Canadian Regulation on Fetal Exposure to Psychotropic Drugs – Public Input Needed (Cross-Posted on The Bitter Pill blog)
Amery and Christiane Schultz have been asked to provide input on proposed recommendations regarding psychotropic drugs in pregnancy in Canada. Amery & Christiane are hard-working activists affiliated with UNITE and MADNAP. Please send any comments you may have to amy@uniteforlife.org by Thursday of this week (November 10, 2011), or call 817-793-8028.
See the following note from Amery:
I am looking for input as to what you feel should be included in recommendations for establishing protocols surrounding women being treated with and babies exposed to psychotropic medications during pregnancy. These recommendations will be presented to both the Canadian Pediatric Association as well as the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada. We have found a good ally who is proposing that we address the National Conference of the Canadian Pediatric Association.
Relentless and Tragic Marketing: Psychiatric Drugs from Before the Cradle to the Grave
These recent posts on The Bitter Pill and uniteforlife.org are of special importance. Check them out.
- My Bad – Mothering Magazine Promotes “Antipsychotics” Not Just Zyprexa
- Mothering Magazine Publishes Letter Reaming Them for Being So “Anti-drug”
- Open Letter to the Editor of Mothering Magazine – Re: “Beat The Baby Blues” by John Breeding and Amy Philo
- Relentless and Tragic Marketing: Psychiatric Drugs from Before the Cradle to the Grave
MADNAP Blanket Sale – UNITE, MADNAP, INDIANA STAR FUNDRAISER
We will be at the Addison Wellness Expo this weekend, October 16-17 with an educational booth for UNITE, MADNAP and The Indiana Star Foundation. We are conducting a fundraiser to defray the costs of participating in this event and conducting other awareness activities.
Several wonderful and generous donors have contributed. We are raffling off a free photography session with Natasha Hance. Tickets are $5. If you want to purchase online, you can use the donate button on this website to pay via our pledgie account and then send me an email to let me know how many tickets you bought.
- Photo Copyright Natasha Hance
We will be selling “Quilts for A Cause,” and various items such as hand-knit baby and children’s winter hats, bracelets, hand-made jewelry and other fun items.
- Photo Copyright Natasha Hance
My friend and fellow activist Ellen Liversidge (who lost her son Rob to Zyprexa-induced hyperglycemia) has generously allowed me to confiscate over two dozen of her vintage quilts to sell. She runs a business selling them, so we will be accepting all small to extravagant offers above cost for the sale of these quilts! I’ve set up a Flickr account and blog to showcase the quilts. Minimum prices on the quilts will be posted soon. If you see one that you want please email me at amy@uniteforlife.org so we can get it shipped to you.
Many thanks to the following donors:
Peek Aren’t You Curious at Northpark Mall (gift bags)
Jenny M Jewels (hand-made earrings)
Christian Delahunty (baby quilts, hand-made jewelry and more)
Amery & Christiane Schultz (MADNAP Teddy Bears)
We are also going to be handing out pink and blue ribbons in honor of October – Infant Loss Awareness Month.
Two $50 Flower Gift Certificates *** RAFFLE to benefit The Indiana Star Foundation **** – Two Drawings – We have two $50 flower gift certificates to raffle off!!! (donated by http://www.proflowers.com/) – For the next week you can buy raffle tickets (for $5 each) by donating to the cause here:
http://pledgie.com/campaigns/6067.
To enter, just use PayPal (through PayPal you can use your bank account or a credit card) on our Pledgie page, and then email amy@uniteforlife.org with your contact information and # of raffle tickets you bought, so we can send you the gift code if you win!!!
Two Hours With Matthew: Letters To Matthew One Year Later
Today Matthew Schultz would be one year old. Please read these posts on Christiane and Amery’s blog:
- Happy First Birthday my little man!
- To Matthew on your 1st Birthday
- Hi Son
- “February Twenty-First”
- Disgusted.
Then, please take action to spread the word by going here.
There are also several new articles on The Bitter Pill related to antidepressants during pregnancy. Check them out:
Dr. Grace Jackson Comments on Detoxing from Antidepressants & Pregnancy Exposure, Damage to DNA/Eggs
Recently we posed a question to MADNAP Co-Founder Psychiatrist Dr. Grace Jackson regarding how long antidepressants like Effexor remain in the body to damage it and a baby during pregnancy.
Here is her reply:
In my new book, Drug Induced Dementia – A Perfect Crime, (Amazon link) one of the points I tried to make in Appendix B is that most doctors have not been trained to appreciate that there are probably at least three discrete phases of drug withdrawal.
a) Acute withdrawal period
- How long it takes the drug to clear the bloodstream – and how long it takes the drug to clear the BRAIN TISSUE itself
In some cases, the elimination time for the blood vs. the brain tissue is NOT equal. This is known as “dissociation” but most doctors know nothing about this fact…
Also, we do not have good data on all drugs… Usually, this comes from research experiments using MRS [magnetic resonance spectroscopy] and fluorinated molecules.
b) Intermediate withdrawal period
- This refers to the length of time it takes for receptor physiology and receptor > 2nd messenger/3rd messenger events to “re-equilibrate.”
c) Long term withdrawal period
- This refers to the length of time it takes for GENE EXPRESSION to return to pre-drug status; and for protein expression >>> “cell-cell” communication and wiring to change.
When you are talking about miscarriages, rather than PPHN, all bets are off.
The reason for this is that UNLIKE sperm, which are made, secreted, and replaced for many decades, ALL of a woman’s eggs are present at BIRTH.
That means all of a woman’s eggs are being exposed to all chemicals throughout the mother’s lifespan, even before pregnancy… As I have written and lectured about in the past, all of the psychiatric drugs – with the exception of the stimulants so far, are being studied as adjuvant [add on] treatments for various cancers. The reasons why these drugs are effective in slowing tumor growth [etc.] is because they interrupt cell division and/or cell growth.
So, if you reason this through, it is extremely risky to expose any developing fetus to chemotherapy [thalidomide, for example, is now used as a chemotherapy for myeloma]. If any mother had been taking Effexor for years prior to conceiving, I know of no way to protect the new fetus from potential birth defects arising from the years of egg exposure to the Effexor during the past.
Unfortuately, I know of no one who is studying this question in any seriousness, because it is a question that is not generally posed.
I would suggest that it would be unlikely to find Effexor in the blood or brain 3 months after stopping Effexor, but this would not necessarily mean that 8 years of Effexor usage in the past would not still be capable of producing lasting effects.
We do not know how long term [or even short term] might be damaging eggs.
We also do not know how long term exposure to Effexor in the past might exert a lasting detrimental effect upon the mother’s ability to make serotonin. The fetus depends upon the mother for all of its serotonin for the first weeks of gestation [sorry, I do not recall from memory the exact week of development at which the fetus starts to make its own serotonin in the gut -- I shall have to look this up for you or you should consult an embryologist].
Since long term users of antidepressants appear to develop a long-term vulnerability in the capacity to tolerate DECREASES in serotonin — which may involve their own increasing inabilty to make adequate serotonin, it stands to reason that chronic users of antidepressants place their fetuses at risk for a serotonin deficiency in the 1st trimester (etc.).
Why is this critical? Serotonin is an essential growth hormone for the fetus.
Grace
Question: I thought psychiatric drugs were also carcinogens – am I wrong on this? If I am right, are they both carcinogens AND tumor treatments?
But of course !!!!
This is a complicated phenomenon that, I guess, the public seldom (?never?) hears about.
All chemotherapies that “fight” cancers are also interventions that can “cause” cancer.
I’m not sure that anyone has made a good study of the exact prevalence of this phenomenon, but the classic case in point arises with a category of chemotherapies known as alkylating agents…
I quote from one of the most useful pharmacology textbooks which I own [Lippincott's Illustrated Reviews - Pharmacology, 4th Edition Editors: Harvey and Champe] “Because most antineoplastic agents are mutagens, neoplasms [for example: acute nonlymphocytic leukemia] may arise 10 or more years after the original cancer was cured.”
This raises interesting questions about the long-term effects of many psychiatric medications — from everything that i have read and researched to date, it would seem that most consumers of neuroleptics and anticonvulsant drugs are dropping dead in their 50s and 60s PRIOR to the emergence of cancers… however, if we really think about what has happened since the epidemic spread of Prozac and other alleged “anti”-depressants since the 1990s, we do not yet have good long-term data on the possible emergence of a leukemia [or other] cancer epidemic that still might appear down the line…
Grace
Top blog award
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How long did it take you withdraw from Paxil?
Go to http://www.fiddaman.blogspot.com/ to take the poll how long did it take you to withdraw from Paxil
Intra-Uterine Deaths and Umbilical Cord Abnormalities Linked to Antidepressants in MedWatch Reports; Preventing Threatened Miscarriages
I have read about problems with the placenta being associated with Paxil, and I have even known people with this problem whose babies were exposed to Paxil or other antidepressants not from the mother but via the father’s sperm and exposure from semen. I am guessing the exposure from mom taking a drug would probably be more intense but this goes to show how toxic the drugs are. There are reports of drug exposure via semen in the MedWatch database.
I was wondering about umbilical cord abnormalities and antidepressants so I decided to do a google search and couldn’t find much aside from unrelated drug selling websites that used every key word imaginable.
So, I pulled a few reports (not all the reports, just a sampling) from the decrypted MedWatch report database on the topics of intrauterine death and umbilical cord abnormalities (Thank you CCHR!).
Some also have placenta problems although I did not do a search on those specifically. The decrypted MedWatch data seems to be one of the only sources for finding this information on what is really associated with antidepressant use / psych drug use. I think it is really one of the best sites on the internet because you can search for a specific side effect and see how many reports there were. The main psychdrugdangers database even breaks it down for you by age range. The MOTHERS Act / prenatal / neonatal database section has all the reports you need to see if you are looking for pregnancy and breastfeeding reports since 2004.
I love this site because you are able to see the truth and not have to wonder about any conflicts of interest with the researchers, agendas, or bad motives like you would if you only read the complete b.s. being offered up by websites of moms on drugs, psychs in the pocket of pHARMa, etc.
Because of the seriousness of this issue I feel that every mom should have access to this information so I hope you will share this with your friends, you never know who it may help to save. (See: October 15 Infant and Child Death Awareness and Prevention Day).
On that note, I highly recommend the book Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year by Susan Weed. It talks about herbs and vitamins that can be used to help prevent miscarriage, to stop miscarriages in progress, promote uterine health, and what herbs and foods to avoid to protect your baby during pregnancy.
I have this book on my shelf, and I looked up some information for a friend once… Using some of the recommended vitamins during a time when she was having bleeding and on bed rest during the second trimester, things improved. Another great product she used is called Carry On which is for bleeding and prevention of miscarriage. Every time I see her baby I think about those products and how they possibly saved that baby’s life. We found out about that product from a friend on a home birth listserv.
If you’re not on any mommy listservs or yahoo groups I recommend trying to find a holistic one to get advice from holistic friends like this. The MADNAP listserv, UNITE listserv, and CHAADA listserv are all hosted on Yahoo and would be a good place to start. We have several home birthing moms on there who have experience with alternative health and can refer you to other resources / groups.
Now for the sample reports I pulled: If you have had a similar incident while taking a psychiatric drug or shortly after withdrawing from one, please consider making a MedWatch report by going here:
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/medwatch/medwatch-online.htm
http://www.thefetus.net/page.php?id=167 According to this article on velamentous insertion of the umbilical cord, the anomaly is associated with congenital abnormalities and preterm birth. These are problems commonly associated with antidepressants. One study found a nearly five times higher rate of preterm birth for babies exposed to antidepressants. [“Infants exposed to fluoxetine during the third trimester had, compared to those exposed only during the first and second trimester, reduced birth weight and length, an almost 5-fold increased risk of premature delivery, a 2.6-fold increased risk of being admitted to special-care nurseries, and an almost 9-fold increased risk of experiencing respiratory difficulties, cyanosis on feeding, and jitteriness.” Birth outcomes in pregnant women taking fluoxetine. Chambers CD, et al. N Engl J Med, 335(14):1010-5 1996 Oct 3.]
DECRYPTED REPORTS:
http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/MothersAct.html
EFFEXOR
M 6026440 4964817 03/01/2006 04/03/2006 Venlafaxine Depression Caesarean Section, Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Testicular Torsion, Umbilical Cord Abnormality
M 6232679 5232270 07/01/2006 02/07/2007 11/01/2006 Effexor XR CN Anomaly of External Ear Congenital, Intra-Uterine Death, Limb Malformation, Low Set Ears, Skull Malformation, Transmission of Drug Via Semen, Umbilical Cord Abnormality
6040906 4985077 09/07/2005 04/19/2006 Effexor XR Pyramidal Tract Syndrome Brain Malformation, Cerebral Cyst, Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Exomphalos, Intra-Uterine Death, Talipes
5827164 4692986 06/15/2005 Effexor XR OT Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Intra-Uterine Death
F 5941024 4845757 11/30/2005 Effexor XR Depression Abortion Spontaneous, Depression, Disease Recurrence, Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Drug Ineffective, Drug Withdrawal Syndrome, Foetal Growth Retardation, Intra-Uterine Death
PAXIL
F 5892354 4789790 10/06/2005 Paxil CN Drug Use for Unknown Indication Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Intra-Uterine Death, Placental Disorder, Umbilical Cord Abnormality, Umbilical Cord Vascular Disorder
M 5991062 5464256 11/02/2005 09/21/2007 Paxil CR CN Maternal Condition Affecting Foetus Arrhythmia, Atelectasis, Atrial Septal Defect, Balance Disorder, Blindness, Blood Pressure Increased, Caesarean Section, Cardiac Failure Congestive, Cardiomegaly, Catatonia, Complex Partial Seizures, Convulsion, Coordination Abnormal, Cyanosis, Dehydration, Developmental Delay, Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Eating Disorder, Embolic Stroke, Encephalomalacia, Facial Palsy, Heart Disease Congenital, Hemiparesis, Infantile Spasms, Loss of Consciousness, Muscular Weakness, Oedema, Oral Intake Reduced, Oxygen Saturation Decreased, Patent Ductus Arteriosus, Pleural Effusion, Post Procedural Complication, Postoperative Thrombosis, Psychomotor Skills Impaired, Pulmonary Oedema, Respiratory Acidosis, Respiratory Distress, Screaming, Sinus Bradycardia, Skin Discolouration, Speech Disorder Developmental, Tachypnoea, Thrombosis, Transposition of the Great Vessels, Umbilical Cord Around Neck, Univentricular Heart, Urinary Tract Infection, Ventricular Hypoplasia, Ventricular Septal Defect, Vesicoureteric Reflux (This one was accidentally copied and pasted, and I just realized doesn’t have umbilcal cord abnormalities, just around the neck, but it was such an awful case I felt I should keep it in.)
F 5654406 4488092 03/23/2004 10/28/2004 Paroxetine MD Depression Cytomegalovirus Infection, Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Intra-Uterine Death
5819180 4690656 02/24/2005 06/15/2005 02/24/2005 Deroxat CN Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Intra-Uterine Death
WELLBUTRIN
F 5701388 4536190 09/17/2004 12/23/2004 Bupropion OT Depression Chorioamnionitis, Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Intra-Uterine Death, Micrognathia, Umbilical Cord Abnormality
26 Years F 6000982 4938300 03/09/2006 Bupropion OT Depression Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Hypertension, Umbilical Cord Vascular Disorder
M 4011323 4279456 01/27/2004 Wellbutrin MD Depression Abdominal Wall Anomaly, Arteriopathic Disease, Chorioamnionitis, Cleft Palate, Congenital Atrial Septal Defect, Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Ear Malformation, Intra-Uterine Death, Jaw Fracture, Kyphosis, Liver Disorder, Lymphangiectasia, Macrognathia, Nose Deformity, Pectus Excavatum, Placental Disorder, Spleen Malformation, Thyroid Disorder, Traumatic Delivery
F 6172347 5156305 11/22/2006 Wellbutrin OT Drug Use for Unknown Indication Drug Exposure During Pregnancy, Intra-Uterine Death
The Nightmare of Paxil Birth Defects
Please read Julie Edgington’s blog entry about a reocurring nightmare she has about Manie: http://bigpharmavictim.blogspot.com/2009/09/reoccurring-nightmare.html
There are also several updates on her blog regarding the current Paxil birth defects trial being covered by Bloomberg news.
by Julie Edgington
Last night I had a reoccurring nightmare which I have had since I found out it was Paxil which caused Manie’s birth defect. Usually I wake only remembering bits and pieces of my nightmare, but not this time. This time I woke with tears streaming down my face and a tear soaked pillow.
My Nightmare:
I saw myself standing there in the kitchen of our old house. This was the house I had been living in when I became pregnant with Manie. I knew right away exactly what moment from the past this was. It was so clear this time as if I was really there watching it all happen. Not only was I watching this happen I could physically feel everything that I felt that day. I watch and felt myself push the kitchen chair in that someone had left pulled out. I watch and felt myself get a glass of water. I even felt the coldness of the glass in my hand. I knew what was going to happen next because I had already done this.
At this time I felt someone holding my hand I looked down and it was Manie. He looked up at me and the sadness on his face let me know he knew what was about to happen too. As I looked at him I could hear his heart beating. I knew it was his because of the sound of it. His heart sounds different then any other heart because of the leak. As I continued to look at him I could hear my own heartbeat also. It was as if I could hear his heartbeat in my right ear and mine in the left, both beating at the exact same time. As I stood there looking at him my chest began to ache. With every heartbeat mine was changing to sound just like Manie’s. I felt as if I had ran a marathon and had a heart attack all at the same time. Before I knew it the two heartbeats were now one. I felt scared and worried, but not for me for Manie.
I began to look around for something to help us. I remembered where we were and at what time. I realized I can stop this! As I looked straight ahead of me I saw myself taking the pill from the package. I screamed and I tried to move, but there was nothing I could do! I could not hear myself. My feet were locked to the floor. The more I watch the more I felt our heart pounding and the louder it became. I looked down at Manie and he just stand there crying as if he knew I could do nothing. I continued to scream but nothing worked. Then I could feel it, the feeling of that damn pill in my mouth and the drink of water that carried it down. I felt it as if it was really happening. In a last ditch effort to make it all better I closed my eyes and slowly instead of having just one heartbeat there was two again. The heartbeat in my right ear was normal and healthy. I gave Manie my heartbeat and I took his. As much as my heart ached with pain and as tired as I was I felt good inside. I could feel the scars on my chest. I looked at Manie’s chest his scars were gone. Manie smiled at me and let go of my hand. I could not hear our hearts beating anymore, but I knew he would be alright.
Manie and I were no longer in that old kitchen, we were outside. I watched as Manie ran and ran and ran. I watched as he played football, basketball, baseball and hockey. I watched as he rode the scariest of amusement park rides. There was no more waiting in doctors offices, no more hospitals, no more leg and arm cramps and no more waking in the middle of the night in pain. There was no more medications. Manie did not look tired because he was not tired. He felt good he was finally able to do all the things he ever wanted because the child on the outside finally matched the child on the inside. My nightmare had become a dream. I woke to tears on my face and pillow because Manie was happy. Happy tears turned to sad tears as I slowly realized it was just a dream. The real nightmare is what I live. The nightmare is knowing I can’t make it all better because I really can not change heartbeats with Manie.
