Comments by Marie Lutz

Showing 6 of 6 comments.

  • Yet my comment, which was very critical, was published (see what I wrote above). I also responded to a primary care doctor who commented that he was aware of the facts in the article and discussed them with his patients. I told him that was unfortunate because the article had so much misinformation in it. After a brief delay, that, surprisingly, was published.

    I don’t know why some comments get in and others don’t. A while back, I had a comment in the NYT published and then removed a couple of days later despite numerous likes. I think use of words like fraud, or arguing that facts are being kept from the public will almost guarantee rejection.

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  • Surely I have misunderstood this study because it is so poorly conceived. The study claims that in identical twins, even ONE adverse childhood event results in a likelihood of a subsequent diagnosis of a mental disorder. What isn’t wrong with this?

    First, even identical twins may have different genetic makeups. Second, even in the same household, experiences can be very different. Third, the study does not examine ACEs but the recollection of ACEs and it’s not convincing to claim that a large population size would mitigate against this problem.

    In addition, we have no convincing definition of a mental disorder. Also comparing the experience of identical twins to that of fraternal twins is not illuminating.

    There are an awful lot of poorly done studies, but psychological studies seem worse than most.

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  • Actually we do know that the benefits of many treatments are exaggerated. Take the highly promoted statins, for instance, without pre-existing heart disease 98% of people do not benefit at all from statins. Statins do not extend lifespan. Even with preexisting heart disease, one study found that 96% saw no benefit from statins over 5 years.

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  • There’s no doubt Americans are over medicated and that drugs cause deaths, with psychiatric drugs being among the worst. But there’s no research that proves drugs are the leading cause of death. That’s because a person’s death may have numerous causes with the drug being only one factor In addition, a toxic drug may eventually kill someone, but the patient may have succumbed to their illness sooner if they hadn’t been taking the medication. I’m not convinced, for example, that statins, blood pressure medications or diabetes medications are completely safe, but they’re supposed to extend lifespans. Maybe they do or maybe they don’t, but that’s the argument for them.

    One other point, people, such as those with dementia or a terminal illness, may be medicated to keep them comfortable even if the drug may shorten their lifespan.

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  • This study is so poorly conceived it should never have been used to criticize the DSM, bad as that text is.

    An online survey is highly unlikely to be accurate, especially one with such a small sample. In addition, trying to measure the traumatic impact of race, gender, and something called cisheterosexism is simplistic. That’s because it doesn’t consider adverse effects of numerous other characteristics, for example, shyness, intelligence, socio- economic status, illness, and so on.

    If MIA wants to show the impact of society on mental problems, it needs a far more sophisticated and complex approach.

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