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Psychiatric Pharma's forced medication on humans and animals

by Marburg monkey
The pharmaceutical psych corporations are still force medicating people and animals against their will. Psychiatric survivor and activist Sara Arenson is being force medicated in a Canadian psych ward. GW Bush's pet pharma corporation Eli Lily profits from animal testing and forcing psych medications into the bodies of human captives.
Did anyone think it would come to this again? Pharmaceutical corporations doing involuntary testing on humans sounds like a Nazi concentration camp nightmare. IG Farben (now Bayer) tested humans to obtain more accurate results. Animal testing is cruel but also inaccurate. The so called moral reasoning of the Nazis against animal testing was a propaganda cover so pharmaceutical/chemical conglomerate IG Farben could get more accurate results from involuntary human test subjects..

Bayer is looking for human test subjects..

http://www.raleigheconews.com/archives.php?id=63

Animal and human rights groups need to join up to speak out against pharmaceutical corporations and their involuntary testing of both humans and animals. Big Pharma is very powerful (nessie) and the opposition needs a strong voice..

Shut down Huntingdon Life Science!!

FREE SARA!

Sara Arenson, 25-year-old artist & activist,
has been captured by a Canadian psychiatric
institution where she is coercively drugged.
MindFreedom Shield Alert - 13 August 2004
 http://www.MindFreedom.org - please forward

FREE SARA!

Sara Arenson, 25-year-old artist & activist,
has been captured by a Canadian psychiatric
institution where she is coercively drugged.

Sara is a member of MindFreedom International,
which is issuing this MindFreedom Shield Alert.

ACTION: Please forward below statement. At BOTTOM
find 3 e-mail addresses of Canadian officials
you are encouraged to e-mail, plus more info.

A photo of Sara and this alert are also on web:

 http://www.livejournal.com/users/laan.

-----------------

Statement from Network to Free Sara Arenson

August 13, 2004 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ST. BONIFACE HOSPITAL, WINNIPEG, MANITOBA, CANADA

On the evening of Wed., August 4, 2004 Sara Arenson, a
twenty-five year old performing artist, student and
activist, was involuntarily detained in the psychiatric
ward of the St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg.

Sara was supposedly suffering a "mixed manic" episode,
according to an examining psychiatrist, although she
believes that "mental illness" is simply a label for
spontaneous personal expression that those in power
in our society find disturbing.

At the time of her confinement, Sara had been out
walking in downtown Winnipeg dreaming up unusual
ideas about science and spirituality, asking
questions of everyone she met, and laughing,
crying, and chatting with the hungry and the poor.

Because she is a naturally spontaneous, frank,
emotionally expressive and articulate person, and
had decided that evening to start asserting herself
in ways she never had before, friends and a
psychiatrist thought she was in trouble and in
need of "treatment".

The "treatment" that Sara has received has consisted
of incarceration in a psychiatric facility, where
she is being coercively drugged with Risperidone,
a powerful "atypical antipsychotic" whose common
side effects include weight gain, dizziness,
sleeplessness, racing heartbeat, restlessness,
and anxiety.

Sara is afraid to refuse this "medication," despite
the fact that when she was brought in no blood
tests were performed indicating any sort of
biochemical abnormality in her brain or elsewhere
(since then, blood work has been performed and she
has been deemed physically healthy except for
some systemic yeast).

Sara is afraid to refuse "medication" because after
her initial psychiatric interview, she was not
allowed to go home, but forcibly restrained with
an injection and brought into the psychiatric ward.

Now she does not want to risk being injected with
slower releasing forms of antipsychotic drugs, because
she has a fear of needles and wants to minimize the
amount of drug in her bloodstream.

WHO IS SARA?

Sara is a highly intelligent, charming, high-energy,
by turns sweet and sarcastic, sometimes sad and
sometimes happy person -- in other words, just like
everyone else on this planet.

She is a writer with a Winnipeg Arts Council Grant
and her first amateur production contract under
her belt, an actor studying theatre at the University
of Winnipeg, a vocal and vociferous vegan, an
occasional gardener, and she is interested in yoga,
meditation, science, music, natural healing, and
anti-capitalist social activism.

Although she is young and her arts career is only
beginning, she is willing to risk her good name by
publicly announcing the conditions of her detainment
if this is the only way that she can end a practice
that she finds absolutely immoral and unjustifiable
in a democracy.

Sara is not an atypical psychiatric patient. Many
are emotionally expressive and intelligent, with a
belief in a spiritual realm that our dominant
"rationalistic" society dismisses as fantasy and delusion.

In fact, this is the second time that Sara has been
locked up in the past two and a half years, indicating
just how easy it is for this kind of situation to arise.

The first time, March/April 2002, she was under extreme
stress because her father was in hospital dying from
congestive heart failure, and the doctors failed to
recognize her father's illness as a precipitating factor
in her desperate journey for meaning.

Since then, her father has passed away, and she has
had to come to terms with his loss while coping with
the trauma inflicted by her initial "treatment" at
the Health Sciences Centre. Yoga, meditation, healthful
eating, close friendships, acting classes, a writing
mentorship and intensive journal-writing have saved
her from the terrible loss of hope and self-esteem that
followed her first incarceration.

"I absolutely, positively did not feel helped by
that experience," says Sara. "I was bullied as a child,
and it was actually reminiscent of the same process,
basically being called a name -- 'bipolar' -- just
means that someone else thinks that you get too
happy and too sad. Well, my emotions are my
emotions, and I have every right to feel and
express them in all their intensity!" Sara is
a passionate person who refuses to give up the
full spectrum of feeling, from joy to agony.

Involuntary psychiatric detainment is a form of
incarceration. Sara is not allowed to leave the
psychiatric facility and its outdoor patio unless
accompanied by a member of staff or her family,
and she has had to be "well-behaved," i.e. not
to argue too vehemently, not to be rude or say
swear words to staff members, and not to threaten
violence, in order to earn this "pass" time. She is
unable to concentrate on her playwriting due to
duress and the effects of the psychotropic drugs
she is taking.

Sara does not feel that she deserves the type of
"treatment" she is receiving. Although doctors
and nurses continually argue with her that she
is mentally ill and that her denial of her illness
indicates a "lack of insight", she has thoroughly
researched the subject of mental illness in the
past two years and believes it to be an elaborate
myth or social ritual (see, for example, books by
Eliott Valenstein and Peter Breggin).

She believes that her sin is simply daring to be
herself in public, and that she is being called
medically deviant because our society no longer
condones the concept of treatment for moral deviance.

According to the Manitoba Mental Health Act, a
person may legally be treated against his or her
will in a psychiatric ward for up to three weeks,
for the simple crime of being strange around others.

No psychiatrist can predict with any certainty
who will be dangerous and who won't be. Studies
have shown how ineffective such predictions have
proven in the past. Furthermore, it does not
seem constitutional to lock someone up for a
potential crime; we know that we are living in a
sham democracy when dissidents are medicalized for
speaking their minds, or, in Sara's case, laughing
and crying their minds without the aid of illegal
drugs or alcohol.

Since when has creative emotional expression and
getting to know people constituted mental disease?

For as long as the medical establishment has been
in cahoots with the powers of oppression and injustice.

EVERY HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST MUST TAKE AN IMMEDIATE
INTEREST IN SARA'S CASE, BECAUSE IT AFFECTS US ALL.

Remember what happened in the Second World War to
the insane and disabled, and recall that the first
step in extermination of differences is isolating
and marginalizing certain people for their skin
color, beliefs or behaviour.

Sara is also Jewish, and as a child she used to
spend time imagining what she would have said to
the SS to try to convince them that she was a
human being before they shot her. Her present
situation is not entirely dissimilar to that
terrible fantasy.

Evil is evil, even when cloaked in the
shiniest rhetoric of health and fitness.

What does Sara have to say about her situation?

SARA SPEAKS OUT!

"It's hard for me to not feel personally persecuted
right now, but I'm just trying to persevere, trying
to be myself as best I can with the drugs and
confinement and everything," said Sara.

"These aren't bad people. They honestly think that
they're helping me and the other patients, who,
I've discovered, are awfully hurt, sensitive, and
perceptive people who are being turned into
zombies by all the drugs that are being forced into them.

"Several men have even told me about dizziness and
fainting from the so-called 'medications,' and one
slightly overweight woman said she was taunted for
wanting a second piece of veal for dinner.

"Is this the right way to help people in trouble?
We need to let the rest of society know that the
mental health system is rife with such human rights
abuses, they are just built right into the system
that defines people as either 'normal' or 'sick'?"

Sara does not know when she will be leaving the
St. Boniface General Hospital, since she will not
admit under any circumstances to having a "mental
illness", although she does tell us that she is
being treated well enough considering the situation.

The staff are kind within the limits of their orders,
and she is receiving proper vegan meals and her B12
supplements. Sara does not intend to give up her
battle against forced psychiatric treatment,
although she would never dream of taking psychiatric
drugs away from those who genuinely do feel helped
by them. Her battle is solely against coercive and
forced "treatment" such as the kind she is enduring.

"This is a political struggle, and it's on the level
of the law and administration, not individuals," says
Sara, whose father Murray, now-deceased, was a lawyer
who prided himself on helping working class people
get the kind of legal assistance they needed.

"It's the draconian nature of the Manitoba Mental
Health Act that we must challenge here. That's the
law that allows a person to be detained without
trial or consent for up to three weeks in a
psychiatric facility, just on the word of doctors
who are unfamiliar with the individual's
personality or temperament." She reminds us once
again that she is only taking her drugs under
coercion, and that they impair her thinking in
a small but perceptible way (she is on a low dose
of Risperidone, once in the morning and once before bed).

We ask that all concerned activists contact the
people below to demand that the Manitoba Mental
Health Act be radically revised.

Help Sara in her battle for freedom from
psychiatric oppression!

If you would like to contact Sara, please call
Michael Nerman at (204) 775-2684. He will forward
all messages to her.

~~~~~~~~~~~

* ACTION * ACTION * ACTION * ACTION

1) Please forward this alert to potentially
interested people, media, etc.

2) Please e-mail to these three Canadian officials'
e-mail addresses with a civil message to let them know
exactly how you feel about this situation:

 premier [at] leg.gov.mb.ca,  minhlt [at] leg.gov.mb.ca,  lperrin [at] sbgh.mb.ca

Also, please copy your e-mail message to the Network to
Free Sara, and they will try to get that to Sara, here:

 reality_namer [at] yahoo.com

3) If you are able to do more, please also
write, fax or phone the three Canadian officials
with a civil message:

The Hon. Gary Doer
Premier of Manitoba
Room 204, Legislature Building
450 Broadway
Winnipeg, MB R3C 0V8 CANADA
Phone: (204) 945-3714

Fax: (204) 949-1484

E-mail:  premier [at] leg.gov.mb.ca

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hon. David Chomiuk
Minister of Health
Province of Manitoba
Room 302, Legislature Building
450 Broadway
Winnipeg, MB R3C 0V8 CANADA

Telephone: (204) 945-3731

Fax: (204) 945-0441

E-mail:  minhlt [at] leg.gov.mb.ca

~~~~~~~~~~~

Patient Relations Officer
Room A1153
St. Boniface General Hospital
409 Tache Ave.
Winnipeg, MB R2H 2A6 CANADA

Telephone: (204) 237-2306

E-mail:  lperrin [at] sbgh.mb.ca

~~~~~~~~~~~

- end of alert -

Forwarded by:

MindFreedom Shield
MindFreedom Support Coalition International
454 Willamette, Suite 216 - POB 11284
Eugene, OR 97440-3484 USA

 http://www.mindfreedom.org
email:  office [at] mindfreedom.org fax: (541) 345-3737
phone: (541) 345-9106 toll free in USA: 1-877-MAD-PRIDE

MIND YOUR FREEDOM: United Action for Human Rights.

join here:  http://www.mindfreedom.org/join.shtml

MindFreedom Support Coalition International is an
independent non-profit uniting 100 sponsor groups
to win human rights & alternatives in mental health.
Accredited by the United Nations as a
Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with
Consultative Roster Status.


David Oaks, Executive Director
MindFreedom Support Coalition International
454 Willamette, Suite 216 - POB 11284
Eugene, OR 97440-3484 USA

 http://www.mindfreedom.org
email:  oaks [at] mindfreedom.org fax: (541) 345-3737
phone: (541) 345-9106 toll free in USA: 1-877-MAD-PRIDE

MIND YOUR FREEDOM: United Action for Human Rights.

join here:  http://www.mindfreedom.org/join.shtml

MindFreedom Support Coalition International is an
independent non-profit uniting 100 sponsor groups
to win human rights & alternatives in mental health.
Accredited by the United Nations as a
Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with
Consultative Roster Status.

Info on Eli Lily and Bayer (now seeking involuntary testing on humans in prison)

Animal rights groups have exposed the profit driven schemes of pharmaceutical corporations like Eli-Lily and Bayer (formerly Nazi conglomerate IG Farben) that force medicate both humans and animals with the backing of powerful psychiatric establishment..

could animal rights activists and psychiatric survivors join together in challenging the pharmaceutical corporations?

below is info about GW Bush and his pet pharma project Eli Lily;

 http://zmagsite.zmag.org/May2004/levine0504.html


More than one journalist has uncovered corrupt connections between the Bush Family, psychiatry, and Eli Lilly & Company, the giant pharmaceutical corporation. While previous Lillygates have been more colorful, Lilly's soaking state Medicaid programs with Zyprexa—its blockbuster, antipsychotic drug—may pack the greatest financial wallop. Worldwide in 2003, Zyprexa grossed $4.28 billion, accounting for slightly more than one-third of Lilly's total sales. In the United States in 2003, Zyprexa grossed $2.63 billion, 70 percent of that attributable to government agencies, mostly Medicaid.  

Historically, the exposure of any single Lilly machination—though sometimes disrupting it—has not weakened the Bush-psychiatry-Lilly relationship. In the last decade, some of the more widely reported Eli Lilly intrigues include: 

* Influencing the Homeland Security Act to protect itself from lawsuits 
* Accessing confidential patient records for a Prozac sample mailing 
* Rigging the Wesbecker Prozac-violence trial 


A sample of those who have been on the Eli Lilly payroll includes: 

* Former President George Herbert Walker Bush (one-time member of the Eli Lilly board of directors) 
* Former CEO of Enron, Ken Lay (one-time member of the Eli Lilly board of directors) 
* George W. Bush's former director of Management and Budget, Mitch Daniels (a former Eli Lilly vice president) 
* George W. Bush's Homeland Security Advisory Council member, Sidney Taurel (current CEO of Eli Lilly) 
* The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (a recipient of Eli Lilly funding)  


In 2002, British and Japanese regulatory agencies warned that Zyprexa may be linked to diabetes, but even after the FDA issued a similar warning in 2003, Lilly's Zyprexa train was not derailed, as Zyprexa posted a 16 percent gain over 2002. The growth of Zyprexa has become especially vital to Lilly because Prozac—Lilly's best-known product, which once annually grossed over $2 billion—having lost its patent protection, continues its rapid decline, down to $645.1 million in 2003. 

At the same time regulatory agencies were warning of Zyprexa's possible linkage to diabetes, Lilly's second most lucrative product line was its diabetes treatment drugs (including Actos, Humulin, and Humalog), which collectively grossed $2.51 billion in 2003. Lilly's profits on diabetes drugs and the possible linkage between diabetes and Zyprexa is not, however, the most recent Lillygate that Gardiner Harris broke about Zyprexa in the New York Times on December 18, 2003. 

Zyprexa costs approximately twice as much as similar drugs and Harris reported that state Medicaid programs—going in the red in part because of Zyprexa— are attempting to exclude it in favor of similar, less expensive drugs. Harris focused on the Kentucky Medicaid program, which had a $230 million deficit in 2002, with Zyprexa being its single largest drug expense at $36 million. When Kentucky's Medicaid program attempted to exclude it from its list of preferred medications, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) fought back. The nonprofit NAMI—ostensibly a consumer organization—bused protesters to hearings, placed full-page ads in newspapers, and sent faxes to state officials. What NAMI did not say at the time was that the buses, ads, and faxes were paid for by Eli Lilly.

Ken Silverstein, in Mother Jones in 1999, reported that NAMI took $11.7 million from drug companies over a three and a half year period from 1996 through 1999, with the largest donor being Eli Lilly, which provided $2.87 million. Eli Lilly's funding also included loaning NAMI a Lilly executive, who worked at NAMI headquarters, but whose salary was paid for by Lilly. Though NAMI's linkage to Lilly is a scandal to psychiatric survivors—whose journal MindFreedom published copies of Big Pharma checks to NAMI—the story didn't have the widespread shock value that would elevate it to Lillygate status. 

In 2002, Eli Lilly flexed its muscles at the highest level of the U.S. government in an audacious Lillygate. The event was the signing of the Homeland Security Act, praised by President George W. Bush as a "heroic action" that demonstrated "the resolve of this great nation to defend our freedom, our security and our way of life." Soon after the Act was signed, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert discovered what had been slipped into the Act at the last minute and on November 25, 2002, he wrote, "Buried in this massive bill, snuck into it in the dark of night by persons unknown... was a provision that—incredibly—will protect Eli Lilly and a few other big pharmaceutical outfits from lawsuits by parents who believe their children were harmed by thimerosal." 

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/May2004/levine0504.html


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