Yes and lied about the context. A quick google to check what Andy Riva actually said reveals the following


If you said to any normal person 'you could tell from his mood swings if he was taking his medication' they would naturally assume that the person was displaying symptoms as they were not taking their drugs. To spin it the opposite way as Hitchens does, is clearly ridiculous.

wow, he really goes above and beyond doesn't he? why merely cheery-pick to get the answers you want when you can just out and out lie?

incidentally, considering this is such a pet topic of pete's, what is it he suggests as an alternative to psychiatric medication? has he ever written about that? because unless you're also vocally calling for an increase in the funding and availability of talking therapies and social support* suggesting simply that something you think is ineffective be removed without a replacement is incredibly short sighted and irresponsible.



*or crystal healing / mass institutionalisation for your bullshit and utter bastard options respectively.

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i have an art blog: http://procrastinationathon.blogspot.com/
and a review blog: http://blindwithwoodenhands.blogspot.com/
double blog! what does it mean?

It does make me wonder what drives a not-unitelligent, educated person such as Hitchens to believe things which he must know, in his heart of hearts, to be untrue.

But then he is very religious, which gives him a head start in believing total guff with no evidence to back it up.

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"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
Voltaire

Money? Also, never underestimate the motivating effect of having a far more successful and respected sibling.

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"Common Sense is the collection of prejudices aquired by age eighteen" - Albert Einstein

I fail to see where the money is in denying that a class of drugs work - don't pharmacutical companies normally give people barrow-loads of cash for claiming that their stuff is the best thing since sliced bread?

The 'more talented elder brother' idea might have legs. Christopher H made a great success out of being a contrarian, so maybe Peter decided to have a go, missing out the bit where you research your subject in great depth and contruct logical arguments.

Alternatively, he could just be as mad as a horse.

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"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
Voltaire

And not very clever...

There isn't any money in that specifically, he gets paid just to write bollocks.. He could be arguing that magic mushrooms cure baldness for all it matters.

And that...

Yeah, and that.

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"Common Sense is the collection of prejudices aquired by age eighteen" - Albert Einstein

Expensively educated and not very clever. where would our government and press be without that combination?

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"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
Voltaire

Quite.
Lack of egalitarianism in education is a curse of this nation.

As far as his stance on antidepressants goes, I think it's a combination of extrapolation from anecdotal evidence (and cherrypicking data), dealing in absolutes, and a hell of a lot of ad hominems.

The anecdotal evidence/cherrypicking one is easy enough to spot - person X used antidepressants and did a horrible thing. If that pattern repeats itself (regardless of underlying conditions, exactly what drugs they were using, external factors, availability of deadly weapons etc), he concludes that it must have been the pills. Of course, he's not bothered about all the people who use said drugs without any bad side effects - they're inconvenient so he ignores them.

Onto the dealing in absolutes. Hitch rightly says that nobody understands the workings of the human brain 100%. But then he assumes that this means that since nobody can FULLY understand it, then everyone who can PARTIALLY understand it is basically on the same level. So he, with his admittedly limited undertanding, is no better an authority than a doctor or psychiatrist who may be on 50% as opposed to his 2% understanding. Then he attacks them for their partial understanding while flaunting his own ignorance as a virtue.

He also assumes that because some doctors work for big pharma, none of them can be trusted. To which one may say, just because some journalists are corrupt goatfuckers...

Finally the ad hominems. If he's not casting aspersions on people (just putting someone's name in quote marks, as in "'Dave' said...", has an effect) for not giving him chapter and verse on their bona fides, or making a spelling mistake, he'll attack them for having the time to write long replies (must be a shirker), dare misunderstand him, or simply exist. The interesting thing is that usually the ad hominem is a sign of running out of good arguments. Hitch seems to go for them first.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

From Pete's MOS column

later followed by a comment about clinical depression being a First World Problem. Add to that his belief that ADHD and other brain disorders are completely invented problems and I suspect that we're dealing with a belief that mental health problems are generally the result of personal weakness, an excuse for poor parenting, and a failure to take responsibility and pull oneself together.

'As far as his stance on antidepressants goes, I think it's a combination of extrapolation from anecdotal evidence (and cherrypicking data), dealing in absolutes, and a hell of a lot of ad hominems.'

This is true, but it underestimates how incredibly lazy and unoriginal a thinker Hitchens is. He tends to import and repeat right-wing memes wholesale without much questioning or consideration. His articles on Israel - which as a supporter of the Palestinians is where I first became aware of him - are essentially a greatest hits of Zionist propaganda. When it comes to antidepressants, he seems to have borrowed his claims from the US right where attempting to throw the blame for spree killings onto drugs has been a tactic of the gun lobby. This is why he presents long-discredited claims as gospel truth, and when challenged is unable to defend his arguments by the normal methods, instead resorting to slurs, insults and changing the subject: he hasn't came to these conclusions himself through studying evidence, and so has nowhere to go when he tries to defend them.

'later followed by a comment about clinical depression being a First World Problem.'

He's talking out of his arse, as usual. Around 5% of the Chinese population suffers from depression and it's become a major health problem in the last decade.

In which case, as Hitch Minor would no doubt tell you as patronisingly as possible, that proves that China is now a developed nation. QED.

You can't win with the insane.

People in third world countries don't have complex personalities or delicate, vulnerable neurochemical balances like us proper folk. They're just cyphers that sit around waiting for nuns to dig them a well without ever complaining.