EXPOSED: The FDA’s Pants Are Down (Quick! Look!)

We got a glimpse of real journalism wriggling out of the mainstream this week…
It was pretty refreshing. It’s been a while.
We wish we could say the same about the story.
It made the cover of Newsweek. Here’s the picture…

You might’ve heard about this story. The most shocking part of it all, as you’ll see, is how routine it is in the world of ‘medicine.’
The article begins with the story of one 14-year-old Japanese girl.
She had been experiencing paranoid delusions.
You know the kind…
She thought someone was watching her. She thought someone was in the house. She felt like someone was watching her. And then, later, over a meal, she was convinced her food was poisoned.
A couple days later, she turned suicidal.
Odd thing is…
She had no history of mental illness.
But it hadn’t just sprung up out of nowhere…
The symptoms began when she started taking Tamiflu, the anti-influenza drug (also known as oseltamivir). The same drug that governments the world over have spent billions stockpiling (the U. S. alone spent $1.5 billion on a huge supply) since it received the FDA’s stamp of approval in 1999.
The Japanese teen lived. Others that took the drug weren’t so lucky.
At least 70 people have died from Tamiflu, many by suicide. One 14-year-old jumped off a balcony… one 17-year-old ran in front of a truck… a South Korean girl developed a temporary bout of bipolar disorder… and an 8-year-old displayed unusual behavior like growling and not responding to his name, among others.
Sure, this doesn’t happen to everyone.

This post was published at Laissez Faire on Nov 19, 2014.