Father: Son was in court for custody issues before murder-suicide

Larry Meriwether Jr. had gone to court Friday with the mother of his child, Fairlen Rawlins, in reference to child custody issues before police say he shot and killed his 7-month-old daughter and then himself, said his father, Larry Meriwether, Sr.

"(Rawlins) did have full custody (of Iyanna Meriwether)," Meriwether, Sr. said, adding that "they went to court (Friday)" and were supposed to go again on Dec. 26.

Meriwether, Sr. said there was no indication anything was wrong Friday before the incident happened.

"He came by and checked on me — I've been under the weather — so he checked on me and called his brother and best friend and they didn't detect anything," Meriwether Sr. said. "He was in good spirits. I don't know what transpired (later)."

For more on this story, see tomorrow's The Leaf-Chronicle.

Original Article -
The Leaf Chronicle - www.theleafchronicle.com - Clarksville, TN

Children find homes during Adoption Day in White Plains

The sad part is the public actually believes that these children were in need of homes, because they had been abused in their own homes.

I'll bet my last dollar that 99% if not 100% of these children have good loving parents that are exhausted from years worth of fighting this wonderful system of ours desperately trying to get back these children that were never abused in the first place, but were legally kidnapped for money!

God help us all, how do any of em sleep at night?

By STACY A. ANDERSON
THE JOURNAL NEWS


(Original publication: November 17, 2007)

WHITE PLAINS - About 900 children are in foster care in Westchester County, but 17 lucky youngsters found permanent homes today.


The children, along with Westchester County court officials and adoptive parents gathered this afternoon in White Plains to celebrate the 8th annual Adoption Day.


Judge Kathie Davidson, supervising judge of the Westchester Family Court, along with Family Court Judge Colleen Duffy and Acting Family Court Judge William Edwards, finalized the adoptions of the children to Westchester families in honor of the day.


"In the New York court system, we believe in families," Edwards said. "This day represents the culmination of a family. Nothing is more precious than gathering a family to come together."

Patients Diagnosed Schizophrenic and Bipolar To Boost Seroquel Sales

April 11, 2007

By Evelyn Pringle

LawyersandSettlements.com

Washington, DC: For over a decade, drug makers have been influencing doctors to diagnose patients, especially those covered by public health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid, with mental illnesses to justify the over-prescribing of the new class of drugs known as "atypical" antipsychotics.

For instance, Seroquel, marketed by AstraZeneca, is only FDA approved to treat acute manic episodes associated with bipolar I disorder and schizophrenia, and yet it is one of the most widely prescribed drugs in the world.

Astra reports that over 16 million patients have taken Seroquel since it came on the market in 1997, and the drug had sales of close to three and a half billion dollars in 2006, according to SEC filings.

Decision Resources, an advisory firm on health care matters, reported that in 2005, two of the top 10 selling drugs worldwide were atypicals.

A new study by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, found that between 1997 and 2004, spending on antipsychotics more than tripled from $1.3 billion to $4.1 billion and the largest purchasers of atypicals are public health care programs.

The other drugs in this class include Eli Lilly's Zyprexa, Bristol-Myers Squibb's Abilify, Johnson & Johnson's Risperdal, and Pfizer's Geodon.

These drugs were promoted as working better than the old "typical" antipsychotics in addition to having fewer of the serious side effects associated with the older drugs.

Both of these claims have now been proven false, but unfortunately tens of millions of people have already taken the new drugs.

A study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, entitled the "Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE)," compared the atypicals against the older medication, perphenazine and found the atypicals were no more effective than the older drug although they cost 10 to 20 times more.

By comparison, the cost of perphenazine was $50 a month, and Zyprexa was $545. But the results of this $40-odd million dollar tax payer funded study is not news.

Back in December 2000, the British Journal of Psychiatry reported a review of 52 studies involving 12,649 patients and stated: "There is no clear evidence that the atypical antipsychotics are more effective or better tolerated than conventional antipsychotics."Over the past several years, studies have linked the atypicals to a number of serious health problems including insulin resistance and diabetes.

According to an October 2006, report by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, diabetes causes tissue damage in many organs, is a major cause of vascular disease, and is the number one cause of adult blindness, end-stage kidney disease and non-traumatic amputations. Insulin resistance, the report says, is closely linked to developing metabolic syndrome, which includes hypertension, high cholesterol, increased blood clotting and eventually insulin dependent diabetes.

Astra is currently facing nearly 10,000 lawsuits in state and Federal courts over injuries and deaths caused by Seroquel, and Eli Lilly has already agreed to pay well over a $1 billion to settle cases out-of-court with approximately 26,000 Zyprexa victims.

In February 2007, the state of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit against AstraZeneca, and other atypical makers, alleging the drug giant illegally marketed Seroquel off-label for unapproved uses.

The state is demanding reimbursement for the cost of the drug and medical care provided to patients who developed serious health conditions while taking the drug. The lawsuit alleges Astra concealed the risks of Seroquel and exaggerated the benefits while persuading doctors to prescribe it for uses not FDA approved as safe and effective.

Astra, the complaint alleges, cost Pennsylvania's Medicaid and drug assistance for the elderly program millions of dollars for "reimbursing for non-medically accepted indications and non-medically necessary uses," of Seroquel, as well as "significant sums of money for the care and treatment" of patients injured by the drug.

Legal experts say millions of people have been duped into taking the atypicals with massive off-label marketing campaigns based on lies, distortions, and rigged-for-profit clinical trials.

Attorney, Derek Braslow, of the Conshohocken, Pennsylvania law firm, Pogust & Braslow, says the schemes usually follow a familiar pattern.

"First," he explains, "the drug maker promotes the drug as significantly more effective than the current standard of care when in reality, its effectiveness is questionable."

"Second," he says, "they market the drug to doctors as safer when not enough studies have been conducted to determine whether it is safe and perhaps, the studies were designed in a way that would never detect the risk in the first place."

"Third," Mr Braslow notes, "the companies promote the drug off label for all types of indications and for all age groups."

But prescribing doctors have played a major role in medicating patients for profit with the new atypicals.

Drug companies are prohibited from promoting a drug for off label uses outside of the FDA-approved indications because for conditions or patient population not listed on the label the drug has not been proven safe and effective.

However, through a major legal loophole, doctors have the authority to decide whether the risk of prescribing a drug for an unapproved use is justified by the benefits.

Which means all companies have to do is convince doctors, by whatever means, to prescribe a drug for unapproved uses and deny the drug maker's involvement in their decisions.

Unfortunately, it is the unwitting patients who will endure the stigma of a life-long label as a result of the atypical drugging for profit scheme.

When people think about schizophrenia or bipolar disorder they picture patients who hear voices, are delusional, and possibly dangerous to themselves or others.

The people misdiagnosed to boost the sale of these drugs, including scores of innocent children, will face a lifetime of suspicion and discrimination by society as a whole.

The Pennsylvania lawsuit says the drug maker influenced doctors to prescribe Seroquel off-label to children for behavior disorders like attention-deficit.

The atypicals are not approved to treat children for any condition but a review of records from HMOs and Medicaid programs by researchers at Vanderbilt University found a dramatic increase in the use of the drugs with children, particularly for behavioral disorders, according to the March/April 2006, Journal of Ambulatory Pediatrics.

The study found that between 1995 and 2002, there were 5,762,193 outpatient medical visits by children, aged 2 to 18 years old, at which an antipsychotic was prescribed. The drug companies have doctors in every field of medicine prescribing atypicals to kids, with 32% of the almost 6 million prescriptions, written by pediatricians, family physicians, emergency department doctors, or other types of providers.

The study authors specifically said that there had been no increase in mental disorders that could justify the prescribing increases "as recent studies do not suggest significant increases in the incidence of schizophrenia."According the study report, these medications have not been studied at all for behavioral disorders and yet, the most common diagnosis was attention deficit disorder or conduct disorder, accounting for 29.0% of all prescriptions.

Critics says, the logical question to ask is how would a pediatrician or family physician, whose practice does not ordinarily include diagnosing or treating mental disorders, ever come up with the idea to prescribe Seroquel to a child for any reason without the input from the drug maker.

As for the benefits of treating kids who are schizophrenic, an August 2006, study by the New York Psychiatric Institute found that the older drugs work far better. The average response rate in children among 8 studies employing the new antipsychotics was only 55.7%, compared to a 72.3% with children in 13 studies who received the older drugs.

The Pennsylvania lawsuit alleges the drug maker influenced doctors to prescribe Seroquel off-label for dementia in elderly patients. On April 11, 2005, after a study revealed that elderly patients with dementia who were taking atypicals were far more likely to die prematurely, the FDA announced the addition of black box warnings about the increased risk of death on the labels of atypicals.

A June 13, 2005, study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, reviewed atypical use by approximately 2.5 million Medicaid patients in nursing homes and found that over half received medications that exceeded the highest recommended dose, received duplicate therapy, or had inappropriate indications for the drugs to begin with.

All total, the study determined that more than 200,000 nursing home residents received atypicals but had "no appropriate indications for use."

On October 12, 2006, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the atypical drugs most commonly used to treat people with Alzheimer's were no more effective than placebos for most patients, and caused serious side effects including confusion, sleepiness and Parkinson's disease like symptoms.

The FDA has acted as an accomplice in allowing atypical makers to suppress other adverse events found in their own clinical trials. According to Dr David Healy, a world-renowned expert on psychiatric drugs, a great deal of data is available on the rates of suicides and suicidal acts in clinical trials on atypicals.

He says Zyprexa probably has the highest suicide rate in clinical trial history and calls the absence of available data on suicidal acts and Zyprexa "striking."

By using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain data from the FDA, award-winning journalist, Robert Whitaker, author of, Mad in America, reported that one in every 145 patients who participated in the clinical trials with the atypicals died.

On March 1, 2007, four days after the Pennsylvania lawsuit was filed, Astra became the target of another investigation, when US House of Representative, Henry Waxman (D-Cal), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to Astra, requesting information related to the exact same charges alleged in lawsuit.

The lawmaker's letter asks for a list of all Seroquel trials, studies, or reports; all presentations given to employees who promoted Seroquel; information shown to physicians; presentations related to physician prescribing patterns, continuing medical education, and off-label use; and all documents and correspondence related to funding for nonprofit professional organizations or consumer patient groups.

Critics say the culpability of the doctors in over-prescribing drugs that cause such serious diseases and adverse events cannot be ignored.

This critic says, labeling people mentally ill for profit, especially innocent children and the elderly, is an indefensible crime and that all the monsters that engaged in this 10-year off-label marketing scheme should be arrested and sent to prison, and the jailer on duty should throw away the key.

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Family Attorney Blows the Whistle on State Child Protective Services Agencies

Practicing family attorney Gregory Hession confirms child protective service agencies engage in abusive, deliberate and dirty tricks motivated by federal funding.

Every year thousands of families are forcibly separated from their children based on unsubstantiated or outright false allegations of child abuse. Gregory Hession, a practicing constitutional and family law attorney in Mass., says that for these families, the nightmare has only begun.

Children in child protective services (CPS) have been abused, wounded, brain washed, drugged, adopted out and some have even died. Hession has represented hundreds of these families and has dedicated himself to exposing CPS abuses and reuniting loving, deserving families. He documents CPS abuses in the July 23, 2007, issue of The New American magazine.

Hession’s articles highlight true stories of families who have been targeted by CPS agencies. All the families discussed are Hession’s clients.

Hession writes that state CPS agencies continually yank children out of good, loving homes based on flimsy allegations of child abuse. He asserts that the child protection business generates so much money, and employs so many social workers, therapists, lawyers and other professionals, that it needs a steady flow of cases to keep all of these workers employed. In Mass., the cost of these state services totals into the billions of dollars, which the state can leverage to obtain prodigious quantities of federal reimbursement monies.

In 2005, more than 3.3 million reports involving 6 million children were made to state child-abuse hot lines. The vast majority of these eventually proved to be untrue. Statistics from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services show 40 percent of allegations are initially screened out. Of the remaining 60 percent, nearly two-thirds of child-abuse investigations are unsubstantiated. Yet, more than 500,000 children are currently in foster care and another 300,000 or so are forcibly removed from their homes by the system every year.

Hession states that genuine child abuse obviously does exist and those involved in its practice need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. However, he writes that most people would likely disagree with CPS in how it defines abuse or neglect. Families are attacked for home-schooling or spanking their children, for not overseeing all play activities, or for when a child has an accident. Only a small percentage of the 3.3 million reported cases annually prove to be genuine abuse, and the system does a bad job of sorting it out.

The articles conclude that millions of children are imperiled by this imperious, abusive CPS system, which works quietly without much public scrutiny. Change will likely come only when the cruelties have been exposed, and the public reaffirms that raising children is the responsibility of families, not the state.

Paxil Setlement on U-Tube

Paxil Settlement On…

You Tube; July 10th, 2007By Ed SilvermanIn an unusual move, the Public Citizen advocacy group has posted a video on YouTube to alert parents to a $48 million settlement of a lawsuit concerning Glaxo’s Paxil antidepressant and side effects.

The drugmaker was required to announce the settlement terms last October, but wasn’t to publicize that the terms were improved and simplified in April, the group notes.Even without receipts, parents can recover up to $100, but any money that isn’t claimed prior to the August 31, 2007, deadline will revert back to Glaxo.

Although it’s not clear, Public Citizen may be correct in noting this is the first time such a class-action settlement uses YouTube to publicize terms.The video, which is just a minute and a half, resembles a public service announcment read by a news anchor, who says: “Now, $48 million is sitting in a fund waiting to pay back parents whose children were on Paxil before their 18th birthday.”

You can visit www.paxilpayback.org

See here: www.paxilpayback.org You are entitled to this money if: • you live in the U.S. and • you purchased Paxil or Paxil CR for someone under the age of 18. If you qualify, you MUST fill out a claim form and mail it to the Paxil Pediatric Settlement Administrator in order to receive compensation. The claims must be received by August 31, 2007.

Breaking News!

A must read!

Breaking News: Supreme Court Upends Family Court.

June 18, 2007San Diego

With the U.S. Supreme Court considering applying the Confrontation Clause in Crawford retro-actively and all courts being equal - marks a new day for family court attorneys. Bringing in out-of-court statements without the speaker testifying in person "is fundamentally at odds with the right of confrontation," U.S. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in Crawford vs. Washington 124 S.Ct. 1354 (2004).

Requiring children testify will happily turn the current custody process in family court upside down, according to Bonnie Russell of USAjudges.com.

Should the Court decides to apply Crawford retroactively, thousands of child custody cases might be completely retried as parents and attorneys realize they can pro-actively end parental alienation, false accusations and preserve the relationship between parent and child."Within a short period of time custody cases will resolve," Russell said.

"The standards of one court would not be any less in another, especially in criminal abuse of a child Family Court judges routinely address.

The Crawford ruling is a sudden ravine through the foundation that has held families hostage to a divorce and custody industry," Russell said while en route to a speaking engagement at a American College of Trial Lawyers 10th Regional meeting in Oklahoma City.

Traditionally Family Court judges eschewed listening to children, preferring instead to grant a full employment act to therapeutic experts and Guardian Ad Litems to act as intermediaries, and report directly to the courts without the children themselves ever testifying.

These third parties would not relay complaints, but report their interpretations of the child's words, and opinions of cases as fact.This resulted with thousands of parents losing custody rights to their children without the court ever directly hearing of experiences from a child.

Such conditions stoked parental alienation cases, in which parent with custody emotionally isolate children and effectively convince them of problems and situations that never existed."What has happened in family courts has been criminal in an ironic way, Russell says.

"Families have been torn apart, children turned against loving parents, because too many professionals had a financial interest in preventing children from speaking for themselves."The Court applying Crawford retro-actively, means attorneys will be able to reopen previously settled cases.

"This might be painful for some" says Russell, but family court has needed this clean wind to dry so many unnecessary tears.

Things will have to be different going forward. The only question is whether those who have already been through the system might finally see justice as well. Who knows with retro-applicability in the future, maybe some parents will just decide to stop fighting and on their own decide a fifty-fifty split."

What a sick twisted woman!

What a sick twisted woman! - and as for Stephanie Jones' comment below.

(In Red)

There is NO EXCUSE - Many people are going thru divorce, some uglier than others both men and women suffer inconcieviable stress and truma, how many of them have killed their own inocent children!

There is NO EXCUSE for this barbaric behaviour NONE!

HOUSTON, June 14:

A mother was charged with capital murder, accused of beating her baby to death, KPRC Local 2 reported Tuesday.

Harris County sheriff's deputies said Jessica Hoosier, 26, told them she beat the child because she was going through a divorce.

Hoosier is accused of leaving the 2-month-old baby in a car seat at her northeast Houston apartment while she went shopping on Saturday.

The father discovered the baby's body later that day, according to authorities.

Investigators said the baby had multiple fractures and was severely underweight.

"He weighed only about 7 pounds, appeared malnourished at the time, has numerous skull fractures, rib fractures, a broken arm," Assistant District Attorney Sylvia Escobedo Newman said. "His injuries were at various stages of healing."

Hoosier originally denied knowing how her son died but later confessed, investigators said.
"She demonstrated to the officers how she hit the child in the head and chest with the hard portion of the palm of her hand," Newman said.

Detectives said Hoosier's two young daughters were not abused. They have been placed in foster care.

The child's father told investigators he did not know anything about the abuse.
Neighbors said they were shocked.

"That's awful. I mean, how could you do that to a baby someone who can't even take care of them own self?

You're taking care of the baby, so she must have been going through something terrible for that to happen," Stephanie Jones said.

Hoosier is being held in the Harris County Jail without bond. If convicted of capital murder, she could face the death penalty.

HCSO

Mom Beat Baby To Death Over DivorceMangalorean.com - Mangalore,IndiaHarris County sheriff's deputies said Jessica Hoosier, 26, told them she beat the child because she was going through a divorce. ...See all stories on this topic

What is it going to take?

WHAT??

What is it going to take to get the government funding to stop (Title IV-D)!!

Children are dying, futures are being destroyed and the average U.S. citizen is on prozac to deal with the results of this!

I'm OUTRAGED- every day there's another story of a family DESTROYED because of this evil funding - WHEN IS IT GOING TO STOP!!!!!!!!!

People open your eyes these children are the future !!!!!!!!

TAKE THE DOLLAR SIGNS OFF OUR CHILDREN'S HEADS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Toddler dies in foster care a day before returning to dad Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Toddler dies in foster care one day before returning to father

A 2-year-old girl died in foster care in Brazoria County the day before she and her little brother were to return to the custody of their biological father.

A foster parent called for help about 6 p.m. Friday evening when Lydia Alday did not wake up from a nap, said Gwen Carter, spokeswoman for Child Protective Services. Attempts to revive her were unsuccessful, Carter said.

The cause of death will be determined by the Galveston Medical Examiner's Office, she said. CPS and Residential Child Care Licensing officials are investigating.

Lydia and her 1-year-old brother were placed in foster case in July 2006 "because mom and dad were having difficult issues at home," Carter said. The siblings had been living in the latest home for four months, she said.

The boy was returned to his father's custody Saturday morning, Carter said.

"He had completed all the services and training we asked him to do," she said. "It's just a very sad story."