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Pearlsong Press books

  • Charlie Lovett: The Program

    Charlie Lovett: The Program
    A new weight loss clinic in New York City has an offer for you -- given them $5,000 and they'll make you as thin as a supermodel. You can eat whatever you want and never gain an ounce. Tempted? Fledgling journalist Karen Sumner would be -- if only she had $5,000. When Karen finally walks through the blue and gold doors of The Program, however, she's on the trail of the hottest story of her career. If she and her friends are right, The Program is doing something even worse than creating an army of unnaturally thin women. Library Journal calls The Program "a lively first novel. Highly recommended."

  • Linda C Wisniewski: Off Kilter: A Woman's Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother, and Her Polish Heritage

    Linda C Wisniewski: Off Kilter: A Woman's Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother, and Her Polish Heritage
    Even before she was diagnosed with scoliosis at 13, Linda Wisniewski felt off kilter. Born to a cruel father in the insulated Polish Catholic community of Amsterdam, New York, she learned martyrdom as a way of life. Off Kilter shows her learning to stretch her Self as well as her spine as she comes to terms with her mentally deteriorating, widowed mother and her culture. Only by accepting her physical deformity, her emotionally unavailable mother, and her Polish American heritage does she finally find balance and a life that fits. Maureen Murdock, author of Unreliable Truth: On Memoir & Memory, calls Off Kilter "a courageous, insightful book, particularly relevant for anyone who grew up feeling physically 'different.'"

  • Pat, Ballard: The Best Man

    Pat, Ballard: The Best Man
    Sparks fly the night Lana Clarke meets to plan her sister's wedding -- and not just because curvaceous Lana announces she's stopped dieting and doesn't care if she's fat as maid of honor. The strong-willed sister of the bride attracts the attention of the groom's devastatingly handsome best man, Anthony Angelino. But when the sparks become flames, Lana's in trouble. Tony's first wife died mysteriously. Will Lana be next?

  • Judy Bagshaw: At Long Last, Love

    Judy Bagshaw: At Long Last, Love
    Big beautiful --and in some cases slightly more mature -- heroines grace the pages of this collection of romantic short stories by Judy Bagshaw.

  • Jack Adler: Splendid Seniors

    Jack Adler: Splendid Seniors
    An inspiring ensemble of 52 people whose accomplishments after age 65 remind us that creativity, passion & influence can not only flower in later years, but bear delicious fruit.

  • Mary Saracino: The Singing of Swans

    Mary Saracino: The Singing of Swans
    "The Singing of Swans is a remarkable narrative calling--even compelling--us to connect with our own ancestral roots, to seek our own inner wisdom, and to reclaim our own inner voices!" --Margaret Starbird, author of The Woman With the Alabaster Jar & Mary Magdalene: Bride in Exile

  • Ellen Frankel: Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature and Inner Growth

    Ellen Frankel: Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature and Inner Growth
    "If you have ever measured your height or your weight and felt good or bad about yourself as a result, you need this book. In its pages, Ellen Frankel makes an important contribution to human liberation by telling the most fabulous story that can be told, the story of a person coming fully into her own. This book is thought-provoking, heart-rending, and a genuine solace for people of all sizes." --Marilyn Wann, author of FAT!SO?

  • Pat Ballard: Abigail's Revenge

    Pat Ballard: Abigail's Revenge
    Injustice, romance and suspense smolder in a small Southern town. Romantic suspense from the Queen of Rubenesque Romances, Pat Ballard.

  • Pattie Thomas, Ph.D.: Taking Up Space

    Pattie Thomas, Ph.D.: Taking Up Space
    "Thomas's incisive blend of sociological inquiry and personal narrative amounts to a provocative treatise on fat oppression in our culture. Taking Up Space is a kind of roadmap through the minefield of the 'war on obesity,' and it offers protection to the reader ready to fight for cultural change surrounding the meaning of fatness." --Kathleen LeBesco, Ph.D., author of Revotling Bodies: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity.

  • Anne Richardson Williams: Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under

    Anne Richardson Williams: Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under
    Shattered by family tragedy in the early 1960s, an upper-middle-class Southern teenager finds solace in art and literature. Decades later she is called to the continent whose literature once comforted her, and to a magical connection with an Aboriginal woman transcending race and half a world.

  • Pat Ballard: A Worthy Heir

    Pat Ballard: A Worthy Heir
    When Pam Spencer sees the newspaper ad seeking "a worthy heir" to Fiona Bainbridge's millions, she jumps at the chance to get her brother the medical care he needs after a job-related accident. But Reese Bainbridge, Fiona's handsome grandson--and jilted heir--rushes home in anger when he hears his grandmother has moved Pam and her brother into the family mansion. Sparks fly--and Pam is up to the challenge.

  • Pat Ballard: His Brother's Child

    Pat Ballard: His Brother's Child
    One party, one silver-tongued, double-talking stranger intent on winning a bet, and Faith Carr ends up betrayed, alone, and pregnant. When Edward Brenner shows up on her doorstep intending to right his brother's wrongs, she's scared and vulnerable. But she agrees to marry this stranger to give the baby a father, although keeping him at a distance. She doesn't realize that Edward fell in love with her the moment he saw her. Will her battered self-esteem allow her to see the truth--and her own beauty?

  • Pat Ballard: Wanted: One Groom

    Pat Ballard: Wanted: One Groom
    Wealthy Hanna Rockwell will lose her home and her inheritance unless she marries by her 30th birthday. She's stunned when Matt Corbett, the faded rock start she worshipped in her teens, accepts her brother's offer to bail him out of financial trouble if he'll marry her. Her teenaged fantasies come to life--bringing a few surprises with them.

  • Pat Ballard: Nobody's Perfect

    Pat Ballard: Nobody's Perfect
    Nella Covington can't believe she's agreed to marry arrogant Samuel du Cannon, even if it IS only a marriage of convenience. He needs a mother for his young son, and she needs to keep her childhood home. If Sam's work keeps him on the road enough, she won't have to deal with him much. Sam's never been attracted to plus-size women, so they won't be tempted to have a real relationship. At least, that's what they keep telling themselves--

  • Pat Ballard: Dangerous Curves Ahead: Short Stories

    Pat Ballard: Dangerous Curves Ahead: Short Stories
    Ten romantic tales pack suspense and sizzle into this collection of short stories featuring amply curved women.

Pearlsong Press links

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February 08, 2007

BBC News program investigates distortion of drug research

The BBC News investigative journalism program Panorama has produced a stunning (well, to anyone who hasn't been following these issues) program about the coverup/distortion of research related to Seroxat (the UK name for Paxil) and children.

You can find an article on the program here, along with links to the online video and a transcript.

The video is lengthy, but is worth watching if you're at all interested in how psychiatric drugs are marketed to the medical community as well as the public. Of particular note are interviews with experts paid by GlaxoSmithKline to promote the drug and even to "co-author" research reports on the drug trials even though they apparently didn't read or understand the data. (In case you don't know....MD training does not include education in experimental design, statistics, or critical analysis of research.)

At one point toward the end of the program the female investigative journalist asks one such expert about the incongruencies in the clinical trials of Seroxat/Paxil (such as the downplaying of any adverse effects -- including sucide -- in those taking the drug), and the male psychiatrist dismisses the question while chucking her under the chin -- a gesture captured by the journalist's hidden camera. (Weird, but to me somehow indicative of such physicians'/researchers' overall attitude about psychiatric drugs....don't worry your little head about anything; just do what I say and take your medicine.)

The reporter also interviews David Healy, the British psychopharmacologist and author of The Antidepressant Era and Let Them Eat Prozac, among other books. Healy lost his academic job a few years ago for speaking out about the hazards of psychiatric drugs (especially SSRIs) and criticizing the pharmaceutical industry.

Posted by Peggy Elam, Ph.D. on February 08, 2007 at 02:38 PM in Drug alerts and side effects, Mainstream Medicine |

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Absolutely unreal...

Seroxat has harmed , killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people...

It is the mental health thalidomide...

http://truthman30.wordpress.com/

Posted by: truthman | June 20, 2007 at 12:33 AM

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