Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression
Author: David Healy
Prozac. Paxil. Zoloft. Turn on your television and you are likely to see a commercial for one of the many selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on the market. We hear a lot about them, but do we really understand how these drugs work and what risks are involved for anyone who uses them?
Let Them Eat Prozac explores the history of SSRIs—from their early development to their latest marketing campaigns—and the controversies that surround them. Initially, they seemed like wonder drugs for those with mild to moderate depression—patients take just one daily dose, and unlike the tranquilizers that were popular in the 1960s, they supposedly did not lead to addiction. When Prozac was released in the late 1980s, David Healy was among the psychiatrists who prescribed it. But he soon observed that some of these patients became agitated and even attempted suicide. Studies were soon published, citing numerous cases in which patients became anxious and reported increased suicidal thoughts while taking Prozac. Could the new wonder drug actually be making patients worse?
Healy draws on his own research and expertise to demonstrate the potential hazards associated with these drugs. He intersperses case histories with insider accounts of the research leading to the development and approval of SSRIs as a treatment for depression. Let Them Eat Prozac clearly demonstrates that the problems go much deeper than a disturbing side-effect of a particular drug. Current FDA regulations encourage drug companies to patent a specific compound and market it effectively to a large population on the basis of minimal effectiveness in a handful of trials.
The pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe that SSRIs can safely treat depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental problems. But as Let Them Eat Prozac reveals, this "cure" may be worse than the disease.
David Healy is a former secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology and author of over 120 articles and 12 books, including The Antidepressant Era and The Creation of Psychopharmacology.
Library Journal
Recent Food & Drug Administration hearings have explored links between antidepressant use and suicide. Expert testimony on the safety of these drugs conflicts, and pharmaceutical companies have been accused of covering up evidence of serious side effects. In his timely new book, psychiatrist Healy (Univ. of Wales Coll. of Medicine, U.K.; The Antidepressant Era) chronicles these very issues at length, drawing on his extensive experience in antidepressant studies and involvement in legal actions against drug manufacturers. (He was fired from a position at the University of Toronto for his outspokenness.) In effect, Healy is continuing the conversation started by Peter D. Kramer (Listening to Prozac) and Peter Breggin (Talking Back to Prozac; The Anti-Depressant Fact Book), both of whom are psychiatrists concerned with the way antidepressants are being marketed and what the current love affair with mood-altering drugs means in our culture. Healy has the advantage of access to internal pharmaceutical industry documents and makes a strong case. Somewhat academic in tone, his book includes extensive notes to relevant case law as well as medical literature. Recommended for larger public libraries and special collections in public policy, medicine, and public health.-Eris Weaver, Redwood Health Lib., Petaluma, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
What People Are Saying
Jonathan Cole
The author is an excellent historian who offers a gripping interpretation of the role of the pharmaco-industrial complex in the introduction of SSRIs. His recommendation for a funded agency that would carefully evaluate the benefits and harms of marketed drugs is a superb idea and much needed.
—Harvard Medical School
John Le Carrй
This very important book will demonstrate beyond your worst dreams that the commercial needs of Big Pharma are the natural-born enemy of independent scientific research.
Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the Modern Film Industry
Author: Jon Lewis
"When it comes to censorship in Hollywood, the bottom line is theticket line. That's the central message in Jon Lewis's provocativeand insightful investigation of the movie industry's history ofself-regulation. . . . Lewis shows that Hollywood films are a triumph ofcommerce over art, and that the film industry has consistently usedinternal censorship and government-industrial collusion to guaranteethat its cash flow is never seriously threatened."
-- The New York Times Book Review
" . . . an accomplished, comprehensive, and provocative new history ofcensorship and the American film industry . . . And what of the perennialtussles between politicos and the film industry? All show business,suggests Lewis, make-believe veiling the real power structure that hasnothing to do with morals, let alone art (it would be interesting toget his take on the recent marketing brouhaha and its relationship tothe recent threatened actors and writers strikes). A staggering sagaworthy itself of a Hollywood movie, Hollywood v. Hardcore is filmhistory at its most illuminating and intense."
--The Boston Phoenix
"As provocative as his sometimes X-rated subject matter, film scholar Lewis detects an intimate relationship between the seemingly strange bedfellows of mainstream Hollywood cinema and hardcore pornography. From postal inspector Anthony Comstock to virtue maven William Bennett, from the Hays Office that monitored the golden age of Hollywood to the alphabet ratings system that labels the motion pictures in today's multiplex malls, Lewis's wry, informative, and always insightful study of American film censorship demonstrates that the most effective media surveillancehappens before you see the movie. Hollywood v. Hard Core is highly recommended for audiences of all ages."
--Thomas Doherty, author of Pre-Code Hollywood
"Jon Lewis weaves a compelling narrative of how box office needs-rather than moral strictures-have dictated the history of film regulation. Telling the complex and fascinating story of how Hollywood abandoned the Production Code and developed the ratings system and then telling the even more compelling story of how the X rating became a desirable marketing device when hard core pornography became popular, Hollywood v. Hard Core reveals a great deal about the true business of censorship."
--Linda Williams, author of Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible"
"This is a fascinating account, both entertaining and scholarly."
—Journal of the West
In 1972, The Godfather and Deep Throat were the two most popular films in the country. One, a major Hollywood studio production, the other an independently made "skin flick." At that moment, Jon Lewis asserts, the fate of the American film industry hung in the balance.
Spanning the 20th century, Hollywood v. Hard Core weaves a gripping tale of censorship and regulation. Since the industry's infancy, film producers and distributors have publicly regarded ratings codes as a necessary evil. Hollywood regulates itself, we have been told, to prevent the government from doing it for them. But Lewis argues that the studios self-regulate because they are convinced it is good for business, and that censorship codes and regulations are a crucial part of what binds the various competing agencies in the film business together.
Yet between 1968 and 1973 Hollywood films were faltering at the box office, and the major studios were in deep trouble. Hollywood's principal competition came from a body of independently produced and distributed films--from foreign art house film Last Tango in Paris to hard-core pornography like Behind the Green Door--that were at once disreputable and, for a moment at least, irresistible, even chic. In response, Hollywood imposed the industry-wide MPAA film rating system (the origins of the G, PG, and R designations we have today) that pushed sexually explicit films outside the mainstream, and a series of Supreme Court decisions all but outlawed the theatrical exhibition of hard core pornographic films. Together, these events allowed Hollywood to consolidate its iron grip over what films got made and where they were shown, thus saving it from financial ruin.
Linda Williams
Jon Lewis weaves a compelling narrative of how box office needs-rather than moral strictures-have dictated the history of film regulation. Telling the complex and fascinating story of how Hollywood abandoned the Production Code and developed the ratings system and then telling the even more compelling story of how the X rating became a desirable marketing device when hard core pornography became popular, Hollywood v. Hard Core reveals a great deal about the true business of censorship.
Thomas Doherty
As provocative as his sometimes X-rated subject matter, film scholar Lewis detects an intimate relationship between the seemingly strange bedfellows of mainstream Hollywood cinema and hardcore pornography. From postal inspector Anthony Comstock to virtue maven William Bennett, from the Hays Office that monitored the golden age of Hollywood to the alphabet ratings system that labels the motion pictures in today's multiplex malls, Lewis's wry, informative, and always insightful study of American film censorship demonstrates that the most effective media surveillance happens before you see the movie. Hollywood v. Hard Core is highly recommended for audiences of all ages.
No comments:
Post a Comment