The following is the first of a two-part series to be concluded in the next issue. The impact of Scientology's ongoing war on psychiatry, now focused on the antidepressant drug Prozac, was a topic of discussion in the corridors and lecture halls of this year's annual meeting in New Orleans. Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA) director Frederick Goodwin, M.D., discussed the anti-Prozac campaign of the Scientologist's antipsychiatry affiliate, the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). "The disingenuously named ...

Last June, the Los Angeles Times published a damning series on the Church of Scientology. Scientologists responded by extracting a few good things the writers had to say about their organization and putting those quotes in foot-high letters on billboards all over town. On May 6 of this year, Time magazine published a cover story on Scientology. It had even fewer good things to say, and now the church has responded with an even more aggressive counterattack. Scientology's campaign of daily ...

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 ...

A personal aide to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard for eight of her nearly 20 years with the group says that fluoxetine (Prozac) and therapy have finally stopped the depression and suicidal ideation she had suffered since 1976. "I have to speak out." Hana (Eltringham) Whitfield told The Psychiatric Times. "The Scientologists choose the most prominent psychiatrists and the most successful drugs to attack. That's why they attacked Ritalin, and that's why they are now attacking Prozac." Although ...

Originally printed in "The Southern California Psychiatrist," May 1991, pp. 6-13. Dr. West has granted permission to upload this article to computer networks and bulletin boards In a previous article (SCPS Newsletter, July, 1990) I provided an historical account of the Church of Scientology. It is a pseudo-scientific healing cult that was formed in the 1950s, and has grown, with the help of extravagant lies and deliberate deception, into a multimillion dollar, international enterprise. Through its many publications, but especially through ...

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 ...

Scientologists Claim Prozac Induces Murder or Suicide, Though Evidence Is Scant Campaign Dismays Doctors INDIANAPOLIS—L. Ron Hubbard, the late founder of the Church of Scientology, long harbored a profound and obsessive hatred for psychiatrists, who, he declared, were "chosen as a vehicle to undermine and destroy the West!" Five years after Mr. Hubbard's death, Scientologists are still waging war on psychiatry. The quasi-religious/ business/ paramilitary organization's latest target is Prozac, the nation's top-selling medicine for severe depression. The group is calling ...

The Church of Scientology began as a pseudo-scientific healing cult, Dianetics, described by L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer, in his best-selling book "Dianetics: The Modern science of Mental Health" (1950). At first, Dianetics attracted followers by promising to cure psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders through a procedure called "dianetic auditing," based on pop-psychology, hypnosis, and cybernetics. Hubbard's theory as based on the principle that people can achieve health through abolishing ("clearing") negative influences ("engrams") from their minds by going back ...