Lawyer Jim Gottstein from Anchorage has a personal brief experience as a patient with acute psychosis. He has won important lawsuits at the Alaska Supreme Court to prevent forced drugging, thereby defending the basic human rights of psychiatric patients. In this episode, Peter C Gøtzsche interviews Jim Gottstein about these issues. Documentation: Gottstein J. The Zyprexa papers. Anchorage: Jim Gottstein; 2020. Gøtzsche PC, Sørensen A. Systematic violations of patients' rights and safety: Forced medication of a cohort of 30 patients. Ind J Med Ethics 2020;Oct-Dec;5(4) NS:312-8. Tasch G, Gøtzsche PC. Systematic violations of patients’ rights and safety: forced medication of a cohort of...

Should I take an antidepressant? Professor emeritus Peter C Gøtzsche explains in four minutes what the effects are of depression drugs on depression, the risk of suicide and people’s sex lives. For more information, see articles and books on https://scientificfreedom.dk

Professor emerita Cornelia Baines from the University of Toronto was a primary investigator in the Canadian National Breast Screening Study. In this episode, Peter C Gøtzsche discusses with Cornelia Baines the false propaganda for breast screening and how its proponents have constantly harassed anyone who told the truth. Documentation: Miller AB, Baines CJ, To T, Wall C. Canadian National Breast Screening Study: 1. Breast cancer detection and death rates among women aged 40 to 49 years. CMAJ 1992;147:1459-76. Miller AB, Baines CJ, To T, Wall C. Canadian National Breast Screening Study: 2. Breast cancer detection and death rates among women aged 50...

Training Psychiatrist and Clinical Research Fellow in the UK National Health Service, Mark Horowitz, has published guidance about how to withdraw safely from psychiatric drugs. In this episode, Peter C Gøtzsche interviews Mark Horowitz who gives practical advice about how to taper the drugs in a hyperbolic fashion. He also recounts his personal experience of horrific withdrawal symptoms when he tried to withdraw a depression drug and did not know how to do it. Documentation: Horowitz MA, Taylor D. Tapering of SSRI treatment to mitigate withdrawal symptoms. Lancet Psychiatry 2019;6:538-46 (behind a paywall). Horowitz M, Taylor DM.The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines: Antidepressants, Benzodiazepines,...

Science journalist Alan Cassels, University of Victoria, British Columbia, was asked by the Cochrane leadership to write a book to celebrate Cochrane’s 20th anniversary in 2013. In this episode, Peter C Gøtzsche discusses with Cassels why Cochrane’s CEO, journalist Mark Wilson, killed his book about Cochrane and why the most important organisation established in healthcare in the last 100 years seems to have collapsed. We hope that somehow a new Cochrane will come out of the ashes. Documentation: Cassels A. The Cochrane Collaboration: Medicine’s best kept secret. Victoria: Agio; 2015. Demasi M. Cochrane – a sinking ship? BMJ 2018; Sept 16. Gøtzsche...

Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London, Joanna Moncrieff, is co-founder of the Critical Psychiatry Network based in the UK and has advocated for far less use of psychiatric drugs for decades, in scientific articles and books. In this episode, Peter C Gøtzsche discusses with Professor Joanna Moncrieff what critical psychiatry is about; why psychiatric drugs are much overused and based on false premises; and how the disease centred and the drug centred model for psychiatric drugs can help explain the predicament we are in. Documentation: Moncrieff J. The bitterest pills: the troubling story of antipsychotic drugs. Palgrave Macmillan;...