Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Won't Tell You About Today's Most Controversial Drug

The truth is the drug companies knew from the start that SSRI's pose serious dangers of agitation, akathisia and suicidality. It's been years since anyone on the inside seriously believed the Serotonin imbalance theory of depression. This information has been available all along and was deliberately suppressed by the drug companies. Now, ten years later, people are beginning to wake up, acting as though this is brand new news.

Go online to Prevention and Treatment, Volume 5, articles 22 through 32, published by the American Psychological Association, for extensive discussion of the fact that the FDA trials barely showed any difference between the SSRI's and placebo.

Better still, read Let them Eat Prozac, by David Healy, soon to be available in the U.S. Healy is a total psychiatric insider, an SSRI researcher and perhaps the world's leading authority on the history of the development of SSRI's. He's not an anti-psychiatrist. He's just pro-truth. He cites chapter and verse, and his conclusions are basically the same as Breggin's.

The negative reviewers simply miss the mark. To judge the value of Breggin's books, you need do one thing: List his specific factual claims, and then try to find in mainstream psychiatric literature any attempt to rebut those specific claims, point by point.

Not "he's dangerous," or "he's a zealot," or "he's unscientific," but actually point for point. For instance, Breggin charges that many Prozac patients in the FDA trials were also put on Benzodiazepines because Prozac alone made them so agitated they couldn't sleep. Look for mainstream psychiatry to a) state whether Breggin's claim is actually true, b) explain why that isn't a serious comment on Prozac, and c) answer Breggin's claim that where Benzo's were used, if the patients on Benzo's were excluded, the Prozac group was no more effective than placebo.

Healy makes many of the same specific points, and more. He exposes the systematic way the drug companies distorted their research and saw to it that both the scientific literature and popular promotional material contained the same distortions.

Breggin was right, and his critics, who accuse him of being shrill and unscientific, are describing themselves more than they describe Breggin.


Shameless fear-mongering...   February 26, 2004
T.G. (Newcastle, WA USA)
24 out of 41 found this review helpful

The review of another reviewer here says it all -- This book (and many others like it) prey on the fears of the ignorant masses, who know nothing about psychology, psychiatry, medicine or science. A few already on the drug who read this may go off it, with potentially negative results -- for example, it's easy to "placebo effect" oneself into anything (including severe withdrawal symptoms one otherwise wouldn't have) after being scared to death by trashy books like this. Thankfully, its target audience consists mostly of "survivors" who had negative experiences (possibly caused by their mental issues rather than the drug) and who read this kind of crap to feel vindicated.

In the previous review I referred to, the person says: "Prozac is known to harm the brain and the body. Listed side-effects reported included: Heart Attack, Bronchitis, Impotence, Pneumonia, Hair loss, Deafness, Cataracts, Duodenal ulcers, Kidney disorders, Stomach ulcers, Hepatitis, Gallstones, Arthritis, Pelvic pain, Breast cysts, Uncontrolled bowel movements, Breast pain..."

It is obvious that this person (and maybe even Breggin!) doesn't understand how to interpret reported side effects of a medication (clue: listed side effects include *all things that happened to anyone for any reason while taking the drug*). It's really sad when this kind of one-sided sensationalism becomes "holy gospel" for the ignorant and agenda-driven, who then proceed to close their minds, turn off their critical thinking facilities and refuse to investigate further. But of course we're already aware that Breggin is "preaching to the choir" here, and that this kind of sensationalist trash is what sells books these days. A real impartial, scientific view? Sadly, one's choices are probably limited to classroom textbooks anymore.

A few have stated that Breggin really cares for people -- how the hell do they know? If he cared, why doesn't he offer an impartial viewpoint with proofs so people can judge for themselves? Undoubtedly big pharma is "evil" (i.e. purely in it for the money) but given that Breggin is profiting bigtime off the fear generated from his books, what does that make him?

A final question for Breggin's congregation: Why didn't he just release all this information on the Net freely to the public if he's such a great guy doing his best to save lives?