The Suicide Pill : Mefloquine and Lariam, History and Peer Review

By Prager, Jeffrey, J

Book Id: WPLBN0100003165
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 26.16 MB
Reproduction Date: 9/16/2018

Title:	The Suicide Pill : Mefloquine and Lariam, History and Peer Review
Author:	Prager, Jeffrey, J
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Non Fiction, Social Sciences, Civilian & Military Pharmaceutical Harms
Collections:	Authors Community, History
Historic Publication Date:	2018
Publisher:	Self-published

Member Page:	Jeff Prager
Citation APA MLA Chicago J Prager, B. J. (2018). The Suicide Pill : Mefloquine and Lariam, History and Peer Review. Retrieved from http://gutenberg.cc/

Description
Dr. Donald H. Marks is a former associate director of clinical research at Roche. Marks left the company in 1991 to take a directorship position with another company and this is what he has to say regarding Lariam and his former employer, Roche: “Roche has developed an attitude of not adjusting the information it supplies to physicians and patients about the performance and safety characteristics of their drugs.” Marks went on to say that there is “ample reason” to believe Lariam causes suicide. Marks said Lariam can cause “spontaneous neurological activity” and “irritation of certain sensitive areas inside the brain” that could lead to suicidal behavior long after someone stops taking it. Dr. Remington Nevin is an epidemiologist and former US Army major. Regarding research on Lariam, Dr. Nevin states, “These figures are consistent with Lariam causing symptoms of mental illness including anxiety and depression, and are also consistent with the known association of these conditions with a strongly increased risk of suicide. As a result of its toxic effects, the drug is quickly becoming the “Agent Orange” of this generation, linked to a growing list of lasting neurological and psychiatric problems including suicide.” Dr. Nevin describes Lariam as “a horror movie in a pill.”

Summary
The history of the development and use of Mefloquine (Lariam) as an anti-malarial and the profound and devastating neurological effects the pharmaceutical was eventually found to cause. This is also the history of the Kandahar Massacre and Robert Bales, a US Marine accused of murdering 17 Afghani civilians alone, in cold blood. It wasn't Robert Bales, it was Lariam. Includes numerous peer reviewed reports with.

Excerpt
"I still remember the first time I smelled brain. It was my grandfather, cracking open the skulls of squirrels he’d killed. They’d scamper down the sides of pecans and live oaks among the Louisiana timbers where I grew up, enter his sights—then, oblivion. I was very small then, so it never seemed odd when those brains found their way into the scrambled eggs my grandmother would cook up for Papaw. When I was there I’d have some too. The gray matter of tree rats adds a certain sweetness generally absent from an otherwise bland backwoods diet. When I was older, and working in the morgue, the scent would hang in my nostrils for days. Maybe it was the acrid combination of blood and cerebral spinal fluid. The smell of souls. I vividly remember the last time I smelled brain. It was July 2004, and I was peering up at the underside of a Camry. I lay on my back considering the strata of accumulated road filth, spots of tar, and oil coating the wheel wells, tires, and front axle. Wedged among the dark-speckled tapestry were brilliant arrays of pink and gray. They had accumulated in little globs that organically glistened among the machinery. Some hung like stalactites, their tips pointing at my nose. Others were smeared here and there—evidence of something brutal and violent. These particular bits of brain belonged to a 23- month-old child. Earlier that day, his mother had dropped him off at his grandmother’s house. As she pulled out of the driveway, the child ran back, perhaps to say goodbye to his momma one last time. She would later recount the slight bump she felt as she turned the wheel and drove away. Obviously she had no idea that bump was her son’s skull being crushed between a tire and the outstretched roots of a pine tree. She continued on, unknowingly spraying her son’s brains across the underside of her car.

Table of Contents
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