----- Original Message -----
From: Ruth E Ehrenberg
To: pr@globe.com
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 9:48 AM
Subject: Where is the News on the hunger strikers?

Dear Boston Globe News People,

There are six hunger strikers and fourteen panelists in Pasadena, CA including psychiatrists, scientists, researchers, and others who are challenging the American Psychiatric Association and organizations such as NAMI, asking for specific evidence that mental illness is biologically based. The panelists are there to review any study or information presented to them.

Please--please--please...... I beg you to cover their story. These six people have placed their lives in jeopardy for all of us, including our children, who have had the misfortune to be in need of psychiatric services. Thanks to your good reporting in the past, we are all aware that the numbers of diagnosis are increasing in frightening proportions and people are being medicated for every conceivable "disorder" from young children with "ADHD" to those in hospitals being drugged and "treated" against their will with labels that will change their lives forever.

The strikers and their panel of experts, as well as the thousands of silent sufferers of our society, deserve to be heard. Who among us will not be affected at some point in our lives by the sin of omission? We all have family members with mental illness in our family trees..... Let's stand up to the drug industry and say "NO".....We will not accept unproven theories that there are "brain imbalances" causing our problems. We want proof.

Please give the hunger strikers the same courtesy we have given to other civil rights groups who fight for their rights. Please hear them and let us know what is going on out there in Pasadena.

Thank you,

Ruth Ehrenberg
Longmeadow, MA
413-567-1162