Drug-Induced Dementia IS NOT Alzheimer’s Disease
HEALTH, 19 Sep 2016
Gary G. Kohls, MD | Duty to Warn – TRANSCEND Media Service
http://www.madinamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Drug-Induced-Dementia-Jackson.jpg
“The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.” — Sir William Osler
“More than 50 conditions can cause or mimic the symptoms of dementia.” and “Alzheimer’s (can only be) distinguished from other dementias at autopsy.” — from a Harvard University Health Publication entitled What’s Causing Your Memory Loss? It Isn’t Necessarily Alzheimer’s
“Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain many adverse effects. All classes of psychotropic drugs have been documented to damage mitochondria, as have statin medications, analgesics such as acetaminophen, and many others…Damage to mitochondria is now understood to play a role in the pathogenesis of a wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disease, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, migraine headaches, strokes, neuropathic pain, Parkinson’s disease, ataxia, transient ischemic attack, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetes, hepatitis C, and primary biliary cirrhosis. Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain many adverse effects” — Neustadt and Pieczenik authors of Medication-induced Mitochondrial Damage and Disease
“Establishing mitochondrial toxicity is not an FDA requirement for drug approval, so there is no real way of knowing which agents are truly toxic.” – Dr. Katherine Sims, Mass General Hospital – http://www.mitoaction.org
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair, anti-fascist, anti-imperialist American author who wrote in the early 20th century
“No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable…for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death.” – President Ronald Reagan, as he signed The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, absolving drug companies from all medico-legal liability when children die or are disabled from vaccine injuries.
Over the past several decades there have been a number of well-financed campaigns, promoted by well-meaning laypersons, to raise public awareness to the plight of patients with dementia. Suspiciously, most of these campaigns come from “patient support” groups lead the public to believe that every dementia patient has Alzheimer’s dementia (AD).
Not so curiously, it turns out that many – perhaps all – of these campaigns have been funded – usually secretly – by the very pharmaceutical companies that benefit economically by indirectly promoting the sale of so-called Alzheimer’s drugs. Such corporate-generated public relations “campaigns” are standard operating procedure for all of Big Pharma’s drugs, especially its psycho-pharmaceutical drugs. Big Pharma has found that the promotion and de-stigmatization of so-called “mental illnesses of unknown etiology” is a great tool for marketing their drugs. (http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/health-advocacy-groups-take-drug-company-cashoften-without-full-disclosures)
Recently Alzheimer’s support groups all around the nation have been marketing a documentary about country singer Glen Campbell who has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (of unknown etiology) despite the obvious fact that Campbell was infamous for his chronic heavy use of brain-damaging, dementia-inducing, addictive, and very neurotoxic drugs like cocaine and alcohol. And, just like so many other hard-living celebrities like the (now cured) dementia victim Kris Kristofferson and the suicidal and early dementia victim Robin Williams. All three celebrities were known to have received prescriptions for legal neurotoxic brain-altering drugs, adding to the burdens that their failing brains, livers and psyches had to endure. It is highly likely that all three of them were also on statins and were up-to-date on their mercury and aluminum-containing vaccinations.
It is an established fact that Alzheimer’s disease can only be definitively diagnosed at a post-mortem examination of the cerebral cortex, something that dementia patients are almost never subjected to. Because of the rarity of coroners doing autopsies on dementia patients, we have to question the accuracy of the diagnoses of, for example, the still living Glen Campbell, Kris Kristofferson and our own memory-impaired spouses, aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas, especially since so many of them have been on neurotoxic substances such as those mentioned in this article.
And we also have to question the motivations of the Big Pharma corporations that financially underwrite patient support groups like the Alzheimer’s Association. AND, equally importantly, given the total lack of recognition of the reality of drug-induced dementia, we have to question to oft-cited assertion that 2/3 of all dementia cases are because of Alzheimer’s disease (of unknown cause).
<<<Are the Alzheimer’s, Autism and Autoimmune Epidemics Actually Iatrogenic, Drug-Induced Epidemics?>>>
Synchronous with the recent large increases in 1) childhood and adult neurotoxic aluminum-adjuvanted vaccinations, 2) the use of neurotoxic psychotropic drugs, 3) the use of statin drugs (cholesterol-lowering drugs) known to cause memory-impairment, and 4) the ingestion of a variety of neurotoxic food additives, there has been a large parallel increase in A) the incidence of chronic autoimmune disorders, especially in childhood, B)the incidence of autistic spectrum disorders, C) “mental illnesses of unknown origin” and D) dementia. For more go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/new-study—mitochondrial_b_147030.html.
Each of those 4 root causes and the 4 neurological disorders that are closely correlated with them are admittedly multifactorial realities. But the important lesson is that they are also preventable. However, due to clever marketing by Big Pharma and the studied ignorance of Big Medicine and the refusal of Big Media to allow scholars to talk about the connections, “walks for the cure” and drug treatment is what is emphasized rather that prevention.
So what we need to ask – and then demand – is an honest answer to the question “could there be a connection between America’s increasingly common over-prescribing of immunotoxic, neurotoxic, synthetic prescription drugs and the equally over-prescribed immunotoxic and neurotoxic vaccines (that often contain either of the heavy metals aluminum and mercury) and some of the neurodegenerative disorders that supposedly “have no known cause”? Could the disabling American epidemic of autoimmune disorders, psychiatric disorders, autism spectrum disorders, etc (all supposedly of unknown origin) be found to have recognizable iatrogenic root causes and therefore be preventable? Psychiatrist and scholar Grace E. Jackson has the answers in her seminal (and black-listed) book “Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime”.
These are extremely important issues, especially in the case of the dementia epidemic, because the Alzheimer’s patient support groups seem to be unaware of the fact that many psychiatric drugs are known to irreversibly damage brain cells (partly by poisoning their mitochondria, the microscopic hearts and lungs of every cell) and therefore would be expected to cause a variety of other neurological and mental health disorders. (See more info on drugs and mitochondria below.)
One of the big problems in America’s corporate-controlled culture, corporate-controlled government, corporate-controlled medical industries and corporate-controlled media is that the giant multinational (especially Big Pharma) corporations are in the business of developing and marketing known mitochondrial toxins with no oversight from regulatory agencies. These businesses obscure the fact that there ARE known causes for the disorders and that they are preventable. The unproven claims expressed in the TV commercials and medical journals advertising the newest drug-of-the-month are often later exposed as plain snake oil propaganda.
It should be a concern for everyone that some Alzheimer’s support groups are actually front groups for the pharmaceutical industry that profit handsomely from the handful of virtually useless drugs such as Aricept, Exelon, Namenda, Hexalon, and Razadyne.
<<<Prescription Drug-Induced and Vaccine-Induced Mitochondrial Disorders>>>
Acquired mitochondrial disorders (as opposed to the rare primary mitochondrial disorders like muscular dystrophy) can be caused by commonly prescribed drugs. They are difficult to diagnose and are generally poorly understood by most healthcare practitioners. When I went to medical school, none of my professors knew anything about the lethal effects that many synthetic drugs and vaccines do to the mitochondria of average brain or body cells. The science of the mitochondria was in its infancy.
A lot of mitochondrial research has been done since then, especially starting in the 1990s,and that research has proven the connections between a variety of commonly prescribed medications and mitochondrial disorders. That evidence seems to have been cunningly covered-up by the for-profit pharma groups whose drug are the culprits. Big Pharma has tremendous control over the medical education of most health care providers, and they spoon-feed pro-drug and pro-vaccine propaganda to undiscerning “healthcare” journalists, which is where many physicians and patients get their health information.
<<<An Honest Patient Guide for Dementia Patients (from Harvard)>>>
I was pleasantly surprised recently to find a reasonably honest guide for dementia patients on a Harvard University website. (The entire guide can be accessed at http://www.helpguide.org/harvard/whats-causing-your-memory-loss.htm#top.)
The information at that site stated that there were over 50 conditions that could cause or mimic early dementia symptoms. What medical practitioner in our double-booked clinic environment has the time to thoroughly rule out the 50 root causes of dementia symptoms when confronted with a patient with memory loss? It’s simpler to just diagnose every case of dementia as another case of Alzheimers! Who will ever dispute such an authoritative-sounding diagnosis? Certainly not those who want to keep dementia from being recognized as a potentially iatrogenic disorder (doctor or treatment-caused disorder).
I have often said to my patients and seminar participants: “it takes only 2 minutes to write a prescription, but it takes 20 minutes to not write a prescription”. In the current for-profit clinic culture, time is money and very few physicians are ever given the “luxury” of spending sufficient time listening carefully to their patients. (In defense of the physicians that I know, they are not happy about these realities but feel powerless to do anything about it.)
It is so tempting for us physicians to use the popularized, but rather squishy label of Alzheimer’s dementia rather than to educate ourselves about the possibility of drug-induced, vaccine-induced or malnutrition-related dementia. But what is so important is that many of the 50+ conditions are preventable or reversible, which will be therapeutic only if the real root causes are identified before permanent brain damage occurs. Just one example was the subject of the book “Lipitor: Thief of Memory” written by former astronaut and flight surgeon Duane Graveline, M.D., M.P.H (for more information go to https://www.spacedoc.com/articles/lipitor-thief-of-memory.)
The Harvard guide actually said that “medications are common culprits in mental decline. With aging, the liver becomes less efficient at metabolizing drugs, and the kidneys eliminate them from the body more slowly. As a result, drugs tend to accumulate in the body. Elderly people in poor health and those taking several different medications are especially vulnerable.”
The guide continued with a list of the possible classes of prescription drugs that number in the hundreds:
“The list of drugs that can cause dementia-like symptoms is long. It includes antidepressants, antihistamines, anti-Parkinson drugs, anti-anxiety medications, cardiovascular drugs, anticonvulsants, corticosteroids, narcotics, sedatives.”
The Harvard guide went on to emphasize that Alzheimer’s can only be accurately diagnosed on a post-mortem examination. The guide states that “Alzheimer’s is distinguished from other dementias at autopsy by the presence of sticky beta-amyloid plaques outside brain cells (neurons) and fibrillary tangles within neurons (all indicative of cellular death). Although such lesions may be present in any aging brain, in people with Alzheimer’s these lesions tend to be more numerous and accumulate in areas of the brain involved in learning and memory.”
“The leading theory is that the damage to the brain results from inflammation and other biological changes that cause synaptic loss and malfunction, disrupting communication between brain cells. Eventually the brain cells die, causing tissue loss and cell carcasses or scars. In imaging scans, brain shrinkage is usually first noticeable in the hippocampus, which plays a central role in memory function.”
<<<The FDA Does Not Require Big Pharma to Test its New Drugs or Vaccines for Mitochondrial Toxicity>>>
But even the Harvard guide inexplicably fails to mention known mitochondrial toxins such as statins, metformin, Depakote, general anesthetics, fluoroquinolone antibiotics (like Cipro), fluorinated psychotropic drugs (like many of the SSRIs and the so-called antipsychotics).
And Big Food corporations are guilty of feeding us neurotoxins also.
For example, when the ubiquitous synthetic food, soft drink and chewing gum sweetener NutraSweet (aspartame) reaches 86 degrees (whether in our 98.6 degree bodies or in some MidEast desert (as was true for many American soldiers who developed Gulf War Syndrome) every molecule releases a molecule of the excitotoxic amino acids phenylalanine and aspartic acid and one molecule of the cellular toxin methanol (wood alcohol). Methanol then rapidly metabolizes into the known mitochondrial poison formaldehyde (embalming fluid), which is a serious cellular and mitochondrial toxin.
The chlorinated artificial sweetener Splenda, which was initially developed as a neurotoxic pesticide, is in an uncountable variety of foods as well.
These examples are only some of the synthetic chemicals in medicines, vaccines and processed foods that are capable of causing mitochondrial damage in brain and body cells – with memory loss, confusion and cognitive dysfunction, all early symptoms of dementia.
It is a tragedy for reversible and preventable drug- or vaccine-induced dementias (or any of the many neurodegenerative disorders) to be mis-diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease (or neurological disorder) “of unknown cause” because if the root causes are not recognized preventive care will not be offered. And then, what may be worse, those patients might be placed on costly, potentially toxic and often useless medications that have not been tested for their own potential mitochondrial toxicities. (Tragically, the American pharmaceutical industry is not required by the FDA to test its drugs for mitochondrial toxicity, thus leaving physicians and their drug-consuming patients in the dark as far as safety of those medications is concerned.)
There is much more in the basic neuroscience literature proving the connections between drugs and vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders. Those basic neuroscience researchers that do not have conflicts of interest with Big Pharma and Big Medicine should be listened to. Those authors with monetary or professional conflicts of interest should be regarded with suspicion.
Don’t expect Big Pharma to respond to such unwelcome revelations as mentioned above. Don’t expect Big Medicine to acknowledge the existence of iatrogenic illnesses or to offer apologies.
Do, however, expect denials, dismissals, distractions, delays and ad hominem attacks against the whistle-blowers rather than honest mea culpas.
So it must be up to the consumers of potentially toxic substances to do the research themselves, for those substances may not show symptoms until a tipping point is reached when their livers can no longer detoxify the cocktail of poisons that are presented to it.
Professor of Medicine Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: “If all the medicine in the world were thrown into the sea, it would be bad for the fish, but good for humanity.”
Enough said.
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Dr Kohls has spent many years researching the powerful, obscenely profitable and therefore easily corrupted pharmaceutical industry and the many false claims that their lobbyists, think tanks and co-opted opinion leaders in the media have been making. He knows many families whose lives have been devastated by psychiatric drug and vaccine injuries, including the post-vaccination regressive autism that unequivocally began following routine well-baby or well-child vaccinations. He takes seriously the precepts of the Hippocratic Oath that he took when he received his medical degree. That oath says that physicians should above all do no harm to their patients and thus, when there is evidence of potential harm from a prescription drug, vaccine or procedure, physicians should hesitate in doing that harmful treatment until a thorough, unbiased re-evaluation is done.
Tragically, there has been a proliferation of big medical corporations (for-profit health insurance companies, for-profit clinics, for-profit hospitals, etc) and the secretive, often above-the-law multinational pharmaceutical corporations that regularly use corrupted science to “prove” the safety and efficacy of their obscenely profitable drugs. They employ thousands of workers but mainly work for the economic benefit of their shareholders and not vulnerable patients.
Dr. Gary Kohls practiced holistic mental health care until his retirement a few years ago. Most of the patients that came asking for his help exhibited a variety of drug-induced, brain-altering, neurological and physical disabilities as well as drug dependencies from the multitude of drugs they had been taking. Dr. Kohls reminds people that they should not try to stop their prescription psychotropic drugs without the help of a physician knowledgeable about basic brain neuroscience, brain nutrition and the intricacies of drug withdrawal syndromes.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 19 Sep 2016.
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