EXTRA!

August 26, 2003

SECOND OPINION

A FAST FOR FREEDOM IN MENTAL HEALTH

A hunger strike challenges the international domination by biopsychiatry and the forced drugging of patients

A MEMO TO VICE ADMIRAL RICHARD H. CARMONA, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.S., AND SURGEON GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES

Sixth In A Series (Fifth HERE)

By RFD Editor, Nicholas Regush

It is Day Ten of the hunger strike in Pasadena, California. The remaining five strikers from MindFreedom are on a liquid diet, refusing solid food for "an indefinite period of time." They want you, Dr. Richard Carmona, the U.S. Surgeon General, to take their cause seriously. They have already been stiffed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the National Alliance For The Mentally Ill (NAMI). The APA arrogantly referred the group, along with its 14-member scientific panel, to some introductory texts and volumes of psychiatric materials, without actually responding to the basic question being asked: What is the solid scientific evidence available that "emotional and mental problems are primarily a biologically-based brain disease?" Actually, one of the APA’s recommendations was to read a report from the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General on mental illness. In response to that publication, the MindFreedom scientific panel noted, for example, that it pointed to the fact that "few lesions or physiologic abnormalities define the mental disorders and for the most part their causes remain unknown."

The Mind Freedom hunger strikers are greatly concerned that the highly questionable and dominant biopsychiatric agenda, which includes forced drugging of patients, strongly deprives huge numbers of people of community-based treatments that are not drug oriented.

I find it quite appalling that the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General has not even had the courtesy of indicating it received this challenge from MindFreedom. Granted, APA and NAMI (which unbelievably tried to convince the strikers to join their biopsychiatric agenda) have shown themselves to be toadies of the drug industry. But what about you, Dr. Carmona? You occupy an office that goes all the way back to 1871, and one that rests on the claim that the Surgeon General of the United States is the nation’s leading spokesman on matters of public health. Seventeen men and women have served in this post before you took over on August 5, 2002. And you even have the additional title of Acting Assistant Secretary for Health.

But I’m wondering to what extent you are a mere figurehead in a Medical Establishment that is now well out of control. For whom do you speak? The American people? Which ones? Only those who are in line with Bush Administration health policies? Have you remained mute because you consider the MindFreedom hunger strikers to be unimportant and ultimately disposable?

It seems to me that if you do not respond intelligently to the issues that they are raising — issues that are being raised throughout the country by professionals and lay people alike —then you are already likely another medical system puppet in service of his masters.