M.K.H.

Britain Tightens Antidepressant Rules
LONDON (Reuters) - British health authorities tightened warnings on popular Prozac-type antidepressants on Monday, urging doctors to use them sparingly and consider non-drug interventions, such as counseling.

Journal Tells FDA Lilly Knew of Prozac Risk
LONDON (Reuters) - The British Medical Journal said on Friday it has sent documents to U.S. health regulators that appear to suggest a link between the antidepressant Prozac and suicidal behavior.

In its Jan. 1 issue, the journal said an anonymous source had provided "missing documents" that included reviews and memos appearing to show that officials at Eli Lilly and Co., the drug's maker, knew in the 1980s that it had "troubling side effects."

Now, normally I wouldn't put such faith in an anonymous source, except it the documents in question apparently have to do with activation syndrome, which is a direct result of the serotonin re-uptake inhibiting properties of the drugs themselves. I've always been a little suspicious that, knowing that the very name for them from the very beginning of this was "selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors" (SSRIs), that no one bothered to study the effects of serotonin re-uptake inhibition before 2003. That's a bit ridiculous. Even an amateur would realize that large doses might result in anxiety or manic symptoms.

Is everyone genuinely so concerned with profit that they don't care about the consequences anymore? If one was in pharmaceuticals because it was their life's work, then the health of the end patients would be top priority. Causing harm would be a failure to research properly, and for me, at least, that would be a great, humbling shock. Or are the youth of today so enamoured of themselves that they seriously think that there is a quick fix biochemical cure, and that they are so brilliant that they will be the ones to find it (which would, logically, be a matter of statistics and luck and have nothing to do with brilliance at all), and that any evidence to the contrary is simply garbage?

I think perhaps children should be ushered into vocations where they, individually, would be satisfied with "mediocrity" (not in quality of work, but in recognition of it). I, for instance, would be perfectly happy to be a general surgeon of no consequence to the national media. In fact, I would prefer it that way. To have your friends, family, colleagues, and patients see you as more than competantly skilled is one thing. Being lauded on day-time talk-shows or the evening news is another thing entirely. If I wanted that, I wouldn't be going for medicine at all. Who knows what I'd be going for, but the fact is, most doctors don't become the slightest bit famous at all.

Or, perhaps, it's even deeper than that. I have noticed among doctors, especially among psychiatrists, a belief in their own infallibility. They can't ever admit to being wrong. They will pursue obviously unsuccessful treatments, beyond the point where they would even be effective under normal circumstances. In one example very close to me: mild depression, instead of being treated with 50mg of zoloft for six months (a normal dose), gets the treatment of 150mg of zoloft, 300mg of trazodone ("for sleep") for 2.5 years, and then, after a new breakdown, slight adjustment of the dosages and an added 8mg of perphenazine (an antipsychotic).

The 8mg of perphenazine would be a temporary hospitalization dose for a severe schizophrenic episode, while a normal maintenence dose would be 4mg at the highest. The patient in question does not have any symptoms of psychosis. In fact, a little research shows that the perphenazine was initially prescribed to "prevent obsessive thoughts of suicide".

At this point, I want to bash my head against the wall. You do not prescribe hospitalization doses of antipsychotics to a nonpsychotic patient to treat depressive symptoms. That's even worse than the trazodone, which is prescribed at six times the normal dosage "for sleep". Trazodone is an antidepressant with extreme drowsiness as a common side effect. You do not prescribe excess amounts of medicines for their side effects.

Top 10 Reasons Why Sex At The Speed of Light is not an Advisible Form of Procreation.

The theme running through the last several links I've posted is genuinely accidental. Seriously, it is.

Stolen from qornelius: Ecological Footprint Calculator. It's extremely simplified; I was surprised at how few questions and choices there were. Even so, it's interesting. My score was an embarrassing 11.7 acres (4.7 hectares), which, while lower than average, is still twice the biologically productive space available per capita. To carry this a little farther, if the advice of the Brundtland Commission is taken into consideration, it would still take 2.5 earths to support the entire world population at my living conditions. This, of course, is in spite of my 0.4 acre (0.2 hectare) transportation footprint, and answering questions using the options that best apply to the whole household (this system as well as other inhabitants of this house), which of course skewer the food and housing footprints higher than they actually are.

On the other hand, taking these matters into consideration and adjusting answers accordingly only results in a 2.1 acre loss (0.8 hectares), for a new score of 9.6 acres (3.9 hectares)-- which still requires 2 earths to support everyone in the human population at my standard of living.

Now, on the other hand, if everyone was an underfed vegan who wasted nothing and bought everything locally, never drove a car and always carpooled in a car with amazing gas mileage or took public transportation everywhere concievable and never, ever flew anywhere, lived in a tiny house with 10 other people with green electricity suppliers and energy efficient appliances... the final score would be 4.3 acres (1.7 hectares), which is about 1.1 acres (0.5 hectare) below the biologically productive space available per person. 20% of the biosphere could be set aside for other species without requiring more than one earth, or the recommended 12% of the Brundtland Commission could be used and 8% of the biosphere would remain as insurance for population growth.

This means, of course, that no one could ever live in the Northeast of the U.S. and maintain their small ecological footprint in regards to food. Let's presume I was a vegan and always ate locally grown food. What would I eat in the winter? Snow? Acorns buried by squirrels in the fall? Tree bark? The only way to survive off of "local food" in the winter in this area would be to hunt the local wildlife, which goes right up against the whole concept of never eating animal products. The only other options would be to either migrate seasonally (in a way that wouldn't effect the transportation footprint), or stuff oneself during the more plentiful seasons and hibernate during the winter, neither of which would have a very good effect on the national economy.

Now, of course, there are ways around the difficulties I just mentioned-- effective use of greenhouses, for one --but my point isn't that it's impossible to have that low of an impact. My point is that it's much more difficult than even advocates of drastic lifestyle changes make it out to be. It's relatively easy to live like that if you are the numerical minority, but in the event that the entire world were to take on such a lifestyle, it would require such an earth-shaking shift in the global culture and the way that every single area of human civilization is conducted within such a relatively short amount of time that, even in the face of near-immediate extinction, I doubt it could actually happen. It's asking for too much, too late. To realistically create such a vast change in humanity's way of dealing with the world, the movement would have had to have started prior to the Industrial Revolution!

That's not to say the movement is worthless. I'm simply saying that by itself, it won't do what it's trying to do. Instead, I say it should continue as it always has, but with an additional alliance to the concept of mass colonization of space.

After all, let's face it. At this rate, we are going to need more space.