Doctors who treat people suffering from depression have learned something recently about the associations that the Ralph Nader combine is willing to accept in pursuit of its notions of the "public interest." For some time now, Eli Lilly & Co. has been embroiled in a tedious battle with the Scientology cult and the usual coven of plaintiffs' lawyers over its anti-depression drug Prozac. The Scientologists—founded by the late science-fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard—and the lawyers have been galloping around the country ...

By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa., had been a normal, happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On the day last June when his parents drove to New York City to claim his body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-studies scholar had jumped from a 10th-floor window of the Milford Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limousine. When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in ...

After a whirlwind love affair with the media, fluoxetine's (Prozac's) fall from grace has been just as spectacular. Just over a year ago it was featured on the cover of Newsweek as a "wonder drug" that not only helped patients overcome major depression, but improved their social life, their careers, and their marriages. Patients testified on talk shows and in newspaper interviews that the drug made them feel even better than before they were sick. A small case report of six ...

As part of its strategy, the movement created a nationwide uproar over the drug Ritalin, used to treat hyperactive children. In recent years, a national debate flared over Ritalin, a drug used for more than three decades to treat hyperactivity in children. Across the country, multimillion-dollar lawsuits were filed by parents who contended that their children had been harmed by the drug. Major news organizations—including The Times—devoted extensive coverage to whether youngsters were being turned into emotionally disturbed addicts by psychiatrists ...

The church has adopted the terminology and trappings of traditional theologies. But the IRS is not convinced. Since its founding some 35 years ago by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology has worked hard to shore up its religious profile for the public, the courts and the Internal Revenue Service. In the old days, for example, those who purchased Hubbard's Scientology courses were called "students." Today, they are "parishioners." The group's "franchises" have become "missions." And Hubbard's teachings, ...

NEWKIRK, OK – A proposed drug treatment and rehabilitation center which could be in operation on Indian land at the former Chilocco Indian School north of Newkirk by June 15th may be part of a notorious religious cult. Narconon was approved for a 75-bed facility by the State Health Planning Commission in January of this year as part of The Chilocco Development Authority. The projected cost is $400,000 for renovation and the five Indian tribes involved are projected to receive $16,000,000 ...

A Flint-area physician who once had a promising career is now in a Colorado rehabilitation center, unable to take care of herself or communicate, the result of a suicide attempt. Her doctors report she may have suffered permanent brain damage from a self-administered overdose of insulin. Family members, her psychologist and her associates say she had been emotionally unstable for some time. They contend the local Church of Scientology and the Michigan Purification Project, a detoxification program, aggravated her condition. Glenn ...

DENVER — A handwritten letter signed "L. Ron Hubbard" was published under copyright in the Sunday edition of the Rocky Mountain News, purporting to knock down rumors that the reclusive father of the controversial Church of Scientology is dead. In the letter, dated Feb. 3, the writer says he was "dismayed" at the church's confrontations with the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Food and Drug Administration, and noted that the incidents occurred after Hubbard resigned from the church in ...

The year was 1950. The book was Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, written by a 39-year-old "pulp" writer of science fiction, L. Ron Hubbard. A few months earlier, Hubbard had outlined the book's tenets in a magazine called Astounding Science Fiction. And a year before that, at a lecture for science fiction writers, Hubbard had mused, "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be ...

The film would star a former science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard who founded a religion — or what his critics call a "cult." Also included in the cast would be Charles Manson, John Travolta, numerous former cultists turned "deprogrammers," and billions of Thetans, or immortal beings trapped in "meat bodies" on the planet earth — and don't forget Hubbard's renegade son, who works in a Nevada casino and suspects his father is either dead or hopelessly insane. Scenery in ...

WASHINGTON — With a phone call to a pharmaceutical firm in New Jersey, American Citizens for Honesty in Government, an affiliate of the Church of Scientology, obtained a small amount of BZ, a hallucinogen used by the Army in the 1960's for chemical warfare tests. A spokesman for the drug firm, Hoffmann-La Roche, Inc., acknowledged that it had furnished the drug to the Scientologists and said steps had been taken to strengthen drug distribution security. The Scientologists, who said BZ is ...

The Church of Scientology contends that for more than 20 years it has been the target of a systematic campaign by the United States government, together with "vested-interest pressure groups" such as the medical professions, to "suppress the church's spiritual practice and expansion." The church advances this accusation as the fundamental rationale for its aggressive policies of defense-by-attack against individual critics, private groups and government agencies perceived as "harassing" Scientology. Church spokesmen, moreover, expand upon the allegation of systematic persecution to ...

It started a little like Watergate. Late one night two years ago, two men made their way to the third floor of the U.S. courthouse in Washington. With stolen keys, they opened the office of assistant U.S. attorney Nathan Dodell and photocopied sheaves of government documents rifled from his files. They repeated the caper a few nights later, but when they showed up at the building again, a suspicious guard called the FBI. The two men, Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner, ...

"The DEFENSE of anything is untenable. The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that, then you will lose every battle you are engaged in, whether it is in terms of personal conversations, public debate, or a court of law." — L. Ron Hubbard For more than a decade, the worldwide Church of Scientology, one of the burgeoning new religions of the 1960s and '70s, has conducted sophisticated intelligence and propaganda operations on an international ...

On May 14, 1951, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard wrote to the U.S. attorney general to plead for help in fending off a Communist conspiracy, dedicated, he averred, to destroying him. "When, when, when," he wrote, "will we have a roundup?" Rambling through seven single-spaced typewritten pages, the letter was, to all appearances, the heartfelt cry of a troubled man. A successful science fiction writer in the 1940s, L. Ron Hubbard, as he signed himself, had gone on to bigger things. ...

The Church of Scientology attempts to reform individuals through its counseling and teaching techniques. It also has a large operation dedicated to reforming society. This comes under the heading of traditional religious activism, Scientologists say, but various government agencies say it goes far beyond. In this, the fourth and final segment of a series on Scientology, the Valley News explores the legal and political entanglements of the church. By BRIAN ALEXANDER The "applied religious philosophy" of Scientology has political as ...

The Church of Scientology, founded 23 years ago by a science-fiction writer, does not believe in turning the other cheek. In a key church exercise called ''auditing," members are taught, for a handsome fee, to confront long-forgotten traumas—sometimes even from previous incarnations—and then to scourge these so-called "engrams" that have been troubling their subconscious. The church is equally assertive toward outside critics. Scientologists have filed scores of lawsuits against skeptical journalists, dissident former members and Government agencies, which have long suspected ...

The two-story brick building at N. Ballenger Hwy. and Sloan St. looks as if it should house an insurance agency or doctor's office. It is a well-built, well-kept structure. Inside, quality furniture and a quiet, professional greeting welcome the visitor. But this building houses a center related to a church that is under fire from federal agencies. Early this month, the FBI used crowbars and sledgehammers to enter offices of the Church of Scientology in Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Agents were ...

Church of Scientology offices in Hollywood and Washington, D.C., were raided Friday by scores of FBI agents searching for more than 150 documents stolen from the U.S. Courthouse in Washington in a series of burglaries last year. The dawn raids at three locations in the two cities netted an unknown quantity of the allegedly stolen documents, informed sources said. Using power saws, crowbars and boltcutters to knock down doors and cut open cabinets, FBI agents executed search warrants based primarily on ...