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The Eagles are sure to part ways with their embattled coach, but that shouldn't tarnish his legacy
By Bill Barnwell on What sort of legacy is Andy Reid leaving
behind in Philadelphia? At the moment, it doesn't appear to be a
particularly positive one. Eagles home games have become rallies —
worse, sparsely attended rallies — for weary fans to boo both a team
that's given up on 2012 and a head coach whose 14-year tenure with the
club appears to be coming to a close. It's as if Philadelphia fans know
that they won't get a chance to boo Reid's decision-making after this
year and want to make sure they get their last licks in before he leaves
town. You can't blame season-ticket holders for thinking about the
short-term, but how does Reid look if we put his long-term career with
Philadelphia in context? How will those booing fans look back at the
Reid administration? Was his tenure with the Eagles a success or a
failure?
In truth, the Reid era isn't given its just due by either of those
polarizing labels. Unlike most of the coaches who also had lengthy
tenures with one team over the past 15 years, Reid's run was noticeably
marked by brilliant highs and dour lows. Coaches like Bill Belichick,
Bill Cowher, and Jon Gruden might have had higher peaks, but none had to
traverse lower valleys or struggle with a steady amount of criticism.
It would be impossible to talk about Andy Reid's legacy without
mentioning some glaring missteps, but Reid is in many ways a model coach
for this upcoming generation of NFL bosses. And, in most cases, the
most pointed criticisms he has received are either misdirected or
shortsighted.
It's fair to say that the Reid Era plays better on paper than it does
in real life, but part of that is because the Eagles coach raised
expectations to feverishly high levels during the beginning of his
tenure and then kept his squad within distance of meeting those
expectations for virtually his entire run. The numbers are actually
rather impressive. With two games left to go in what is expected to be
his final season, Reid has a 130-91-2 record as head coach of the
Eagles, producing a .588 winning percentage that ranks sixth in the
league across that time frame. The five teams ahead of him are your
standard-issue best teams in football: the Patriots (a league-best
.710), Colts (.674), Steelers (.636), Packers (.620), and Ravens (.602).
Reid's Eagles sit well ahead of the seventh-place Titans, who are
packed tightly in a group with the Giants and Broncos. Cynics will
correctly note that the five teams ahead of the Eagles have each won the
Super Bowl (and have combined to win eight of the 14 Super Bowls over
that time frame), but I'll get to that in a second.
Reid's work in the playoffs was also very impressive. If his run
finishes after this season, Reid's teams will have made the playoffs in
nine of his 14 seasons with the team, including a Super Bowl run in
2004. Reid is 10-9 in playoff games, too, which is a .526 winning
percentage that tops the percentages of the Packers and Jets (both .500)
as well as the Colts (.474).
The playoff runs Reid made look even better when you compare them to
what the Eagles did before he arrived in town. From 1970 (the AFL-NFL
merger) to 1999 (at which point Reid took over), the Eagles played 30
seasons of football and only made the playoffs 10 times. Reid is one
playoff appearance away from equaling that in half the time. Those
Eagles teams went 5-10 in the playoffs, making the Super Bowl as
frequently in 30 years (once) as Reid did in 14 years. Particularly
bitter Eagles fans will argue that Reid needed to win a Super Bowl to
justify his existence, but that argument doesn't carry a ton of weight
these days. How many people have either mentioned or noticed without
saying it that the most important thing about the NFL playoffs is merely
getting in? The Giants have made a living off of limping through the
regular season before dominating in two different postseason runs.1
If it is really that much of a crapshoot, shouldn't we be crediting
Reid for gaming the system properly and getting as many cracks at the
postseason as possible as opposed to lining up to attack him for only
reaching the Super Bowl once?
Fourteen years is a long time in the NFL. It's enough to draft and
develop a whole generation of talent, see them age, and then be forced
to replace them with a second generation of talent, players who Reid
drafted to replace guys he had drafted toward the beginning of his run
who had either left in free agency or become too old to start. That
takes a lot of skill and a lot of trust in your development process, a
level of faith the Eagles deserved. Although their drafting slowed down
some over the past several years, the early days of the Andy Reid–Joe
Banner team produced a number of notable stars. Each of Reid's first
seven drafts after he joined the organization produced at least one Pro
Bowl player, with those first seven drafts2 producing 16 Pro Bowl appearances from eight players.
As with many long-running coaches, we commonly associate the coach
with his most notable starting quarterback from the era in question.
Belichick and Brady. Dungy and Manning. Gruden and … OK, it doesn't work
for everybody. Reid is very clearly linked with Donovan McNabb, whose
run with the Eagles seemed to mirror his head coach's. McNabb, perhaps
unfairly, served as the calm spokesperson for controversial team
decisions in the media. After the 2004 season and the fallout from the
Terrell Owens disaster that began to sprout up in 2005, McNabb's job
security and long-term status with the team were questioned far more
regularly than those of other quarterbacks of his stature. Eagles fans
actually spent time debating whether a six-time Pro Bowl quarterback
should be benched for the likes of Mike McMahon or A.J. Feeley,
arguments that seem almost comically naive in hindsight.
In fact, Reid's ability to handle his quarterbacks and know exactly
when to move along serves as one of his biggest strengths. In virtually
every case, Reid dealt a quarterback available to him away at exactly
the right time, commanding a larger-than-deserved bounty while giving up
a player who struggled mightily elsewhere. Feeley threw 168 middling
passes with the Eagles before the Dolphins gave up a second-round pick
for him; he lasted half a season there before being benched and let go.
Reid dealt McNabb to the Redskins for a second-round pick, and he didn't
even last a full season as the starter in Washington. He made it to
Minnesota and got six starts there before being benched. That opened up
an opportunity for Kevin Kolb, but when Kolb got hurt and lost his job
to Michael Vick, Reid extracted a second-round pick and cornerback
Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, who has been Philly's best defender this
year. And, yes, he signed Vick off of the scrap heap for nothing and
turned a quarterback who had been wildly inefficient in Atlanta into one
of the league's most valuable properties until the bottom fell out this
year. In virtually every case, Reid sold high on his quarterback and
got significant value for a player who was way worse outside of
Philadelphia than he was in town. Some of the credit for that simply has
to go to Reid.
But, oh, that passing game. It eventually became the subject of
derision in Philly, as fans and media members alike groused that the
Eagles simply didn't run the ball enough. Graphics departments churned
out misleading cause-and-effect charts noting that the Eagles were 373-1
if they would just run the ball 35 times per game (without realizing
that the Eagles would exclusively run the ball that frequently in games
where they were ahead and killing clock). In reality, though, Reid's
Eagles didn't fail because they weren't running the ball frequently
enough. If anything, throwing the ball that frequently contributed to
their success! Reid's pass-heavy attack anticipated the coming shift to
pass-happy offenses and shotgun-reliant attacks that showed up toward
the end of the last decade.
The league is throwing passes on 56.4 percent of their offensive
plays this year, which represents the highest rate that's shown up
during Reid's tenure in Philadelphia. That's actually just below Reid's
average pass rate of 57.0 percent, but it's not a sign that Reid threw
too much. The simple facts are that passes produce more yardage than run
plays do: The average first-and-10 pass in a 14-point-or-fewer game
last year produced 8.0 yards per attempt, even after you consider all
the incompletions. Run plays averaged a mere 4.5 yards per attempt. You
don't want to throw the ball on every single first down because the
first figure is larger than the second one, but it's also clear that the
equilibrium between the two figures — the point at which both figures
are maximized for the largest possible gain on first down by your team —
has yet to be reached.3
In addition to creating more big plays, that allowed the Eagles to
build their offense around an undervalued asset class, specifically the
undersized pass-catching running back. It would be years before teams
like the Saints started doing the same. The Eagles were able to get
Brian Westbrook and LeSean McCoy in the middle of the draft, pay them
below the market rate on extensions, and keep them relatively healthy by
managing their workload and avoiding runs into the middle of the line
for no gain. When you consider just how bad the Philly receivers used to
be — the 2001-03 teams went 34-14 while starting James Thrash, Todd
Pinkston, and Chad Lewis at the three receiver spots — and how much the
Eagles invested in the trenches on either side of the ball, it's clear
to see just how traditional the Philadelphia model was. The Eagles were
(at least in the early days of the Reid era) building their team through
the lines out. The only difference was that they were building it for a
modern, pass-oriented league.
The one place where Philadelphia's run woes hit home most fervently
was in the red zone, where the Eagles became the league's running joke
over the past two seasons. Before the days when Ronnie Brown would
debate whether to run or pass the ball as he was falling down, though,
the Eagles were actually a very good team in the red zone.
Teamrankings.com's red zone stats
begin in 2003, at which point the Eagles actually had the league's
seventh-best red zone offense, a rate that would improve to fourth in
2004! The Eagles were 12th in 2005 and 2006, but fell off to 25th in
2007 and 2008 before two years around league-average. In 2011, though,
the Eagles actually weren't terrible in the red zone. They scored
touchdowns on 51.5 percent of their drives inside the 20, which was good
enough for 14th in the league; bad, but not bad enough to become a
cause célèbre. Through Week 14 of this season, though, they were 27th in
red zone touchdown percentage.
The biggest factor in all that is that when most teams don't score
touchdowns, they normally just settle for field goals. The Eagles were
(and have been) replacing the "settle for field goals" part with
"catastrophically give the ball away." Since 2007, the Eagles have
turned the ball over 28 times in the red zone, which is the largest
total for any team in football. If you adjust it for the number of plays
the Eagles have run in the red zone, they have the second-highest
turnover rate in the red zone in football, ranking behind the lowly
Rams.4
So if it wasn't the obsession with throwing the ball or the red zone
performance that brought the Reid Era to its conclusion, what was it?
Well, just based on Philadelphia's points scored and points allowed
totals from season to season, it seems fair to say that a defense that
routinely ranked below league-average had more to do it with than a
top-10 offense. And there, the soft causes seem obvious.
The team never recovered from the death of defensive coordinator Jim
Johnson; since Johnson left the team and passed away, an Eagles defense
that ranked fourth during Johnson's final year with the team has ranked
19th or worse in points scored during three of the four ensuing seasons.
The only year when that wasn't the case was 2011, when Juan Castillo
was scapegoated for the failure of the "Dream Team"'s defense, despite
the fact that the Eagles ranked 10th in points allowed. I wasn't immune
to this, either, but it sure seems a lot clearer when you consider how
bad the Eagles have been since they fired Castillo during the bye week
this year. Castillo's predecessor, Sean McDermott, was also fired under
murky circumstances before the 2011 lockout.
On a personnel basis, the Eagles seemed to get soft up the middle.
After trying myriad options at middle linebacker as a long-term
replacement for Jeremiah Trotter, they eventually settled on DeMeco
Ryans, but Ryans hasn't been enough to stem the tide this year. Even
more noticeable has been Philly's inability to replace Brian Dawkins,
who was allowed to hit free agency in 2009. While Dawkins only had one
good year in Denver before getting hurt and playing at a subpar level,
the Eagles have cycled through umpteen draft picks (Jaiquawn Jarrett)
and veterans (Marlin Jackson) at both safety spots in an attempt to find
even competent play. It's instead become the bugaboo of the Philly
defense, with the big play coming against them far too frequently. Over
the past two years, only the Saints and Raiders have allowed more plays
of 40 yards or more than the Eagles have.
The biggest reason why the Reid Era went down, though, was that the
big-name free agents they brought in simply failed to live up to
expectations. Outside of perhaps Asante Samuel, the big money the Eagles
threw out in free agency at veteran superstars just didn't result in a
commensurate return. Although everybody remembers the Eagles adding
Terrell Owens for the 2004 season, their equally notable signing on the
other side of the ball was Jevon Kearse, who never showed the burst that
got him the "Freak" nickname after his 14.5-sack rookie campaign with
Tennessee. Years later, when the Eagles went all-in to sign Nnamdi
Asomugha and upgrade their secondary with arguably the league's best
cornerback, they ended up signing a player who wasn't his old self.
If Kearse is at his peak level as a pass rusher in 2004, maybe it's
enough to swing the Super Bowl over to Philly's side. And if Asomugha
was the shutdown cornerback the Eagles expected, maybe they produce a
top-five defense and win those games against the Bills and 49ers at the
beginning of last season and work their way into the playoffs. As much
as Reid's time with the Eagles is associated with the lengthy tenure of
McNabb at quarterback, its end will be associated with the failures of
Asomugha and Vick.
With that being said, there's clearly too much good here for Reid to be seen as a failed head coach.5
He was the best coach the Eagles have had during the modern era of
football by a fantastically wide margin, and both his longevity and his
effectiveness suggest that he's one of the best coaches of his
generation. It's also foolish to believe that he's done. If he wants to
come back to coaching (and reports say that he does), he would be at the
top of the list for many of the league's coach-needy teams. There's a
track record of guys who fizzled out after a long run with one team
immediately succeeding elsewhere, too. John Fox followed a 2-14 year
with the Panthers by going to Denver and winning two consecutive AFC
West titles. Tom Coughlin peaked at 12-4 and had three years of
below-average football before being let go by the Jaguars, but when he
caught on with the Giants, he had them in the playoffs in two years. It
may take another chance with another team for people to realize just how
valuable Reid is as a head coach. And it may take an inferior new head
coach in Philadelphia for Eagles fans to realize how lucky they were to
have Andy Reid all these years.
WHY DID THEY DO IT?
AN INQUIRY INTO THE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS IN AMERICA (1999)
by Jon Rappoport www.nomorefakenews.com qjrconsulting@gmail.com Published by the Truth Seeker Foundation.
The massacre at Columbine High School took place on April 20, 1999.
Astonishingly, for eight days after the tragedy, during thousands of
hours of prime-time television coverage, virtually no one mentioned the
word “drugs.” Then the issue was opened. Eric Harris, one of the
shooters at Columbine, was on at least one drug. The NY Times of April 29, 1999, and other papers reported
that Harris was rejected from enlisting in the Marines for medical
reasons. A friend of the family told the Times that Harris was being
treated by a psychiatrist. And then several sources told the Washington Post that the drug prescribed as treatment was Luvox, manufactured by Solvay.
In two more days, the “drug-issue” was gone.
Luvox is of the same class as Prozac and Zoloft and Paxil. They are
labeled SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). They attempt to
alleviate depression by changing brain-levels of the natural substance
serotonin. Luvox has a slightly different chemical configuration from
Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft, and it was approved by the FDA for
obsessive-compulsive disorder, although many doctors apparently
prescribe it for depression.
Had Eric Harris been on other drugs as well? Ritalin? Prozac? Tranquilizers? As yet we don’t know.
Prozac is the wildly popular Eli Lilly antidepressant which has been
linked to suicidal and homicidal actions. It is now given to young
children. Again, its chemical composition is very close to Luvox, the
drug that Harris took.
Dr. Peter Breggin, the eminent psychiatrist and author (Toxic Psychiatry, Talking Back to Prozac, Talking Back to Ritalin),
told me, “With Luvox there is some evidence of a four-percent rate for
mania in adolescents. Mania, for certain individuals, could be a
component in grandiose plans to destroy large numbers of other people.
Mania can go over the hill to psychosis.”
Dr. Joseph Tarantolo is a psychiatrist in private practice in
Washington DC. He is the president of the Washington chapter of the
American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians. Tarantolo states that
“all the SSRIs [including Prozac and Luvox] relieve the patient of
feeling. He becomes less empathic, as in `I don’t care as much,’ which
means `It’s easier for me to harm you.’ If a doctor treats someone who
needs a great deal of strength just to think straight, and gives him one
of these drugs, that could push him over the edge into violent
behavior.”
In Arianna Huffington’s syndicated newspaper column of July 9, 1998,
Dr. Breggin states, “I have no doubt that Prozac can cause or contribute
to violence and suicide. I’ve seen many cases. In a recent clinical
trial, 6 percent of the children became psychotic on Prozac. And manic
psychosis can lead to violence.”
Huffington follows up on this: “In addition to the case of Kip
Kinkel, who had been a user of Prozac [Kinkel was the shooter in the May
21, 1998, Springfield, Oregon, school massacre], there are much less
publicized instances where teenagers on Prozac or similar
antidepressants have exploded into murderous rages: teenagers like Julie
Marie Meade from Maryland who was shot to death by the police when they
found her waving a gun at them. Or Ben Garris, a 16-year old in
Baltimore who stabbed his counselor to death. Or Kristina Fetters, a
14-year old from Des Moines, Iowa, who stabbed her favorite great aunt
in a rage that landed her a life sentence.”
Dr. Tarantolo also has written about Julie Marie Meade. In a column for the ICSPP
(International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology) News,
“Children and Prozac: First Do No Harm,” Tarantolo describes how Julie
Meade, in November of 1996, called 911, “begging the cops to come and
shoot her. And if they didn’t do it quickly, she would do it to herself.
There was also the threat that
she would shoot them as well.”
The police came within a few minutes, “5 of them to be exact, pumping at least 10 bullets into her head and torso.”
Tarantolo remarks that a friend of Julie said Julie “had plans to
make the honor roll and go to college. He [the friend] had also observed
her taking all those pills.” What pills? Tarantolo called the Baltimore
medical examiner, and spoke with Dr. Martin Bullock, who was on a
fellowship at that office. Bullock said, “She had been taking Prozac for
four years.”
Tarantolo asked Bullock, “Did you know that Prozac has been
implicated in impulsive de novo violence and suicidalness?” Bullock said
he was not aware of this.
Tarantolo writes, “Had she recently increased the dosage? Was she
taking other drugs? Drugs such as Ritalin, cocaine, amphetamine, and
tricyclic antidepressants (Tofranil, Pamelor, Elavil) could all
potentiate the effect of the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors include Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil).”
In layman’s language, mixing these drugs could tinker in ignorance
with basic brain chemistry and bring on horrendous violent behavior.
Tarantolo is careful to point out, “A change [in Julie's drug-taking
pattern] was not necessary, though, to explain her behavior. Violent and
suicidal behavior have been observed both early (a few weeks) and late
(many months) in treatment with Prozac.”
The November 23rd, 1996, Washington Post reported the Julie
Meade death by shooting. The paper mentioned nothing about Prozac. This
was left to a more penetrating newspaper, the local PG County
Journal-the Maryland county in which the shooting took place.
Why did the Post never mention Prozac or interview any of a
growing number of psychiatrists who have realized the danger of giving
these drugs to children (and adults)?
Is it because major media outlets enjoy considerable support from
pharmaceutical advertisers? Is it because these companies have been
running successful PR campaigns to keep their drugs’ names quiet when
suicides and murders are reported?
Another small paper, The Vigo Examiner (Terra Haute,
Indiana), looked into the May 21, 1998, murders in Springfield, Oregon.
The shooter, who had been on Prozac, Kip Kinkel, was a 15-year-old
freshman. First he killed his parents, then walked into his school
cafeteria and gunned down fellow students. He killed 2 and wounded 22.
He is awaiting trial. Vigo Examiner reporter Maureen Sielaff covered this story.
Showing straightforward independence where many big-time reporters just
don’t, Sielaff researched the book, Prozac and Other Psychiatric Drugs,
by Lewis A. Opler, MD. She writes, “The following side effects are
listed for Prozac: apathy; hallucinations; hostility; irrational ideas;
paranoid reactions; antisocial behavior; hysteria; and suicidal
thoughts.” An explosive cocktail of symptoms.
A day or two after the Littleton, Colorado, shootings, a teenager in
Los Angeles, depressed about Littleton, hung himself. The boy had been
under treatment for depression. Did that mean Prozac? Zoloft? Luvox?
Will any reporter look into that incident?
The Jonesboro, Arkansas, school shooting took place on March 24,
1998. Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, apparently faked a
fire alarm at Westside Middle School. Then when everyone came outside,
the boys fired from the nearby woods, killing four students and a
teacher, wounding 11 other people. Charged as juveniles, the boys were
convicted of capital murder and battery. They can be held in jail until
they are 21 years old. Dr. Alan Lipman, of Georgetown University, one of
the experts interviewed on network television after Littleton, remarked
that at least one of the boys who committed murder in Jonesboro had
been, before the incident, treated for violent behavior. Treated how?
With Prozac, with Zoloft, with a combination of antidepressants? The
action of these drugs-altering the supply of the brain neurotransmitter
serotonin-is touted by some people as a potential cure for violence. The
only problem is, there is no acknowledged proof within the broad
psychiatric profession that serotonin is a causative factor in violence.
That is an unproven theory.
Not that unproven theories stop the dedicated from experimenting on brains of the young.
We must get a complete review of the medical history of the two Littleton shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
In the aftermath of other school shootings, have parents tried to find answers? With what responses have their efforts been met?
In Olivehurst, California, on May 1, 1992, Eric Houston, 20, killed 4
people and wounded 10 at his former high school. Houston was sentenced
to death.
On January 18, 1993, in Grayhurst, Kentucky, Scott Pennington, 17,
entered Deanna McDavid’s English class at East Carter High School and
shot her in the head. He also shot Marvin Hicks, the school janitor, in
the stomach. Pennington was sentenced to life, without the possibility
of parole for 25 years.
In Richmond, Virginia, on October 30, 1995, Edward Earl Spellman, 18, shot and wounded 4 students outside their high school.
On February 2, 1996, in an algebra class at Frontier Junior High
School in Mose Lake, Washington, Barry Loukaitas, 14, killed his teacher
and 2 teen-aged boys with an assault rifle, and wounded a girl.
Loukaitas was sentenced to 2 mandatory life terms.
In St. Louis, Missouri, on February 29, 1996, Mark Boyd, 30, fired
into a school bus when its doors opened, killed a 15-year-old pregnant
girl and wounded the driver.
On July 26, 1996, Yohao Albert, a high-school junior, shot and wounded 2 classmates in a stairwell at his Los Angeles school.
On February 19, 1997, in Bethel, Alaska, Evan Ramsey, 16, shot and
killed his high school principal Ron Edwards and one of his classmates,
Josh Palacious. Two students were wounded. Ramsey was sentenced to 2
99-year terms. Authorities later accused 2 students of knowing the
shootings were
going to happen.
On October 1, 1997, in Pearl, Mississippi, Luke Woodham, 16, started
shooting in his school cafeteria. He killed 2 students, including his
ex-girlfriend, and wounded 7 others. He also killed his mother. Woodham
was sentenced to life. Authorities later accused 6 friends of
conspiracy.
On December 1, 1997, at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky,
Michael Carneal, 14, found students coming out of a prayer meeting.
Using a stolen pistol, he shot 8 of these students and killed 3. One of
the wounded girls is paralyzed.
On December 15, 1997, in Stamps, Arkansas, Joseph Todd, 14, was
arrested in the shooting of 2 students outside their high school. The
students recovered from their wounds. Todd faces trial.
In Edinboro, Pennsylvania, on April 24, 1998, Andrew Wurst, 14,
allegedly shot and killed his science teacher, John Gillette, at the JW
Parker Middle School at an 8th grade dance. Two students and another
teacher were wounded. Wurst is awaiting trial.
In Fayetteville, Tennessee, on May 19, 1998, several days before
graduation, Jacob Davis, 18, allegedly shot and killed Robert Creson, a
classmate at Lincoln County High School. Creson was dating Davis’
ex-girlfriend. Davis, who was an honor student, awaits trial.
Try to find major media coverage of these crimes that carefully
examines the medical-drug history of the perpetrators and establishes
whether or not they were on drugs that could significantly contribute to
violence.
A CNN story, dated May 21, 1998, authored by its Justice Dept.
correspondent, Pierre Thomas, offered the following statistics: “Ten
percent of the nation’s schools reported one or more violent crimes in
the 1996-1997 school year, including murder, suicide, rape, robbery and
fights involving weapons.” Even if these Justice Dept. figures are
self-serving and overblown, they point to a chilling landscape.
The availability (to children) of guns is a cause. No question.
The saturation of violence on TV is a cause. No question.
The breakup of families is a cause. No question. So is outright child abuse.
The compartmentalization of children from their parents is a cause.
The absence of a good education is a cause.
The growing poverty and its atmosphere of hopelessness in America is a cause.
The presence of lunatic ideologies (Nazism, Satanism) in the landscape is a factor.
You can’t assign numbers to these causes. You can’t say one of the above is a 23% cause or a 3% cause.
But is there another factor in pushing kids over the edge? Are some
children, angry and desperate and in proximity to weapons, who are
nevertheless quite able to maintain moral equilibrium, being jolted by
chemicals which are scrambling their brains and intensifying their
impulses and amplifying their dark thoughts?
The bulk of American media appears afraid to go after psychiatric
drugs as a cause. This fear stems, in part, from the sure knowledge that
expert attack dogs are waiting in the wings, funded by big-time
pharmaceutical companies. There are doctors and researchers as well who
have seen a dark truth about these drugs in the journals, but are afraid
to stand up and speak out. After all, the medical culture punishes no
one as severely as its own defectors, when defection from the party line
threatens profits and careers and reputations, when defection alerts
the public that deadly effects could be emanating from corporate
boardrooms.
And what of the federal government itself? The FDA licenses every
drug released for public use and certifies that it is safe and
effective. If a real tornado started at the public level, if the mothers
of the young killers and young victims began to see a terrible
knowledge swim into view, a knowledge they hadn’t imagined, and if THEY
joined forces, the earth would shake.
After commenting on some of the adverse effects of the antidepressant
drug Prozac, psychiatrist Peter Breggin notes, “From the initial
studies, it was also apparent that a small percentage of Prozac patients
became psychotic.”
Prozac, in fact, endured a rocky road in the press for a time.
Stories on it rarely appear now. The major media have backed off. But on
February 7th, 1991, Amy Marcus’ Wall Street Journal article on
the drug carried the headline, “Murder Trials Introduce Prozac
Defense.” She wrote, “A spate of murder trials in which defendants claim
they became violent when they took the antidepressant Prozac are
imposing new problems for the drug’s maker, Eli Lilly and Co.”
Also on February 7, 1991, the New York Times ran a Prozac piece headlined, “Suicidal Behavior Tied Again to Drug: Does Antidepressant Prompt Violence?”
In his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry, Dr. Breggin mentions that the Donahue
show (Feb. 28, 1991) “put together a group of individuals who had
become compulsively self-destructive and murderous after taking Prozac
and the clamorous telephone and audience response confirmed the
problem.”
Breggin also cites a troubling study from the February 1990 American Journal of Psychiatry
(Teicher et al, v.147:207-210) which reports on “six depressed
patients, previously free of recent suicidal ideation, who developed
`intense, violent suicidal preoccupations after 2-7 weeks of fluoxetine
[Prozac] treatment.’ The suicidal preoccupations lasted from three days
to three months after termination of the treatment. The report estimates
that 3.5 percent of Prozac users were at risk. While denying the
validity of the study, Dista Products, a division of Eli Lilly, put out a
brochure for doctors dated August 31, 1990, stating that it was adding
`suicidal ideation’ to the adverse events section of its Prozac product
information.”
An earlier study, from the September 1989 Journal of Clinical Psychiatry,
by Joseph Lipiniski, Jr., indicates that in five examined cases people
on Prozac developed what is called akathesia. Symptoms include intense
anxiety, inability to sleep, the “jerking of extremities,” and
“bicycling in bed or just turning around and around.” Breggin comments
that akathesia “may also contribute to the drug’s tendency to cause
self-destructive or violent tendencies … Akathesia can become the
equivalent of biochemical torture and could possibly tip someone over
the edge into self-destructive or violent behavior … The June 1990 Health Newsletter,
produced by the Public Citizen Research Group, reports, ‘Akathesia, or
symptoms of restlessness, constant pacing, and purposeless movements of
the feet and legs, may occur in 10-25 percent of patients on Prozac.’”
The well-known publication, California Lawyer, in a December
1998 article called “Protecting Prozac,” details some of the suspect
maneuvers of Eli Lilly in its handling of suits against Prozac.
California Lawyer also mentions other highly qualified critics of the
drug: “David Healy, MD, an internationally renowned
psychopharmacologist, has stated in sworn deposition that `contrary to
Lilly’s view, there is a plausible cause-and-effect relationship between
Prozac’ and suicidal-homicidal events. An epidemiological study
published in 1995 by the British Medical Journal also links Prozac to increased suicide risk.”
When pressed, proponents of these SSRI drugs sometimes say, “Well,
the benefits for the general population far outweigh the risk,” or,
“Maybe in one or two tragic cases the dosage prescribed was too high.”
But the problem will not go away on that basis. A shocking review-study
published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases (1996,
v.184, no.2), written by Rhoda L. Fisher and Seymour Fisher, called
“Antidepressants for Children,” concludes: “Despite unanimous literature
of double-blind studies indicating that antidepressants are no more
effective than placebos in treating depression in children and
adolescents, such medications continue to be in wide use.”
In wide use. This despite such contrary information and the negative, dangerous effects of these drugs.
There are other studies: “Emergence of self-destructive phenomena in
children and adolescents during fluoxetine treatment,” published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
(1991, vol.30), written by RA King, RA Riddle, et al. It reports
self-destructive phenomena in 14% (6/42) of children and adolescents
(10-17 years old) who had treatment with fluoxetine (Prozac) for
obsessive-compulsive disorder.
July, 1991. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Hisako Koizumi, MD, describes a thirteen-year-old boy who was on Prozac:
“full of energy,” “hyperactive,” “clown-like.” All this devolved into
sudden violent actions which were “totally unlike him.”
September, 1991. The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Author Laurence Jerome reports the case of a ten-year old who moves
with his family to a new location. Becoming depressed, the boy is put on
Prozac by a doctor. The boy is then “hyperactive, agitated …
irritable.” He makes a “somewhat grandiose assessment of his own
abilities.” Then he calls a stranger on the phone and says he is going
to kill him. The Prozac is stopped, and the symptoms disappear.
Recently I spoke with a psychologist at a major university about the
possibility that Prozac could have provoked some of the school
shootings. He said, “Well, in the case of Columbine High School, that
couldn’t have been the case. The boy had a whole plan there. Prozac is
more of an impulse-causer.” I said, “Suppose the plan was in the realm
of a maybe-fantasy and then Prozac pushed the whole thing over the
edge.” After a pause he said, “Yes, that could be.” As mentioned above,
grandiose ideas can be generated by a person taking Prozac, and in the
literature there is also mention of a “delusional system” being the
outcome in a case of a patient on the drug.
A December 1, 1996, newswire story from Cox News Service, by Gary
Kane, states, “Scores of young men and women across the country are
learning that the Ritalin they took as teen-agers is stopping them from
serving their country or starting a military career.”
Kane continues, “All branches of the armed forces reject potential
enlistees who use Ritalin or similar behavior-modifying medications …
And people who took Ritalin as teen-agers to treat ADD [Attention
Deficit Disorder], an inhibitor of academic skills, are rejected from
military service, even if they no longer take the medication.”
Was this the case with Eric Harris? Was he rejected by the Marines
only because of the Luvox, or was Ritalin use, past or present, involved
as well?
Ritalin, manufactured by Novartis, is the close cousin to speed which
is given to perhaps two million American schoolchildren for a condition
called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), or ADHD (Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder). ADD and ADHD, for which no organic causes have
ever been found, are touted as disease-conditions that afflict the
young, causing hyperactivity, unmanageability, and learning problems. Of
course, when you name a disorder or a syndrome and yet can find no
single provable organic cause for it, you have nothing more than a loose
collection of behaviors with an arbitrary title.
Correction: you also have a pharmaceutical bonanza.
Dr. Breggin, referring to an official directory of psychiatric
disorders, the DSM-III-R, writes that withdrawal from amphetamine-type
drugs, including Ritalin, can cause “depression, anxiety, and
irritability as well as sleep problems, fatigue, and agitation.” Breggin
then remarks, “The individual may become suicidal in response to the
depression.”
The well-known Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics
reveals a strange fact. It states that Ritalin is “structurally related
to amphetamines … Its pharmacological properties are essentially the
same as those of the amphetamines.” In other words, the only clear
difference is legality. And the effects, in layman’s terms, are obvious.
You take speed and after awhile, sooner or later, you start crashing.
You become agitated, irritable, paranoid, delusional, aggressive.
A firm and objective medical review needs to be done in all of the
school shootings, to determine how many of the shooters were on, or had
at one time been on, Ritalin.
In Toxic Psychiatry, Dr. Breggin discusses the subject of
drug combinations: “Combining antidepressants [e.g., Prozac, Luvox] and
psychostimulants [e.g., Ritalin] increases the risk of cardiovascular
catastrophe, seizures, sedation, euphoria, and psychosis. Withdrawal
from the combination can cause a severe reaction that includes
confusion, emotional instability, agitation, and aggression.” Children
are frequently medicated with this combination, and when we highlight
such effects as aggression, psychosis, and emotional instability, it is
obvious that the result is pointing toward the very real possibility of
violence.
In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions
published a most important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was
called “An Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin
(Methylphenidate”) [v.21(7), pp. 837-841].
Scarnati listed over a hundred adverse affects of Ritalin and indexed published journal articles for each of these symptoms.
For every one of the following (selected and quoted verbatim) Ritalin
effects then, there is at least one confirming source in the medical
literature:
• Paranoid delusions
• Paranoid psychosis
• Hypomanic and manic symptoms, amphetamine-like psychosis
• Activation of psychotic symptoms
• Toxic psychosis
• Visual hallucinations
• Auditory hallucinations
• Can surpass LSD in producing bizarre experiences
• Effects pathological thought processes
• Extreme withdrawal
• Terrified affect
• Started screaming
• Aggressiveness
• Insomnia
• Since Ritalin is considered an amphetamine-type drug, expect amphatamine-like effects
• psychic dependence
• High-abuse potential DEA Schedule II Drug
• Decreased REM sleep
• When used with antidepressants one may see dangerous reactions including hypertension, seizures and hypothermia
• Convulsions
• Brain damage may be seen with amphetamine abuse.
Many parents around the country have discovered that Ritalin has
become a condition for their children continuing in school. There are
even reports, by parents, of threats from social agencies: “If you don’t
allow us to prescribe Ritalin for your ADD child, we may decide that
you are an unfit parent. We may decide to take your child away.”
This mind-boggling state of affairs is fueled by teachers,
principals, and school counselors, none of whom have medical training.
Yet the very definition of the “illnesses” for which Ritalin would be
prescribed is in doubt, especially at the highest levels of the medical
profession. This doubt, however, has not filtered down to most public
schools.
In commenting on Dr. Lawrence Diller’s book, Running on Ritalin,
Dr. William Carey, Director of Behavioral Pediatrics, Children’s
Hospital of Philadelphia, has written, “Dr. Diller has correctly
described … the disturbing trend of blaming children’s social,
behavioral, and academic performance problems entirely on an unproven
brain deficit…”
On November 16-18, 1998, the National Institute of Mental Health held
the prestigious “NIH Consensus Development Conference on Diagnosis and
Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD].” The
conference was explicitly aimed at ending all debate about the diagnoses
of ADD, ADHD, and about the prescription of Ritalin. It was hoped that
at the highest levels of medical research and bureaucracy, a clear
position would be taken: this is what ADHD is, this is where it comes
from, and these are the drugs it should be treated with. That didn’t
happen, amazingly. Instead, the official panel responsible for drawing
conclusions from the conference threw cold water on the whole attempt to
reach a comfortable consensus.
Panel member Mark Vonnegut, a Massachusetts pediatrician, said, “The diagnosis [of ADHD] is a mess.”
The panel essentially said it was not sure ADHD was even a “valid”
diagnosis. In other words, ADD and ADHD might be nothing more than
attempts to categorize certain children’s behaviors-with no organic
cause, no clear-cut biological basis, no provable reason for even using
the ADD or ADHD labels.
The panel found “no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain
malfunction [which malfunction had been the whole psychiatric
assumption].”
The panel found that Ritalin has not been shown to have long-term
benefits. In fact, the panel stated that Ritalin has resulted in “little
improvement on academic achievement or social skills.”
Panel chairman, David Kupfer, professor of psychiatry at the
University of Pittsburgh, said, “There is no current validated
diagnostic test [for ADHD].”
Yet at every level of public education in America, there remains what
can only be called a voracious desire to give children Ritalin (or
other similar drugs) for ADD or ADHD.
Nullifying the warnings, assurances and prescriptions doctors
routinely give to parents of children who have been diagnosed ADD or
ADHD should be a national goal.
The following pronouncement makes a number of things clear: The 1994 Textbook of Psychiatry,
published by the American Psychiatric Press, contains this review
(Popper and Steingard)-”Stimulants [such as Ritalin] do not produce
lasting improvements in aggressivity, conduct disorder, criminality,
education achievement, job functioning, marital relationships, or
long-term adjustment.”
Parents should also wake up to the fact that, in the aftermath of the
Littleton, Colorado, tragedy, pundits and doctors are urging more
extensive “mental health” services for children. Fine, except whether
you have noticed it or not, this no longer means, for the most part,
therapy with a caring professional. It means drugs. It means the drugs I
am discussing in this inquiry.
In December 1996, the US Drug Enforcement Agency held a conference on
ADHD and Ritalin. Surprisingly, it issued a sensible statement about
drugs being a bad substitute for the presence of caring parents: “[T]he
use of stimulants [such as Ritalin] for the short-term improvement of
behavior and underachievement may be thwarting efforts to address the
children’s real issues, both on an individual and societal level. The
lack of long-term positive results with the use of stimulants and the
specter of previous and potential stimulant abuse epidemics, give cause
to worry about the future. The dramatic increase in the use of
methylphenidate [Ritalin] in the 1990s should be viewed as a marker or
warning to society about the problems children are having and how we
view and address them.”
The Brookhaven National Laboratory has studied Ritalin through PET
scans. Lab researchers have found that the drug decreased the flow of
blood to all parts of the brain by 20-30%.
That is of course a very negative finding. It is a signal of danger.
But parents, teachers, counselors, principals, school psychologists
know nothing about this. Nor do they know that cocaine produces the same
blood-flow effect.
In his book, Talking Back to Ritalin, Peter Breggin expands
on the drug’s effects: “Stimulants such as Ritalin and amphetamine …
have grossly harmful impacts on the brain-reducing overall blood flow,
disturbing glucose metabolism, and possibly causing permanent shrinkage
or atrophy of the brain.”
In the wake of the Littleton shooting, we find that “the American
people” and lawyers and pundits and child psychologists are pointing the
finger at Hollywood, at video games like Doom, at inattentive parents,
and at the availability of guns. We have to wonder why almost no one is
calling out these drugs.
Is it possible that the work of PR people is shaping the national response?
An instructive article, “Protecting Prozac,” by Michael Grinfeld, in the December 1998 California Lawyer,
opens several doors. Grinfeld notes that “in the past year nearly a
dozen cases involving Prozac have disappeared from the court record.” He
is talking about law suits against the manufacturer, Eli Lilly, and he
is saying that these cases have apparently been settled, without trial,
in such a quiet and final way, with such strict confidentiality, that it
is almost as if they never happened.
This smoothness, this invisibility keeps the press away and also,
most importantly, does not encourage other people to come out of the
woodwork with lawyers and Prozac horror-stories of their own. Because
they are not reading about $2 million or $10 million or $50 million
settlements paid out by Lilly.
Grinfeld details a set of maneuvers involving attorney Paul Smith,
who in the early 1990s became the lead plaintiffs’ counsel in the famous
Fentress case against Eli Lilly. The case made the accusation that
Prozac had induced murder. This was the first action involving Prozac to
reach a trial and jury, so it would establish a major precedent for a
large number of other pending suits against the manufacturer.
After what many people thought was a very weak attack on Lilly by
lawyer Smith, the jury came back in five hours with an easy verdict
favoring Lilly and Prozac.
Grinfeld writes, “Lilly’s defense attorneys predicted the verdict would be the death knell for [anti-]Prozac litigation.”
But that wasn’t the end of the Fentress case, even though Smith-to
the surprise of many-didn’t appeal it. “Rumors began to circulate that
Smith had made several [prior] oral agreements with Lilly concerning the
evidence that would be presented [in Fentress], the structure of a
postverdict settlement, and the potential resolution of Smith’s other
[anti-Prozac] cases.”
In other words, the rumors said: This lawyer made a deal with Lilly
to present a weak attack, to omit evidence damaging to Prozac, so that
the jury would find Lilly innocent of all charges. In return for this,
the case would be settled secretly, with Lilly paying out monies to
Smith’s client. In this way, Lilly would avoid the exposure of a public
settlement, and through the innocent verdict would discourage other
potential plaintiffs from suing it over Prozac.
The rumors congealed. The judge in the Fentress case, John Potter,
asked lawyers on both sides if “money had changed hands.” He wanted to
know if the fix was in. The lawyers said no money had been paid,
“without acknowledging that an agreement was in place.”
Judge Potter didn’t stop there. In April 1995, Grinfeld notes, “In
court papers, Potter wrote that he was surprised that the plaintiffs’
attorneys [Smith] hadn’t introduced evidence that Lilly had been charged
criminally for failing to report deaths from another of its drugs to
the Food and Drug Administration. Smith had fought hard [during the
Fentress trial] to convince Potter to admit that evidence, and then
unaccountably withheld it.”
In Judge Potter’s motion, he alleged that “Lilly [in the Fentress
case] sought to buy not just the verdict, but the court’s judgment as
well.”
In 1996, the Kentucky Supreme Court issued an opinion on all this: “…
there was a serious lack of candor with the trial court [during
Fentress] and there may have been deception, bad faith conduct, abuse of
the judicial process or perhaps even fraud.”
After the Supreme Court remanded the Fentress case back to the state
attorney general’s office, the whole matter dribbled away, and then
resurfaced in a different form, in another venue. At the time of the
California Lawyer article, a new action against Smith was unresolved.
If Lilly went to extreme lengths to control suits against Prozac, it
stands to reason that drug companies could also try to deflect legal
actions by influencing how the press, lawyers, and public view these
school shootings. For example, accusing video games is acceptable,
accusing guns is acceptable, accusing bad parents is acceptable. In
fact, these causes, as I stated above, are legitimate. But when the
national press is completely silent on medical drugs, we have to
question the background on that. We have to. We have to ask, why should
THIS horrendous factor be eliminated altogether from reporting to the
nation?
The PBS television series, The Merrow Report, produced in
1996 a program called “Attention Deficit Disorder: A Dubious Diagnosis?”
The Educational Writer’s Association awarded the program first prize
for investigative reporting in that year. I can recall no other piece of
television journalism since the Vietnam war which has managed to
capture on film government officials in the act of realizing that they
have made serious mistakes.
John Merrow, the series’ host, explains that, unknown to the public,
there has been “a long-term, unpublicized financial relationship between
the company that makes the most widely known ADD medication [Ritalin]
and the nation’s largest ADD support group.”
The group is CHADD, based in Florida. CHADD stands for Children and
Adults with ADD. Its 650 local chapters sponsor regional conferences and
monthly meetings-often held at schools. It educates thousands of
families about ADD and ADHD and gives out free medical advice. This
advice features the drug Ritalin.
Since 1988, when CHADD and Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis), the
manufacturer of Ritalin, began their financial relationship, Ciba has
given almost a million dollars to CHADD, helping it to expand its
membership from 800 to 35,000 people.
Merrow interviews several parents whose children are on Ritalin,
parents who have been relying on CHADD for information. They are clearly
taken aback when they learn that CHADD obtains a significant amount of
its funding from the drug company that makes Ritalin.
CHADD has used Ciba money to promote its pharmaceutical message
through a public service announcement produced for television. Nineteen
million people have seen this PSA. As Merrow says, “CHADD’s name is on
it, but Ciba Geigy paid for it.”
It turns out that in all of CHADD’s considerable literature written
for the public, there is rare mention of Ciba. In fact, the only
instance of the connection Merrow could find on the record was a
small-print citation on an announcement of a single CHADD conference.
In recounting CHADD’s promotion of drug “therapy” for ADD, Merrow
says, “CHADD’s literature also says psychostimulant medications [like
Ritalin] are not addictive.”
Merrow brings this up to Gene Haslip, a Drug Enforcement Agency
official in Washington. Haslip is visibly annoyed. “Well,” he says, “I
think that’s very misleading. It’s [Ritalin's] certainly a drug that can
cause a very high degree of dependency, like all of the very potent
stimulants.”
Merrow reveals that CHADD received a $750,000 grant from the US Dept.
of Education, in 1996, to produce a video, Facing the Challenge of ADD.
The video doesn’t just mention the generic name methylphenidate, it
announces the drug by its brand name, Ritalin. This, at government
(taxpayer) expense.
We see a press conference announcing the release of the video. The
CHADD president presents an award to Dr. Thomas Hehir, Director of
Special Education Programs at the US Dept. of Education.
This sets the stage for a conversation between Merrow and Dr. Hehir,
providing a rare moment when discovery of the truth is recorded on
camera, when PR is swept aside.
MERROW: “Are you aware that most of the people in the film [the
video, Facing the Challenge of ADD-referring to people who are giving
testimonials about how their ADD children have been helped by treatment]
are not just members of CHADD … but in the CHADD leadership, including
the former national president? They’re all board members of CHADD in
Chicago. Are you aware of that? They’re not identified in the film.”
HEHIR: “I’m not aware of that.”
MERROW: “Do you know about the financial connection between CHADD and Ciba Geigy, the company that makes Ritalin?”
HEHIR: “I do not.”
MERROW: “In the last six years, CHADD has received $818,000 in grants from Ciba Geigy.”
HEHIR: “I did not know that.”
MERROW: “Does that strike you as a potential conflict of interest?”
HEHIR: “That strikes me as a potential conflict of interest. Yes it does.”
MERROW: “Now, that’s not disclosed either. Even though the film talks
about Ritalin as a-one way, and it’s the first way presented-of taking
care of treating Attention Deficit Disorder. That’s not disclosed
either. Does that trouble you?”
HEHIR: “Um, it concerns me.”
MERROW: “Are you going to look into this, when you go back to your office?”
HEHIR: “I certainly will look into some of the things you’ve brought up.”
MERROW: “Should they have told you that all those people in that film
are CHADD leadership? Should they have told you that CHADD gets twenty
percent of its money from the people who make Ritalin?”
HEHIR: “I should have known that.”
MERROW: “They should have told you.”
HEHIR: “Yes.”
This funded video, in which CHADD devotes all of twenty seconds to
mentioning Ritalin’s adverse effects, is no longer distributed by the US
Department of Education.
CHADD has now told its members that it receives funding from Ciba. It says it will continue to take money from Ciba.
This is an example of how a corporation can, behind the scenes, bend and shape the way the public sees reality.
In the case of the school shootings, has an attempt been made to mold
media response? To highlight various causes and omit others?
Real action is going to have to come from the public. Mothers in
Littleton and Springfield and West Paducah and Jonesboro are going to
have to ask the hard questions and become relentless about getting real
answers. They are going to have to learn about these drugs. They’ll have
to learn which violent children in the school shootings were on these
drugs. They are going to have to throw off robotic obedience to
authorities in white coats. And they are going to have to join together.
If they do, many people will end up standing with them.
POSTSCRIPT (circa 2001)
Since this inquiry was published in early May 1999, I have had
requests to include more information about Ritalin. Mothers have told me
they need whatever they can get their hands on, in order to deal with
teachers, school principals, school boards, and government agencies who
are determined to force Ritalin on their children.
To begin with, I would suggest that these concerned and embattled
parents write letters to many medical and psychiatric and
law-enforcement officials of high standing, asking for a definitive
answer to the questions: Is it legal to pressure us with threats? Can my
child be kept out of school if I refuse Ritalin? A background of
on-the-record No’s can be used to enlighten the ignorant.
Let’s start with the first listed symptoms of the condition
officially named Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).* For
this I am consulting the DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, published by the American
Psychiatric Association.
[ *In a domain of embarrassingly crude definitions, ADHD and ADD
(Attention Deficit Disorder) are more or less equivalent. ADHD is the
larger, more opulent land-vehicle which has replaced the older mini-van,
ADD. ]
“Individuals with this disorder [ADHD] may fail to give close
attention to details or may make careless mistakes in schoolwork or
other tasks (Criterion A1a).”
“Work is often messy and performed carelessly and without considered thought… (Criterion A1b).”
“They [students] often appear as if their mind [sic] is elsewhere or
as if they are not listening or did not hear what has just been said
(Criterion A1c).”
The reader immediately assumes that, although these symptoms are
vague and could stem from many reasons on many different days of the
week, the whole business must somehow be attached to a central
underpinning, one thing from which the diverse behaviors arise, like
debris floating on the sea from a ship that has already sunk.
But, staying with the DSM-IV, under a nearby section called
“Associated laboratory findings,” we read: “There are no laboratory
tests that have been established as diagnostic in the clinical
assessment of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.”
So although behaviors are offered as signs of ADHD, no organic cause is named.
Despite that, an official psychiatric disorder, ADHD, has, in the
absolutely official DSM-IV, been catalogued and presented as needing
medication.
But without a central cause, basic logic dictates, there is no assurance of a Disorder.
Comes then, in the DSM-IV, a sub-category of ADHD called Conduct
Disorder, the invention of which, as a “disease,” communicates a degree
of utter fabrication that is stunning.
“The essential feature of Conduct Disorder is a repetitive and
persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or
major age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated. These
behaviors fall into four main groupings: aggressive conduct that causes
or threatens physical harm to other people or animals (Criteria A1-A7),
non-aggressive conduct that causes property loss or damage…”
Again, no cause. No microorganism, no chemical imbalance, no brain
malfunction. Just a bald kidnapping of certain kinds of bad behavior
under the title of “medical problem.”
“What we have here is an illness.”
“Really? What’s the cause?”
“Well… we don’t know.”
“Then how do you know it’s an illness?”
“Because people have it.”
“Have it?”
“Yes.”
“You mean they behave in various ways.”
“Well…”
Conduct Disorder is superseded in transparency only by another ADHD category, Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
Why not form up an infant condition called Frowning and imply it has a single invariable biological root?
There are gentle members of our society who pray and believe that the
authorities really do have a clue because they simply must. Because
otherwise the whole so-called mental health edifice might come crashing
down around our ears.
In the gold-plated PDR, the Physician’s Desk Reference for
1999, under the drug Ritalin (methylphenidate), we are cautioned:
“Specific etiology (causation) of this syndrome [ADHD] is unknown, and
there is no single diagnostic test.”
Again. Define a disease without knowing what causes it. And, give a drug (Ritalin) for it.
To know that something is a disease is to know the cause.
Otherwise, and certainly as time goes on, you cannot say you have a
disease at all. You can only say you have a series of loosely connected
or similar behaviors or symptoms, and you suspect there may be a single
agent bringing them all about. You have a feeling. You have a hunch. A
premonition. Faith.
On that basis, should over two million American children be treated with Ritalin for ADHD?
The 1999 PDR states, “Sufficient data on safety and efficacy of
long-term use of Ritalin in children are not yet available.” That is a
staggering remark. Particularly on the safety side.
The first tier of adverse effects listed for Ritalin in the PDR
includes: nervousness, insomnia, hypersensitivity (including skin rash),
fever, necrotizing vasculitis, anorexia, nausea, dizziness,
palpitation, dyskinesia, tachycardia, angina, cardiac arrhythmia. These
effects are rounded out by Tourette’s syndrome and toxic psychosis.
Again, Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics
states that Ritalin is “structurally related to amphetamines… Its
pharmacological properties are essentially the same as those of the
amphetamines.”
A parent said to me, “You mean the doctor is prescribing speed for my son?”
I referred her to the above quote a number of times. Perhaps with sufficient chanting of it she will finally get the message.
Any drug counselor can tell you about speed: it makes some people
feel better for a little while. Your head clears up. You function more
clearly. You have confidence. Then that all disintegrates and you slowly
or quickly crash. You develop very negative symptoms. (See Scarnati
above.)
This is not complicated. Ritalin is speed dressed up as a medicine.
Users frequently go on to other drugs to even themselves out. They
become aggressive, they have physical problems.
One parent told me her doctor assured her that “many children are
helped by Ritalin.” When she asked him for names and statistics he
smiled and said, “I’m not in the business of supplying proof to every
question. I wouldn’t have time to practice medicine.” She continued to
press him. She asked him if he was aware that the PDR cannot offer proof
of the safety of Ritalin over the long-term. He said, “What do you want
me to do?” “Not give the drug,” she said. He promptly ended the
conversation. It not being on the clock.
For some people, the corporation itself, the manufacturer of a
pharmaceutical, is the ultimate referral point, the final back-up for
believing in the safety and efficacy of the drug. Along with the FDA,
which is held inviolate by many, the company emanates an aura of
honorable purpose. As in, how could a drug corporation spend decades
turning out these medicines if they weren’t Good?
The original patent-holder and principal manufacturer of Ritalin is
Ciba-Geigy, whose headquarters are in Switzerland. C-G is now Novartis,
having merged with Sandoz, but I shall continue to call the company
Ciba, for historical purposes.
In addition to my comments above on CHADD, the Ciba-financed ADHD
support-group, let’s take this a little further. Has Ciba ever been
involved with another drug which was shown to have profoundly negative
effects? In other words, should the corporation’s prior reputation
inspire naive faith?
In the autumn of 1970, the Japanese government banned the use of all
medical drugs in Japan which contained the compound called clioquinol.
These antidiarrheal medications were manufactured under a variety of
names by Ciba.
More than 11,000 people in Japan had suffered from the effects of
clioquinol between 1955 and 1970. Some of the symptoms: numbness,
blindness, paralysis, death.
There was a smokescreen between clioquinol and the Japanese
discovering that the drug was the cause of what was being called
subacute myelo-optic neuropathy (SMON). The medical establishment was
bent in the direction of looking for germs.
Eventually, through the courageous work of several researchers and a lawyer, the truth was exposed.
But Ciba knew as early as 1935 that there were serious problems with
clioquinol. Reports had come in from Argentina, where the compound was
introduced as an oral preparation for the first time. The same symptoms
which much later surfaced in Japan were being cited in Argentina.
Animal tests – as misleading as they are – are relied on by
pharmaceutical companies. In the case of clioquinol, Ciba found in the
late 1930s that cats were convulsing and sometimes dying from the drug.
Dogs were dying from seizures.
Dr. Olle Hanson, a Swedish researcher, published a paper in The
Lancet in 1966, linking optic atrophy and blindness to clioquinol.
Ciba did nothing.
Victims of the drug in Japan began to sue Ciba in 1972. It took 6
years to wring an apology and dollar damages out of the company.
Yet Ciba issued a press release in 1980 on SMON, saying “there is no
conclusive evidence that clioquinol causes SMON.” In fact, the company
continued to manufacture and sell drugs containing clioquinol in other
countries.
Ciba dragged its feet until 1985, at which time it stopped
manufacturing clioquinol for oral use. (This piece of history about
clioquinol and Ciba comes from several sources, including the excellent
information gathering organization, Health Action International, based
in Amsterdam, and one of its lead writers, Andrew Chetley.)
With ADHD, the developing premise that there was one condition at the
heart of all the symptoms was the error. It is an error that is made
every day in hundreds of labs around the world. Begin from the other
end. Jimmy is fidgety. He can’t sit still in class. He yells when he
should be quiet. He draws elephants when he should be adding numbers. He
walks around when he should sit down. He does cartwheels in the hall.
Imagine a good doctor interviewing Jimmy. For several hours, perhaps,
over several appointments. He wants to know all about the boy. Is he
bored? Is he feeling nervous in school? Is there someone he’s afraid of?
Is there a subject he really wants to study that is not being offered?
Does he have a buried talent? Is he eating various junk foods that
contain chemicals and preservatives which might be producing anxiety?
Does he have serious allergies? Are his parents absent or abusive? And
so on down the list, a very long list.
I have been told of several instances of so-called ADHD resolved
when, for example, correct changes were made in the foods and nutrients
children ate.
To this claim, psychiatrists often say, “That’s ridiculous. Nutrition
has nothing to do with it, because ADHD is a brain malfunction.” Of
course that is arrogantly begging the question, and the same arrogance
can be gleaned simply by opening up the DSM-IV and reading the sentences
about ADHD. They are rife with deductions based on unproven
assumptions, all concocted at a great emotional distance from children.
No, it’s one child at a time. One child at a time. That’s the way to
be a decent human being and a decent practitioner, instead of talking
nonsense from a very high cathedral.
There are enough relentless mothers of children out there to open up
new land, to change the damaging way this whole business is being
handled. And in the process, they might make Ciba and other similar
entities pay dearly for their misdeeds.
As one doctor has written, if a school official or doctor says that
your child must take Ritalin because he has ADHD, you have the right to
demand proof that ADHD is a disease in the first place. You have a right
to demand such proof all the way down the line, without backing away,
without buying bland assurances or arrogant threats from “highly
educated experts.” You have the right to state that the doctor in
question is stepping over the line into violating informed consent
statutes, because those laws insist that the patient is told the whole
truth about what is going to be done to him and why. You have the right
to say the demand that your child take Ritalin is an instance of medical
malpractice.
It is your choice.
It always is.
What follows is based on a series of conversations between educated
mothers and their doctors about Ritalin and ADHD. I’ve paraphrased the
mothers’ reports and telescoped them into one short conversation.
“My son needs medicine?”
“Yes. Ritalin. He has ADHD.”
“But I understand there is no proof that ADHD is a disease.”
“We know it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Through research.”
“But I’ve read that no definite cause has been found.”
“We’re still looking for that.”
“So it might be something else. My son might have problems that come from another source.”
“No, he has ADHD.”
“I’ve read the definition of ADHD in the DSM-IV. It’s a list of behaviors. They might come from a lot of different causes.”
“Who have you been talking to?”
“I’ve been reading.”
“ADHD is a disease.”
“A disease has a cause, Doctor. Otherwise there’s no way of knowing it’s one disease.”
“It takes time to learn all about diseases.”
“No. You have to know the cause. Otherwise you don’t know you have a
disease to begin with. My son could be hyperactive because of a hundred
things. He could have allergies.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Why?”
“There isn’t any literature on that.”
“I’ve talked to a number of health practitioners, and they tell me in some cases allergies caused the hyperactivity.”
“Rarely. Your son has ADHD. It’s like any other disease. Diabetes, for example. He needs medicine.”
“Nonsense. And besides, Ritalin is speed.”
“It’s a medicine.”
“I don’t want my son treated with it.”
“You’re being negligent.”
“According to what?”
“The psychiatric research on this subject.”
“I have research that says ADHD is not a disease and that Ritalin can have very harmful effects.”
“You’re being resistent.”
“No, I’m being careful. It’s my son’s life. You want to tell him that
he has a malady and that his brain is involved. That’s going to give
him the idea that something is wrong with him. That he’s less than
normal. I won’t let you do that unless you can show me the exact place
where it says Ritalin is caused by a particular thing. I know you can’t
show me that.”
“You’re being stubborn. You can’t just walk away from this.”
“Giving him Ritalin is walking away from it.”
“You know, the reason there are doctors is because we have skills and knowledge about these things. You don’t.”
“I’ve read enough of the literature. I can understand it when no
cause is given, when a bunch of behaviors are suddenly labeled a
disease. That’s bad medicine.”
“We’re getting nowhere.”
“You should go back to the basic literature on ADHD. It’s made up of
words that show no real proof. It’s my son. Until you can show me that
ADHD has an organic cause, and that Ritalin cures that, or changes it
for the better, you won’t get my okay.”
“You’re causing your son harm by this attitude.”
“No, I’m protecting him.”
“The people in charge at his school won’t think that. They’ll be very upset.”
“So I should give in to them because they’re upset? I don’t think so.”
“They might not let your son back in school.”
“Then I’ll sue them and anyone else who contributes to that decision.”
“You’d be up against very powerful people.”
“I’m not raising my son to be a coward, and I won’t be one either.”
“You know, most parents agree to treatment immediately.”
“They’re relieved about avoiding any involvement, any responsibility.
Or they’re just relieved to hear a doctor say it isn’t their fault.
They’re tired and worn out and they want a pill to do the job. I know
fifty kids at school who are on Ritalin, and I know things their parents
could be doing as parents that would calm their kids down. Without
drugs. In some cases that means being better parents. In some cases it
means exploring their environment.”
“Environment? What does that mean?”
“Chemicals that disturb the functioning of the body and the nervous
system. Toxins, pollutants, chemicals in the food. Allergies. Lots of
things.”
“No research points to those as the cause of ADHD.”
“Because the research I’m talking about isn’t usually carried on
under the banner of ADHD. ADHD is just a name. It’s very misleading and
has caused a lot of confusion…”
“You’re a troublemaker.”
“Listen, Doctor, this comes down to a question of rights. Do I have
the right, the civil and human right to refuse Ritalin for my child. I’m
informed. I’m aware. I’m not stupid. It’s my choice, regardless of what
you think.”
One of the mothers told me she was “referred” for psychological
counseling because she refused to allow Ritalin for her child. This
referring was done by her child’s pediatrician. The mother refused the
counseling.
So to summarize: over a period of years, psychiatrists doing
“research” collect child behaviors and assemble them into an
interlocking list. They call this list ADHD, although no cause has been
found, and they determine that a drug whose properties are essentially
the same as amphetamine, Ritalin, should be used to treat the disease.
When a parent refuses to allow the drug to be given, he or she may be
referred for counseling. This “therapy” would presumably involve digging
up the “real reasons” for the parent’s resistance. What is the parent
harboring that prevents him/her from wanting the child to get better?
Or, to put it another way, how can “licensed professionals” convince a
parent to abandon all semblance of rationality and pretend that, deep
down, the desire to protect a child from a dangerous drug is really a
neurosis, a phobia, a fragment of pathology perhaps itself requiring
medication?
Which proves that not all cold-blooded species live out of town.
As this postscript goes to press, we read in the May 22nd New York
Times that T. J. Solomon, Jr. the boy who wounded several of his
classmates at a suburban Atlanta school, was on Ritalin. Treated for
depression, he was possibly also on one of the SSRIs, such as Prozac or
Zoloft.
And Phil Hartman’s brother, the executor of the dead actor’s estate,
has just filed a suit against Pfizer, the manufacturer of Zoloft. Brynn
Hartman who murdered her husband a year ago, was being treated for
depression by Los Angeles psychiatrist Arthur Sorosky with Zoloft.
Some sources of information (may no longer be operating in 2012): Dr. Peter Breggin, psychiatrist, author, former full-time consultant with the National Institute of Mental Health. www.breggin.com ICSPP News. Phone: 301-652-5580 www.icspp.org
Dr. Joseph Tarantolo, psychiatrist, president of the Washington
chapter of the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians. Phone:
301-652-5580
The Merrow Report can be ordered by phone at 212-941-8060.
The ICSPP News publishes the following warning in bold letters: “Do
Not Try to Abruptly Stop Taking Psychiatric Drugs. When trying to
withdraw from many psychiatric drugs, patients can develop serious and
even life-threatening emotional and physical reactions… Therefore,
withdrawal from psychiatric drugs should be done under clinical
supervision…”
ADHD Action Group: 212-769-2457
Many thanks to Dr. Peter Breggin. Much information in this article was obtained through his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry. Jon Rappoport The author of an explosive new collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th
District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked
as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics,
medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine,
Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has
delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and
creative power to audiences around the world. www.nomorefakenews.com qjrconsulting@gmail.com
Jacob Roberts, the
Oregon mall shooter, and the shooter(s) at the Connecticut elementary
school, share a common trait: they committed irrational and inexplicable
murders.
This may seem like
an obvious fact, but it holds the key to understanding what is going
on. You don't look for an ordinary motive. Therefore, what are we
dealing with?
It's easy to say, "They were crazy," or "Who cares why they did it," but that gets you nowhere.
We have to shake
off our own conditioning to these repetitive murders. We have to shake
off the idea that "they just keep happening" and instead look below the
surface.
First and
foremost, we have to consider the possibility that SSRI antidepressants
like Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft were in play. The drugs have been well
studied. They do, in fact, push people far over the edge, scramble
neurotransmitter systems, and result in patients committing suicides and
murders.
My extensive
school-shooting report, written a decade ago, lays out the facts about
these drugs, and also about the amphetamine-type drugs prescribed for
ADHD, like Ritalin:
The meds cause
inexplicable violent behavior: suicide, homicide. The drugs were, in
fact, linked with the 1999 Columbine school shooting. Eric Harris, one
of the killers, was on Luvox, an SSRI antidepressant, which was taken
off the market by its manufacturer several years later.
It's long past the
time when police should continue to fear defensive psychiatrists. In
these latest tragedies, an investigation must be launched immediately to
see whether the shooters were on these drugs, or whether they had just
come off them. The withdrawal effects alone can be horrific.
You can be sure
drug companies have people striving to find out, in Oregon and
Connecticut, before anyone else does, whether the shooters were on the
devastating drugs. It's called damage control, which means, if
necessary, covering up or downplaying the facts.
The same kind of
damage control is no doubt being tried in the Aurora theater shootings,
where it finally leaked out that James Holmes was under the care of a
psychiatrist and was, most likely, on one or more of the drugs that
induce out-of-control violence---inexplicable baffling violence.
Jacob Roberts, the
Oregon mall shooter, was said to be happy-go-lucky, and then shortly
before the killings, "went numb." Investigate whether he was under the
care of a doctor, and whether he was given psychiatric drugs.
Whether either or
both of the shooters in Oregon and Connecticut were operating out of an
even darker mind-controlled program, as was apparently the case, for
example, with the dupe in the RFK assassination, Sirhan Sirhan, we are
still looking at Operation Chaos:
Generations of
children and adults have now fallen under the influence of
psychiatrists, who have given them these brain-scrambling chemicals, and
the overall outcome is certain. People will continue to launch
inexplicable motiveless murders, on a random basis.
The destabilizing
effects on the society, the debilitating effects on the population are
enormous. People are confused, they become more passive, they move a
little further each time into dependence on the authorities.
The government screws in tighter controls on freedom. New programs are mounted to take away guns from citizens.
All this is the
aim of the massive covert operation that is behind the "mental-health
establishment." Distort the brains and neurological systems of millions
of people, and let the chips fall where they may.
Mass murders are the consequences.
Whether or not
Jacob Roberts and the Connecticut school shooter(s) were on these
psychiatric drugs, Operation Chaos will proceed. The very fact that we
may never find out whether the latest mass murderers were drugged in
this way speaks volumes: powerful people don't want the truth to be
known.
This is a common
feature of all mass murders: the police and the prosecutors refuse to
investigate the psychiatric medicines, unless they are absolutely forced
to. They are under tacit orders to ignore that obvious and glaring
route of inquiry.
The most important
reason why? The hugely powerful drug companies, who are only a step
away from incrimination, when a shooter is driven to kill by the storm
created in his brain by the drugs.
Billions of dollars are at stake.
The pharmaceutical
companies have it all figured out. No matter how much is written and
discovered about the violence-inducing effects of psychiatric chemicals,
they can ride things out and keep selling those poisons. The FDA will
maintain a hands-off attitude. The money will keep rolling in unless:
One of these killers is shown to have killed because he was on Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Ritalin, or Adderall.
Terrible things
happened in Oregon and Connecticut. Terrible things will keep happening
unless a relentless pursuit of the truth is undertaken. Anything less
is obscene dereliction of duty.
To law-enforcement officials: blood is already on your hands. Find the truth and tell it.
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th
District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked
as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics,
medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine,
Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has
delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and
creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his
free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
What a tragedy… I’m saddened and almost speechless with this horrible news.
We need to pray for the families.
Watch the gun control crowd use this in order to round-up all the guns.
We are a nation that has taken God out of our schools, killed 53
million babies and taught our kids that they are descendants of apes.
Our children are told there are no absolutes, no right or wrong only
survival of the fittest. Insane, bloody video games, violent movies,
along with Occult themed music videos, are pumped into our children. Is
it any wonder we are seeing more of what I would consider demonic
violence manifest in these last days. L.A.
Here is a picture sent to me by Watcher Shawn; This is why there are no shootings in Israeli schools. Think about it.
ALL YOU BANNER'S --- HAVE NO ANSWER 4 THIS !!! ---SEEMS LIKE THEY PROTECT THEIR CHILDREN !!! HUMMM
We've
argued, for a long time, that just railing against "middlemen" misses
the point. There are always middlemen. But not all middlemen are
created equal. The distinction, that we've discussed multiple times, is
the difference between enablers and gatekeepers.
That is, historically, many middlemen came to power because they were
gatekeepers. If you wanted to do something -- be a musician, write a
book, sell a new product -- you effectively had to get "approval" and
support from a gatekeeper who had access to those markets. Being a
gatekeeper gave them enormous power, such that the gatekeepers often
became central to the market, rather than the people/companies
they were working with and it also allowed them to craft ridiculous
deals that were incredibly favorable to themselves, at the expense of
those they were working with. That, of course, is why there tends to be
so much inherent antipathy towards traditional gatekeepers.
In contrast to that -- and what we found most exciting about many of the
new companies that had popped up over the last decade or two -- was the
rise of middlemen as "enablers." These were situations where the
middlemen weren't gatekeepers, and weren't "required" to do what you
wanted to do. Instead, they were companies that helped give
people/organizations a lift up on what they were trying to do, while
keeping them and their work (rather than the middlemen) central to the
market. So, when you see things like eBay or Etsy or Kickstarter, those
are more enablers (and, yes, they do have some restrictions on use, but
they're more policy based, rather than "can you make us money"-based).
Of course, the truth is that there's a spectrum along which these
middlemen lie. It's not two separate buckets, where "enablers" are
here and "gatekeepers" are there. Rather, intermediary companies often
fall somewhere along that spectrum. It seems somewhat clear that, for
the most part, newer firms are becoming successful by being
enablers, rather than gatekeepers. But... they don't necessarily remain
enablers their whole lives. One thing that is worth paying close
attention to, is how companies shift over time, and when they start to
shift from being enablers to being gatekeepers.
In fact, it seems like some of the big "clashes" we've been seeing in
the tech/web world lately are along those lines. Lots of people have
talked about Instagram and Twitter fighting with each other,
which is just the latest in a series of "fights" among hot web
companies blocking each other. Considering that many of these companies
grew up on a web 2.0 ethos of openness and sharing -- and we're now
watching them get more locked down, proprietary and limiting -- it seems
obvious that some of these companies are moving along the spectrum from
enabler to gatekeeper.
Anil Dash recently wrote a great post in which he frets about the fact that we're effectively losing key parts of the open web,
which made the web great. You should read the whole post, as I
couldn't do it justice summarizing it here. Again, it seems like many
of his points are really about some of the more successful "internet"
companies moving along that spectrum more towards the gatekeeper side of
things, and that clashing with the more open spirit that the enablers
built their reputations on. Dash, rightly, points out that this is
self-correcting over time. We shouldn't necessarily fear the new
gatekeepers, mainly because a gatekeeper business model, while lucrative
in the short-term, is unsustainable in the long term.
Companies, which move along that chain chasing the easy money, need to
learn that they do so at their own peril. Becoming a gatekeeper merely opens up massive opportunity for a new enabler to disrupt you. That's a lesson that too many companies learn way too late.
That said, Dash fears that because a new generation is growing up in a
world with more closed systems, that we may lose some generational
knowledge of what came before:
This isn't some standard polemic about "those stupid walled-garden
networks are bad!" I know that Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and
LinkedIn and the rest are great sites, and they give their users a
lot of value. They're amazing achievements, from a pure software
perspective. But they're based on a few assumptions that aren't
necessarily correct. The primary fallacy that underpins many of their
mistakes is that user flexibility and control necessarily lead to a user
experience complexity that hurts growth. And the second, more grave
fallacy, is the thinking that exerting extreme control over users is the
best way to maximize the profitability and sustainability of their
networks.
The first step to disabusing them of this notion is for the people
creating the next generation of social applications to learn a little
bit of history, to know your shit, whether that's about Twitter's business model or Google's social features
or anything else. We have to know what's been tried and failed, what
good ideas were simply ahead of their time, and what opportunities have
been lost in the current generation of dominant social networks.
I both agree and disagree. I'm among those who get a bit frustrated
when I see new entrepreneurs trying something that was done before --
and they seem to have no knowledge of it (ditto for reporters who cover
the big "new thing" without mentioning that half a dozen companies did
exactly the same thing a decade earlier). But, some of that, I'll
admit, may just be the onset of old fogeyism. Yes, there's value in
knowing the past, and learning from it, but there is also value in the
naivete with which some new entrepreneurs jump into the pool -- often
not fully understanding the past. Will they repeat some of the
mistakes? Sure. Absolutely. But not being burdened with the past can
sometimes be a key ingredient in redoing something that failed in the
past, and in somehow making that slight unexpected tweak that just makes it work.
So, I agree wholeheartedly that the "new gatekeepers" mean that we've
lost some sense of what made the last generation of internet companies
great. And I do hope that the next generation that comes along can
similarly disrupt the last generation, often by being the enablers that
break up their new gatekeeper role. And I think that companies who
understand the history of how enablers disrupt gatekeepers should
understand why progressing down that spectrum in search of short-term
profits can lead to long-term pain. So I think it's wise for those companies
to learn from history. But I'm less worried about the new
entrepreneurs jumping into the space. They'll likely find their
opportunities in being the new enablers, because that's where the
disruption occurs.
Watching the cycles of innovation can be a fascinating (and at times
frustrating) past time. Companies make the same mistakes over and over
again. The ones, which actually don't fall for the usual traps, are few
and far between. But, in the long run, the new startups tend to be
pretty good at showing the old guard that they chose the wrong path.
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