Hi Steve! Two things. First there was a whistleblower about 20 years ago who was a Pfizer executive. He wrote a book that I believe is one of the best summaries I've seen of the internal culture at Pfizer. It has been on my todo list to write something on it.
Second:
I did a lot of digging on what happened with the SSRI anti depressa…
Hi Steve! Two things. First there was a whistleblower about 20 years ago who was a Pfizer executive. He wrote a book that I believe is one of the best summaries I've seen of the internal culture at Pfizer. It has been on my todo list to write something on it.
Second:
I did a lot of digging on what happened with the SSRI anti depressants and on a lot of levels, I believe what happened with them serves as a perfect precedent for what has happened with the COVID vaccines.
Very briefly:
•There was massive evidence of fraud throughout the clinical trials for them.
•George HW Bush was in bed with Prozac's manufacturer and got the FDA to approve it despite the fact they never should.
•A large public outcry built up towards them because a lot of people were having horrific injuries to them.
•A ton of lawsuits forced the manufacturers to reveal that they had been covering everything up and the antidepressants were extremely dangerous.
•Once the FDA approved them, they did everything possible to cover up what was going for decades, including silencing and punishing whitstleblowers from the HSS.
•Congressional and senate hearings occurred.
•It took 2 decades of work to get the FDA to be willing to put a blackbox on the SSRIs but nothing else has been done since then.
•In my opinion, these medications have harmed more people (not counting vaccinated children which so hard to put an estimate on) than anything else on the market besides the COVID vaccines.
I believe understanding the history of all of this is really important for the current situation.
The issues are very different with short and long term usage (fluvoxamine for COVID is short term, most of the damage comes from the SSRIs rewiring neural connections over time). A lot of my readers contacted me to complain about my endorsement of Fluvoxamine because of the incredibly bad experiences they and their loved ones had had with SSRIs, so I've had to explain the long term vs. short term issue to a lot of people.
I also never have heard of significant effects from people taking fluvoxamine, although it also has the blackbox warning the other SSRIs have for psychosis and suicide.
The risk reward ratio is very different for short term usage to save your life verses long term usage for no appreciable benefit.
That all said, if I have the choice, I avoid pharmaceuticals with fluoride on it (fluvoxamine has that), but I consider that relatively minor compared to saving someones life or preventing long covid. I also think any potential harm fluvoxamine has is a drop in the ocean relative to remdesivir.
I wonder if patients are having the fluvoxamine dose tapered at conclusion of therapy? Side effects are greatly enhanced with an abrupt discontinuation.
Most likely not; it is very unlikely hospitalists have experience with taping SSRIs and most likely the doctors using this in general practice do not frequently use SSRIs either. That said, since they are used for a short term period, the withdrawl issues are much much smaller (a fairly open minded psychiatrist I just spoke with said the withdrawl issues are rarely a concern when SSRIs are only taken for a few weeks).
Hi Steve! Two things. First there was a whistleblower about 20 years ago who was a Pfizer executive. He wrote a book that I believe is one of the best summaries I've seen of the internal culture at Pfizer. It has been on my todo list to write something on it.
Second:
I did a lot of digging on what happened with the SSRI anti depressants and on a lot of levels, I believe what happened with them serves as a perfect precedent for what has happened with the COVID vaccines.
Very briefly:
•There was massive evidence of fraud throughout the clinical trials for them.
•George HW Bush was in bed with Prozac's manufacturer and got the FDA to approve it despite the fact they never should.
•A large public outcry built up towards them because a lot of people were having horrific injuries to them.
•A ton of lawsuits forced the manufacturers to reveal that they had been covering everything up and the antidepressants were extremely dangerous.
•Once the FDA approved them, they did everything possible to cover up what was going for decades, including silencing and punishing whitstleblowers from the HSS.
•Congressional and senate hearings occurred.
•It took 2 decades of work to get the FDA to be willing to put a blackbox on the SSRIs but nothing else has been done since then.
•In my opinion, these medications have harmed more people (not counting vaccinated children which so hard to put an estimate on) than anything else on the market besides the COVID vaccines.
I believe understanding the history of all of this is really important for the current situation.
The article I put together on it can be read here: https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/how-the-fda-buried-the-dangers-of?s=w
wow. so is fluvoxamine unsafe?
The issues are very different with short and long term usage (fluvoxamine for COVID is short term, most of the damage comes from the SSRIs rewiring neural connections over time). A lot of my readers contacted me to complain about my endorsement of Fluvoxamine because of the incredibly bad experiences they and their loved ones had had with SSRIs, so I've had to explain the long term vs. short term issue to a lot of people.
I also never have heard of significant effects from people taking fluvoxamine, although it also has the blackbox warning the other SSRIs have for psychosis and suicide.
The risk reward ratio is very different for short term usage to save your life verses long term usage for no appreciable benefit.
That all said, if I have the choice, I avoid pharmaceuticals with fluoride on it (fluvoxamine has that), but I consider that relatively minor compared to saving someones life or preventing long covid. I also think any potential harm fluvoxamine has is a drop in the ocean relative to remdesivir.
I wonder if patients are having the fluvoxamine dose tapered at conclusion of therapy? Side effects are greatly enhanced with an abrupt discontinuation.
Most likely not; it is very unlikely hospitalists have experience with taping SSRIs and most likely the doctors using this in general practice do not frequently use SSRIs either. That said, since they are used for a short term period, the withdrawl issues are much much smaller (a fairly open minded psychiatrist I just spoke with said the withdrawl issues are rarely a concern when SSRIs are only taken for a few weeks).
Every medication is risk v. reward. Most are risk rather than reward.