Combatting depression
Iggy Kim (Write On, GLW #641) offers up Cuba's continued use of anti-depressants and electro-shock therapy (ECT) to bolster his argument that drugs, used in combination with community-based psychiatric methods, are the best way to combat depression.
ECT use is only supported by 50% of Cuban psychiatrists (of whom there are only 1000). Max Fink (shock advocate) in the 1978 Comprehensive Psychiatry said: "The principal complications of ECT are death, brain damage, memory impairment, and spontaneous seizures. These complications are similar to those seen after head trauma, with which ECT has been compared."
There is also no conclusive evidence that anti-depressants are effective in treating depression. Breggin in Toxic Psychiatry — Drugs and Electroconvulsive Therapy: The Truth and the Better Alternatives cites an overview of 16 studies that indicate the majority (62%) show no difference in the percentage of patients benefiting from an active drug as opposed to a placebo.
Moynihan and Cassels in Selling Sickness: How Drug Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients note that independent analysis of clinical trials have shown the average advantages of anti-depressants over placebos are modest at best, and that their side effects can include sexual problems, severe withdrawal reactions and an apparent increase in the risk of suicidal behaviour among the young. And how can we trust the "science" of drug trial conclusions when, as Moynihan spells out, "almost all of the clinical trials of the new anti-depressants were funded by their manufacturers rather than public or not for profit sources".
We need to eradicate the profit motive so we can both have a scientific assessment of how to combat depression, and so we can eradicate the cause of depression and mental illness — a sick, inhumane world.
Rachel Evans
Dulwich Hill, NSW [Abridged]
Vietnam
Peter Toren (Write On, GLW, #643) rejects the possibility that Vietnam's spectacular economic growth over the last 10 years could have benefited its people. He says that the country has "systematically dismantled its socialist system" and opened its "economy to every multinational looking to make a few bucks".
Toren hasn't done the basic research. Vietnam's economic growth has increased the standard of living of ordinary people. As GLW #643 reported, citing the UN's Human Development Report 2005, the number of people living below the poverty line was cut from 65% in 1990 to 32% in 2000. In the same period child mortality has fallen from 58 deaths per 1000 live births to 42.
Meanwhile, government spending on health, education and pensions has not been systematically dismantled, it's increased!
Most importantly, Toren doesn't grasp the difficulties faced by any underdeveloped country in trying to create socialism. Vietnam is an overwhelmingly peasant country with a low level of industrialisation, and one still recovering from the ravages of war at that.
Vietnam has to sell its rice on the world market for a pittance, just like every other undeveloped country in order to buy from the industrialised countries the things it needs in order to look after its people and industrialise its own economy.
Vietnam could refuse to have any dealings with the multinational corporations that control the world's economy, but this would be a recipe for a Pol Pot style "self-sufficient" agrarian-utopian nightmare that would reduce living standards, not lift them.
If a foreign corporation builds a factory in Vietnam that provides workers with better conditions than those they'd get as a peasant farmer and the government can tax the operations of the company for the benefit of its own social spending — isn't this a good thing?
Far from being a free-for-all, the Vietnamese government is targeted about where it allows capitalist investment and market mechanisms and where it does not. Most importantly the prices and export of key agricultural commodities remain controlled by the state to protect the livelihood of peasants.
The Vietnamese are riding a tiger and will need to continue to educate and mobilise the population in defence of their collective goals. This is a complex challenge, but until the working people of the industrialised countries overthrow their imperialist rulers and give the Vietnamese the help they need what other choice do they have?
Sam Wainwright
O'Connor, WA [Abridged]
Refugees
It is amazing. There are still refugees locked up in detention. We are told this is "administrative detention", not punishment. I bet it sure feels like punishment to be locked up for three, four, five years. I bet it feels like punishment to be put in solitary confinement or, as it is called, "management".
I wonder if we ever thought we would treat refugees this way.
I remember reading about Anne Frank and singing about the Von Trapp family when I was young. I began to learn about the heroism of people who helped refugees escape. Remember Rick in the movie Casablanca, or the French Resistance members who smuggled families to safety? Really I thought Australians would be on the side of the refugees. I thought we would offer them safety and welcome.
How will it all end? Will we drive them back to terrible danger, or just drive them mad?
Australia still holds 27 in Nauru, now beginning their fifth year of anguish. It is time to stop this cruelty to innocent people. Close the camps. Close Nauru. Let them begin a safe and secure life.
Elaine Smith
West Haven, NSW
Petrol prices
John Howard is never slow in claiming that his governement has the lowest interest rates and unemployment in decades. Well, here is another one for the record book, John. Your governement presides over the highest petrol prices in Australian history!
Ken Cotterill
Mareeba, Qld
From Green Left Weekly, September 28, 2005.
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