Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose-leaf. I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results. Unless these appear, I cast aside the word as a sham and counterfeit, having no ring of the true metal. Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without activity and power. As a human quality, the glorious significance of affection is more than words: it is the tender, unselfish deed done in secret; the silent, ceaseless prayer; the self-forgetful heart that overflows; the veiled form stealing on an errand of mercy, out of a side door; the little feet tripping along the sidewalk; the gentle hand opening the door that turns toward want and woe, sickness and sorrow, and thus lighting the dark places of earth .
Just watched your interview with Senator Blumenthal when you mentioned that you lost all four of your grandparents to the unspeakable evil of Nazism. I just want to extend my sympathies not only for their deaths but also to you and your family–and countless others–for the pain inflicted today by the despicable words of Donald Trump. Mr. Trump’s words, and the beliefs they reflect, are a national disgrace, and all Americans of conscience need to repudiate his ugly and dangerous comments. If allowed to continue along this senseless path, Mr. Trump will do lasting harm to American society and to our standing in the world. By his words and his actions, Mr. Trump is putting our national security and our collective futures at grave risk.
The mother of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old who was killed during Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville, Va., says the way to truly honor her is to “make a difference in the world.” Her father also spoke at a memorial service on Wednesday. (Aug. 16)
Two award-winning educators – on a reservation in Arlee, Mont., and in Washington – share how literature has helped expand their students’ discussions, and perspective
Researchers have raised concerns about a drop in young people’s empathy over time and its possible link to everything from bullying to civic apathy. So a growing number of educators are including empathy among a range of social-emotional goals they believe will bolster not only children’s development but their academic performance as well.
How teachers work to build that into their classrooms can be as varied as the teachers themselves.
For Baldwin’s school district, empathy has been a focal point partly because of the area’s high rate of addiction and suicide.
“It’s really important to build those relationships…. It might be the one thing that gets some of our kids through – that relationship with a caring adult,” she says.
At the start of the school year, “students are reluctant, they feel nervous,” Baldwin says, even though most know one another. So she starts off with low-risk opportunities to talk in small groups about various topics. Then they’ll share something from the group to the rest of the class. “They’re not naming names … [but] they basically have to call out one of their group mates in a positive way.”
She moves on to Socratic circles, where some students in the center of the circle discuss a question while others observe and reflect on how they’re communicating. Over time, they become comfortable sharing things that are “really personal and really deep,” says Baldwin, the 2014 State Teacher of the Year in Montana.
A variety of resources are available for teachers and parents looking to boost young people’s understanding of and caring about people different from themselves. Here are just a few examples:
There are two themes that ring out clearly from the hundreds — actually thousands — of stories I have read this month: first, that we all deeply desire to be known and loved by our Creator God, and second, that we all desperately need to know that the people we are closest to, our families and friends, love us just because we breathe. Pretty simple, right?
When I was a little girl, I felt that my mother did not love me. I tried in every way to please her but without visible success. When my brother was born, my mother was overwhelmed with joy. She preferred him in every way. And so began a long, lonely existence in the shadow of my brother. As the years went by, my character gradually changed. There was an inward hardening, a new taciturnity. I was convinced that nobody loved me, that I was unwanted everywhere. Later I even believed that God had only hardship and injustice in store for me. I was convinced that mother love was for all others but not for me. Even years after, when Christian Science took the lead in my life, I still believed this.
Then one day the words of a Christian Science practitioner struck me. “Oh, darling,” she said to me, “you are not an orphan!” These few words were said with an undertone that was new to me. They came from a higher source. Something gave way in my heart, and a wonderful healing began.
As we become conscious of God’s motherhood and impartial, all-inclusive love, we will feel a greater and purer love for God than ever before and recognize the claims our divine Mother has on us. We will be awakened to a spiritual mother love within and a deep desire to show forth this divine quality in our daily life—to let those we come in touch with feel that the “tender relationship” of God and man is intact in spite of all contrary arguments of the material senses. These senses are incompetent to utter a single truth but are continually pouring into consciousness false suggestions of insurmountable barriers between individuals and peoples.
As we begin to understand the glory of the motherhood of God, as we gradually become aware that this divine mother love is uninterruptedly at work within us, enlightening and liberating us, we are freed from a self-imposed sense of personal responsibility for ourselves and others. We are freed from fear for the wellbeing of grown-up children who do not go the way we think is best for them. We can then let them go, trusting them to the wisdom of the divine Mother, who never lets Her children stray. Rejoicing in this newfound freedom, we find within ourselves the wideness of outlook and the spiritual strength to embrace in our thought—in our reflected mother love— all who are hungering for the love of a mother but are seeking it where it never can be found—in material sense.
Then said Jesus unto them . . . I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. . . . And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.
“I will love, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces of God wherewith to overcome all error.”4
Mary Baker Eddy
Violence erupts at white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.
One of the most urgent problems of the present day is the overcoming of hatred with love. This problem ranges from the broadest international context to the most intimate human relationship. No one is exempt from this necessity. It has much to do with our experiencing health and harmony, and it is pertinent both to individual and nation.
Such warnings are not new, but they need to be repeated. Christ Jesus pointed this out in his Sermon on the Mount. The disciple John emphasized it time and again. And in strong language Mrs. Eddy gives us this instruction: “Hate no one; for hatred is a plaguespot that spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us; brings suffering upon suffering to its possessor, throughout time and beyond the grave.”1
Jesus said, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.”2The influence of Christian Science in unfolding the transforming and healing power of divine Love has roused the resistance of evil. This shows up in aggressive forms of materialism. Mrs. Eddy says in the textbook, Science and Health, “Until the author of this book learned the vastness of Christian Science, the fixedness of mortal illusions, and the human hatred of Truth, she cherished sanguine hopes that Christian Science would meet with immediate and universal acceptance.”3
But Jesus’ example in overcoming hatred with love gives hope to the human race in every age. It can be done; and Christ, as the true idea of God, shows us the way. Christ shows us the unreality of evil either as cause or effect. It enables us to see through the conflagrations, the violent eruptions, the subtle or obvious opposition to Truth, and to prove the presence and power of divine Principle. Love reveals the fact that all men have one common good, that there is actually no conflict of interests, that good is infinite and available to all, that there is no valid basis for suspicion and distrust. The oneness of God establishes the oneness of man as God’s reflection.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus [not less than or unequal]”.
Ellen DeGeneres might not have dealt with bullies as a child, but after coming out as an adult in Hollywood, she says she faced cruelty she hadn’t known before.
“The bullying I endured [in Hollywood] after I came out made up for the lack of it during my childhood,” she said. “I moved out of L.A., went into a severe depression, started seeing a therapist and had to go on antidepressants for the first time in my life,” she says. “It was scary and lonely. All I’d known for 30 years was work, and all of a sudden I had nothing. Plus, I was mad. It didn’t feel fair — I was the same person everyone had always known.”
DeGeneres came out publicly ahead of the airing of her then-show “Ellen”’s “The Puppy Episode” in April 1997, in which her character came out, too. A year after that episode aired ― to 40 million viewers, no less ― ABC canceled the show.
“I lost my entire career, and I lost everything for three years,” DeGeneres told W magazine in May 2007. “I was so angry, I was just so angry … I came out, which was good for me, and ultimately it was the only thing I could do. And then I got punished for it.”
“Eventually I started meditating, working out and writing again, and I slowly started to climb out of it,” she told Good Housekeeping. “I can’t believe I came back from that point. I can’t believe where my life is now.”
The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it’s one of the reasons that some people don’t like the books, but I think that it’s a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.
J.K. Rowling
Editorial – The family bond that cannot be broken By Tony Lobl, CS
From the July 10, 2017 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel
By Tony Lobl, CS
In our heart of hearts, none of us wants our family ties to be broken.
That stands to reason, because we each have a spiritual sense within us—a capacity to see beyond the many material details of our lives, to what God knows. And with this spiritual sense we can perceive one universal family we each belong to. In this family the ties that bind are never torn apart by grief, nor severed by any geographical or emotional parting of the ways. In this family, Spirit, God, is the perfect, divine Parent—our divine Father-Mother—and we are all His solely spiritual offspring, bonded together in an unbreakable spiritual unity.
In best-case scenarios we gratefully see this ideal family reflected in human families formed of mutual fondness, compassion, kindness, and belonging.
Sadly, this isn’t always how human relationships play out, either within the global family of mankind or within our own families.
Just over a year ago, a shooter opened fire on a crowd in an Orlando, Florida, club predominantly frequented by the LGBT community. Dozens of innocent lives were lost, and families and friends were left grieving. In the wake of such targeted hatred, I immediately reached out to people dear to me who openly identify themselves as gay—including a fellow church member, my brother, and his marriage partner—to express love and care for them.
On the 24-hour news cycle, talking heads mainly focused on the big-picture tragedy. But one lone voice particularly moved me. In a missive addressed to the killer, author K. G. MacGregor pinpointed what she called the real fear faced by LGBT people in everyday life, a fear which would strike a chord with anyone who has ever dreaded, or experienced, broken family ties.
What if we were to see every individual as our divine Parent’s son or daughter, and just love them?
“Real fear [is] being unloved. By our parents, our siblings. By our extended families and dearest friends. By our schools, churches, workplaces and communities. There’s nothing you can ever do to us that scares us more than the thought of losing love,” she wrote.
In the spiritual understanding of Christian Science, fear is ultimately never real in the light of divine Love’s allness. And the truly satisfying and enduring spiritual love that reflects this divine Love, and which makes up our true identity as God’s children, can never be lost. But as I read MacGregor’s words, I put myself in the shoes of those who had found themselves “unloved” by those they’d grown up with or grown close to—or by those at church they had grown into fellowship with. And I yearned to see all such loss of familial affection become a thing of the past.
At their best, family members love one another impartially. Such love can not only safeguard a family member going through a potentially vulnerable period in his or her life, but can also safeguard every other family member’s connection to a son, daughter, sister, brother, nephew, or niece, whose love they should never be deprived of.
And when this impartial love is founded on God’s love—by which we love man as the pure image of divine Love itself—it does more than tolerate differences. Such love lifts the atmosphere of thought to that place where those we relate to genuinely feel loved, whatever differences we might feel we have. And loving our kith and kin no matter where they might be in their individual demonstration of spiritual growth fulfills our obligation to support them in moving forward morally and spiritually, just as we would want to be supported in our own efforts to do so.
Such empowering love is best seen in the spirituality Christ Jesus exemplified, which enabled individuals to feel both the love of God that heals broken minds and bodies and the power of Truth that transforms character. The Christ, the voice of the true Mind, God, so clearly perceived in Jesus’ love for all, shines a light on what we all spiritually are as objects of God’s never-ending affection. To affirm this understandingly is prayer that brings out an affection within us that unreservedly expresses Love’s care.
For instance, I recently talked with a Christian Scientist who had met and married a man whose adult daughter was the first openly gay person this Christian Scientist had ever known. I asked, “So how did you respond when finding this out about your daughter-to-be?” She simply said, “Well, I just loved her.”
As her husband’s daughter, and as God’s daughter, she has loved this young woman for over a decade now. She and her husband regularly voice that love, and express it in tangible ways, to both the daughter and her partner.
What if we were to see every individual as our divine Parent’s son or daughter, and just love them? Isn’t our willingness to see the unbreakable bond between the divine Mind and all its ideas the right starting point for guiding all our relationships?
By contrast, it’s the carnal mind—the opposite, material belief of man as separate from God—that tears families apart. This false mentality is pictured in the Scriptures as a talking serpent tempting us to act and react based on a false, fleeting sense of man as matter-defined rather than Spirit-created. But we don’t need to listen to the whispers of this serpent. People, in good faith, wrestle with the Scriptures and sincerely arrive at contrasting conclusions about what particular Bible passages teach. But can’t we all unite in praying to support families being havens of love, where we’re all wholeheartedly valued and welcomed, while also being seen beyond every temporal label as the loved, divine idea of God we each actually are?
And if that doesn’t happen? A Bible promise says, “God setteth the solitary in families” (Psalms 68:6). So in cases where families haven’t been the havens we would wish, we can pray to know, as Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures says, “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 494). This applies wherever we are on our journey of understanding and proving the purely spiritual identity that ultimately defines us all. As loved sons and daughters of the Divine, we each have a forever fixed place within our divine family whose bonds have never been broken, and cannot be broken. These forever family bonds include each and every one of us equally, in unbroken unity with the Love that Mrs. Eddy describes as “man’s only real relative on earth and in heaven” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896,p. 151), our Father-Mother God.
Tony Lobl
And take a look at our graphic below. You might not have thought that marriage equality legislation could drive down youth suicide rates. But it looks like it has, particularly for sexual minorities. Check it out – and be reminded of what a “you are welcome here” sign can make in a young person’s confidence and desire to excel.
Amelia Newcomb
Senior Editor with The Christian Science Monitor’s EqualEd section
I was asked recently if you need to experience adversity to learn or to understand and help others who are going through the same thing.
Perhaps?
Why is it that most of the people who reached out and helped survivors of Hurricane Katrina were hurricane survivors themselves?
I remember my first high risk call as a crisis intervention and suicide prevention counselor for LGBT youth. I deescalated a call from a 14 year old youth who felt unloved by his family. But he believed in and loved God. Thus I empowered him to understand that he was loved unconditionally by God since he already had God in his life. He stopped fighting me after this conclusion.
Faith and spirituality is an unobstructed path to hope. Why hope? Because hope is the major weapon against suicide.
I then asked for his permission to pray for him. He stated he wanted me to pray for him because I wanted to not because he wanted me to Pray. He also stated nobody had ever prayed for him as far as he knew.
After receiving his permission I stayed with him in prayer for three nights as we were not given the same caller ever again.
This was the only call which I broke down crying after bringing the call to a conclusion.
I still remember the stillness in my office and the question which came to me from the universe and asked if I could go back and erase all the pain that made me made me effective in reaching this child would I do it.
NO! The past is what shaped and humbled me to be an effective counselor. His last words were: “You are authentic”.
I had no further contact from the caller who I helped. But I felt the weight lift before bringing the call to a conclusion.
Why is this important?
I remember the night Robin Williams died and a church member told me Robin Williams was a coward for taking his life. Thus I stood up and gave a Wednesday Night Testimony that perhaps his pain exceeded his capacity to cope. But divine Love is with him right here, right now for eternity.
Robin’s mother was a student of Christian Science.
So you decide. Would that church member have been effective in deesculating the high risk call?
Perhaps if he had been touched by suicide he wouldn’t have said that.
I also remember a woman who reached out to me in my previous career in mental health. She stated too many youth are falling through the cracks into suicide. Perhaps it takes a special person to understand and reach them?
Perhaps?
Robin Williams’s unexpected death Monday brings to an end the comedian’s long battle with cocaine and alcohol addiction.
Williams checked himself into a renewal center just a few weeks ago, but his battle with addiction dated back more than 30 years.
More specifically, Williams told Parade in 2013 of the moment that led him to drink again: “One day I walked into a store and saw a little bottle of Jack Daniel’s. And then that voice — I call it the ‘lower power’ — goes, ‘Hey. Just a taste. Just one.’ I drank it, and there was that brief moment of ‘Oh, I’m okay!’ But it escalated so quickly. Within a week I was buying so many bottles I sounded like a wind chime walking down the street.
Actor Robin Williams arrives to attend the 2006 New York Film Critics Circle Awards in New York in this January 7, 2007 file photo.REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/Files
Robin Williams was born in 1951. He described himself as a shy child until he became involved in his high school’s drama department, where he soon proved himself to be a talented actor. In 1973, he was one of only 20 freshman students to be accepted into the prestigious Juilliard School for drama. During his career, Williams starred in everything from slapstick comedy to drama, taking on leading roles in iconic films such as “The Dead Poets Society,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and “Hook.” He soon earned a reputation as one of the greatest comedians of his generation, known for the wide variety of characters he played in his films and his stand-up comedy.
Williams won awards for both his dramatic and comedic acting, including multiple Golden Globes, Emmy Awards, and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in “Good Will Hunting.” A great improvisational comedian, Williams made up many of his best and funniest lines on the spot, even in films that were fully scripted.
1. Talent
“You’re only given a little spark of madness, and if you lose that, you’re nothing.”
– from “A Night at the Roxy” comedy show (1978)
2. Seize the day
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File
“Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”
– from “Dead Poets Society” as John Keating (1989)
3. Loss
AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File
“You don’t know about real loss because it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself. I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much.”
“Good morning, Vietnam! Hey, this is not a test. This is rock and roll. Time to rock it from the delta to the DMZ!”
– from “Good Morning Vietnam” as Armed Forces Radio DJ Adrian Cronauer (1987)
9. Poetry
REUTERS/Fred Prouser/Files
“But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, ‘O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?’ Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
“You have been a fabulous audience! Tell you what, you’re the best audience in the whole world. Take care of yourselves! Good night, Alice! Good night, Agrabah! Adios, amigos!”
We totally support and applaud the excellent motives of those who labor as doctors and nurses on behalf of their patients and for the well-being of all of us. The following is a caveat of the dark side of drug manufacture, use and abuse which too infrequently has seen the light of day. Let’s not be the “Christian asleep” on these issues. By uncovering these errors we hope to wake people up to the grave dangers of putting profits over patient care. Perhaps there needs to be a little more “care” in healthcare.
The US is only one of two countries in the world (the other being New Zealand) which allows drugs to be advertised on television. Why is that?
Righteous art thou, O Lord, and upright are thy judgments. . . . Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it. . . . Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth.
King James Version of the Bible
Psalms 119:137, 140, 142
***
Take from a lie its power to deceive and it becomes nothing, for its very being depends upon its ability to mislead. A lie must have two willing accessories – one who is willing to be deceived: one who is willing to deceive – the victimized and the victim; if either is wanting, the lie can do nothing.
Mary Baker Eddy
Blue Book by Richard Oakes
***
When wisdom bids one uncover to another a sinful belief in order that it may be destroyed by Truth, there is often a hesitancy to do so. It sometimes seems easier to remain silent … than to risk offending … Jesus must have loved Peter dearly, yet he did not withhold the necessary rebuke when Peter permitted false beliefs to deceive him.
I have patients who are at a level of despair that I cannot reach as we don’t have a pill for “hope”.
Chair, Department of Psychiatry
Three Hospital system
The Lancet
Drugs kill. After heart disease and cancer, drugs are the third leading cause of deaths in Europe and the USA, states Peter Gøtzsche in Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare. He estimates that in the USA, every year, about 100 000 deaths are due to drugs, despite people taking the drugs correctly, and another 100 000 people die because of errors. According to Gøtzsche, “we now suffer from two man-made epidemics, tobacco and prescription drugs, both of which are hugely lethal” and the norm for both industries is a “morally repugnant disregard for human lives”. Furthermore, Gøtzsche claims, the business model of the drug industry is “organised crime”. He told The Lancet that he has written his latest book because he wants to “influence policy towards much more transparency”.
Throughout Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime Gøtzsche uses many anecdotes, provides countless facts and comments based on facts, and cites more than 900 references to draw attention to the allegedly shocking crimes committed by the drug industry (including manufacturers of medical devices). Gøtzsche understands pharmaceutical companies only too well because of his long and varied career in health care, with roles that have included drug representative for big pharma, researcher in clinical trials, physician, lecturer, and author of papers and books. He cofounded the Cochrane Collaboration and is the Director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen. With his expertise and uncompromising attitude, Gøtzsche is outraged and outspoken in his book about pharmaceutical companies being “just like street drug pushers”.
The Lancet (Peer Reviewed Medical Journal), Volume 383, Issue 9915, Page 402, 1 February 2014
For years, a trio of anemia drugs known as Epogen, Procrit and Aranesp ranked among the best-selling prescription drugs in the United States, generating more than $8 billion a year for two companies, Amgen and Johnson & Johnson. Even compared with other pharmaceutical successes, they were superstars. For several years, Epogen ranked as the single costliest medicine under Medicare: U.S. taxpayers put up as much as $3 billion a year for the drugs.
The trouble, as a growing body of research has shown, is that for about two decades, the benefits of the drug — including “life satisfaction and happiness” according to the FDA-approved label — were wildly overstated, and potentially lethal side effects, such as cancer and strokes, were overlooked.
Last year, Medicare researchers issued an 84-page study declaring that among most kidney patients, the original and largest market for the drugs, there was no solid evidence that they made people feel better, improved their survival or had any “clinical benefit” besides elevating a statistic for red blood cell count.
“It was just so easy to do — you put this stuff in the patient’s arm, and you made thousands of dollars,” said Charles Bennett, endowed chair at the Medication Safety and Efficacy Center of Economic Excellence at the University of South Carolina and one of the critics of the use of the drug in cancer patients. “An oncologist could make anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000 a year from this alone. And all the while they were told that it was good for the patient.”
For those who have lost relatives who had been given the drugs, only doubts remain: What killed their loved ones — the disease or the drugs they took to treat it?
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that GlaxoSmithKline had agreed to pay $3 billion in criminal and civil fines for its misdeeds in inappropriately marketing Paxil and another antidepressant, Wellbutrin; for withholding information on the cardiovascular risks of Avandia, a diabetes drug that has been shown to cause heart attacks; and for promoting Advair, an inhaled lung drug, to patients with mild asthma even though it wasn’t approved or appropriate for them. The fine was the largest ever imposed by the U.S. on a pharmaceutical company and settled both civil and criminal charges.
The settlement agreement and the attached documents were full of juicy details that have now been widely reported: How GSK orchestrated the publication of a “misleading,” ghost-written study purporting to show that Paxil helped children when evidence suggested the opposite.
Drug Research in China Falls Under a Cloud
By KATIE THOMAS
JULY 22, 2013
The New York Times
The confdential document from November 2011, obtained by The New York Times, suggests that Glaxo’s problems may go beyond the sales practices that are currently at the center of a bribery and corruption scandal in China. They may extend to its Shanghai research and development center, which develops neurology drugs for Glaxo.
Glaxo’s research and development center opened in 2007 with lofty ambitions not only to help the company’s drugs get approved in China, but also to serve as one of its primary research hubs.
***
GlaxoSmithKline Fined $488.8M for ‘Massive Bribery Network
KAIJING XIAO
Friday, September 19, 2014
BEIJING –
China has fined the British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) $488.8 million (3 billion Yuan) for a “massive bribery network” to get doctors and hospitals to use its products. Five former employees were sentenced to two to four years in jail, but ordered deported instead of imprisoned, according to state news agency Xinhua today.
Roger Griggs, who introduced Adderall in 1964 before ads portraying medication as a way to improve grades and behavior were allowed, said, “There’s no way on God’s green earth we ever promote stimulates directly to consumers. Karstan Moran said to The New York Times.
“After more than 50 years leading the fight to legitimize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Keith Conners could be celebrating.
But Dr. Conners did not feel triumphant this fall as he addressed a group of fellow A.D.H.D. specialists in Washington. He noted that recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school-age children, and that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990. He questioned the rising rates of diagnosis and called them “a national disaster of dangerous proportions.”
“The numbers make it look like an epidemic. Well, it’s not. It’s preposterous,” Dr. Conners, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Duke University, said in a subsequent interview. “This is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels.”
Behind that growth has been drug company marketing that has stretched the image of classic A.D.H.D. to include relatively normal behavior like carelessness and impatience, and has often overstated the pills’ benefits. Advertising on television and in popular magazines like People and Good Housekeeping has cast common childhood forgetfulness and poor grades as grounds for medication that, among other benefits, can result in “schoolwork that matches his intelligence” and ease family tension.”A magazine ad for Concerta had a grateful mother saying, “Better test scores at school, more chores done at home, an independence I try to encourage, a smile I can always count on.” A 2009 ad for Intuniv, Shire’s nonstimulant treatment for A.D.H.D., showed a child in a monster suit taking off his hairy mask to reveal his adorable smiling self. “There’s a great kid in there,” the text read.
Shire agreed last February to pay $57.5 million in fines to resolve allegations of improper sales and advertising of several drugs, including Vyvanse, Adderall XR and Daytrana, a patch that delivers stimulant medication through the skin. Mr. Casola of Shire declined to comment on the settlement because it was not fully resolved.
***
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, November 4, 2013
Johnson & Johnson to Pay More Than $2.2 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations
Allegations Include Off-label Marketing and Kickbacks to Doctors and Pharmacists
In a related civil complaint filed today in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States alleges that Janssen marketed Risperdal to control the behaviors and conduct of the nation’s most vulnerable patients: elderly nursing home residents, children and individuals with mental disabilities. The government alleges that J&J and Janssen caused false claims to be submitted to federal health care programs by promoting Risperdal for off-label uses that federal health care programs did not cover, making false and misleading statements about the safety and efficacy of Risperdal and paying kickbacks to physicians to prescribe Risperdal.
“J&J’s promotion of Risperdal for unapproved uses threatened the most vulnerable populations of our society – children, the elderly and those with developmental disabilities,” said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Zane Memeger. “This historic settlement sends the message that drug manufacturers who place profits over patient care will face severe criminal and civil penalties.”
In its complaint, the government alleges that the FDA repeatedly advised Janssen that marketing Risperdal as safe and effective for the elderly would be “misleading.” The FDA cautioned Janssen that behavioral disturbances in elderly dementia patients were not necessarily manifestations of psychotic disorders and might even be “appropriate responses to the deplorable conditions under which some demented patients are housed, thus raising an ethical question regarding the use of an antipsychotic medication for inappropriate behavioral control.”
The government’s complaint also contains allegations that Janssen paid speaker fees to doctors to influence them to write prescriptions for Risperdal. Sales representatives allegedly told these doctors that if they wanted to receive payments for speaking, they needed to increase their Risperdal prescriptions.
Off-Label Promotion of the Heart Failure Drug Natrecor:
This case is an example of a drug company encouraging doctors to use a drug in a way that was unsupported by valid scientific evidence,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Brian Stretch. “We are committed to ensuring that federal health care programs do not pay for such inappropriate uses, and that pharmaceutical companies market their drugs only for uses that have been proven safe and effective.”
How A Big Drug Company Inadvertently Got Americans Hooked On Heroin:
BUSINESS
02/24/2014 07:55 am ET | Updated Feb 25, 2014
HUFF POST
By Jillian Berman
In dozens of seminars in ritzy hotel conference rooms across North America, the company sold doctors on the idea that the time-release function made OxyContin perfect for a population of patients who were suffering from chronic pain. Representatives also argued that the drug’s spaced-out effects made it less likely that patients would get addicted — which was the main factor deterring many physicians from prescribing opioids for chronic pain.
“This campaign focused on convincing doctors that they shouldn’t worry about addiction, so the medical community was taught to believe that addiction to opiates was relatively rare,” said Andrew Kolodny, the director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing.
The pitch was convincing, Kolodny said, because no doctor wants to believe that they’re keeping a patient in pain unnecessarily. By 2001, OxyContin had exceeded more than $1 billion in sales, and by 2003, nearly half of the doctors prescribing OxyContin were primary care physicians, according to a 2004 report from the Government Accountability Office.
“As prescriptions began to take off, it led to an epidemic of opioid addiction,” Kolodny said. “We all became much more likely to have opioids in our homes, so it created a hazard.”
“We have now this incredibly unusual public health crisis that’s essentially caused by physicians, caused by the health care industry,” said Meldon Kahan, the medical director of substance use services at the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto.
In 2007, Purdue and three of its top executives pleaded guilty to misleading doctors, regulators and patients about OxyContin’s risk of addiction. The company agreed to pay more than $600 million in fines …
“The First Drug Czar Speaks”
[The antidote]
With contributions from Egil “Bud” Krogh (Drug Spokesperson under Nixon Administration)
From the October 2002 issue of The Christian Science Journal
Over the years, various strategies for dealing with illegal drugs have been attempted. They include incentives to steer farmers away from raising plants such as poppies, hashish, and coca that are the source of illicit drugs. A common complaint is that none of the alternatives to providing such crops—whether it’s raising cows in Lebanon or cucumbers in the Andes—is as lucrative or as easy. Recently, the Journal spoke with Egil “Bud” Krogh, who, under President Richard Nixon, became the United States’ first drug czar. He offered some observations about then and now.
What nurtures this belief that drugs will help?
“I think it goes right back to the feeling that materiality can give pleasure or satisfaction. Feelings of separation and loneliness drive people into drugs. For young people, it’s often just wanting desperately to be included as part of an in-group. There’s this really intense desire to belong—to have a boyfriend or girlfriend, or to be part of group.
The antidote is the understanding that we are all at one with our infinite divine source. That gives us all the joy and peace we could possibly want. But I think society still hasn’t grasped these ideas widely enough. In the long term, and even the short term, individuals who have been healed of using drugs have had a deeper insight into who they are. These people were able to give up drugs through the realization at some level that they were not separate and alone, that God was with them and loved them. I’m not sure they would put it in those terms, although some do. But I think a sense of being loved really does make the difference.”
