In a February 7, 2008 interview with the Chicago
Tribune, Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army's recently departed
Surgeon General, said there has been "a series, a sequence of deaths" in the new
"warrior transition units” (WTUs).
On April 13, 2009, Baughman wrote the Office of the
Surgeon General (OTSG) pressing Schoomaker about his "series, sequence of
deaths" statement and the existence of an analysis of these deaths said to be
forthcoming. On April 17, 2009, the OTSG
responded: "The assessment is still pending and has not been released yet." Nor has such a disclosure ever been
released.
Andrew
White, son of Stan and Shirley White was one of four soldiers from the
Charleston, WV area, seemingly OK at bedtime only to be found dead in bed hours
later. These are not “overdoses” with
central nervous system (CNS) depressant drugs causing steadily deepening coma
leading to respiratory depression and death, as the the Surgeon General, the
Inspector General of the Veterans Administration, and the whole of the Pentagon
would have us believe, blaming the victims.
Rather, these are “sudden unexpected deaths,” a.k.a. sudden cardiac
deaths with most of the deceased having been seen alive and apparently well
within the preceding 12 hours. Some, in
fact, were seen as recently as 2-3 hours previously when they had laid down to
take a nap.
Googling “soldier found dead, “dead in barracks,” “dead
in bed,” etc. we have uncovered 314 such deaths of mostly males in their
20s—probable sudden cardiac deaths.
Three hundred and fourteen! And
we find more each time we return to the grim task.
Sicouri & Antezelevitch (Expert Opinion. Drug Saf.
(2008) 7 (2):181-194.) conclude: “A number of antipsychotic and antidepressant
drugs are known to increase the risk of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden
cardiac death. Antipsychotics can increase cardiac risk even at low doses
whereas antidepressants do it generally at high doses or in the setting of
drug combinations.”
et al (European Heart
Journal, online September 14, 2011 doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehr368)
conclude: “The use
of psychotropic drugs, especially the combined use of antipsychotic and
antidepressant drugs, is strongly associated with an increased risk of
sudden cardiac death (SCD)…” These are
all risks long-known to government and military medicine. Who made such drugging policy?
In June 2011, a Department of Defense
Health Advisory Group backed a highly questionable policy of "polypharmacy"
(five, ten or fifteen drugs at a time) asserting: "...multiple psychotropic meds
may be appropriate in select individuals." The fact of the matter is that
psychotropic drug polypharmacy is never safe, scientific, or medically
justifiable. What it is, is a means of maximizing profit, while making it
difficult-to-+impossible to blame adverse effects on any one drug.
From 2001 to the present, US Central
Command has given deploying troops 180 day supplies of prescription psychotropic
drugs--Seroquel included. In a May 2010
report of its Pain Management Task Force, the Army endorsed Seroquel in 25- or
50-milligram doses as a 'sleep aid.'
Over the past decade, $717 million was spent for Risperdal and $846
million for Seroquel, or $1.5 billion when neither Risperdal nor Seroquel have
been proven safe or effective for PTSD or sleep disorders.
Ironically, yet not surprisingly,
pay-to-play in Washington becomes more egregious every day. Heather Bresch,
daughter of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, (D-WV) was recently named CEO of WV
drug-maker Mylan Inc., that recently contracted with the DoD for over 20 million
doses of Seroquel. Defense Department Health Advisory Group chair, Charles
Fogelman, warned: "DoD currently lacks a unified pharmacy database that reflects
medication use across pre-deployment, deployment and post-deployment settings."
In essence, through a premeditated lack of record keeping, mandated by law at
any other pharmacy or medical office to track potential fatal reactions to
mixing prescription drugs, the military is willfully preempting all
investigations into the injuries and deaths due to these and other psychiatric
drugs.
We call on the Department of Defense, the
Veterans Administration, the House and Senate Armed Services and House and
Senate Veterans Affairs Committees to tell concerned Americans and the families
of fallen heroes what psychiatric drugs each of the deceased, both combat and
non-combat, soldiers, and veterans were on? It is time for the military and
government to come clean. Until they do
there can be no such thing as the appropriate prescribing of such drugs in the
military--either at home or abroad.
By Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD* & Stan White**
**Father of deceased soldiers Andrew (dead in bed at home) and Robert White (dead in combat in Iraq)
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