Introduction Note: I am currently editing the book PROZAC - Panacea or Pandora? by Ann Blake Tracy, PhD. This extremely important book was first published in 1994 and re-printed in 2001. Due to my legal difficulties, my work has been delayed and I have not yet finished editing this 400-page book but am nearing the end.
Through my work with and for Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, I have learned a great deal about how SSRI anti-depressants affect human behavior. I highly recommend her website for the International Coalition for Drug Awareness:
Link: http://www.drugawareness.org/home.html
It is only through awareness of what these drugs do that we will be able to prevent more school shootings like the one in Blacksburg, Virginia.
MEDIA DOES DAMAGE CONTROL FOR DRUG COMPANIES
The controlled media is doing damage control to prevent the public from learning what psychoactive anti-depressant medication the berserk killer was on when he killed 32 students at Virginia Tech. If the American public were to be informed of the precise medication this killer was taking, it would cause alarm to the millions of people who are taking the same drug.
The reports that mentioned Cho Seung-Hui taking anti-depressant medication are being edited to remove the idea that the drugs he was taking could have contributed to his murderous rampage.
Cho's behavior fits the "Prozac killer" profile in every aspect. Cho killed because his mind was saturated with a psychoactive drug that affected his serotonin levels, hence his moods and behavior. Although he may not have been taking Prozac, he was most likely taking a similar SSRI anti-depressant that has the same effect.
On April 17, for example, the Los Angeles Times, reported that Cho Seung-Hui went through his morning ritual, which included "taking his medication."
A few paragraphs later it reported that he was "taking medication for depression." Most readers would naturally understand that he was taking anti-depressant medication, probably a SSRI (Serotonin Selective Reuptake Inhibitor such as Prozac, Zoloft, Luvox, Paxil, etc.) anti-depressant.
How odd that several days after the worst shooting in U.S. history and we still don't know what medication Cho was taking when he went on his killing spree - or sleepwalk - as the case may be.
It appears that the corporate-controlled media certainly isn't "going there."
Rather than investigating and discussing Cho's use of anti-depressant medication, the Chicago Tribune newspapers (L.A. Times, Newsday, etc.) are now deleting these references. Take a look at what happened to the story that I quoted and linked to in my previous posting on this subject.
Link: http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=102932
In an article entitled "Gunman was both methodical and angry" in the Los Angeles Times on April 17, 2007, the first paragraph read:
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- It was 5:30 Monday morning and Karan Grewal was finishing a break after a long night of cramming for his classes at Virginia Tech. As he left the bathroom at Harper Hall, his dormitory mate, Cho Seung-Hui, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, entered for his morning ritual of applying lotion, inserting his contact lenses and taking his medication.
A few paragraphs later we read what he took medication for – depression:
His only previous contact with the law was a recent speeding ticket for doing 74 mph in a 55-mph zone, federal sources said. But the officials said he once set fire to his dorm room and was taking medication for depression.
What these drugs were doing to Cho's view of the world is described in his writings:
"His writing, the plays, were really morbid and grotesque," Derry said.
"I remember one of them very well. It was about a son who hated his stepfather. In the play the boy threw a chainsaw around, and hammers at him. But the play ended with the boy violently suffocating the father with a Rice Krispy treat," she said.
The link I had provided to this story no longer brings you to this story. It takes you to another Newsday article that says only this about his medication:
Several students and professors described Cho as a sullen loner. Authorities said he left a rambling note raging against women and rich kids. News reports said that Cho, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English, may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly erratic.
Professors and classmates were alarmed by his class writings -- pages filled with twisted, violence-drenched writing.
Even if you search for the last sentence of the former first paragraph, the link will take you to the Chicago Tribune story of April 18 in which the words "medication" and "depression" no longer even appear. The sentence about Cho being in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt has been drastically shortened – and put at the end of the article without mentioning his "morning ritual of applying lotion, inserting his contact lenses and taking his medication" :
The article is entitled "MASSACRE AT VIRGINIA TECH: THE FIREARMS: Shooter plotted in silent rage" and now ends with the former lead paragraph, albeit conspicuously shortened:
Grewal stayed up all night Sunday to study and was in the suite's shared bathroom at about 5:30 a.m. Monday when he noticed Cho was already up and dressing. He was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
"He was, like, normal," Grewal said.
End of story. No anti-depressant medication mentioned in the whole article.
Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/la-na-shooter18apr18,1,4029957,print.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Because the fact that Cho went on his murderous rampage while he was on an anti-depressant medication is probably the most important element in this horrible school shooting and the one that is being omitted by the editors, I am providing the original article, which is no longer served by the link:
Paper: Los Angeles Times (LATWP News Service) (CA)
Title: 'He Was, Like, Normal,' Student Says of Gunman
Date: April 17, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- It was 5:30 Monday morning and Karan Grewal was finishing a break after a long night of cramming for his classes at Virginia Tech. As he left the bathroom at Harper Hall, his dormitory mate, Cho Seung-Hui, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, entered for his morning ritual of applying lotion, inserting his contact lenses and taking his medication.
"He was, like, normal," Grewal, a 21-year-old accounting major, said Tuesday, describing the ordinary start to what turned out to be an extraordinary day.
Grewal said he went back to sleep but, according to authorities, Cho stayed awake. In fewer than five hours, Cho was dead, having killed himself after shooting 32 others to death at two locations on the Blue Ridge Mountain campus.
"He did not seem like a guy that's capable of anything like this," Grewal said.
A day after the deadliest gun massacre in modern U.S. history, students, friends and officials were trying to understand how Cho, a 23-year-old senior who was majoring in English, came to kill. It was a hazy picture of a man whose last note was a rant against rich kids and debauchery, but who also appeared organized enough to secure weapons and stage his rampage.
According to school officials, Cho even had time to post a deadly warning on a school online forum.
"im going to kill people at vtech today," they said he wrote.
The Chicago Tribune reported on its Web site that Cho left a note in his dorm that included a rambling list of grievances. The note included rants against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.
Cho arrived in the United States as an 8-year-old from South Korea in 1992, Korean Embassy officials said.
His parents, who are in seclusion refusing to talk to the media, run a dry cleaning business in Centreville, Va., according to federal investigation sources. Cho's sister is a graduate of Princeton.
His only previous contact with the law was a recent speeding ticket for doing 74 mph in a 55-mph zone, federal sources said. But the officials said he once set fire to his dorm room and was taking medication for depression.
By around 7:15 a.m. Monday, Cho had left his Harper Hall dorm for West Ambler Johnston dormitory. There he went to see Emily Hilscher, described as a friend by officials. Hilscher and the resident adviser, who came to investigate, were shot to death.
As police investigated, Cho was on the move. He had a backpack containing knives and ammo magazines, sources said. He was armed with two handguns.
One, a .22-caliber handgun, was bought in February at JND Pawn in Blacksburg, federal sources said. The other gun, a 9-mm Glock, was bought from a Roanoke, Va., firearms store.
After leaving the scene of the first shooting, Cho telephoned authorities with a threat, saying there was a bomb at Norris Hall, about half a mile away from Johnston.
At Norris, officials said Cho barricaded the doors with chains, then began shooting people. Thirty were killed before Cho turned the gun on himself, officials said.
At Harper, Cho shared a second-floor apartment-style suite with six other students. The suite has three bedrooms of two students each. The suite is connected with one living room and a shared bathroom. Its living room has a burgundy couch and tan coffee table, and Tuesday it was littered with empty water bottles and Dr Pepper cans.
Cho shared a bedroom with Joseph Aust, a sophomore majoring in electrical engineering. Aust said he knew barely anything about him, and the two hardly spoke. Aust said when they moved in together, Cho told him he was a business major.
Aust said Cho always was on his computer listening to rock, pop and classical.
"He would spend a lot of time downloading music," he said.
But Aust said Cho was away from the room more often than he was there. Aust didn't know where he went. Sometimes, Aust said, he walked into their room and Cho would be sitting in his chair.
"I would come into the room and he'd just kind of be staring at his desk, just staring at nothing," he said. "I would pass it off like he was just weird."
Aust said that Cho worked out every day and went to bed at 9 p.m. every night. The last couple of weeks he started getting up at 7 a.m., Aust said. But recently he had been waking up at 5:30 or 6 a.m.
He said Cho didn't appear to have any friends or a girlfriend. He also didn't have any decorations, posters or photos in his room, just his laptop, books and clothes. Aust said he tried talking to him a couple of times.
"He would just give one-word answers, not try to carry on a conversation."
Cho was an English major and the English department is in Shanks Hall, one of the smaller buildings on campus.
It's a two-story brick building and, like much of the campus, was ghostly quiet. Inside, the chair of the English department, Carolyn Rude, sat in her office.
Rude said she couldn't comment in detail because attorneys for the college advised the faculty not to speak. But, she said, she thought that there was a business major who switched his major to creative writing. She thought he may have taken a class with the esteemed poet Nikki Giovanni, who spoke at Tuesday's on-campus convocation.
Stephanie Derry, a senior English major, was in a playwriting class with Cho taught by acclaimed professor Ed Falco this semester.
"His writing, the plays, were really morbid and grotesque," Derry said.
"I remember one of them very well. It was about a son who hated his stepfather. In the play the boy threw a chainsaw around, and hammers at him. But the play ended with the boy violently suffocating the father with a Rice Krispy treat," she said.
"When I got the call it was Cho who had done this, I started crying, bawling," Derry said. "I kept having to tell myself there is no way we could have known this was coming. I was just so frustrated that we saw all the signs, but never thought this could happen."
Author: Erika Hayasaki and Richard A. Serrano
Section: Domestic News
Copyright 2007, Los Angeles Times. Reproduced with the permission of Los Angeles Times - Washington Post News Service by NewsBank, Inc.
Photo: Christopher Bollyn (left) with Mark Taylor, who miraculously survived being shot at close range by the drug-crazed student killers at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Taylor brought a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the psychoactive anti-depressant that his assailant was on when he shot Taylor and others. Taylor was forced to drop the suit after being threatened by the company's lawyers.
