Dr. Patricia Halligan and Shane Kenny discuss the how patients were injured and harmed by overprescribing Benzodiazepines.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Shane Kenny:
People are still looking the other way and I wonder if the campaigners are going to have to have different tactics, because it's all been carried out in a very gentlemanly fashion for the most extent. There's the World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day every year and some events are staged for that. I think more direct action may be necessary to beat on the doors of these people and say, "Where are you at? Where has your head been for the last 50 years?"
For instance, Leo Sternbach (and I don't blame him) he was a scientist, but he's the man discovered the benzodiazepines, which led to Librium and Valium and all the rest of them. And he's now in some museum! There's a museum of industry success where he's being celebrated because of the financial reward to the makers of Valium -- and to the fact that this drug became so widely used and so widely prescribed.
That's an insult to those people who have been really seriously injured and harmed ... their lives ruined by these drugs. And I hasten to add again and again, these are the patients who were prescribed the drugs by their doctors and they took them as prescribed and they never had informed consent. They never knew what the dangers were of taking these drugs.
Shane Kenny Bio:
Shane Kenny is a broadcaster and a journalist who worked for 30 years as a frontline presenter and editor for RTE, the Irish national broadcaster.
In 1989, he won the Irish national media award for Supreme contribution to Irish journalism. During the years, 1994 to 1997, he served as press secretary for the Irish government before returning to RTE. In 2003, he established his own independent media and production and training. From 2005 to 2011, he was also director of public affairs and member of the executive board of Dublin city university.
The last three years, unable to work because of serious illness caused by being treated with Valium, Shane started working on his unique documentary, "the benzodiazepine medical disaster" in 2014, while still very ill and continues to suffer from the disease caused by the drug to this day.
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