Matthew Perry’s ketamine overdose should be lesson in expanded use of dangerous drug

 By 

Social Links forMarc Siegel

Now that the autopsy report has revealed that beloved actor Matthew Perry died of a large ketamine overdose, from an amount that is only intended for use during anesthesia, it is time to closely examine the drug and its storied past.

In Perry’s case, according to the autopsy report, ketamine caused either an acute heart issue (he had underlying heart disease) such as an arrhythmia and/or a respiratory arrest followed by submersion face down in the hot tub.

Perry was receiving ketamine regularly by intravenous injection to treat his longtime depression and anxiety, but according to the coroner, hadn’t received an intravenous administration in over a week, and ketamine only lasts for three or four hours.

But Dr. Michael Baden, world-renowned forensic pathologist and former NYC chief medical examiner, told me he agrees with the autopsy conclusion that Perry died from ketamine and pointed out that since there was ketamine found in his stomach he most likely took it orally.

Addiction history

Perry became addicted to Vicodin following a 1997 jet ski accident and ended up with a burst colon in 2019 as a result of his opioid use.

Severe depression and alcohol use disorder accompanied his drug use.

Perry was very open about his addiction, and wrote about it in his memoir last year, “I’m Grateful to Be Alive.” It is tragic that the very drug he was trying to use to save himself succeeded in killing him, and it is a warning to all of us about the risks of self-medicating with ­potent drugs.

Too often, drugs we use to replace other drugs are as dangerous or more so than the originals.

In the late 19th century, Bayer developed heroin as a pain reliever and cough suppressant and to help cure Civil War wounded of “soldier sickness” (morphine addiction), only to find that heroin was far more potent and dangerous.

The same may be said for fentanyl, which was developed as an anesthetic in the 1960s and then to treat cancer pain, only to find that it was far more potent than the treatments it was replacing and ripe for illicit use.

Ketamine was initially utilized as an anesthetic for use in horses in the 1960s, and according to Baden, when the horses appeared to hallucinate, this led to it becoming a popular street drug for humans at the same time that anesthesiologists began to use it during surgery.

The rapid expansion for use for depression and pain has not been sanctioned by the FDA, which has approved an inhaled form of a related drug (esketamine) since 2019 for severe depression, but advises that it only be used in very carefully controlled settings.

Rapid rise

The problem with ketamine (oral, lozenge, inhaled) overuse and over-prescription off-label (without FDA approval) has expanded dramatically in recent years thanks largely to telemedicine and online prescribing.

According to EPIC Research, which examined a database of more than 125 million patients, ketamine prescriptions have soared more than 500 percent since 2017, with only 5 percent of the reason being depression in 2017, growing to 28 percent due to depression in 2022 with an additional 19 percent reportedly due to anxiety.

Pain continues to be the reason for the prescription over one- third of the time, but the use to replace opioids with ketamine has also not been well studied and carries additional risks, especially at higher doses.

As far as depression is concerned, ketamine has only been studied and found to be effective for use in severe depression, where the alternative a patient is facing might be electro-convulsive therapy and hospitalization.

The mind/body dissociation a patient experiences with ketamine can help pull them out of a severe downhill spiral.

Ketamine’s rapid expansion to regular use for lesser forms of depression and anxiety as well as pain management is disturbing and reckless.

Many studies are ongoing, but they need to be completed and assessed.

I am certain that Matthew Perry would want us to learn this lesson from his tragic death.

https://nypost.com/2023/12/17/opinion/matthew-perrys-ketamine-overdose-should-be-a-lesson-in-expanded-use-of-the-dangerous-drug/

Rite Aid prohibited from using facial-recognition technology as part of FTC settlement

 Rite Aid Corp. (RADCQ) said Tuesday it has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission after the agency alleged the retail chain falsely tagged consumers, particularly women and people of color, as shoplifters. Rite Aid will be banned from using facial-recognition technology for surveillance for five years as part of the settlement. "We respect the FTC's inquiry and are aligned with the agency's mission to protect consumer privacy," Rite Aid said in a statement. "However, we fundamentally disagree with the facial recognition allegations in the agency's complaint. The allegations relate to a facial recognition technology pilot program the company deployed in a limited number of stores. Rite Aid stopped using the technology in this small group of stores more than three years ago, before the FTC's investigation regarding the company's use of the technology began."

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20231219512/rite-aid-prohibited-from-using-facial-recognition-technology-as-part-of-ftc-settlement

Psychiatrist From Gender Clinic Warns: 'Gender-Affirming Care' Will Lead To Mass Sterilization

 by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A London psychiatrist who spent 12 years working with children at the United Kingdom's government-funded Tavistock gender clinic is warning that "transitioning" patients to a new gender identity isn't the answer to gender dysphoria.

Countries embracing "gender-affirming care" risk needless mass sterilization, Dr. Az Hakeem told The Epoch Times. He is the author of the new book "Detrans: When Transition is Not the Solution."

"I say affirmation therapy is not therapy—it's grooming" them to accept the idea they were born in the wrong body, said Dr. Hakeem, a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and honorary associate clinical professor at University College London Medical School.

He predicts in the next 5-10 years, society will see a massive number of so-called detransitoners, people who try to reverse steps they took in an attempt to medically change their gender. That's because of an expected 8,000-fold increase in patients undergoing procedures and taking medications meant to try to alter their gender.

"I'm critiquing the whole of gender ideology," he said. His book, he said, "debunks all the myths and dissects" transgenderism.

A False Solution

When a person is feeling confused about his or her identity, he or she may assume that it has to do with gender, especially with the current climate of affirmation of that kind of thinking, he said.

"It's a false solution to a different problem," Dr. Hakeem said.

The causes of gender dysphoria—or unhappiness with one's gender—often are linked to autism, underlying trauma, or internalized homophobia, he said.

In many cases, vulnerable children are "groomed" to transition, often by parents, teachers, doctors, governments, or social media influencers, who plant the idea they might be transgender.

"It's the only medical intervention that I know of for which there was no evidence," Dr. Hakeem said. "There are no outcome studies for this."

To medically castrate children with hormones or surgery is akin to the use of lobotomies or thalidomide in the 1950s and 1960s, he said.

Thalidomide was a tranquilizer given to pregnant women around the world, resulting in thousands of severe birth defects. A lobotomy is a surgery that disrupts nerves to lobes in the brain. It formerly was used as a treatment for mental illness until the practice was deemed inhumane.

There have been enough dissenters to pause, at least temporarily, the headlong plunge into gender-affirming care in the United Kingdom. But it is still a popular course of action there and across Europe, Dr. Hakeem said.

The mental health profession has been captured ideologically, he said, even to the point of affirming children's beliefs that they are cats and dinosaurs.

He sees the pressure applied to people to coerce them to agree with gender ideology and ignore science as "Orwellian." That's a term often used to equate happenings today to the dystopian, future, totalitarian state described in the 1949 novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell. 

A mural depicting British novelist George Orwell with the quote “Freedom is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear,” in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 8, 2018. (Oliver Bunic/AFP via Getty Images)

In the literary classic, the protagonist eventually succumbs to pressure to write 2 + 2 = 5, even though he knows it's incorrect. That's much like how people are expected to affirm adults and children who say they were born in the wrong body.

Though Dr. Hakeem no longer counsels patients on matters of gender identity because it's "too politically dangerous," he does meet with parents of children with gender dysphoria.

One mother who sought his advice has a daughter who was being affirmed as a boy at school against her wishes. But the mother took some comfort in knowing it could have been worse, he said.

"She said, 'The only consolation I can take is that in class—she's 15—she sits next to someone who the teachers are affirming as a pterodactyl, and someone who the teachers are affirming as a cat,'" Dr. Hakeem said.

Teachers and college lecturers in the United Kingdom recently have attended training courses to learn how to interact with students who identify "as cat gender," he said.

'Horrified By What I Saw'

Psychiatrists don't affirm the beliefs of schizophrenic patients who say they hear voices, Dr. Hakeem said. Yet, he marveled, they affirm gender confusion by allowing irrevocable chemical or surgical sterilization.

His stint working at Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS), the gender clinic for minors at The Tavistock Centre, was disturbing, he said.

GIDS started as a small part of the clinic that's funded by the National Health Service (NHS). But it grew and took over, he said.

Activist Chris Elston, known as Billboard Chris (2nd L), embraces a supporter as he demonstrates against “gender-affirming” treatments and surgeries on minors outside of Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts on Sept. 18, 2022. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

It was there Dr. Hakeem encountered incidents of what he considers "transhausen by proxy."

The term refers to parents who want to transition their children to a different gender to meet their own narcissistic needs. It's adapted from Munchausen by proxy, a medical condition in which a parent or caregiver invents medical problems of a child in his or her care in order to gain attention.

The U.K. government has ordered the Tavistock gender clinic to close—scheduled to happen in the spring of 2024—over concerns that diagnoses of gender dysphoria were being confirmed in patients with little investigation into the cause. The review found no solid evidence that "treatment" with puberty blockers or hormones benefited patients.

"I was horrified by what I saw," Dr. Hakeem said.

"My role was every week to challenge and be a troublemaker, standing up for what I thought was common sense, while they were just a transition factory for little kids."

The Epoch Times reached out to the clinic for comment. In an emailed response, a spokeswoman, who declined to be identified by name, wrote, "GIDS works on a case-by-case basis with every young person, their family and local services, working thoughtfully and holistically with them to explore their individual situation, with no expectation of what the right outcome for them might be."

Dr. Hakeem recalled how the parents of a 4-year-old boy discussed steps they were taking to transition him.

"Parents who are saying, 'Oh, yes, well, Johnny's told us that he's a girl, and we've told him he's trapped in the wrong body. We bought him a wig. We've told the school we're changing his name. He knows he's going to get puberty blockers.'"

Things didn't change after he left.

Some 70 children under the age of 5 were referred to the gender clinic from 2010 to 2022, according to GIDS data.

Dr. Hakeem remembers thinking that most of the children coming through the clinic would resolve their dysphoria over time, with many coming to realize they were gay.

"We know that most kids who are gender nonconforming or questioning their gender grow out of it, especially at puberty," he said.

Those running the clinic appeared to think transitioning children and chemically castrating them was a better option than letting them be gay, he said.

"So they literally were transitioning the gay away."

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/psychiatrist-gender-clinic-warns-gender-affirming-care-will-lead-mass-sterilization

Anavex OKd by CHMP to Submit Marketing Authorisation Application for Alzheimer’s

 Anavex Life Sciences Corp. (“Anavex” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq: AVXL), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing differentiated therapeutics for the treatment of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders, announced today that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) within the European Medicines Agency (EMA) agreed that oral blarcamesine for Alzheimer’s disease is eligible for submission of an application for a Union Marketing Authorisation in the EU under the European Medicines Agency’s centralised procedure.

The granting of the eligibility from the CHMP under the centralised procedure allows for submission of a single Marketing Application to the European Medicines Agency that, if approved, would allow blarcamesine to be marketed in all EU member states. Anavex is aiming to submit the Marketing Authorisation Application as early as possible in 2024.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/12/19/2798446/29248/en/Anavex-Received-Agreement-from-the-Committee-for-Medicinal-Products-for-Human-Use-CHMP-for-the-Submission-of-a-Marketing-Authorisation-Application-of-Oral-Blarcamesine-for-Alzheime.html

Neurogene: Merger with Neoleukin Therapeutics and Concurrent Private Placement of $95 M

 Neurogene focused on advancing Phase 1/2 trial for NGN-401, a differentiated clinical stage gene therapy to treat Rett syndrome using its EXACT technology; interim clinical data expected in 4Q24

Two patients successfully dosed with NGN-401, which has been well tolerated to date with no treatment-emergent or procedure-related serious adverse events, or transgene-related overexpression toxicity

Post transaction cash, cash equivalents, and investments of approximately $200 million expected to fund advancement of Neurogene’s EXACT gene therapy portfolio into 2H26

Shares to trade on NASDAQ under the new ticker “NGNE”

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231219056613/en/

Amgen upped to Outperform from Market Perform by BMO

 Target to $326 from $286

https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=AMGN&ty=c&ta=1&p=d

J&J Spinoff Kenvue Defeats Suits Alleging Tylenol Causes Autism

 

• Judge says plaintiffs’ scientific evidence of link is flawed
• Kenvue faced more than 400 suits over the popular painkiller

Kenvue Inc., a Johnson & Johnson spinoff, won’t have to face lawsuits alleging prenatal exposure to over-the-counter painkiller Tylenol caused autism after a judge rejected the scientific evidence behind the cases.

US District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan concluded Monday that plaintiffs in more than 400 suits accusing Kenvue and other makers and sellers of acetaminophen relied on flawed science in seeking to prove an increased risk of developmental issues in babies. The ruling effectively kills a consolidation of the cases before Cote.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-19/j-j-spinoff-kenvue-defeats-suits-alleging-tylenol-causes-autism