120 Babies and 120 Hostages: Their common link is Fentanyl

I cannot for the life of me, figure out how anyone today believes that epidural is safe for the mother and baby. I don't think a woman has the right to chose it for no damn good reason. I say that freely after making that choice myself. My fourth child was born in 1994 under the influence of epidural. I didn't have the luxury of the internet to research this; I just believed her father, a medical student, that it was safe. Nearly ten years later I found enormous information on the web about the dangers of epidural.

Since 1990 epidural anesthesia use has become widespread and promoted as safe. Women WANT to believe this, so much so, it is considered "natural birth" because now the definition of "natural" is vaginal. Women will resist sharing with other women that they are not going to use epidural because of the shock and pressure from other women. "Why would you want to go through all of that pain?"

One of the considerations of doing birth at home is to not have a medical person constantly badgering her to use epidural. What has happened to these medical people? Educated, caring, compassionate people who are supposed to protect our health and our baby's health.

Since the prolific research of the late 80's and early 90's clearly indicating the dangers of epidural anestheia (namely bipuvicaine) to both mother and baby, Fentanyl, another unresearched and dangerous drug has been added to the cocktail. Fentanyl is a synethetic opiod being considered as a weapon to use in Iraq and has been added to the epidural mix to counter affect the complications of bipuvicaine. Research on birthing babies determined the "appropriate" dosage. Fentanyl is responsible for the deaths of hostages in 2002 in Moscow and is dangerous for children. In the US the same drug could be used on our sweet, precious babies AND terrorists.

Reports yesterday from Moscow about the gray gas that was pumped into the Moscow theater bear out the assertions of American medical experts that Fentanyl is dangerous to children under 12. Survivors and relatives of victims said that at least 10 of the dead were children. 


U.S. Suspects Opiate in Gas Used in Theater
By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD© New York Times, October 29, 2002
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/dll/knockoutgas2.htm

So, Fentanyl is the drug that the obstetric whizs decided was good to counter-act the detrimental and dangerous complications of bipuvicaine in epidural anesthesia. Where are the ethics committee who consider the rights of the birthing baby? What is going on that women who will use no drugs whatsoever during pregnancy will, without question, denying the long term impact on their baby, will demand their right to take Fentanyl during birth. And, some will allow their baby to be treated with less ethical care and consideration than a lab rat.

In this study by addition of fentanyl we tried to minimize the dose of bupivacaine, thereby reducing the side effects caused by higher doses of intrathecal bupivacaine in cesarean section.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1159169

Study was performed on 120 cesarean section parturients divided into six groups, identified as B8, B10 and B 12.5 8.10 and 12.5 mg of bupivacaine mg and FB8, FB10 and FB 12.5 received a combination of 12.5 μg intrathecal fentanyl respectively.

Women trust the medical profession. They would never allow harm to their baby if they were truly informed of the full risk; if they were informed that these drugs were never shown to be safe for their baby -- in any dose. Neither of these drugs were ever tested for safety for the birthing baby and certainly no research is being done to show the long-term impact to the human being.

The 120 babies in this particular study were not able to chose or be informed about their participation in this study. This is characteristic of all research done on laboring and birthing babies. It is a travesty that "ETHICS" committees and society do not regard the human baby in their research ... research that happens AFTER the use of technology and substance, not before using on babies. And, then to deny the need for research to see what the long-term impact is.

Fentanyl is considered a potential chemical weapon and has been studied for use on terrorists.

And on February 5th, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went a big step further. Rumsfeld, himself a former pharmaceutical industry CEO (1), announced that the US is making plans for the use of such incapacitating biochemical weapons in an invasion of Iraq (see News Release, 7 February 2003).

The Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) and the US Army's Soldier Biological Chemical Command (SBCCOM) are leading the research. Of interest to the military are drugs that target the brain's regulation of many aspects of cognition, such as sense of pain, consciousness, and emotions like anxiety and fear. JNLWD is preparing a database of pharmaceutical weapons candidates, many of them off-the-shelf products, and indexing them by manufacturer. It will choose drugs from this database for further work and, according to Rumsfeld, if President Bush signs a waiver of existing US policy, they can be used in Iraq. Delivery devices already exist or are in advanced development. These include munitions for an unmanned aerial vehicle or loitering missile, and a new 81mm (bio)chemical mortar round.

Many of the Pentagon’s so-called "nonlethal" (bio)chemical weapons candidates are pharmaceuticals. Different names are used for these weapons ("calmatives", "disabling chemicals", "nonlethal chemicals", etc.). Used as weapons, all minimally aim to incapacitate their victims. They belong to the same broad category of agents as the incapacitating chemical that killed more than 120 hostages in the Moscow theater. That agent was reported to be based on fentanyl, an opiate that is also among the weapons being assessed by JNLWD. 

In the US, pharmaceutical fentanyl is sold by Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutica. Remifentanil, a closely related drug, is a GlaxoSmithKline product. 

WHO is allowing the field obstetrics to go unsupervised? WHO is allowing the same drug to used on terrorists to be used on our birthing babies?? The FDA has approved this? Or, any drug is ok as long as an OB want to use it?

I don't know who wrote the following, but I did find some references that are listed at the end.

Russia's top health official Yuri Shevchenko reported that the gas used in the storming of a Moscow theater held by Chechen gunmen was based on fentanyl, a fast-acting opiate with medical applications. Shevchenko said the deaths were caused by the use of the chemical compound on people who had been starved of oxygen, were dehydrated, hungry, unable to move adequately and under severe psychological stress.

Injected, skin-patch and oral doses of fentanyl sold in the United States carry warnings that the anesthetic can be fatal if administered in too high a dose and that doses must be customized, taking into account the patients' size and any previous exposure to similar drugs.

Fentanyl was among drugs that Pennsylvania State University researchers suggested two years ago that the U.S. military explore as weapons to subdue angry mobs. The Pentagon has put such research on hold, however, because of worries that it would violate the international ban on chemical weapons.Fentanyl is one of the drugs used in epidural anesthesia for childbirth ("hungry, unable to move adequately, under severe psychological stress" sounds familiar). It certainly has worked wonders on the women of this culture as a chemical weapon in the war against spontaneous, unimpeded, empowered birthing.

http://www.sunshineproject.org/publications/pr/pr110203.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/31/world/main527614.shtml
 
Oprah says we should be uprising over the dismal state of our education system. We are 25th in the world science and math. Oprah also still promotes epidural anesthesia and drugs in birth -- she does so as most women do, laughing and saying it is the only way to give birth. No regard for the human baby. Oprah gave birth at age fourteen, reportedly she was pregnant by rape. No amount of drugs will help a woman give birth in that circumstance. Oprah's experience is not the correct measurement of what is scientifically wrong for babies. She does not even crack her psyche a fraction to allow the possibility that our failing schools ... failing children ... struggling children are the consequence of the rising use of induction of babies and the use of narcotics, opiods for the birthing brain. As the incidence of drugs in birth and cesarean birth rise at an alarmingly similar rate as the failure of our children in school, we need to rise up and say no more. No more routine drugging of the human newborn at birth.

Based on what we know, the routine epidural anesthesia during labor is not the right of a woman over that of a baby. I don't care what Obama says.