World’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater invokes Tom Cruise as he joins presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard in pushing hot new study that reveals “big pharma falsely claimed depression was caused by a chemical imbalance – so they got people hooked on anti-depressants!”

“Shameful and criminal.”

A couple of days back a new study delivered an apparent coup de grâce to big pharma, revealing all those anti-depressants people are gobbling to stop ‘em from killing ‘emselves don’t do a thing. 

Media went wild, as y’might imagine, the findings feeding the suspicion, which has been driven to fever pitch by big pharma pushing COVID vaccines with debatable effectiveness, that it ain’t about health with these immoral sons of bitches, only cash.

The review, published in Molecular Psychiatry argued that there is “no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations” and that, “the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated.”

And, therefore, “Depression is probably not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain” and “antidepressants appear to have a generalized emotion-numbing effect…(and) it is not clear they do more good than harm.”  

The former Congresswoman from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard, noted for her no-nonsense style of biz, neither swinging left nor right, went at pharmaceutical co’s, tweeting, 

“Once again, Big Pharma rakes in billions of dollars based on lies. New study finds big pharma falsely claimed depression was caused by a chemical imbalance – so they got people hooked on  antidepressants that did nothing but increase the risk of suicide. Shameless & criminal.”

Once again, Big Pharma rakes in billions of dollars based on lies. New study finds big pharma falsely claimed depression was caused by a chemical imbalance – so they got people hooked on antidepressants that did nothing but increase the risk of suicide. Shameless & criminal.

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) August 4, 2022

It’s since turned out the study might’ve overreached a little in its conclusions, and there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that pills keep some of us from swinging from the rafters, but it does shine a light on our habit of trying to find easy-fix solutions, hacks, to problems.

Of course, no debate can be considered closed without the greatest surfer of all time, Kelly Slater, delivering his own riposte. 

Slater, who was a favourite to win next week’s Outernknown Tahiti Pro until the arrival of wildcard and former event runner-up Nathan Hedge, was typically pithy in response.

“Tom Cruise was right after all,” he tweeted, drawing almost two-thousand likes.

Cruise blew up the pre-internet (papers, magazines etc) in 2005 when he went on the Matt Lauer Show and said exercise, vitamins were a better solution than drugging and electro-shocking children.