While the reader may not agree with Bramley's conclusions regarding Alien intervention throughout Earth's history, the majority of the "history" Bramley investigates and presents here is very clear and well written. Here is an excerpt for the chapter dealing with psychiatry and drugs: By redefining the nature of thought and behavior, scientific psychiatry also redefined the nature of mental abnormality and its cure. Methods to bypass human free will and intellect (behavior modification) were explored and developed. Because human beings were viewed as strictly biological-chemical-electrical organisms, all mental illnesses were said to be the result of physiological processes somehow going "out of kilter." Experimenters theorized that mental illness could be cured by strictly physiological means, such as with drugs, shock treatment, or brain surgery. It was believed that such treatments could remedy the chemical or electrical "imbalances" and thereby cure the mental illness itself. Out of these theories arose a multibillion dollar drug industry which pours out huge quantities of mood-altering drugs every year. These drugs are designed to relieve every mental ill from "can't get to sleep at night" to violent psychosis. In addition, many psychiatrists use special machines to send electrical shocks through a person's brain. Some may even resort to brain surgery. Now that we have had almost half a century to observe these cures in action, we can ask: have they benefited mankind? Is the world a saner place today than it was 50 years ago? To answer these questions, we might do well to analyze the "cure" most often prescribed by psychiatrists: psychotropic ("mind-affecting") drugs. Psychotropic drugs are a mammoth industry.
They comprise a large portion of the total prescription drug trade which
in 1978 amounted to an estimated $16.7 billion wholesale value in global
sales by U.S. manufacturers alone. This figure does not even include sales
by Swiss and other European manufacturers. An excellent book, This epidemic drug use is not an accident. Powerful psychotropic medications are energetically promoted to the medical community in glossy Madison Avenue advertisements in such publications as the American Journal of Psychiatry and through workshops and seminars sponsored by the drug companies. Justified criticism has been leveled against drug-oriented psychiatry because of the number of patients who actually deteriorate as a result of their psychiatric treatment. For example, a surprisingly large number of people who commit apparently senseless acts of violence, such as shooting sprees and other grisly headline-grabbing acts, are people who were previously treated with psychotropic drugs. John Hinckley, Jr., for example, was under the influence of Valium when he attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Such coincidences are usually explained as an indication that those people were already mentally deranged before the violent episodes and, at worst, the drugs were simply not able to help them. On the other hand, critics point out that such individuals were often not violent before their treatment, but became violent only afterwards. Did psychiatric treatments actually worsen their mental states to the point of their going completely psychotic? One of the great feathers in the cap of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is its requirement that all drug manufacturers must list the side effects, or "adverse reactions," that their drugs have been known to cause. This mandatory disclosure warns physicians of possible dangers and guides them in knowing when to take a patient off a drug. Unfortunately, by the time an adverse reaction is visible to the doctor, the damage may already be done. Most adverse reactions do vanish when the medication is discontinued, but some side effects can be permanent and cause lasting complications. This is especially worrisome when we discover that many adverse reactions are psychological. A person opening a copy of the American Journal of Psychiatry and seeing the drug ads for the first time may react with shock at not only the slick sales pitches, but also at the small print. Every advertised psychotropic medication has a long list of potential physical and psychological adverse reactions. Most of the listed side effects are in medical terms incomprehensible to the layman; however, many of them are quite understandable.
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