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
Episode 06: Why is mammography screening a bad idea?
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 to 59 years. CMAJ 1992;147:1477-88.
Miller AB, Wall C, Baines CJ, Sun P, To T, Narod SA. Twenty five year follow-up for breast cancer incidence and mortality of the Canadian National Breast Screening Study: randomised screening trial. BMJ 2014;348:g366.
Gøtzsche PC. Mammography screening: truth, lies and controversy. London: Radcliffe Publishing; 2012.
Gøtzsche PC. Mammography screening: the great hoax. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom 2024 (in press).
Episode 07: How can patients be safely withdrawn from their psychiatric drugs
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, Gabapentinoids and Z-drugs (The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines Series) 2024.
Gøtzsche PC. Mental health survival kit and withdrawal from psychiatric drugs. Ann Arbor: L H Press; 2022.
Gøtzsche PC. Withdrawing from psychiatric drugs: How to produce smaller doses than those the drug companies provide. Mad in America 2023; Nov 21.
Episode 05: The rise and demise of the Cochrane Collaboration
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 PC. Cochrane – no longer a Collaboration. BMJ 2018; Nov 8.
Gøtzsche PC. Death of a whistleblower and Cochrane’s moral collapse. København: People’s Press; 2019.
Gøtzsche PC. Decline and fall of the Cochrane empire (freely available). Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022.
Gøtzsche PC. Cochrane’s demise: misleading denigration of benzodiazepines for acute psychosis. Mad in America 2023; June 3.
Gøtzsche PC. Cochrane reviews of psychiatric drugs are untrustworthy. Mad in America 2023; Sept 14.
Gøtzsche PC. “Why we resigned” from the Cochrane Governing Board. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom 2023;Dec 6.
Gøtzsche PC. My career in exposing fraud, bias and injustice in healthcare. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom 2023; Dec 4.
Episode 04: The myths of the chemical imbalance and the chemical cure for psychiatric disorders
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; 2013.
Moncrieff J. The myth of the chemical cure: a critique of psychiatric drug treatment. Palgrave Macmillan; 2007.
Moncrieff J. A straight talking introduction to psychiatric drugs. PCCS Books; 2013.
Demasi M, Gøtzsche PC. Presentation of benefits and harms of antidepressants on websites: cross sectional study. Int J Risk Saf Med 2020;31:53-65.
Gøtzsche PC. The Norwegian Psychiatric Association propagates dangerous misinformation about their specialty. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom 2023; Aug 30.
Coupland C, Dhiman P, Morriss R, et al. Antidepressant use and risk of adverse outcomes in older people: population based cohort study. BMJ 2011;343:d4551.
Whitaker R. Anatomy of an epidemic, 2nd edition. New York: Broadway Paperbacks; 2015.
Horowitz MA, Taylor D. Tapering of SSRI treatment to mitigate withdrawal symptoms. Lancet Psychiatry 2019;6:538-46.
Moncrieff J, Cooper RE, Stockmann T, et al. The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence. Mol Psychiatry 2022; July 20.
Moncrieff J, Cooper RE, Stockmann T, et al. The serotonin hypothesis of depression: both long discarded and still supported? Mol Psychiatry 2023; June 23.
Gøtzsche PC. Critical psychiatry textbook. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022. Freely available.
Episode 03: Vaccines, a complicated area. Some decrease total mortality, some increase it, and COVID-19 vaccines are overused
Professor Christine Stabel Benn, Southern University in Denmark, has published ground-breaking field studies about vaccines with her husband, Professor Peter Aaby.
In this episode, Peter C Gøtzsche discusses with Professor Christine Stabell Benn the research that has shown that live, attenuated vaccines reduce total mortality by much more than their specific effects would predict; that non-live vaccines increase total mortality; that the order in which the vaccines are given is important for mortality; what the harms are of the COVID-19 vaccines; and why they are overused.
Documentation:
Benn CS, Fisker AB, Rieckmann A, et al. Vaccinology: time to change the paradigm? Lancet Infect Dis 2020 Oct;20:e274-83.
Unspecific effects of vaccines on mortality (after 1m)
All live vaccines reduce mortality more than expected (after 5m20s)
Non-live vaccines increase mortality (after 8m25s)
The last vaccine should be a live one (17m40s)
Gøtzsche PC. Vaccines: truth, lies, and controversy. New York: Skyhorse; 2021.
The measles vaccine has saved millions of lives (after 3m25s)
The MMR vaccine does not cause autism (after 3m50s)
Polio outbreaks caused by the vaccine (after 6m20s)
The DTP vaccine increases mortality (after 10m15s, 11m30s)
Drug regulators claim that adjuvants are harmless (after 10m45s)
Dengue virus (15m30s)
Pfizer trial in New England Journal of Medicine not honest about severe adverse events (28m50s)
Influenza vaccines are poor (after 50m45s)
Mogensen SW, Aaby P, Smedman L, et al. Introduction of standard measles vaccination in an urban African community in 1979 and overall child survival: a reanalysis of data from a cohort study. BMJ Open 2016;6:e011317.
Mortality declined 70% after introduction of the measles vaccine (after 4m35s)
Aaby P, Ravn H, Fisker AB, et al. Is diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) associated with increased female mortality? A meta-analysis testing the hypotheses of sex-differential non-specific effects of DTP vaccine. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg 2016;110:570-81.
The DTP vaccine increases mortality (after 10m15s)
Higgins JP, Soares-Weiser K, López-López JA, et al. Association of BCG, DTP, and measles containing vaccines with childhood mortality: systematic review. BMJ 2016;355:i5170.
The DTP vaccine increases mortality (after 14m25s)
Benn CS, Amenyogbe N, Björkman A, et al. Implications of non-specific effects for testing, approving, and regulating vaccines. Drug Safety 2023;46:439-48.
How vaccines should be tested (after 20m50s, 26m20s)
Benn CS, Schaltz-Buchholzer F, Nielsen S, et al. Randomized clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines: Do adenovirus-vector vaccines have beneficial non-specific effects? iScience 2023;26:106733.
Total mortality decreased with the vector COVID-19 vaccines but not with the mRNA vaccines (after 23m10s)
Knox R. Merck tries to move beyond Vioxx debacle. National Public Radio 2007; Nov 12 (after 28m15s).
Gøtzsche PC, Demai M. Serious harms of the COVID-19 vaccines: a systematic review Institute for Scientific Freedom 2023; March 22.
App for recording adverse events in placebo-controlled trials was inadequate (after 30m5s)
100% of hospital staff became severely harmed after the Astra-Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine (after 33m40s)
The Astra-Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine causes thromboses (after 35m30s)
Benn CS, Aaby P. Should COVID-19 be a vaccine disease or a childhood disease? BMJ 2021; July 18.
We should make COVID-19 a childhood disease (after 40m40s).
Gøtzsche PC. More on YouTube censorship of world class vaccine research. Institute for Scientific Freedom 2022; Oct 18.
YouTube would take down our interview immediately (after 42m38s)
Peter Aaby’s lecture removed by YouTube even though he just reported on his own research (after 43m15s)
Chumakov K, Benn CS, Aaby P et al. Can existing live vaccines prevent COVID-19? Science 2020;368:1187-8.
Aaby in Science (after 43m45s)
Gøtzsche PC. The Chinese virus: Killed millions and scientific freedom. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022 (freely available).
The COVID-19 pandemic was highly likely caused by a lab leak of a manufactured virus (after 45m37s)
100% COVID-19 vaccine efficacy was fact checked but false (after 47m45s)
Sunday Times: The Chinese virus was likely manufactured in Wuhan as part of a secret bioweapons programme Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom 2023; June 12.
The COVID-19 pandemic was highly likely caused by a lab leak of a manufactured virus (after 45m50s)
Episode 01: Big pharma, the corruption of science, and millions of unnecessary deaths
Professor Peter C Gøtzsche is a medical researcher who co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993 and was expelled from it after a show trial. He has published over 100 articles in the “big five” medical journals and several books about the corruption of science.
In this episode, filmmaker Janus Bang interviews Professor emeritus Peter C Gøtzsche who explains that big pharma’s business model is organised crime; that our drugs are the third leading cause of death; that drug approval is a broken system that protects the drug industry rather than the patients; that many deaths are missing in published reports; that The Cochrane Collaboration, once a trusted scientific organisation, employed the wrong man as CEO in 2012 who destroyed the organisation and expelled one of its most respected scientists because of his criticism of psychiatry after a secret show trial; that censorship in medical publishing has increased; that Cochrane threw the researcher that showed facemasks don’t work under the bus; and why Cochrane now seems to be a slowly dying institution.
Documentation:
Gøtzsche PC. Deadly medicines and organised crime: How big pharma has corrupted health care. London: Radcliffe Publishing; 2013.
Gøtzsche PC. Deadly psychiatry and organised denial. Copenhagen: People’s Press; 2015.
Gøtzsche PC. Death of a whistleblower and Cochrane’s moral collapse. København: People’s Press; 2018.
Gøtzsche PC. Survival in an overmedicated world: look up the evidence yourself. Copenhagen: People’s Press; 2019.
Gøtzsche PC. Vaccines: truth, lies, and controversy. New York: Skyhorse; 2021.
Gøtzsche PC. Decline and fall of the Cochrane empire. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022.
Gøtzsche PC. Mental health survival kit and withdrawal from psychiatric drugs. Ann Arbor: L H Press; 2022.
Gøtzsche PC. The Chinese virus: Killed millions and scientific freedom. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022.
Gøtzsche PC. Critical psychiatry textbook. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022.
Gøtzsche PC. False propaganda about face masks and Cochrane editorial misconduct. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom 2023; Sept 11.
Episode 09: Being abused by psychiatry, lies in court, and winning lawsuits to prevent forced drugging
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 30 patients in Alaska. Psychosis 2023;15:145-54.
Gøtzsche PC. Critical psychiatry textbook. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022. Freely available.
Gøtzsche PC. Mental health survival kit and withdrawal from psychiatric drugs. Ann Arbor: L H Press; 2022.
Gøtzsche PC. Deadly psychiatry and organised denial. Copenhagen: People’s Press; 2015.
Gøtzsche PC. Is psychiatry a crime against humanity? Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2024. Freely available.