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Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

The FDA is under regulatory capture by the pharmaceutical industry, and their approval or lack thereof is one of the most unreliable measures of the safety and efficacy of psychiatric drugs in particular. Schizophrenia diagnoses are almost entirely subjective in nature (there's no reliable biochemical or biomolecular or biophysical test for the presence or absence of the condition) - really the whole field of psychiatric care for mental health issues is about as useful as tuberculosis experts were in the 1850s, before Koch's demonstration of the infectious microbial nature of the disease.

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I’m sort of surprised to see someone claiming schizophrenia is subjective. Schizophrenia has extraordinarily pronounced symptoms. It’s like claiming lupus doesn’t exist because there’s no single reliable diagnostic test for it. Schizophrenia has very specific and easily observed symptoms and is specifically affected by medications such as Zyprexa that doesn’t cause similar changes in behavior for people without schizophrenia or psychosis. However that and related medications have horrible side effects leading most patients to avoid taking it. For people who are or have family members ravaged by schizophrenia this is some of the best news you can imagine - a medication with similar beneficial effects on their loved ones but without turning them into zombies. It feels callous to an extraordinary degree to deny the existence of schizophrenia and to not recognize the benefit to a minimal side effect mediation that can give the schizophrenics life back.

This is actually a ridiculous answer. So you claim if you get get cold turkey'ed on Zyprexa you won't hallucinate or have mania? You claim, there are people out there, who take a dopamine antagonist without getting diabetes, organ issues, loss of self (fundamentally this is what these drugs do, deprive of brain function) and ultimately sudden death?

I made no statements remotely like this.

> Schizophrenia has very specific and easily observed symptoms and is specifically affected by medications such as Zyprexa that doesn’t cause similar changes in behavior for people without schizophrenia or psychosis.

By the nature of these drugs, each and every symptom of what you pronounce Schizophrenia would be your daily life once on the poisonous neuro-toxic agents.

This doesn't seem science-backed and feels more emotional.

Whatever feels for you emotional or not is irrelevant. It is science-backed that each and every "Schizophrenia" symptom of a book that resembles the bible and nothing else (going by the name of DSM) is a product of chemically induced damage and torture with neuro-toxic poison.

It is not science-backed the schizophrenia is caused by schizophrenia medication. That doesn't even account for people who have psychosis evident of schizophrenia but have never taken medication.

> It is not science-backed the schizophrenia is caused by schizophrenia medication It truly is. The fact psychosis can be caused by alchohol withdrawal even (delirium) is irrelevant. Psychiatric "medications" directly cause schizophrenic symptoms and everything, hallucinations included. They not only lobotomize people, but also cause tremendous suffering and non reversible permanent damage. If you really believe all this, you should check your facts straight.

Do you have any sources for this? No offense, but this sounds a bit crazy. Again, this doesn't account for people who are unmedicated and clearly have symptoms. Schizophrenia doesn't seem to be caused by Schizophrenia medication, that doesn't even make sense. How would they get the medication then?

The "medication" is not something anyone gets better with. They become easier to deal with and they essentially live less, both in terms of effective living (thinking, talking, creating) as well as long-term living (life span reduction). As far as your request per sources, here it is:

https://www.madinamerica.com/critical-psychiatry-textbook-2/

A background on the author:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_C._G%C3%B8tzsche

I feel like you don’t know anyone personally who has schizophrenia or you wouldn’t dare to say this. People tend to develop schizophrenia in young adulthood and it’s not after taking antipsychotics they take antipsychotics after developing schizophrenia. Schizophrenia existed before the development of antipsychotic medications, that’s why they were developed at all.

There’s nothing to glorify in schizophrenia- it’s in many ways worse than losing your loved ones in a tragic accident. It’s even worse for the schizophrenic who after having a normal life descends into paranoid delusion and take on an existence of misery.

I know the right answer here is for me to ignore and walk on but it’s hard to do so and leave statements like these unqualified.

I dare to say this because I really know what I am talking about. Every symptom of what you call "Schizophrenia", cited by the bible-like book going of the name DSM, is directly caused by dopamine antagonists. I am not saying "Schizophrenia" does not exist by itself, I am just saying that it's being categorized as well as treated in a specific manner on purpose. There are far better alternatives and remedies one could actually utilize to achieve better therapeutic results. And by the way, it has been scientifically proven that people without "medication" do better long-term.

Pain is entirely self reported by the patient. There is no objective measure of it. Painkillers must also then be a scam, by your logic.

I see this take on the internet a lot usually combined with some statement of how Schizophrenics are secret geniuses and were the prophets of olden times. It just doesn't square off with my own observations of schizophrenics in real life. How is the condition subjective when you see the same types of symptoms across people? I've seen it with men and women afflicted by the condition - always the persecutory delusions, belief that they are some king or prophet/chosen one, disorganized thinking, and word salads. Why is it always the same symptoms? You're telling me that's not rooted in any common condition?

> always the persecutory delusions, belief that they are some king or prophet/chosen one, disorganized thinking, and word salads. Why is it always the same symptoms?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect

Your argument is as good as calling Martha Mitchell crazy and dismissing entirely possible organized exploitation on a premise of made-up symptoms that are composed of zero scientific evidence.

No it’s under pressure from people who go to the press saying “the FDA won’t let me use this drug to help me/my family” who ignore “because there’s no evidence it works” as the reason.

The pharmaceutical just has to tell those people that it does work in their particular case and just ignore the studies that say it doesn’t, and the media and politicians uncritically report that as “the FDA is mean, let pharmaceutical companies sell new and expensive snake oil and re-victimise these people”, then in a few years later the same reporters and politicians berate the “ineffectual” FDA for allowing snake oil.

Regulatory capture doesn’t mean the entire of idea of FDA as a safety mechanism is bad… nor does a legitimate reason for their existence mean that capture doesn’t exist

It is good to hold federal agencies with large power to a very high standard. But that’s often not the case as any critiques get dismissed with the “well they have good intentions and can you imagine if they didn’t exist?” hand wave tactic.

> Game changer in treatment of disease we can't even define

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, now does it?

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