increased level of agitation and anger....Plan - discontinue Prozac which may be the cause. Documents released under the US. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that PRIOR to the Wesbecker rampage in 1989, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had evidence of FIVE violent Prozac-_link_ed deaths in its files. Pre-market tests done by Lilly recorded AT LEAST SIX DEATHS _link_ed to Prozac. As a result, Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Health Research Group has called for and successfully obtained a suicide warning which was placed on Prozac's Product Information Sheet. Published reports from studies at the Harvard Medical School, Yale University, Columbia University, The State University of New York and the Veterans Administration have produced persuasive evidence that Prozac causes intense violent suicidal preoccupation. A study at the University of South Carolina had to be abruptly terminated when five people developed intense violent and suicidal thoughts while on Prozac. In September 1991, Lilly sent out a letter to all doctors across the US. offering to pay all legal costs incurred as a result of all patients taking legal action over Prozac. Documents recently released in the US. under the US Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) from the FDA show that while Prozac was being tested for market approval FIFTEEN patients succeeded in taking their own lives. In a second document released - a safety review of Prozac done by the FDA in 1986 - it was uncovered that an FDA official indicated that the symptoms of DEPRESSION appear to be INTENSIFIED by Prozac. At the same time, further documents released by the FDA reveal that the FDA condoned tampering with the scientific data in Prozac's pre-market trials. These documents also reveal that Lilly told researchers not to report some of Prozac's adverse reaction but to re-classify them instead as symptoms of the person's original depression. According to an FDA Efficacy Reviewer, this would have lead to a gross under-representation of Prozac's adverse reactions while it was being tested. Yet another document states that in 1986 an FDA Safety Reviewer discovered Eli Lilly had withheld information about the onset of psychotic episodes in FIFTY TWO patients during testing. Dr Louis Fabre, who conducted clinical pre-market trials on the drug Halcion which has been _link_ed to deaths and is now banned in the UK, is being sued in the United States for conspiracy, fraud, negligence and battery. Fabre is charged with falsifying ALL of the clinical trial studies of Halcion conducted at Portland clinic between 1973 and 1975 and numerous gross and flagrant violations of correct scientific procedure. Fabre was also one of the chief researchers on Prozac's clinical trials. Complaints have been filed both with the FDA in the United States and the CSM in Britain, charging grievous violations in Lilly's pre-market testing of Prozac which resulted in the needless deaths of 27 people, 15 of which were suicides. Both the FDA in the United States and the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) in Britain have refused to take any action to investigate these facts, claiming that the reported deaths are all anecdotal (meaning that the victims did not die whilst under supervised medical study) and therefore are not scientific . Presumably then deaths are not worthy of consideration and can be ignored unless they occur under scientific conditions. An animal study conducted by a Canadian research team and published in the 1st of July 1992 issue of Cancer Research showed that Prozac and Elavil, another widely used anti-depressant, act as tumour promoters in rats and mice. In other words, although they are not themselves carcinogens, they accelerate the growth of existing tumours in animals. The article raised the question as to whether these drugs could have a similar effect on humans. The article noted that Prozac has been associated with 21 reported cases of the reactivation of herpes, at a dosage as low as 20-40 mg per day, suggesting that Prozac can impair normal human immune function even at the lowest range of prescribed dosages. On July 17 1990 New York secretary Rhonda Hala filed a 150 million dollar lawsuit against Prozac's manufacturer, Eli Lilly, charging that the drug had driven her to mutilate herself with razor sharp _object_s more than 150 times and attempt suicide six times. These  compulsions stopped when she stopped taking Prozac. Since then over 150 similar suits have been filed against Lilly in the US. and now ten people in the UK. are reported to be taking legal action. In April 1994, Graham Moss, a Merseyside (England) solicitor, set up a steering committee for Prozac actions and is currently preparing 35-40 cases on behalf of patients prescribed Prozac. All the cases have been granted legal aid and will be against Prozac's manufacturer, Eli Lilly. Mr Ross also warned that doctors prescribing Prozac could also face legal actions. All the patients experienced suicidal thoughts or uncharacteristic violent episodes whilst taking Prozac for depression. Drug oversight authorities in Norway and Sweden have refused to authorise Lilly to market Prozac in those countries - concluding that testing given to the drug was inadequate to justify approval. __________________________________________ INCIDENTS OF VIOLENCE RELATED TO PROZAC: In September 1989 JOSEPH WESBECKER went into the Standard Gravure Building in Louisville Kentucky and opened fire on co-workers there. He killed eight people and wounded twelve others during his bloody rampage before finally killing himself. The coroner found that Wesbecker had therapeutic levels of Prozac in his blood. On April 16 1991, former San Diego deputy Sheriff Hank Adams shot his wife and himself to death in front of their 17-year-old daughter. Adams, who was taking Prozac, had no prior history of violence. Abbie Hoffman, civil rights and anti-war leader, committed suicide while on Prozac in April 1989. Mildred Johnson, aged 74, shot and killed her husband in 1989 while on Prozac. Gus Kroll, a Vancouver lawyer, was put on Prozac in 1989. In the next four months he became paranoid and hallucinated and went into a coma. He spent 80 days in hospital recovering from the effects of the drug. Raymond Hammerli of Illinois strangled his ex-wife to death in 1990 while on Prozac and Halcion. Barbara Tappan of San Diego, California shot herself in the chest and died in an act of violent self-mutilation. She had been on Prozac seven weeks. Michael Biffle of Dallas, Texas shot and killed himself in 1990 - he had been on Prozac only five days. In 1991 pathologist Dr Douglas Simmons killed himself with a razor blade while awaiting trial for killing his wife. He had been on Prozac until two days before his suicide. Sandra Moneymaker of Virginia shot and killed her two sons aged 8 and 16 and then attempted to kill herself with a shot in the stomach in April 1991, whilst on Prozac. She is now in an institution for the criminally insane. Rock singer Del Shannon committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a rifle in February 1990. He had been on Prozac for two weeks. Jennifer Barret, a 20 year old San Diego honour student, was put on Prozac for bulimia and anorexia. She attempted suicide in January 1990 and was taken off Prozac. She was put back on Prozac in July of the same year and committed suicide a month later. Kristina Marie Cushing of Orange County California shot and killed her two young daughters aged 4 and 8, and wounded herself in October 1991. She was on Prozac at the time. David Lych shot and killed 12 year old passer-by India Anderson from a window of his home in November 1991. He then shot her father who tried to come to the girl's rescue. He then wounded five others in the ensuing siege. Lynch was withdrawing from Prozac at the time. Brooklyn District Attorney Michael Farrell jumped to his death from a 42 storey apartment building. He had been on Prozac. In April 1992 Kenneth Seguin drugged his two children, aged 7 and 5, took them to a pond, slashed their wrists and dumped their bodies in the water. He then drove home and killed his wife with an axe. He was on Prozac. Melisa Ochs of Indianapolis was on Prozac for two weeks when she stabbed her daughter in the heart. Earlier she had given her daughter toilet bowl cleaner to drink. ___________________________________________________________ VESTED INTERESTS ? Despite the documented astronomical number of adverse reactions, deaths and suicide attempts amassed by this drug in the few short years of its life, Eli Lilly have made great play of the fact that Prozac was passed by the FDA. However, hearings conducted by US representative John Dingell into the FDA and the generic drug industry in 1989 revealed that FDA officials receive payoffs from drug manufacturers for rushing through drug approvals that were _base_d on false or incomplete data. These findings were substantiated by subsequent investigations by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice in the United States Moreover, as if this scandal were not embarrassing enough, Lilly have made much of the fact that an FDA hearing in September 1991 claimed to be able to find nothing wrong with Prozac or with any antidepressants at all! However what Eli Lilly failed to tell you about that hearing was the following: On that hearing ALL the panel members were psychiatrists or mental health professionals and that FIVE of the ten-man panel had active financial interests with private drug companies, totalling more than one million dollars. For more than three hours, more than two dozen Prozac victims or their surviving family members recounted horror stories _link_ing the drug to multiple murders, suicide. attempted suicide, self-mutilation, psychosis and other nightmarish effects. The committee however ignored this information and voted against relabeling Prozac to carry a proper warning of its dangers. None of the medical experts from the five different universities who had done studies that showed suicidal preoccupation with Prozac were invited to testify at the hearing. Another expert, Harvard researcher Martin Teischer, who was attendant with evidence that Prozac can produce suicidal ideation, was not allowed to present that evidence. The FDA issued waivers to all of the five psychiatrists who had actual financial interests in anti-depressant drug companies, including Eli Lilly, that were voting against the allegations against Prozac. These conflicts of interest which make it impossible for the FDA to be impartial in such cases, find a strange echo in the composition of its British counterpart, which has also been unable to find anything wrong with Prozac. The Committee on Safety of  Medicines in Britain (CSM) and its medicines control agency are ENTIRELY FUNDED by the drug industry according to a report by the National Consumer Council. A majority of members of the CSM have personal financial _link_s to drug companies. Impartial and _object_ive regulation of an industry can only be properly and reliably done by people who have no vested interests, financial or otherwise, in the industry in question. Clearly that it not the case either with the FDA or the CSM and this is putting the unsuspecting consumer at risk. ____________________________ LILLY'S HISTORY * PRIOR to 1919, Lilly produced an addictive HEROIN compound which the company touted as a cough remedy. * IN 1945, Lilly introduced to America a drug developed by the Nazis. This drug is generically named Dolophine and was named after the infamous Adolf Hitler. Toady that drug is administered to millions of heroin addicts as a supposed cure for heroin addiction under the name of METHADONE. Methadone is in fact even more addictive than heroin and is now in the process of becoming a street drug in its own right. * IN the 1950s Lilly manufactured LSD, which it supplied to the CIA for mind-control experiments. Like Heroin, LSD became one of the most abused and dangerous drugs known to man. * IN 1957 Lilly introduced the highly addictive painkiller, DARVON. Although Lilly promoted the drug as safe and non-addictive, by 1977 DARVON was the second leading cause of drug-related deaths in the United States - surpassed only by heroin. * IN 1971, the artificial hormone DES, which Lilly marketed to women to reduce miscarriages without it first having been adequately tested on pregnant animals, was banned for use by pregnant women as it was found that DES caused cancer in babies. * IN 1982 Lilly introduced the arthritic drug ORAFLEX (called OPREN in the UK) in the United States. After ten weeks ORAFLEX was removed from the US market, the day after it was removed from the UK market because of 61 Oraflex-related deaths here.   * IN August 1985 ELI LILLY AND COMPANY was CONVICTED in a Federal Court of 25 CRIMINAL CHARGES stemming from its actions to get ORAFLEX approved and marketed. Ten of those counts dealt with failures by Lilly to inform the FDA of deaths _link_ed to the drug. The convictions came after more than 100 DEATHS had been tied to the drug. Lilly had known about the deaths but failed to correct the problem or notify the government. Prozac was being tested through this same period and was approved by the FDA just 28 months after Lilly was convicted. * IN January 1993 Lilly was forced to stop the distribution of the drug CENTOXIN in Europe, where it had been approved to treat septic shock (shock caused by infection) because a number of people had died following treatment with the drug. * IN January 1994 the US consumer protection group Public Citizen Health Research Group filed a complaint with the FDA alleging Eli Lilly knew about the toxic effects of YET ANOTHER of its products, the Hepatitis B drug FIAU (Fialuridine) before it led to five patient deaths in summer 1992. FIAU was pulled off the market following those FIVE deaths. * And now in 1994 Prozac has to date amassed over 28,000 adverse reaction reports, over 2000 deaths, 1300 attempted suicides, yet it remains on the market. ____________________________________________________ THESE  ARE THE SIDE-EFFECTS REPORTED FOR PROZAC AS LISTED IN THE PHYSICIANS DESK REFERENCE FAMILY GUIDE TO PRE_script_ION DRUGS :- More commonly reported side-effects: Abnormal dreams, agitation, anxiety, bronchitis, chills, diarrhoea, dizziness, drowsiness and fatigue, hay fever, inability to fall or stay asleep, increased appetite, lack or loss of appetite, light-headedness, nausea, nervousness, sweating, tremors, weakness, weight loss, yawning. Less commonly reported side-effects: Abnormal ejaculation, abnormal gait, abnormal stoppage of menstrual flow, acne, amnesia, apathy, arthritis, asthma, belching, bone pain, breast cysts, breast pain, brief loss of consciousness, bursitis, chills and fever, conjunctivitis, convulsions, dark tarry stool, difficulty in swallowing, dilation of pupils, dimness of vision, dry skin, ear pain, eye pain, exaggerated feeling of well-being, excessive bleeding, facial swelling due to fluid retention, fluid retention, hair loss, hallucinations, hangover effect, hiccups, high or low blood pressure, hives, hostility, impotence, increased sex drive, inflammation of the oesophagus, inflammation of the gums, inflammation of the stomach lining, inflammation of the tongue, inflammation of the vagina, intolerance of light, involuntary movement, irrational ideas, irregular heartbeat, jaw or neck pain, lack of muscle co-ordination, low blood pressure upon standing, low blood sugar, migraine headache, mouth inflammation, neck pain and rigidity, nosebleed, ovarian disorders, paranoid reaction, pelvic pain, pneumonia, rapid breathing, rapid heartbeat, ringing in the ears, severe chest pain, skin inflammation, skin rash, thirst, twitching, uncoordinated movements, urinary disorders, vague feeling of bodily discomfort, vertigo, weight gain. Rarely reported side-effects: Abortion, antisocial behaviour, blood in urine, bloody diarrhoea, bone disease, breast enlargement, cataracts, colitis, coma, deafness, decreased reflexes, dehydration, double vision, drooping of eyelids, duodenal ulcer, enlarged abdomen, enlargement of liver, enlargement or increased activity of thyroid gland, excess growth of coarse hair on face, chest etc., excess uterine or vaginal haemorrhage, extreme muscle tension, eye bleeding, female milk production, fluid accumulation and swelling in the head, fluid build-up in the larynx and lungs, gallstones, glaucoma, gout, heart attack, hepatitis, high blood sugar, hysteria, inability to control bowel movements, increased salivation, inflammation of eyes and eyelids, inflammation of fallopian tubes, inflammation of testes, inflammation of the gallbladder, inflammation of the small intestine, inflammation of tissue below skin, kidney disorders, mouth sores, muscle inflammation or bleeding, muscle spasms, painful sexual intercourse for women, psoriasis, rashes, reddish or purplish spots on the skin, reduction of body temperature, rheumatoid arthritis, seborrhoea, shingles, skin discoloration, skin inflammation and disorders, slowing of heart rate, slurred speech, spitting blood, stomach ulcer, stupor, suicidal thoughts, taste loss, temporary cessation of breathing, tingling sensation around the mouth, tongue discoloration and swelling, vomiting blood, yellow eyes and skin. __________________ References: 1.Joseph F Lipinski and others. Fluoxetine (Prozac) induced Akathisia, Clinical and Theoretical Implications The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry Vol. 50, No 9 (Sept. 1989) pp 339-342. 2.William C Wirshing and others Fluoxetine Akathisia and Suicidality: Is there a causal connection? Archives of General Psychiatry Vol. 49 (July 1992) pp 580-581. 3.Anthony J Rothschild and Carol A Locke Re-exposure to Fluoxetine After Serious Suicide Attempts by 3 Patients: The Role of Akathisia. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry Vol. 52 No 12 (DEC 1991) pp 491-493. 4.Geoffrey Cowley and others A Prozac Backlash Newsweek April 1991. 5.FDA Memorandum by Alan Gielberg, acting Chief, Surveillance and Data Processing Branch. May 30th 1991. 6.Computer printout dated 18.6.92 of adverse reaction reports on Prozac filed with the FDA. 7.Amy Boardman Plaintiffs Bar Anticipates Prozac Landslide Texas Lawyer, Dallas 11.3.91. 8.Lucy Johnston, The Big Issue Nov. 16-22 1992. 9.Amy Dockser Marcus Murder Trials Introduce Prozac Defence 10.American Journal of Psychiatry Vol. 147 #2 (Feb. 1990) pp 207-210. 11.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Vol. 30 #2 (March 1991) pp179-186. 12.Journal of Clinical Pharmacology Vol. 7 #5 October 1987 pp 329-332. 13.New England Journal of Medicine Vol. 326 #4 (7.2.91) p240. 14.Adverse Reaction reports released by FDA under Freedom of Information Act December 1989. 15.FDA letter to Lilly Research Labs 29.12.87 pp 1,7,8,10,11,16,17. 16. Deaths Reported During or After Fluoxetine Treatment detailed a total of 27 deaths as of October 15 17.This report came just TWO MONTHS before Prozac's approval for the US market on Dec. 29 1987. 18.Toxicology sheet of Joseph Wesbecker prepared by Dr Richard Greathouse, coroner of Jefferson County, 19.Kentucky. Interview with Richard Greathouse WKLY-TV Louisville October 19 1989, 11pm.) 20.David Fletcher Drug secrecy criticised by watchdog Daily Telegraph 7.9.93.(PAGE 11) .- Prozac - A Special Report