and corporal punishment occurred at the school from the 1950s to the 1980s at the hands of priests and brothers of the Congregation for the Company of Mary.

While not all acknowledged being victims themselves, 14 of the 67 wrote sworn statements and videotaped testimony, detailing the abuse they say they suffered, some for years, at the school’s two campuses in Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet. They named 24 priests, lay religious men and religious brothers.

Vantini said he, too, was silent for years.

“How could I tell my papa that a priest had sex with me?” Vantini, 59, told the AP one afternoon, recounting through a sign-language interpreter the abuse he said he endured. “You couldn’t tell your parents because the priests would beat you.”

Vantini named two priests and two lay brothers — three of whom are still alive — but asked that their names not be printed for fear of legal action. He spoke with the nervousness and agitation he says has accompanied him all of his life from being raped as a child by a priest.

“I suffered from depression until I was 30,” said Vantini, who attended the school from age 6 to 19. “My wife said it was good that I spoke out because it lifted this weight from my chest.”

Vantini’s one-time schoolmate, Gianni Bisoli, 60, named the same men in his written declaration and in an interview, as well as 12 other priests and brothers from the Congregation, accusing them of sodomizing him, forcing him to have oral sex and to masturbate them.

In his declaration, Bisoli also accused Verona’s late bishop, Monsignor Giuseppe Carraro — who is being considered for beatification — of molesting him on five separate occasions while he was a student at Provolo, which he attended from age 9 to 15.

A diocesan probe cleared Carraro of sex abuse. But the investigation interviewed none of the alleged victims, limiting testimony to surviving members of the Congregation, other school personnel and their affiliates, and documentation from the Congregation and Verona diocese.

The late bishop’s beatification process was suspended pending the investigation, but is now going ahead to the Vatican’s saint-making office.

Five decades later, Bisoli still recalls the route he said he took from the institute, located on a quiet street named for the congregation’s founder, Don Antonio Provolo, along the serpentine Adige river to the bishop’s residence tucked behind Verona’s Piazza del Duomo.

Bisoli, who became deaf at age eight, said he was accompanied by one of his abusers and walked past the red brick Castelvecchio, an imposing 14th-century citadel, then along the main Corso Cavour thoroughfare or the more out-of-the-way pedestrian shopping street Via Mazzini.

“They brought me inside the curia (the diocese headquarters),” Bisoli recalled in an interview. “There was a servant who opened the door, then someone brought me inside. It was dark.”

Bishop Carraro appeared, he recalled. “The bishop started to touch me, grope me,” he said, running his hands up and down his body, pulling at his shirt and shorts to demonstrate. “I pulled away. But he continued to touch me for 15, 20 minutes. I didn’t know what to do.”

On a subsequent occasion, Bisoli says, the bishop tried to sodomize him with a banana. Another time, they were on the sofa and he sodomized him with his finger, offering him candy to appease him, Bisoli said.

Once, Bisoli said, the bishop offered him some gold crosses that had caught Bisoli’s eye.

“I said ‘at least give me 10,000-20,000 lire so I can buy a Coca-Cola or an ice cream,”‘ Bisoli recalled.

The current bishop of Verona, Monsignor Giuseppe Zenti, initially accused the former students of fabricating their claims in talking in January to L’Espresso, a left-leaning newsweekly. Zenti called the accusations “lies” and a stunt that was part of a long-standing real estate dispute between the Congregation and the deaf students’ association, to which the alleged victims belong.

But when one of the accused lay religious men admitted to sexual relations with students, Zenti ordered an internal investigation into the Congregation. The results found that some abuse occurred, albeit a fraction of what has been alleged.

According to the diocese probe, there were episodes of physical violence against two unnamed students between 1958 and 1965. From 1965 to 1967, two would-be priests with “sexual disorders” were kicked out; while between 1965 and 1990 a religious brother had sexual relations with an undetermined number of students, the investigation found. In all cases the accused were removed.

“There could have been some episodes, some bad apples are possible,” Carlo de’ Gresti, spokesman for the Provolo institute said in an interview at the school’s Chievo campus, where a lay staff now runs a technical school for poor teens. “It happens, even in families. That there could have been 26, 27, 25 pedophiles? There is no objective corroboration from anyone who isn’t inside the (students’) association.”

Advocates, however, says the diocese’s investigation was fatally flawed because it didn’t interview the alleged victims and only people with links to the school who may have something to hide.

“If they had wanted to shed full light on it, they wouldn’t have only heard from priests and lay brothers, but from the deaf as well,” said Marco Lodi Rizzini, a spokesman for the victims.

The investigation has been forwarded to the Vatican, said the Rev. Bruno Fasani, spokesman for the diocese. He claimed former students had been manipulated into denouncing innocent priests and accused some of harboring a long-standing animosity to the church.

Zenti, for his part, asked forgiveness from the victims.

“The feeling that prevails is above all one of profound solidarity with the victims of abuse,” Zenti said in a May statement. “To them and their families, a humble request of forgiveness is made.”

Among the cases the AP tallied, there were charges of inducing boys into prostitution, participation in satanic rituals, and one notorious case in which the church itself determined that an elderly Florentine priest was responsible for “sexual abuse, false mysticism and domination of consciences.”

Where there were sentences, they ran from a two-year suspended sentence to eight years in jail, although with Italy’s notoriously lengthy appeals process it’s unclear how many have been carried out. Where civil damages were awarded, which has been rare, the amounts ranged from about $22,000 to $220,000 at today’s exchange rates.

The cases in the AP survey involve civil or criminal cases and investigations. For that reason, the Verona figures were omitted, since no criminal or civil action is pending because the statute of limitations has expired.

In 2002, when the abuse scandal was erupting in the United States, the No. 2 official in the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Monsignor Giuseppe Betori, was quoted as saying clerical sex abuse was so limited in Italy that the conference leadership hadn’t even discussed the matter.

But Italian prelates and the Vatican now seem to be taking the problem far more seriously. Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican prosecutor in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — which handles cases of priestly sex abuse — acknowledged that public awareness of the problem in Italy had increased as a result of the “tsunami” of cases that came to light in the United States.

“There is a change of mentality, and we find that to be very positive,” he told the AP.

In a shift for the Vatican, Scicluna acknowledged that priestly sex abuse was an age-old problem that needed to be rooted out.

“I don’t think it’s a question of happening. It has always happened. It’s important that people talk about it, because otherwise we cannot bring the healing which the church can offer to people who need it — both the victims and perpetrators.”

Suicidal Thoughts and Rage Associated With Anti-depressants and Smoking Cessation Drugs

Suicidal Thoughts and Rage: What are Causing Your Symptoms of Side Effects

US Recall News | Sep 4, 2009

Suicidal thoughts and Rage are often symptoms of conditions like clinical depression, and bipolar disorder. Since everyone handles depression differently, the symptoms of this disease manifest in different ways. Extreme anger is a common – but often ignored – symptom of depression, especially in men.

Rage and suicidal thoughts can also be related to diseases like Lyme disease, or could be side effects associated with certain medications, such as Chantix and Welbutrin. Below is a list of diseases and conditions associated with symptoms like Suicidal Thoughts and Rage, as well as a list of medications related to similar side effects.

We are not medical professionals, and these are not comprehensive lists. Please contact your doctor if you are experiencing any of the following symptoms or side effects, or similar health issues.

Suicidal Thoughts and Rage are Symptoms of:

Depression: Clinical depression, or major depressive disorder, can easily lead to suicidal thoughts and for some can cause rage. The symptoms of depression can be misleading to doctors and patients alike because so many things can be at the root of the problem including nutritional imbalance, hormonal imbalance, environmental toxins, and side effects from medications.

Bipolar Disorder: Bipolar disorder, also called manic-depression, is a form of depression with a very high suicide rate. It is characterized by extreme mood swings which include rage. Rage is an aspect of bipolar disorder that is often overlooked and many people are not aware that it is something to expect with the condition.

Traumatic Brain Injury: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) effects each victim differently. When there is no loss of consciousness and/or no blow to the head, it often goes undetected or undiagnosed. Mood swing, depression, suicidal thoughts, and episodes of extreme rage are common after TBI and the symptoms can be life-long. To complicate matters further TBI can cause epilepsy. When we think of seizures, we typically think of convulsions, but a seizure is really electrical misfiring in the brain and does not always cause convulsions. Seizures can be mistaken for outbursts of rage.

Lyme Disease: Lyme disease is carried by some ticks and can be transmitted to humans by a tick bite. It is an inflammatory disease that can affect different areas of the body and has widely varying symptoms. Rage is such a common complication of Lyme disease that it is simply referred to as “Lyme rage.” Suicidal thoughts are not uncommon in people with Lyme disease and can be a result of the disease in action or due to excruciating symptoms from which there is no relief.

Suicidal Thoughts and Rage Are Side Effects Associated With:

Chantix: Chantix is a smoking cessation drug. Instead of delivering nicotine, as many smoking cessation aids do, it attaches to the receptors in the brain that nicotine normally attaches to, blocking the nicotine out.

Zyban and Wellbutrin: Bupropion, sold as Zyban and Wellbutrin, is used as a smoking cessation aid and an antidepressant. It is a norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor and, like Chantix, blocks the reception of nicotine.

Zoloft: Zoloft is an antidepressant also sold under the brand name Lustral and generically as sertraline hydrochloride. It is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI).

Neurontin: Neurontin is used to treat nerve pain in people with herpes or shingles and to treat epilepsy. It affects the chemical and nerves in the body, but exactly how it works is not yet known.

Cymbalta: Cymbalta is used to treat depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia, and pain caused by diabetic neuropathy. It was tested as a treatment for stress urinary incontinence, but failed due to suicides and liver toxicity.

Psychiatrist in charge of autism research has family connection to vaccine implicated in rise of autism rates

Thomas R. Insel, the psychiatrist in charge of autism research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has a family connection to one of the vaccines potentially implicated in the sharp rise in autism rates since 1990.

Age of Autism | Aug 20, 2009

When Vaccine Development is Family Business: Thomas Insel’s Conflicted Role on Vaccines and Autism

By Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill

Thomas R. Insel, the psychiatrist in charge of autism research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has a family connection to one of the vaccines potentially implicated in the sharp rise in autism rates since 1990. His brother, Richard A. Insel, was part of both the research team that developed the vaccine for Haemophilus influenza B (Hib) and the company that profited from the introduction of the first commercial Hib vaccine formulation. Richard Insel was a co-founder and director of Praxis Biologics–a vaccine development company in Rochester, New York–that together with a research team at the University of Rochester developed and then sold HibTITER®, a vaccine for Hib first licensed for children in December 1988 and for infants in October 1990.  Largely based on the momentum of its successful Hib vaccine, Praxis Biologics was sold in 1989 to American Cyanamid in a deal valued at $190 million. As co-founder and director, Richard Insel held shares that gave him a 2% interest in the company, making his personal share of the transaction worth close to $4 million.

Despite his family connection to the Hib vaccine, there is neither evidence nor suggestion of undisclosed financial conflict on Thomas Insel’s part; all the Praxis Biologics transactions and development activity associated with HibTITER® occurred at least twenty years ago and involved his brother, Richard Insel.  Nor has Richard Insel been involved in autism research in any way. But HibTITER® contained the ethyl mercury-based preservative thimerosal, a vaccine component that has been at the center of an ongoing controversy in autism. Many organizations concerned over vaccine safety, including many autism groups, have been asking for increased NIH funding for vaccine safety research, including research into the effects of thimerosal. In that context, Age of Autism’s investigation of Thomas Insel’s familial link to a thimerosal-containing vaccine developed by his brother raises important questions, and advocates for more research on a possible link reacted strongly to the connection.

Put simply, Thomas Insel presides over the NIH research into the causes of autism. In his dual capacity as autism planner and brother (see HERE), responding to these concerns would require him to address a personally difficult question: Did his brother help develop a product that increased the risk of autism in children?

“With a topic as sensitive and combustible as vaccines and autism, Insel needs to move on and hand the reigns over to someone with no conflicts, real or perceived,” said J.B. Handley of Generation Rescue. Age of Autism outlined this article and the reaction of some autism advocates to a spokeswoman for the National Institute of Mental Health, of which Insel is director. She said Insel is on vacation “this week and next week at least” and could not be reached for comment. In a brief conversation, she said that in general “he falls back on the science, not some personal view of anything” in making policy decisions.

Full Story

One in five Afghan children suffers psychiatric disorder

More than one in five children in parts of Afghanistan suffer from some sort of psychiatric disorder, the first large-scale survey of their mental health suggests.

Telegraph | Aug 20, 2009

By Kate Devlin

Some have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, more often seen in soldiers returning from the battlefield.

Others are suffering from extreme anxiety or depression, the study shows.

Girls were twice as likely to have a psychiatric disorder as boys.

Researchers interviewed more then 1,000 children in northern Afghanistan, including one, a 16-year-old girl, who said she had seen the beheaded body of her grandfather after he was killed in a rocket attack.

Related

Afghan probe: US strike killed 140 people, many children

The study, by researchers at Durham University, also found that many of the children were suffering day-to-day violence and stress on top of the war-related incidents they had witnessed.

One in ten said that they had been beaten by relatives or neighbours, had undergone painful medical treatments or suffered accidents.

These were the most traumatic injury in their lives, they said.

Only a small number said that a war-related injury had been their most distressing experience.

Poverty is increasing the stress the children suffer, researchers warned.

“Huge numbers of children live in families where the father is struggling to make ends meet and many relatives are squeezed into inadequate housing,” said Catherine Panter-Brick from Durham’s Anthropology Department.

“Many children have to work before and after school to help put food on the table.

“They walk long distances to school, have overcrowded classes, and can’t do homework at night because there is no electricity.

“The war-related suffering comes on top of all that.”

However, the study also uncovered large amounts of resilience and high aspirations among the children they interviewed.

The findings, published in the Lancet medical journal, suggest that 22 per cent of Afghan children have some form of psychiatric disorder.

Children who had experienced more than five traumatic events, such as domestic or community and war-related violence, were more than twice as likely as others to develop mental health problems.

The research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, involved 1,011 children aged between 11 and 16 and their parents, along with 358 teachers at schools in Kabul, Bamiyan, and Mazar-e-Sharif.

Video Gamers Hooked for Life

Some researchers say video games are addictive in ways similar to gambling addiction.

livescience.com | Jul 31, 2009

By Tuan C. Nguyen and Lucas Siegel

Video gamers are gamers for life, analysts say. And that’s no surprise to the industry that peddles the games and the hardware, which grew last year as the rest of the economy went south.

But health experts are worried that the deepening love affair some gamers have with their consoles may lead to addiction.

Consumer spending on video game hardware, software and accessories rose by 19 percent in 2008 over the previous year to $22.9 billion, according to the report released this week by the Entertainment Merchants Association.

New game console hardware sales increased by 11 percent, despite no price drops from Nintendo or Sony, two of the three major console manufacturers. Microsoft dropped the price of each version of their Xbox 360 console just prior to the holiday 2008 season.

There are signs of a slowdown, however, including a dip in sales during June, also reported this week. And yesterday, Nintendo announced that sales of its popular Wii consoles fell by 57 percent in the latest quarter — the first drop since 2006, according to news reports. Still, industry analysts expect overall industry profits to rebound with a slew of highly anticipated titles scheduled for release in the second half of the year.

“Our data also shows that the number of video gamers is broadening across many demographics, meaning as people get older they keep playing because they are now playing video games with their kids or getting fit with the Nintendo Wii,” says George Van Horn, a senior analyst at IBISworld.

One factor behind the rise: The average console game typically provides between 5 and 25 hours of playtime. When that game is completed, gamers look to a new game, often without replaying the old ones.

“Once a person becomes a video gamer, he or she will remain a video gamer indefinitely, rendering the industry essentially turnover-proof,” Van Horn said.

Meanwhile, the notion that video gaming can become addictive has remained controversial.

A study published in the May issue of the journal Psychological Science found that nearly 1 in 10 youths who play video games behaved in ways that were similar to other addictive disorders, such as compulsive gambling. These behaviors include skipping chores, lying to parents and even stealing money to support their gaming habits.

Excessive gaming has become a particularly severe problem in Asian countries, where a number of gaming-related deaths have been reported. In 2005, a 28-year old South Korean man died of exhaustion after playing computer games at an Internet café non-stop for close to 50 hours. A state survey released by the South Korean government revealed that an estimated 2.4 percent of the population aged 9 to 39 may be addicted to gaming.

Still, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has yet to recognize those who play games excessively as having a disorder, though some experts expect that to change.

“With these gamers, there’s almost always some other underlying issue such as depression, anxiety or some form of social disorder,” says Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health & Sciences University and an APA advisor. “But if the game playing poses a barrier to treating any of these other issues, it would have to be addressed separately as a pathology.”

Block is currently lobbying the APA to include pathological video game playing in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, due out in 2012.