Reality shows ‘eroding children’s sense of reality’

Big Brother ‘eroding children’s sense of reality’

Children’s sense of reality is being eroded by soap operas, game shows and computer games, according to a leading headmaster.

Telegraph | Jun 15, 2009

By Graeme Paton

The influence of programmes such as Big Brother and I’m A Celebrity… are leading to young people losing awareness of the challenges facing them as they grow up, it is claimed.

Robert Holroyd, head of Repton School, in Derbyshire, said teachers should encourage pupils to watch the news and read quality papers including The Daily Telegraph to provide a “reality check”.

The comments follow a survey of 800 teachers that found that the vast majority believed TV programmes had a negative effect on the behaviour of pupils.

Mr Holroyd said: “An increasing number of young people think that celebrity status is available to everyone, usually through television. Many also have the impression – generated by reality TV, computer games and soap operas – that the world beyond a small area or community has no impact on people’s lives.

“They need to understand that ‘reality television’ often shows a modified and highly influenced form of reality.”

He added: “Big Brother and I’m A Celebrity are the biggest concerns here. In a sense I want to draw a distinction between that sort of programme and some of the talent shows like Britain’s Got Talent which has at least got an element of rewarding hard work.

“At least that may make children look at their own performance and think ‘what would Amanda Holden or Simon Cowell say about me?’”

He was speaking ahead of a conference at the school, which charges up to £25,000 per year for boarders. The Global Perspective event on Thursday to Saturday for sixth-formers will feature speeches and workshops on the environment, wealth distribution and use of natural resources.

The school has already opened a second campus in Dubai for up to 1,500 international pupils.

Mr Holroyd said schools had a duty to promote awareness of global issues. This includes ensuring children are “regularly reading a good quality newspaper and listening to or watching the news or factual documentaries”.

The school encourages pupils to subscribe to broadsheet newspapers instead of magazines and limits access to the internet amid concerns over its effect on young people.

“The first thing a child often goes for when they walk into a newsagent is a corrosive magazine, particularly those marketed towards teenage girls which are packed with premature relationship issues,” he said. “What they are missing out on is the every day exposure to real life that reading a quality daily like The Daily Telegraph can give them. That’s why we encourage our pupils to read the newspapers.”

The comments follow research from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers which warned access to inappropriate TV was turning young children into “Vicky Pollards” – the rude Little Britain character known for her “Yeah-but, no-but” catchphrase.

Two thirds of those questioned said Big Brother was a bad influence on children’s behaviour with 61 per cent naming Little Britain and 43 per cent picking out EastEnders as responsible for changes in how they act.

U.S. military: Heavily medicated and armed

Prescription pill dependency among American troops is on the rise

MSNBC | May 19, 2009

U.S. military: Heavily armed and medicated

By Melody Petersen

Marine Corporal Michael Cataldi woke as he heard the truck rumble past.

He opened his eyes, but saw nothing. It was the middle of the night, and he was facedown in the sands of western Iraq. His loaded M16 was pinned beneath him.

Cataldi had no idea how he’d gotten to where he now lay, some 200 meters from the dilapidated building where his buddies slept. But he suspected what had caused this nightmare: His Klonopin prescription had run out.

His ordeal was not all that remarkable for a person on that anti-anxiety medication. In the lengthy labeling that accompanies each prescription, Klonopin users are warned against abruptly stopping the medicine, since doing so can cause psychosis, hallucinations, and other symptoms. What makes Cataldi’s story extraordinary is that he was a U. S. Marine at war, and that the drug’s adverse effects endangered lives — his own, his fellow Marines’, and the lives of any civilians unfortunate enough to cross his path.

“It put everyone within rifle distance at risk,” he says.

In deploying an all-volunteer army to fight two ongoing wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has increasingly relied on prescription drugs to keep its warriors on the front lines. In recent years, the number of military prescriptions for antidepressants, sleeping pills, and painkillers has risen as soldiers come home with battered bodies and troubled minds. And many of those service members are then sent back to war theaters in distant lands with bottles of medication to fortify them.

According to data from a U. S. Army mental-health survey released last year, about 12 percent of soldiers in Iraq and 15 percent of those in Afghanistan reported taking antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, or sleeping pills. Prescriptions for painkillers have also skyrocketed. Data from the Department of Defense last fall showed that as of September 2007, prescriptions for narcotics for active-duty troops had risen to almost 50,000 a month, compared with about 33,000 a month in October 2003, not long after the Iraq war began.

In other words, thousands of American fighters armed with the latest killing technology are taking prescription drugs that the Federal Aviation Administration considers too dangerous for commercial pilots.

Military officials say they believe many medications can be safely used on the battlefield. They say they have policies to ensure that drugs they consider inappropriate for soldiers on the front lines are rarely used. And they say they are not using the drugs in order to send unstable warriors back to war.

Yet the experience of soldiers and Marines like Cataldi show the dangers of drugging our warriors. It also worries some physicians and veterans’ advocates. “There are risks in putting people back to battle with medicines in their bodies,” says psychiatrist Judith Broder, M. D., founder of the Soldiers Project, a group that helps service members suffering from mental illness.

Prescription drugs can help patients, Dr. Broder says, but they can also cause drowsiness and impair judgment. Those side effects can be dealt with by patients who are at home, she says, but they can put active-duty soldiers in great danger. She worries that some soldiers are being medicated and then sent back to fight before they’re ready.

“The military is under great pressure to have enough people ready for combat,” she says. “I don’t think they’re as cautious as they would be if they weren’t under this kind of pressure.”

Brought more than memories back

When Cataldi talks about what happened to him in Iraq, he begins with an in incident that took place on a cold January night in 2005, when he and five other Marines received a radio call informing them that a helicopter had disappeared. The men roared across the desert of western Iraq and found what was left of the chopper. Flames roared from the pile of metal. Cataldi, 20, was ordered to do a body count.

The pilot’s body was still on fire, so he shoveled dirt on it to douse the acrid flames. He picked up a man’s left boot in order to find the dog tag every Marine keeps there. A foot fell to the ground. “People were missing heads,” Cataldi remembers. “They were wearing the same uniform I was wearing.”

The final death toll from that crash of a CH-53E Super Stallion was 30 Marines and one sailor.

For days, Cataldi couldn’t escape the odor of burning flesh. “I had the smell all over my equipment,” he says. “I couldn’t get it off .”

When he returned to his stateside base at Twentynine Palms, California, he knew he’d brought more than memories back from Iraq. He would cry for no reason. He flew into fits of rage. One night he woke up with his hands around the throat of his wife, Monica, choking her.

“It scared the crap out of me,” he says.

He went to see a psychiatrist on base. “He said, ‘Here’s some medication,’ ” Cataldi recalls. The prescribed drugs were Klonopin, for anxiety; Zoloft, for depression; and Ambien, to help him sleep.

Later, other military doctors added narcotic painkillers for the excruciating pain in his leg, which he’d injured during a training exercise. He was also self-medicating with heavy doses of alcohol.
Those prescriptions didn’t stop the Marine Corps from sending Cataldi back to Iraq. In 2006, he returned to the same part of the Iraqi desert to do the same job: performing maintenance on armored personnel carriers known as LAVs. He also took his turn driving the 14-ton tanklike vehicles, one of which was armed with a 25 mm cannon and two machine guns and loaded with more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

Marine Major Carl B. Redding says he can’t talk about the medical history of any Marine because of privacy laws. He says the Corps has procedures to ensure that service members taking medications for psychiatric conditions are deployed only if their symptoms are in remission. Those Marines, he says, must be able to meet the demands of a mission.

But it’s difficult to square those regulations with Cataldi’s experience. His medications came with written warnings about the dangers of driving and operating heavy machinery. The labels don’t lie.

One night, Cataldi took his pills after his commander told him he was done for the day. Five minutes later, however, plans changed, and he was told to drive the LAV. He asked the Marine sitting behind him to help keep him awake. “I said, ‘Kick the back of my seat every 5 minutes,’ and that’s what he did.”

Cataldi says he managed on the medications — until his Klonopin ran out. The medical officer told him there was no Klonopin anywhere in Iraq. So the officer gave him a drug called Seroquel. That’s when Cataldi says he started to become “loopy.”

“I’d go to pick up a wrench and come back with a hammer,” he says. “I wasn’t able to do my job. I wasn’t able to fight.”

Soldiers on medication

Soldiers have doped up in order to sustain combat since ancient times. Often their chosen drug was alcohol. And Iraq isn’t the first place U. S. military doctors have prescribed medications to troops on the front. During the Vietnam war, military psychiatrists spoke enthusiastically about some newly psychiatric medicines, including Thorazine, an anti-psychotic, and Valium, for anxiety. According to an army textbook, doctors frequently prescribed those drugs to soldiers with psychiatric symptoms. Anxiety-ridden soldiers with upset bowels were sometimes given the antidiarrheal Compazine, a potent tranquilizer.

But the use of those drugs in Vietnam became controversial. Critics said it was dangerous to give soldiers medications that slowed their reflexes, a side effect that could raise their risk of being injured, captured, or killed. That risk was real. In a report supported by the U. S. Navy 14 years after the United States withdrew from Vietnam, researchers looked at the records of all Marines wounded there between 1965 and 1972. Marines who’d been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons before being sent back to battle were more likely to have been injured in combat than those who hadn’t been hospitalized.

Critics of medication use in Vietnam also said that a soldier traumatized by battle may not be coherent enough to give his consent to take the drugs in the first place. Plus, a soldier would risk court-martial if he refused to follow orders, they said, making it unlikely he could make a reasoned decision about taking the medications.

After the war, the practice of liberally giving psychiatric drugs to warriors fell out of favor. In War Psychiatry, a 1995 military medical textbook, a U. S. Air Force flight surgeon warned about the use of psychiatric drugs, saying they should be used sparingly.

“Sending a person back to combat duty still under the influence of psychoactive drugs may be dangerous,” he wrote. “Even in peacetime, people in the many combat-support positions… would not be allowed to take such medications and continue to work in their sensitive, demanding jobs.”

Colonel Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, M. D., M. P. H., a psychiatrist and the medical director of the strategic communication directorate in the Office of the Army Surgeon General, acknowledges that writing more prescriptions for frontline troops was a change in direction for the Pentagon. “Twenty years ago,” she says, “we weren’t deploying soldiers on medications.”

Today it’s not uncommon for a soldier to arrive in Iraq while taking a host of prescription drugs. The Pentagon explained its new practice in late 2006, stating that there are “few medications that are inherently disqualifying for deployment.”

According to Colonel Ritchie, military officials have concluded that many medicines introduced since the Vietnam War can be used safely on the front lines. Military physicians consider antidepressants and sleeping pills to be especially helpful, she says. Doctors have also found that small doses of Seroquel, an anti-psychotic, can help treat nightmares, she says, even though the drug is not approved for that use.

Full Story

Government Experiments on U.S. Soldiers: Shocking Claims Come to Light in New Court Case

They say government scientists messed with their minds. Now, veterans who were the subject of top-secret experiments want answers.

Mother Jones | May 23, 2009

By Bruce Falconer

Their stories are a staple of conspiracy culture: broken men, suffering hallucinations and near-total amnesia, who say they are victims of secret government mind-control experiments. Think Liev Schreiber in The Manchurian Candidate or Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. Journalists are a favorite target for the paranoid delusions of this population. So is Gordon Erspamer—and the San Francisco lawyer’s latest case isn’t helping him to fend off the tinfoil-hat crowd. He has filed suit against the CIA and the US Army on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans of America and six former American soldiers who claim they are the real thing: survivors of classified government tests conducted at the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland between 1950 and 1975. “I get a lot of calls,” he says. “There are a lot of crazy people out there who think that somebody from Mars is controlling their behavior via radio waves.” But when it comes to Edgewood, “I’m finding that more and more of those stories are true!”

That government scientists conducted human experiments at Edgewood is not in question. “The program involved testing of nerve agents, nerve agent antidotes, psychochemicals, and irritants,” according to a 1994 General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) report (PDF). At least 7,800 US servicemen served “as laboratory rats or guinea pigs” at Edgewood, alleges Erspamer’s complaint, filed in January in a federal district court in California. The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that military scientists tested hundreds of chemical and biological substances on them, including VX, tabun, soman, sarin, cyanide, LSD, PCP, and World War I-era blister agents like phosgene and mustard. The full scope of the tests, however, may never be known. As a CIA official explained to the GAO, referring to the agency’s infamous MKULTRA mind-control experiments, “The names of those involved in the tests are not available because names were not recorded or the records were subsequently destroyed.” Besides, said the official, some of the tests involving LSD and other psychochemical drugs “were administered to an undetermined number of people without their knowledge.”

Erspamer’s plaintiffs claim that, although they volunteered for the Edgewood program, they were never adequately informed of the potential risks and continue to suffer debilitating health effects as a result of the experiments. They hope to force the CIA and the Army to admit wrongdoing, inform them of the specific substances they were exposed to, and provide access to subsidized health care to treat their Edgewood-related ailments. Despite what they describe as decades of suffering resulting from their Edgewood experiences, the former soldiers are not seeking monetary damages; a 1950 Supreme Court decision, the Feres case, precludes military personnel from suing the federal government for personal injuries sustained in the line of duty. The CIA’s decision to use military personnel as test subjects followed the court’s decision and is an issue Erspamer plans to raise at trial. “Suddenly, they stopped using civilian subjects and said, ‘Oh, we can get these military guys for free,’” he says. “The government could do whatever it wanted to them without liability. We want to bring that to the attention of the public, because I don’t think most people understand that.” (Asked about Erspamer’s suit, CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf would say only that the agency’s human testing program has “been thoroughly investigated, and the CIA fully cooperated with each of the investigations.”)

Erspamer’s involvement in the case is deeply personal. His father was a government scientist during Operation Crossroads, a series of nuclear tests conducted at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the summer of 1946; he was present aboard a research vessel for the “Baker” test, during which a 21-kiloton thermonuclear bomb was detonated 90 feet below water. The blast resulted in massive radioactive contamination. Erspamer’s father and the rest of the ship’s crew, he says, all died in middle age from radiogenic diseases. Erspamer makes his living in the field of energy litigation, but has twice before argued class action suits for veterans—one for soldiers who, like his father, were exposed to radiation during nuclear tests (a case he ultimately lost in a 1992 appellate decision) and more recently one on behalf of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans denied treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. The case is on appeal in California’s 9th Circuit. “Nobody out there is doing these types of cases,” he says. “It’s really sad because the veterans are left holding the bag, and it’s not a very pretty bag.”

One of those vets is Frank Rochelle. Unlike those of other test veterans, portions of his heavily redacted medical records have survived, providing a rare, if incomplete, account of his experiences. In 1968, while posted at Virginia’s Fort Lee as a 20-year-old Army draftee, he saw a notice calling for volunteers for the Edgewood program. Among the promised incentives were relief from guard duty, the freedom to wear civilian clothes, three-day weekends, and, upon completion, a medal of commendation—all for participation in experiments that, according to the notice, would help the military test a new generation of equipment, clothing, and gas masks. Upon his arrival at the testing facility in Maryland, he says he was asked to sign a series of documents, including a release form and a secrecy agreement. The tests would be risk free, he says he was told, and any drugs given would not exceed normal dosage. Over the next two months, however, he was subjected to three rounds of experiments that, Rochelle says, left him permanently damaged. His medical records indicate that he was exposed to nonlethal incapacitating agents like DHMP and glycolate, both of which act as sedatives that produce hallucinations. In the latter case, Rochelle says he was taken into a gas chamber and strapped to a chair by two men in white lab coats, who affixed a mask to his face and told him to breathe normally. He quickly lost consciousness. According to Erspamer’s complaint, “Over the next two to three days, Frank was hallucinating and high: he thought he was three feet tall, saw animals on the walls, thought he was being pursued by a 6-foot-tall white rabbit, heard people calling his name, thought that all his freckles were bugs under his skin, and used a razor to try to cut these bugs out. No one from the clinical staff intervened on his behalf…”

Medical records indicate that Rochelle went through a third round of testing, but he has no memory of it. For years he’s been having nightmares about the Edgewood tests and now suffers from anxiety, memory loss, sleep apnea, tinnitus, and loss of vision, all of which he claims are direct results of the experiments. Still, he didn’t inform his doctor of the tests until 2006, believing that he was still bound by the oath of secrecy he swore in 1968. (The government finally released human test subjects to speak to their physicians about the tests in June 2006, under the condition that they not “discuss anything that relates to operational information that might reveal chemical or biological warfare vulnerabilities or capabilities.”)

Rochelle’s story is similar to those of Erspamer’s other plaintiffs, all of whom claim to be suffering debilitating health effects stemming from the experiments. Of course, substantiating these claims is a challenge, given that most of the medical records were destroyed upon completion of the program. Rochelle’s records remain intact, but for “others we have less information,” says Erspamer. “We spent a great deal of time on that topic, and we are confident that the plaintiffs are who they say they are, were where they said they were, and got what they said they got,” in terms of exposure to experimental chemicals. “Who bears the burden on that issue when the defendants destroyed the evidence?” Erspamer asks. “They’ve put all that stuff through the shredder.”

Compensation for injuries sustained during human testing of chemical and biological agents is not unprecedented. Last year, more than 350 servicemen who served as test subjects at Porton Down, a secret military research facility where the British government conducted its own series of mind-control experiments, were granted nearly $6 million in compensation in an out-of-court settlement with the UK’s Ministry of Defence. Likewise, in 2004, the Canadian government began offering $18,000 payments to eligible veterans of experiments at its testing facilities. Nevertheless, says Erspamer, “No American soldiers have ever been compensated.” The CIA and the Army “just hope they’re all gonna die off, and they will unless somebody does something.”

After suicide of 7-year-old, agency finds serious shortcomings in monitoring of foster children on psychotropic drugs

Review finds shortfalls in monitoring of foster children on psychiatric drugs

13.19 percent, are taking one or more psychotropic medications

St. Petersburg Times | May 29, 2009

By Kris Hundley

Spurred by the shocking suicide of a 7-year-old on psychiatric drugs, the agency in charge of Florida’s foster children has discovered serious shortcomings in its monitoring of kids on such powerful prescriptions.

After reviewing its files, the Department of Children and Families determined it had undercounted the number of foster kids on such medications as Risperdal and Adderall, overlooking hundreds of cases.

It also has failed to meet its legal requirement that such prescriptions be given only after parental consent or court order.

On Thursday, DCF said a review of the files of more than 20,000 children currently in the state’s foster care showed 2,669, or 13.19 percent, are taking one or more psychotropic medications.

That compares with about 4 or 5 percent of children in the general population who are on such prescriptions.

Of those foster children taking drugs, DCF discovered 16 percent had no proof either a parent or judge had signed off on the prescription, as required by a 2005 Florida law.

“That is unacceptable,” said DCF Secretary George Sheldon. “We’re going to bring every single case of a foster child on drugs into compliance with the law.”

Concerns about pediatric use of antipsychotic and antidepressants such as Adderall and Risperdal have been growing along with increased warnings of such side effects as suicide, diabetes and weight gain. Few of the drugs have been tested or approved by the FDA for children, though physicians can prescribe them for this age group.

Robin Rosenberg, a Tampa lawyer and deputy director of Florida’s Children First, said advocacy groups like hers have been fighting for oversight of psychotropic drugs for years. “We’re not as far along as we should have been if the state had followed up on serious concerns starting in the late 1990s,” she said. “It’s a shame we’re in this place today.”

Sheldon, who was named to the top job at DCF in October, left no doubt that he had been deeply affected by Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old who hanged himself on a shower hose in South Florida in mid April. The boy was in his third foster home and on Vyvanse, a medication for ADHD, as well as Symbyax, a combination antipsychotic and antidepressant.

Though his caseworker repeatedly said Gabriel’s mother had agreed to the medications, that was not true. The boy’s psychotropic medications also had not been entered in the state’s tracking system.

To correct ongoing problems, Sheldon set a deadline of June 5 for action on cases without consent. This could include scheduling new doctors’ appointments, gaining informed consent from parents or expediting a judge’s review of the prescription.

Sheldon said he also was going to focus on the cases of 73 children under age 6 found to be on psychotropic drugs.

“I want a sense of urgency, but I also want to get it right,” he said. “I want to move forward, but I think it’s important for the agency to apologize for misinformation it may have put out in the past.”

Flaws in DCF’s record-keeping became clear in the immediate aftermath of Gabriel’s death. An initial review of the state’s database showed only 1,950 kids on psychotropic prescriptions. After a thorough review of individual records, however, that number grew by more than 700.

Preliminary data released in mid May also showed some questionable dates on judicial consent. Though it’s not inconceivable a judge might sign an order on a Saturday or Sunday, early returns showed weekend consent orders on 129 occasions.

The final database, including information on types of drugs and diagnoses, was not available Thursday. Sheldon said a summary of the drug data would be posted on the DCF Web site and updated weekly.

“I’ve got a lot more confidence in these numbers than I had two weeks ago,” he said. “But any database is only as good as the quality of the information being put into it.”

One ongoing area of concern, Sheldon said, is the validity of any consent given by parents whose kids are in the state’s custody.

“A parent whose child is taken into our care is going to sign virtually anything and that’s not informed consent,” he said. “My preference is that the biological parent have a dialogue with the psychiatrist.”

Now that DCF has a handle on the number of foster children on psychotropic drugs, Sheldon said the department can begin to address the bigger issue of the efficacy of such drugs.

He has asked an independent panel investigating Gabriel Myers’ death to make recommendations on improving DCF’s oversight of these medications. Sheldon said a second-party review of all such prescriptions might be necessary; currently, only prescriptions for kids under age 6 require such review.

DCF has set up a page on its Web site that tracks the progress of the panel investigation into the boy’s suicide. The page includes a photo of the smiling boy.

“We have his face on the screen watching us to see how well we learned from his life and death,” Sheldon said. “We cannot let him down.”

ADHD treatment causes young boys to develop female breasts

3news.co.nz | May 26, 2009

In Janssen's own clinical trials, 43 children developed the abnormal breasts

A drug used to treat ADHD children is causing concern in the United States.

It is called Risperdal and it is supposed to be used primarily for adults with sever psychological problems.

But last year it was prescribed more than 6.5 million times.

The side effects include young males developing female sex organs.

Nineteen-year-old John was just seven when he began taking Risperdal for ADD.

Even though the FDA approved the drug only for adult patients who were psychotic, John’s doctor and others widely prescribed it to kids for less severe behaviour problems.

Once taking Risperdal, John’s mum says he became aggressive, sleepy, and developed bowel problems. But the biggest shock came when he was 14 and started developing women’s breasts.

“He asked me if he was a girl,” she says.

It turns out Risperdal can increase production of a hormone called prolactin, which stimulates breast growth. It is called gynecomastia – and it is irreversible.

Risperdal and other so-called “atypical anti-psychotics” have exploded in use.

Hundreds of thousands of kids have been prescribed Risperdal in the 14 years it has been on sale – long before the FDA approved it for very limited pediatric use in 2006.

John and most of the other children were not psychotic at all, but were given Risperdal for behaviour disorders including autism and ADD.

Attorney Stephen Sheller is suing Janssen, which makes Risperdal. He claims Janssen marketed Risperdal for unapproved uses in children, downplayed serious risks like diabetes and seizures.

Janssen would not agree to an interview but told us the breast growth risk is “clearly stated in the FDA-approved” labelling, and “we only promote our products for their FDA-approved indications.”

Nobody knows how often it happens. But in Janssen’s own clinical trials with fewer than 2,000 children (1,885), 43 developed the abnormal breasts.

Mr Sheller represents John and nine other boys – one of whom was only four when he developed a breast on one side and began producing milk.

The treatment for the unbridled breast growth is as unthinkable as the disorder: painful removal of the breasts.
Eventually, the boys can appear normal again.

The family’s lawsuit is still in court.

But John’s mother says surgery did not fix all of the problems from the medicine.

When asked if John still thinks he’s a girl his mother wells up and cries before answering, “yes.”

As for Risperdal – it’s still on the market.  And families say putting even more children at risk.

Proposed law could make comparing Soviet rule with that of the Nazis a crime

A woman holds a portrait of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin during a demonstration in central Moscow on Victory Day, commemorating the end of World War II, on May 9. The Kremlin announced the creation of a special 28-member panel tasked with examining and combating examples of “historical revisionism” that harm Russia’s image. Alexander Natruskin/Reuters

A proposed law could make comparing Soviet rule with that of the Nazis a crime. Intellectuals fear a manipulation of Russia’s past.

Russia plans to battle attempts to ‘falsify history’ with a Kremlin commission that opponents say is part of a drive to silence those who dare to challenge Moscow’s view of the Soviet empire.

Christian Science Monitor | May 21, 2009

Russian history 2.0: Kremlin wants to ‘correct’ the record.

By Fred Weir

Moscow – A bitter joke from the Soviet-era has it that Russia is the world’s only country with an unpredictable past.

That jibe has come winging back in recent days, after the Kremlin announced the creation of a special 28-member panel tasked with examining and combating examples of “historical revisionism” that harm Russia’s image.

The committee, which has no legal power, is chaired by the head of President Dmitry Medvedev’s administration, Sergei Naryshkin, and includes a sprinkling of historians but also lawmakers, Kremlin officials, the armed forces’ chief of staff, and members of the FSB security service.

But a companion law, drafted by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and soon due to be introduced into the State Duma, will stipulate fines and prison sentences of up to five years for anyone found guilty of “denying the decisions of the Nuremberg Tribunal.”

This is a reaction to a growing body of historiography in former Soviet and Eastern European countries that depicts the long years of Soviet domination as similar in nature to the Nazi occupation, and suggests that for these nations, liberation arrived only when the USSR collapsed. Even more irritating for the Russians are perceived attempts in some places, like Ukraine and Latvia, to “rehabilitate” citizens who wore German uniforms during World War II to fight against the oncoming Red Army.

“It is high time to make a study of what is going on here, and to decide what kind of documents we need to dig up and publish to counter these new interpretations,” says Natalya Narochnitskaya, a historian, former Duma deputy, and member of the new commission. “If a nation is unable to come to a united view in interpreting its own past, it will be unable to formulate its national interests.”

Ms. Narochnitskaya insists that the panel’s brief is to study the problem and make recommendations, not to impose a Sovietesque party line. “All nations have this problem of balance and need to find their own path between humiliation and normal self-criticism,” she says.

Critics are alarmed by what they see as a blatant throwback to Soviet methods of intellectual control.

“You cannot struggle against falsifications of history by creating bureaucratic commissions,” says Sergei Solovyov, editor of Scepsis, a Russian quarterly journal that aims to promote cross-cultural debate. “Either it will be completely useless or it will become a tool for suppressing people with different points of view.”

Former Soviet states have a different view of the facts

The Kremlin has been infuriated by what it sees as attempts to “revise” the results of World War II in some Eastern European and former Soviet countries. The removal of Red Army war memorials in Poland and the Baltic states has drawn particular ire, as have street marches by Latvian SS veterans, a Lithuanian law banning the public display of Soviet symbols, and an Estonian prosecution of a decorated Soviet war veteran, Arnold Meri, on charges of genocide for his alleged role in postwar deportations of Estonians to Siberia. (Mr. Meri died two months ago, before the trial finished.)

Another sore point has been Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s public praise for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought a CIA-backed guerrilla war against the USSR for nearly a decade following the end of World War II, as well as official Ukrainian efforts to get world governments to classify as an act of “genocide” the mass famine caused by farm collectivization in the early 1930s, which killed millions of Soviet peasants and is known in Ukraine as the “Holodomor.”

In his recently launched blog, Mr. Medvedev recently complained that “such attempts [to revise history] are becoming more hostile, more evil, and more aggressive…. We find ourselves in a situation in which we have to defend the historical truth and once again prove facts that not long ago seemed most clear. But it is necessary to do.”

War history a touchy subject

A public opinion survey conducted last month by the state-run VTsIOM agency found that almost two-thirds of Russians agree that attempts to “deny the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War” should be outlawed, referring to the Russian term for World War II. Many older Russian historians appear to agree that the panel, and its brief of fighting revisionism, is a good thing.

“We had to do this long ago,” says General Makhmut Gareyev, a war hero and president of the official Academy of Military Sciences in Moscow. “One cannot tolerate historical falsifications, particularly of World War II. Once the state organs make their decision, some things will possibly be corrected in the near future.”

Roy Medvedev, a dissident historian from the Soviet period, told the independent Ekho Moskvi radio station that the commission is not an objectionable idea in principle – if it sticks to reviewing history and opening up archive access. But he added, “I have strongly protested against any measures for criminal prosecution for falsification because this would be a restoration of Soviet practices…. It will be very bad if publishing various kinds of theories and research ends up being banned.”

In search of a stable past

Russia’s own national identity has been in flux since the collapse of the USSR, along with its ideology and multi-ethnic empire. The early post-Soviet years were marked by excoriating self-criticism and widespread public demoralization. Vladimir Putin came to power nearly a decade ago amid a patriotic backlash, which aimed to banish that pervasive sense of national humiliation by restoring pride in Russia and recognizing the positive achievements of the Soviet years.

Some ultranationalist thinkers, such as Alexander Dugin, who heads the influential International Eurasian Movement, suggest that the creation of a national myth that will unite Russians is a worthy goal.

“We should fix some limits to freedom of speech in order to establish a national consensus and preserve it for future generations,” Mr. Dugin says. “To have a myth that provides a stable point of reference for society is necessary to define our historical path. That’s not false.”

But critics have long complained that the downside of the Putin-era “feel good” approach to Russian history includes a tendency to minimize a multitude of past crimes, including mass murders carried out by Joseph Stalin’s NKVD security service.

“I don’t even think [the commission] is legal. Our Constitution forbids the establishment of a state ideology and mandates ideological pluralism in Russia,” says Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former independent Duma deputy. “You can debate history, but it shouldn’t be imposed by those who happen to be in power. For centuries, our history has been written and rewritten by czars and commissars. So, this new commission can only raise doubt and protest.”

Flu overhyped? Some say officials ‘cried swine’

Many blame such alarms and the breathless media coverage for creating an overreaction that disrupted many people’s lives.

AP | May 7, 2009

By LINDSEY TANNER and MIKE STOBBE

CHICAGO (AP) — Did government health officials “cry swine” when they sounded the alarm on what looked like a threatening new flu?

The so-far mild swine flu outbreak has many people saying all the talk about a devastating global epidemic was just fear-mongering hype. But that’s not how public health officials see it, calling complacency the thing that keeps them up at night.

The World Health Organization added a scary-sounding warning Thursday, predicting up to 2 billion people could catch the new flu if the outbreak turns into a global epidemic.

Many blame such alarms and the breathless media coverage for creating an overreaction that disrupted many people’s lives.

Schools shut down, idling even healthy kids and forcing parents to stay home from work; colleges scaled back or even canceled graduation ceremonies; a big Cinco de Mayo celebration in Chicago was canned; face masks and hand sanitizers sold out — all because of an outbreak that seems no worse than a mild flu season.

“I don’t know anyone who has it. I haven’t met anyone who knows anyone who contracted it,” said Carl Shepherd, a suburban Chicago video producer and father of two. “It’s really frightening more people than it should have. It’s like crying wolf.”

Two weeks after news broke about the new flu strain, there have been 46 deaths — 44 in Mexico and two in the United States. More than 2,300 are sick in 26 countries, including about 900 U.S. cases. Those are much lower numbers than were feared at the start based on early reports of an aggressive and deadly flu in Mexico.

Miranda Smith, whose graduation ceremony at Cisco Junior College in central Texas was canceled to avoid spreading the flu, blames the media.

“It’s been totally overblown,” she said Thursday.

“Everyone seems to know it’s not going to kill you and it’s not as deadly as they think,” she said. “Everybody needs to just calm down and chill out.”

Craig Heyl of Decatur, Ga., said the government overreacted.

“Swine flu is just another strain of flu. People get the flu. I guess you have to call it a pandemic when it’s a widespread virus, but I don’t think the severity of it is all that concerning,” said Heyl, 43.

Public health authorities acknowledge their worst fears about the new virus have not materialized. But no one’s officially saying it’s time to relax. And experts worry that people will become too complacent and tune out the warnings if the virus returns in a more dangerous form in the fall.

“People are taking a sigh of relief too soon,” said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, Besser said the outbreak in the United States appears to be less severe than was first feared. But the virus is still spreading and its future potential as a killer is not clearly understood.

“The measures we’ve been talking about — the importance of handwashing, the importance of covering coughs, the real responsibility for staying home when you’re sick and keeping your children home when you’re sick — I’m afraid that people are going to say, ‘Ah, we’ve dodged a bullet. We don’t need to do that,’” Besser said.

“The thing that’s keeping me up right now is that feeling of dodging the bullet,” he added.

Peter Sandman, a risk communication specialist, says on his Web site that reminding people the risk is still real and warning them in the future if a pandemic looks imminent “will be extremely difficult.”

“Swine flu looks to be an extremely mild pandemic if it goes pandemic at all, despite WHO warnings that it may ‘come back with a vengeance’ in the fall. People are going to be very, very skeptical,” Sandman wrote.

That concern is shared by infectious disease specialists. But elsewhere, especially online, talk of hype is rampant.

“If I hear 1+ person freaking out because of the “Swine Flu” they won’t have 2 worry about dying from it. I will kill them w/ my handbag!” read a comment Wednesday on Twitter.

“Adults are acting like a bunch of crybabies in a B-rated science fiction germ-outbreak movie, wringing their hands, whining about what to do next,” Dallas Morning News reader Mark Thompson wrote in a letter to the editor posted online Wednesday.

Kari Carsey Valente of Lake Oswego, Ore., had similar thoughts in a letter on the Oregonian newspaper’s Web site.

“Is the daily front page body count really necessary? In reading the entire content of the collected articles one learns that the H1N1 strain is not likely to be more lethal than its predecessors. Give it a rest — and lots of liquid!,” Valente wrote.

Colt Ables, 22, an economics major at the University of Texas in Arlington, said he thinks the Obama administration overreacted and unfairly tried to make it seem as if Republicans have been soft on preparedness.

“This shouldn’t be about politics or about hyping up a virus to send the American people into a panic. Do yourself a favor, wash your hands and turn off the TV,” he wrote in a campus newspaper column.

Whether the media overhyped or accurately reported the dangers is a toss-up, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll published Thursday on Americans’ views of the media’s flu coverage.

The May 5 poll also found that concern about the flu peaked a week ago. But even then, only 25 percent of Americans said they worried about getting the virus.

Dr. Robert Daum, a University of Chicago infectious disease expert, says authorities acted properly when news first broke about the new flu strain.

“It’s like overcalling a snowstorm in Chicago. You want the plows out even if it’s only going to snow a flake,” Daum said. If not, and a blizzard hits, “there will be an outcry like you’ve never seen before.”

Still, Daum says authorities have been a bit awkward in “downshifting” now that it appears the U.S. situation isn’t dire.

“I think it was right to place everyone on high alert, and now right” to say it’s time to calm down, Daum said.

Panic and hype have reached pandemic levels

Daily Iowan | May 5, 2009

BY DI EDITORIAL BOARD

People with runny noses, congestion, or a bad cough can be a common sight in spring. Along with sunnier days, the occasional rainy day, and warmer temperatures, spring allergies are a rite of passage — oddly, a sign of good things to come. Unfortunately, allergies aren’t the only things giving people runny noses this spring.

A couple of weeks ago, reports of a “new, exotic” disease infecting people in Mexico caught the world’s attention as if it were a baby in a well or a party girl gone missing in Aruba. The Mexican government initially reported around 150 deaths from the dreaded “swine flu,” as well as thousands more infected. It even prompted the government to shut down most of Mexico City until officials could control the contagion. Soon, other countries reported outbreaks. As of Monday, the World Health Organization listed on its website 21 countries with confirmed cases of influenza A (H1N1) — the scientific name for the flu. Worldwide, there are 1,085 officially reported cases, prompting the WHO to raise its pandemic level from level four to five. Its scale tops out at six.

Governments’ responses have varied around the globe, with some countries taking drastic steps in dealing with the virus. The French government recommended an EU-wide travel ban to and from the Americas. A hotel in Hong Kong is under full quarantine when authorities learned occupants were infected with the new flu after leaving Mexico. The Egyptian government has ordered farmers to exterminate the entire pig population. The Russian and Chinese governments imposed trade restrictions on pork imports from the Americas.

This is a severe overreaction, given the scope and danger the H1N1 virus (which was originally called swine flu) presents to the world. Yes it is alarming that the flu was able to infect as many areas as it has, but the degree of infection is so slight that such drastic actions as culling entire pig populations or imposing trade restrictions on pork or quarantine people arriving from Mexico do more harm than good.

The WHO has confirmed only 26 deaths, 25 of them in Mexico. One of the reasons the initial fatalities coming out of Mexico were so high could be from misdiagnosis. Seasonal flu reaches Mexico about this time, and it is a much more lethal strain. In the United States alone, the seasonal flu may kill between 30,000 and 35,000 people in a year. The symptoms are similar, so it is understandable that Mexican officials misreported fatalities from the “new” flu.

Culling pig herds and imposing trade restrictions on pork products is not only an overreaction but a futile attempt. According to both the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s impossible to contract “swine” flu from eating pork products and nearly impossible to contract the flu directly from pigs. It’s even a misnomer to label it “swine” flu. This particular strain of H1N1 is really what scientists call a chimera — a combination of three strains of the flu: swine, human, and avian. At this point, it’s unknown how much of the virus is made up of swine flu as opposed to the avian and human flu. It is quite common for viruses such as the flu to naturally mutate and even combine with other viruses. That is how they jump from one species to another. “Swine” flu wouldn’t be able to infect humans if it didn’t contain genetic material from human flu.

It seems foolish, in a light of these numbers and facts, to react as many have. While potential pandemics shouldn’t be taken lightly, there is no need to panic. We encourage Americans to follow flu updates closely but not to pay too much attention the hype and panic which has become commonplace on television and in newspapers over the past few weeks.

Millions of Britons racked with worry over recession, crime, health and the Big Brother surveillance state

Stress is causing a generation of anxious Brits worrying about everything from money to bird flu

The report, In the Face of Fear, calls for a campaign to cut ‘institutionally-driven fear’

Daily Mail | Apr 14, 2009

By Jenny Hope

More than seven million Britons are living with anxiety problems, almost a million more than a decade ago, a report reveals.

Two in three say the financial downturn has caused them to be anxious, fuelled by 24-hour news and ‘worst case’ images used by politicians.

Mental health experts believe that fear and anxiety could actually make the economic crisis worse and result in a longer recession.

Knife crime, MRSA, bird flu and terrorism are among other issues contributing to a ‘culture of fear’, says a report from the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) charity.

Even measures to tackle crime such as CCTV cameras may be counter-productive because they intensify fears.

The report, In the Face of Fear, calls for a campaign to cut ‘institutionally-driven fear’ and raise awareness of mental health problems.

It says: ‘The more fearful people feel in the general population, the more will be tipped over into diagnosable anxiety disorders.’

A poll of 2,246 adults for the MHF report found 77 per cent believed the world had become a more frightening place in the last ten years.

Asked specifically about the economic crisis, 49 per cent said they were anxious about money, with 66 per cent experiencing fear or anxiety about the current economic situation.

The MHF says fear is partly driving the economic crisis because emotion overrides logical thinking and this could hinder efforts to escape it.

It says: ‘Individuals and institutions – keen to protect themselves – are now too afraid to lend, spend and invest, despite the fact that these actions could assist in ending the recession.’

Research shows people with anxiety are at increased risk of heart disease and high blood pressure.

Anxiety has also been linked to increased incidence of gastrointestinal problems, arthritis, migraine, allergies, thyroid disease and chronic respiratory disorders such as asthma.

Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation, said: ‘This report shows that fear is having a serious negative impact on the mental and physical health of the nation.

‘The modern world will test our resilience again and again, and people need to know how to process their emotions better to prevent harm to their mental and physical health.

‘Prevention campaigns about physical illnesses like heart disease and cancer are often mounted, but less than 0.1 per cent of adult mental health investment is allocated to mental health promotion.’

Care services minister Phil Hope said: ‘During the last ten years, we’ve seen major improvements in the mental health services available, but now we need to develop a dynamic new approach, which actively helps create more mentally healthy and resilient communities.’

Suicide-Linked Cymbalta Promoted for Minor Conditions

Epoch Times | Mar 17, 2009

By Martha Rosenberg

Many are outraged that Eli Lilly gave nonprofits $3.9 million in grants last year for medical courses to “educate” doctors about the pain-and-fatigue ailment fibromyalgia—more than it spent for diabetes and Alzheimer’s, which people already know they have.

But finding new diseases to justify a drug’s existence is the normal way pharma operates, especially Lilly, which agreed to pay $1.42 billion for illegal marketing of its anti-psychotic Zyprexa in January—$615 million for criminally promoting it for dementia—another $62 million to 32 states for illegal pediatric marketing, and agreed to resolve Medicaid fraud investigations into “rebates” at the same time. Lilly—whose diabetes treatment Byetta is tanking since reports last summer of six deaths, at least two from pancreatitis.

But Lilly’s fibromyalgia-fighting drug, Cymbalta (duloxetine)—its second-best seller after Zyprexa—is anything but normal.

Starting with the death of 19-year-old Cymbalta test subject Traci Johnson, who hanged herself in the Lilly Clinic in Indianapolis in 2004 and had no history of mental problems—it has been beset by reports of baffling, rapid, unprovoked, and out-of-character suicides and suicide attempts.

A 37-year-old man described in the February 2008 Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology with a stable marriage and employment and no history of mental problems tried to kill himself with carbon monoxide two months after taking Cymbalta for back pain.

“The patient was unable to state exactly why he wanted to commit suicide,” write the four physician authors of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Kansas Medical Center, who note he returned to normal when the drug was stopped.

A 63-year-old man with no history of suicide attempts or ideation was similarly “unable to explain why he was having thoughts of wanting to die,” say the authors after becoming suicidal two weeks after being put on Cymbalta for fatigue, insomnia, and sadness.

Last January, a Texas man prescribed Cymbalta for peripheral neuropathy because of a job that required him to be on his feet all day, a man with no history of mental problems “had a normal day at work, drove home, said he was going to grab a sandwich for his wife, went and shot himself,” his family wrote a reporter.

In February 2007, a 19-year-old Wisconsin college student recently put on Cymbalta “checked out books for a paper he was to write over the weekend,” emailed his résumé “to see if he could get a spot on Obama’s team for the summer,” and “then hung himself from his loft bed in his dorm,” writes his family. One month earlier, a 21-year-old Midwest college student, recently put on Cymbalta, took his own life three minutes after speaking to his family while driving home and sounding fine, the family wrote a reporter.

Approved as an antidepressant and for diabetic nerve pain in 2004—soon after the Johnson suicide, thanks to an unfazed FDA—Cymbalta soon proved to be the “Swiss Army Knife” of Lilly drugs, says its hometown paper the Indianapolis Star. It was approved for general anxiety disorder and maintenance treatment of depression in 2007, for fibromyalgia in 2008, and with approvals for chronic knee and low-back pain expected shortly.

In Europe, it is in use for stress urinary incontinence, but in the United States, its side effect of urinary retention landed Cymbalta on the FDA’s first Potential Signals of Serious Risks danger list in 2008. (FDA won’t release suicidal rates from stress urinary incontinence trials says reporter Jeanne Lenzer on Slate.com. She estimates the suicidal rates as 400 per 100,000 person-years for middle-aged women.)

But some, like Shannon Brownlee, author of “Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer,” question the revenue-driven prescribathon. Should drugs  “that may have a really serious side effect called suicide,” be used for simple knee or back pain, she asks in the Star.

Cymbalta is also being studied for binge eating, social phobia, chronic fatigue, restless legs disorder, seasonal affective disorder, migraines, attention deficit disorder, and childhood depression (despite known pediatric risks), PMS, menopause, alcoholism, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, kleptomania, and the important medical condition: tennis elbow.

At the American Academy of Pain Medicine Annual Meeting in January, Lilly presented a study by its own doctors finding Cymbalta was superior to placebo in knee pain—in keeping with its penchant to publish studies by Lilly-funded and Lilly-employed doctors who say Cymbalta is safe.

Cymbalta is also a good use of state and third-party-payer dollars, say Lilly-funded doctors in “Differences in Medication Adherence and Healthcare Resource Utilization Patterns: Older Versus Newer Antidepressant Agents in Patients With Depression and/or Anxiety Disorders” in the 2008-22 CNS Drugs. These doctors are fighting the “restrictive reimbursement policies for newer antidepressants,” in which pharmacy benefits managers are saying, “You want us to spend WHAT”?

Getting benefits managers to cover the $200-a-month cost for Cymbalta prescriptions for fibromyalgia may also be tough since the ailment has no clear cause, blood test, or cure.

Maybe Lilly will offer pointers in the medical courses it is funding.

Martha Rosenberg is a freelance writer.