Perhaps the greatest medical scandal of all is the rampant prescribing of psychiatric drugs — not only to adults, but even to very young children.

Between 1990 and 2003, prescription sales of antidepressants in the U.S. increased from $1.1 million to almost $11 million. Today, more than 8 million American children are being given these mind-altering drugs at the direction of members of the medical profession.

And this frightening trend is not just a U.S. problem. Antidepressant drug sales increased 247 percent in Spain during the 1990s, while antianxiety drug sales increased fourfold.

In England, psychiatric drug prescriptions have reached 85 million, with 57 million prescriptions for antidepressants. That represents a 500 percent increase since 1992.

And the consequences are dire, especially among children. Widespread use of psychiatric drugs has been shown to dramatically increase suicide rates. In addition, these medications can alter a child’s mind for the rest of his or her life.

Because children’s brains are undergoing rapid development until the age of 8 — and development continues in critical areas of the brain until age 26 — these drugs, which alter critical neurotransmitters, can cause the brain to be “miswired.” That can result in impaired learning, confusion, and suicidal and or even homicidal thoughts.

It may also trigger early onset of neurodegenerative diseases.

Vaccines given very early in life can also alter the brain’s construction and function for a lifetime. No child should be vaccinated before age 8, and the number of vaccines should be drastically reduced from the current schedule.

Use of antidepressants can have terrifying effects on the elderly as well. Based on randomized trials and cohort studies, Professor Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre estimates that half a million elderly people die from side effects of psychiatric drugs in England alone.

Some elderly people are taking such high doses and/ or complex combinations of these drugs that they are mistakenly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and then they’re institutionalized.

When you add the use of marijuana, which is now legal in a number of states, we have a real disaster on our hands. That’s because marijuana alters brain development, and can result in permanent brain malfunction.4-8

We are now in the third generation of heavy use of illicit drugs. This has had a major effect on the ability of young people to think clearly. Kids in universities and colleges are some of the heaviest users of such drugs, along with psychotropic prescription medications.

That may explain some of their bizarre behavior, as well as their seeming inability to think rationally and logically.

Another disaster is the use of fluorinated drugs — so called because they contain fluorine compounds in their chemical structure. These include fluorinated antibiotics as well as fluorinated psychotropic medications.

Fluorine is used by pharmaceutical companies to increase the potency of the medication and keep the medication in the body much longer than normal. These measures dramatically increase their toxicity.

Studies have shown that adding fluorine significantly strengthens the side effects of these drugs. It also increases the risk of suicide and homicide.