Tag: suicide

Drugmakers Hid Suicides, Manipulated Data to Falsely Show Safety in Antidepressant Drug Trials

Every now and then, a highly profitable pharmaceutical will come along that everyone also knows is quite dangerous.

Remarkably, rather than this stopping the product, it will often be pushed to market and the profits it generates will be used to ensure any objections to its safety get ignored and blown to the wayside.

One of my goals in writing has hence been to review the scandalous history of some of the most dangerous pharmaceuticals on the market.

This was done both to help those being harmed by them (e.g., consider the story of statins and the story of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs) and to illustrate that the horrendous malfeasance we’ve observed from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) throughout COVID-19 has been its standard operating procedure.

For example, I recently covered the story of Merck’s Vioxx, an unsafe and unneeded painkiller that was kept on the market until outside investigators proved it was causing heart attacks and strokes (estimated to have killed 120,000 people by the time Vioxx was withdrawn), something Merck was fully aware of from the start.

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Inside the cult top model joined after visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘pedo island’: Ruslana Korshunova was lured into Moscow’s ‘Rose of the World’ that humiliates members and tells rape victims it was THEIR fault

The last person Kazakh-Russian model Ruslana Korshunova called before she leaped to her death from her Manhattan apartment wasn’t her family, best friend, or even her boyfriend.

Minutes before her suicide on June 28, 2008, the 20-year-old called her ‘life coach’ who months earlier introduced her to shadowy cult Rose of the World.

Vladimir Vorobeyv, who was 22 at the time, met Korshunova at a party in Moscow in December 2007 and began a three-month romance.

Korshunova was at a crossroads, worn out by her frenetic life as a top model that had her at a shoot one day, and partying with billionaires the next.

One of those rich men was convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who flew her on his ‘Lolita Express’ to his private Caribbean island in June 2006, newly released documents revealed on Thursday.

Knowing she was despondent, Vorobeyv introduced her to Rose of the World just weeks after they met, initially signing up for a three-day $900 course.

Rose of the World is run by flashy Russian millionaire Vladislav Novgorodtsev, who shows off his wealth and exotic holidays online. 

Korshunova kept going for three months, along with her friend, fellow model Anastasia Drozdova, who also jumped to her death in 2009.

By the end of March she returned to New York in search of new modelling work but was making increasingly concerning posts on a Russian social media site.

The last day of her life began with a 10am walk next door to buy fruit, then she talked to her boyfriend Mark Kaminsky, then 32, about 12pm.

They made plans to got to a friend’s birthday party that night, before logging back in to the social media site at 12.19pm.

Soon after she called Vorobeyv, telling him: ‘I’m going to go out. I have friends coming by’.

‘She said she was feeling unwell, that she did not want to talk to anybody,’ he said.

‘She was not in a right mood. Before this, she often complained about her bad mood.’

Vorobeyv said just two days earlier she told him: ‘Even if I am not here any more, the whole world will talk about me’.

Minutes before she jumped to her death, Korshunova tried calling Vorobeyv a second time, but he was drinking at a bar and told her to call back later.

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Statistics Canada excludes assisted-dying deaths from annual mortality report

Medically assisted suicide is the sixth-leading cause of death in Canada, according to its federal health agency — a reality Statistics Canada excluded in a recent report.

The Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed that 13,241 Canadians accessed the medical assistance in dying (MAID) procedure last year, accounting for one in 25 deaths (4.1%).

However, a Statistics Canada report showed cancer (24.7%), heart disease (17.2%), COVID-19 (5.90%), accidents (5.50%), cerebrovascular diseases (4.17%), and chronic lower respiratory diseases (3.73%) caused most of the 334,081 reported deaths in Canada for 2022. 

“In the database, the underlying cause of death is defined as the disease or injury that initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death. As such, MAID deaths are coded to the underlying condition for which MAID was requested,” Statistics Canada posted on its X feed.

If a cancer patient accesses MAID to end their life, cancer would be listed as their cause of death.

A StatsCan spokesperson told the Epoch Times they excluded MAID-related deaths over the absence of an official classification by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Causes of death are coded using the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) 10th revision (ICD-10) […] There is no code for MAID in the ICD,” reads the email statement.

In addition, some provinces do not attribute MAID on medical certificates of death when the procedure is carried out. Provincial and federal vital statistics registries rely on this data, reported True North.

“Therefore, Vital Statistics is not a reliable source for tracking MAID. Stats Can will continue to classify deaths according to the WHO ICD rules,” said Health Canada.

Approximately 31,664 Canadians accessed MAID between 2016 and 2021, with an average year-over-year growth rate of 66%. In the previous data year, the feds recorded 10,029 such deaths — up 34.7% from 7,446 deaths in 2020. 

MAID accounted for 3.3% of all deaths in Canada in 2021, up from 2.4% of all reported deaths in the previous year.

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OxyContin’s Reformulation Linked to Rising Suicides by Children

In 2010, Purdue Pharma replaced the original version of OxyContin, an extended-release oxycodone pill, with a reformulated product that was much harder to crush for snorting or injection. The idea was to deter nonmedical use, and the hope was that the reformulation would reduce addiction and opioid-related deaths. That is not how things worked out.

The reformulation of OxyContin was instead associated with an increase in deaths involving illicit opioids and, ultimately, an overall increase in fatal drug overdoses. Researchers identified that pattern by looking at the relationship between pre-2010 rates of OxyContin misuse, as measured by surveys, and subsequent overdose trends. They found that death rates rose fastest in states where reformulation would have had the biggest impact. A new study by RAND Corporation senior economist David Powell extends those findings by showing that the reformulation of OxyContin also was associated with rising suicides among children and teenagers.

The root cause of such perverse effects was the substitution that occurred after the old version of OxyContin was retired. Nonmedical users turned to black-market alternatives that were more dangerous because their potency was highly variable and unpredictable—a hazard that was compounded by the emergence of illicit fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute. The fallout from the reformulation of OxyContin is one example of a broader tendency: Interventions aimed at reducing the harm caused by substance abuse frequently have the opposite effect.

From 1988 to 2010, Powell notes in the journal Demography, the suicide rate among 10-to-17-year-olds fell by 36 percent. That drop was “followed by eight consecutive years of increases—resulting in an 83% increase in child suicide rates.” Based on interstate differences in nonmedical use of OxyContin prior to 2010, Powell estimates that “the reformulation of OxyContin can explain 49% of the rise in child suicides.”

Since “the evidence suggests that children’s illicit opioid use did not increase,” Powell says, it looks like “the illicit opioid crisis engendered higher suicide propensities by increasing suicidal risk factors for children,” such as child neglect and “alter[ed] household living arrangements.” He notes a prior study that found “states more
affected by reformulation experienced faster growth in rates of child physical abuse
and neglect starting in 2011.” And he suggests the suicide rate may also have been boosted by “parental death and incarceration” associated with the shift from legally produced pharmaceuticals to illicit drugs.

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The story of a horrendous injustice and the three people who tried to expose it begins with a suicide note

Two years into his 25-year sentence for attempted aggravated rape, Nathan Brown could tell the man sitting across from him — a jailhouse lawyer improbably named Lawyer Winfield — was not going to help him get out of prison. It was astounding to Brown that he was pinning his hopes on a fellow inmate who had an eighth grade education and whose formal legal training amounted to a prison paralegal course. “But he knew more than I did,” Brown said.

Brown laid out for Winfield the details of his case. In the summer of 1997, a woman was assaulted in the courtyard of the apartment complex in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, where Brown was living with his mother. The woman, who was white, fended off the attacker with her high-heeled shoe until he fled on a bicycle. When sheriff’s deputies arrived, a security guard suggested they question Brown — one of the few Black tenants in the complex.

Brown, 23 at the time, was in his pajamas, rocking his baby daughter to sleep. The deputies put him in handcuffs and brought him to the victim. When she couldn’t identify him, the officers allowed her to get close enough to smell him. She had told them her attacker had a foul body odor. Brown, she would later testify, smelled like soap; he must have showered immediately after, she speculated. In a trial that lasted one day, the jury found him guilty. After his appeal was rejected, he no longer had a right to an attorney provided by the state.

Winfield began translating Brown’s grievances into a legal petition. He argued that Brown’s lawyer had provided ineffective counsel: He had overlooked the most basic defense strategies, failing to challenge the discrepancies in the victim’s story and to insist on DNA testing. The two of them worked on the petition for months, so Brown was surprised when the Louisiana 5th Circuit Court of Appeal delivered a rejection just a week later. The denial — a single sentence that didn’t address any of Brown’s claims — bore the names of three judges. But something didn’t feel right. How could they return the ruling so quickly? Why was it so vague?

The answer to those questions would come years later, in the suicide note of a high-level court employee who disclosed that the judges of the 5th Circuit had decided, in secret, to ignore the petitions of prisoners who could not afford an attorney. It was a shocking revelation. In a state where police and prosecutorial misconduct frequently make national headlines and a stream of exonerations has revealed a criminal justice system still functioning in the shadow of slavery and Jim Crow, a group of white judges had decided that the claims of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of inmates — most of them Black — were not worth taking the time to read.

Among those petitions was Brown’s claim that a DNA test would have proven his innocence.

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Canada Will Legalize Medically Assisted Dying For People Addicted to Drugs

Canada will legalize medically assisted dying for people who are addicted to drugs next spring, in a move some drug users and activists are calling “eugenics.” 

The country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) law, which first came into effect in 2016, will be expanded next March to give access to people whose sole medical condition is mental illness, which can include substance use disorders. Before the changes take place, however, a special parliamentary committee on MAID will regroup to scrutinize the rollout of the new regulations, according to the Toronto Star. 

Currently, people are eligible for MAID if they have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition”, such as a serious illness or disability, that has put them in an advanced state of irreversible decline and caused enduring physical or psychological suffering—excluding mental illness. Anyone who receives MAID must also go through two assessments from independent health care providers, among meeting other criteria. 

The contentious idea of including people who are addicted to drugs is being discussed this week at a conference for the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine in Victoria, British Columbia.  

“I don’t think it’s fair, and the government doesn’t think it’s fair, to exclude people from eligibility because their medical disorder or their suffering is related to a mental illness,” said Dr. David Martell, physician lead for Addictions Medicine at Nova Scotia Health, who is presenting a framework for assessing people with substance use disorders for MAID at the conference.  “As a subset of that, it’s not fair to exclude people from eligibility purely because their mental disorder might either partly or in full be a substance use disorder. It has to do with treating people equally.” 

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Lawyer, 81, who advised judge in Charles Manson trial shoots dead his wife, 75, before turning the gun on himself in murder-suicide in their $3.5 million Long Beach homes

A lawyer who was the legal advisor in Charles Manson’s murder trial shot dead his wife before turning the gun on himself.

Police in Long Beach, California, are probing the deaths of Lawrence Eric Taylor, 81, and Judy Strother Taylor, 75, as a murder-suicide.

Authorities responded to a welfare check at their $3.5million home in Naples on Wednesday, after the couple stopped answering their phone and front door.

Taylor set up his own legal firm after serving as the trial judge’s legal advisor in Manson’s trial and was Supreme Court counsel in the Onion Field murder case.

His wife worked under President Richard Nixon at the now-closed White House Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention.

Long Beach Police Department found the couple dead in their home, with Judy suffering from ‘gunshot wounds to the head’ according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office

Taylor also suffered a ‘gunshot wound’ to the head, with cops recovering a firearm at the scene.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Taylors’ death as a suicide and Judy’s as a murder.

Cops confirmed that the Medical Examiner will conduct an independent investigation. 

The couple were both pronounced dead at the scene, and the motive for the shooting is currently unclear. 

Judy worked as a youth mentor  and within the juvenile justice system for more than 20 years,

She teamed up with Mentor Management Systems President Jerry Sherk to bring an employee-to-employee mentoring program to the US Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and Colorado Springs.

Taylor was retained by the Attorney General of Montana as an independent Special Prosecutor to conduct a one-year grand jury probe of governmental corruption.

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Veteran RCSO officer kills himself amid investigation

A veteran officer with the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office has killed himself amid an investigation by his agency.

The body of Investigator Brian Manecke was discovered on a dirt road in Lincolnton on Friday night. He had apparently killed himself, and the GBI was investigating the death along with Coroner Tim Quarles.

The sheriff’s office issued a short press release late Friday: “On September 15, 2023 at approximately 6:20 pm, the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office was notified by the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office that they located an employee of RCSO in their personal vehicle, deceased with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The investigation into this matter is being held in the jurisdiction of Lincoln County and no other information is available for release at this time.”

The death came as the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office looked into complaints from other law enforcement officers in the region that Manecke had been posting pictures of their children on social media pages that were pro-pedophilia. He was accused of taking a photo of two children from a woman’s Facebook page and posting the image on a known pedophile site, claiming the girls were his. The sheriff’s office had taken out search warrants to look at his devices, including his phone and computer.

But before they could download the material, Manecke disappeared and did not answer phone calls from his supervisor. Then his body was discovered in Lincoln County.

The parents first complained last week to the sheriff’s office about Manecke posting their children’s pictures on social media. They complained again this week when they didn’t feel enough was done. They reached out to WGAC’s Austin Rhodes, who talked about the case on his afternoon radio show on Thursday and Friday.

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Canadian Hospital Suggests Euthanasia to Suicidal Woman Who Went There For Help

A Canadian woman who went to a hospital for help managing her suicidal thoughts and chronic depression was asked if she had considered euthanasia.

Kathrin Mentler, 37, says that she went through a traumatic event earlier this year. When seeking psychiatric help at the Vancouver General Hospital, the doctor suggested the nation’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program.

The Globe and Mail reports, “Ms. Mentler says a clinician told her there would be long waits to see a psychiatrist and that the health care system is ‘broken.’ That was followed by a jarring question: ‘Have you considered MAID?’”

“She was like, ‘I can call the on-call psychiatrist, but there are no beds; there’s no availability,’” Mentler explained. “She said to me: ‘The system is broken.’”

Mentler said that she had not considered MAID but had considered overdosing on pills herself. The doctor told her that attempting suicide on her own could lead to brain damage and other harm but that the euthanasia program would be a more “comfortable” process as she would be sedated.

“I very specifically went there that day because I didn’t want to get into a situation where I would think about taking an overdose of medication,” Mentler said. “The more I think about it, I think it brings up more and more ethical and moral questions around it.”

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US suicides hit an all-time high last year

About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which posted the numbers, has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year, but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II.

“There’s something wrong. The number should not be going up,” said Christina Wilbur, a 45-year-old Florida woman whose son shot himself to death last year.

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