PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS KILLING SOLDIERS BY HEART ATTACK. MILITARY COVERUP? WHO IS PROFITING? DAUGHTER OF SENATOR WINS DRUG-SUPPLYING CONTRACT WITH THE ARMY
MARCH 30, 2012. Is the US military employing a policy that is killing its own soldiers?
Dr. Fred Baughman published an explosive letter in the European Heart Journal (December 29, 2011) that detailed yet another aspect of death by medicine: "Psychotropic drugs and sudden death."
This time it's American soldiers and fatal heart attacks, brought on by so-called antipsychotic drugs; for example, Seroquel, given for PTSD.
Baughman began his own investigation into four American soldiers who died in their sleep, in 2008. Baughman writes: "...all in their twenties...no signs of suicide or of a multi-drug 'overdose'...as claimed by the Inspector General of the VA...All were on the same prescribed drug cocktail, Seroquel (antipsychotic), Paxil (antidepressant) and Klonopin (benzodiazepine)."
Baughman calls on the Surgeon General to embargo the use of all antipsychotics and antidepressants in the military.
Baughman's initial inquiry suggests as many as 247 soldiers have died from cardiac arrest after ingesting these drugs.
He finds the US military has spent, in the last decade, $1.5 billion on antipsychotic drugs, despite the fact that these meds have never been approved for PTSD or sleep disorders.
Baughman writes, "From 2001, US Central Command has given deploying troops 180-day supplies of prescribed psychotropic drugs."
This is like making each soldier a self-dosing pharmacy.
Finally, Baughman charges that the Army has no reliable record-keeping system to track the uses of these drugs or their harm.
Recently guest-hosting The Alex Jones Show, I interviewed psychiatrist Peter Breggin. Several startling points emerged in our conversation. Among them: a decade ago, the Army wouldn't accept recruits who had taken psychiatric meds, including Ritalin. Now, according to Breggin, the whole policy has been reversed. Soldiers who are heading for the battlefield must agree to take these drugs.
If you were mounting a conscious plan to destroy a military force from within, the widespread prescription of psychotropic drugs would be an obvious choice.
The Army states that diagnosis of psychiatric conditions like depression among troops has escalated. But once you open the door to psychiatry in the services, it's a fait accompli, because many human behaviors can be arbitrarily classified as mental disorders. As I have documented, over and over again, no labeled mental disorder is based on chemical or biological tests-because there are no such tests. There never have been. It's pseudo-science. But with increased numbers of diagnoses, the drugs automatically flow. The harmful drugs.
And the pharmaceutical and military view of human beings merges: people are units, they're bio-machines with identical chemistry, and drugs can be shoved down their throats with no real concern for the consequences.
The drug companies consider the military just another market; and the Pentagon is merely hoping that, somehow, the drugs can help exhausted soldiers maintain performance levels through increasing numbers of deployment assignments.
Here are excerpts from Dr. Baughman's published letter: " [I] opened and financed my own investigation into these unexplained deaths. Andrew White, Eric Layne, Nicholas Endicott and Derek Johnson, all in their twenties, were four West Virginia veterans who died in their sleep in early 2008.... All were on the same prescribed drug cocktail, Seroquel (antipsychotic), Paxil (antidepressant) and Klonopin (benzodiazepine) and all appeared "normal" when they went to sleep.
"On February 7, 2008, Surgeon General Eric B. Schoomaker, had announced there had been 'a series, a sequence of deaths' in the military suggesting this was 'often a consequence of the use of multiple prescription and nonprescription medicines and alcohol.' However, the deaths of the 'Charleston Four' were probable sudden cardiac deaths (SCD), a sudden, pulseless condition leading to brain death in 4-5 minutes, a survival rate or 3-4%, and not allowing time for transfer to a hospital...
"Antipsychotics and antidepressants alone or in combination, are known to cause SCD. Sicouri and Antzelevitch (2008) concluded: '...A number of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs can increase the risk of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death...'
"I call upon the military for an immediate embargo of all antipsychotics and antidepressants until there has been a complete, wholly public, clarification of the extent and causes of this epidemic of probable sudden cardiac deaths.
"Pfc. Ryan Alderman was on a cocktail of psych drugs when found unresponsive, dying in his barracks at Ft. Carson, Colo. Sudden cardiac death was confirmed by an ECG done at the scene. Inexplicably, military officials de-classified his death and reversed the cause, calling it instead, a "suicide." Again I challenge the military to produce the evidence.
"In June 2011, a DoD Health Advisory Group backed a highly questionable policy of 'polypharmacy' asserting: '...multiple psychotropic meds may be appropriate in select individuals.' The fact of the matter is that psychotropic drug polypharmacy is never safe, scientific, or medically justifiable. What it [is] is a means of (1) maximizing profit, and (2) making it difficult to impossible to blame adverse effects on any one drug.
"From 2001 to the present, US Central Command has given deploying troops 180 day supplies of prescription psychotropic drugs--Seroquel included. In a May 2010 report of its Pain Management Task Force, the Army endorsed Seroquel in 25- or 50-milligram doses as a 'sleep aid.' Over the past decade, $717 million was spent for Risperdal and $846 million for Seroquel, for a mind-blowing total of $1.5 billion when neither Risperdal nor Seroquel have been proven safe or effective for PTSD or sleep disorders.
"Heather Bresch, daughter of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, (D-WV) was recently named CEO of WV drug-maker Mylan Inc., that recently contracted with the DoD for over 20 million doses of Seroquel.
"Defense Department Health Advisory Group chair, Charles Fogelman, warned: 'DoD currently lacks a unified pharmacy database that reflects medication use across pre-deployment, deployment and post-deployment settings.' In essence, through a premeditated lack of record keeping, mandated by law at any other pharmacy or medical office to track potential fatal reactions to mixing prescription drugs, the military is willfully preempting all investigations into the injuries and deaths due to psychiatric drugs.
"I call on the DoD, VA, House and Senate Armed Services and House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees to tell concerned Americans and the families of fallen heroes what psychiatric drugs each of the deceased, both combat and non-combat, soldiers and veterans were on? It is time for the military and government to come clean."
Jon Rappoport