WASHINGTON —The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday rejected a request by a group affiliated with the Church of Scientology that it ban the anti-depressant drug Prozac on grounds that it makes people suicidal and violent. The FDA released a letter to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights saying that it had found no evidence for these claims or for the commission's additional claims that Prozac is addictive and causes movement disorders. The agency said it had reviewed the evidence provided ...

INDIANAPOLIS —The Food and Drug Administration weighed in heavily on the side of Ell Lilly & Co. in rejecting claims that the popular anti-depressant drug Prozac is connected to murder, suicide or other maladies. The FDA action follows a yearlong campaign against Prozac by the Church of Scientology that had sought to persuade the federal agency, through a formal petition, to ban U.S. sales of the Lilly drug. But the FDA found that a Scientology-founded group called the Citizens Commission for ...

A bizarre run-in between Time magazine and the Church of Scientology has ensnared an unlikely victim: WPP Group's Martin Sorrell. Ever since Time ran a May 6 cover story depicting the Scientology group as a "cult of greed," the Scientologists have been striking back, criticizing the article as a "sensationalized attack" full of "falsehoods." In the past week, the Scientologists have broadened their attack. This time, in one of the stranger plot twists Madison Avenue has seen, their target is Mr. ...

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 ...

The Church of Scientology has launched an unusually large-scale media attack against Time magazine in retribution for an unflattering cover story on the worldwide organization earlier this month. The church, founded by the late L. Ron Hubbard, took out a four-color, full-page ad yesterday in Gannett Co.'s USA Today with the headline "What magazine gets it wrong in 1991. . .the same one that was wrong in 1936. Time magazine." The ad, using quotes from W.A. Swanberg's "Luce and His Empire," ...

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 ...

[...] COPYRIGHTED WRITINGS can be used in critical biography, court rules. A federal appeals court in New York reversed a lower court ruling that appeared to signify tighter restrictions on the use of copyrighted materials by authors and journalists. The appeals court ruled that Carol Publishing Group's critical biography of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, doesn't violate federal law by including copyrighted quotations from Mr. Hubbard's published writings. The plaintiff was New Era Publications International, a Copenhagen ...

Two recent decisions by federal courts cast judges in the odd role of telling authors how they should write history and biography. These decisions deserve more attention than they have received from scholars, and from journalists as well. Russell Miller's "Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard" is a biography of the founder of the Church of Scientology. Mr. Hubbard, who died in 1986, bequeathed the copyrights on his writings to his church, which licensed them to New Era ...

NEW YORK — In a decision putting copyright concerns ahead of free-press interests, a federal judge ordered that a manuscript about L. Ron Hubbard be turned over to his authorized biographer for inspection before publication. U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ruled that New Era Publications International had reason to believe its copyrights might be violated by the planned book on the late Mr. Hubbard, who died in 1986. The judge said permitting New Era to see Carol Publishing Group's edited manuscript ...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled that the Internal Revenue Service has broad discretion to refuse to release tax records requested by taxpayers, even when deleting names or other identifying features would preserve confidentiality. In a 6-0 ruling, the court rejected arguments by the Church of Scientology, which sought access to tax records pertaining to the organization and its founder. Federal law requires that the IRS keep confidential all tax returns and "return in-formation," including itemized details from returns or data ...