22 Bullets Quotes

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Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.
Muhammad Ali
A 22-caliber bullet can travel as fast as 1,022 mph. I learned that at Quantico. However, the bullet that hit him probably traveled at 818 mph. Sound travels at 761 mph. I hear the bullet after I see the shot enter his head. But in my mind it all goes so fast that it’s just a single message.
Francis Y. Barel (Saving Kennedy)
Now standing in one corner of a boxing ring with a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, shooting a bullet weighing only 40 grains and with a striking energy of 51 foot pounds at 25 feet from the muzzle, I will guarantee to kill either Gene Tunney or Joe Louis before they get to me from the opposite corner. This is the smallest caliber pistol cartridge made; but it is also one of the most accurate and easy to hit with, since the pistol has no recoil. I have killed many horses with it, cripples and bear baits, with a single shot, and what will kill a horse will kill a man. I have hit six dueling silhouettes in the head with it at regulation distance in five seconds. It was this type of pistol that Millen boys’ colleague, Abe Faber, did all his killings with. Yet this same pistol bullet fired at point blank range will not dent a grizzly’s skull, and to shoot a grizzly with a .22 caliber pistol would simply be one way of committing suicide
Ernest Hemingway (Hemingway on Hunting)
The rifle and the pistol are still the equalizer when one man is more of a man than another, and if…he is really smart…he will get a permit to carry one and then drop around to Abercrombie and Fitch and buy himself a .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol, '''Woodsman model''', with a five-inch barrel and a box of shells. I advise him to get lubricated hollow points to avoid jams and to ensure a nice expansion on the bullet. He might even get several boxes and practice a little…
Ernest Hemingway (Hemingway on Hunting)
In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John Burns, I experienced four near misses in all, three of them in the course of one day. I certainly thought that the Bosnian cause was worth fighting for and worth defending, but I could not take myself seriously enough to imagine that my own demise would have forwarded the cause. (I also discovered that a famous jaunty Churchillism had its limits: the old war-lover wrote in one of his more youthful reminiscences that there is nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result. In my case, the experience of a whirring, whizzing horror just missing my ear was indeed briefly exciting, but on reflection made me want above all to get to the airport. Catching the plane out with a whole skin is the best part by far.) Or suppose I had been hit by that mortar that burst with an awful shriek so near to me, and turned into a Catherine wheel of body-parts and (even worse) body-ingredients? Once again, I was moved above all not by the thought that my death would 'count,' but that it would not count in the least.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
So our next move is to take the entire civil rights struggle – problem – into the United Nations and let the world see that Uncle Sam is guilty of violating the human rights of 22 million Afro-Americans right down to the year of 1964 and still has the audacity or the nerve to stand up and represent himself as the leader of the free world?
Malcolm X (The Ballot or the Bullet)
One also, in our milieu, simply didn't meet enough Americans to form an opinion. And when one did—this was in the days of crew-cuts and short-legged pants—they, too, often really did sport crew-cuts and trousers that mysteriously ended several inches short of the instep. Why was that? It obviously wasn't poverty. A colleague of my father's had a daughter who got herself married and found that an American friend she had met on holiday had offered to pay the whole cost of the nuptial feast. I forget the name of this paladin, but he had a crew-cut and amputated trouser-bottoms and a cigar stub and he came from a place called Yonkers, which seemed to me a ridiculous name to give to a suburb. (I, who had survived Crapstone… ) Anyway, once again one received a Henry Jamesian impression of brash generosity without overmuch refinement. There was a boy at my boarding school called Warren Powers Laird Myers, the son of an officer stationed at one of the many U.S. Air Force bases in Cambridgeshire. Trousers at The Leys School were uniform and regulation, but he still managed to show a bit of shin and to buzz-cut his hair. 'I am not a Yankee,' he informed me (he was from Norfolk, Virginia). 'I am a CON-federate.' From what I was then gleaning of the news from Dixie, this was unpromising. In our ranks we also had Jamie Auchincloss, a sprig of the Kennedy-Bouvier family that was then occupying the White House. His trousers managed to avoid covering his ankles also, though the fact that he shared a parent with Jackie Kennedy meant that anything he did was accepted as fashionable by definition. The pants of a man I'll call Mr. 'Miller,' a visiting American master who skillfully introduced me to J.D. Salinger, were also falling short of their mark. Mr. Miller's great teacher-feature was that he saw sexual imagery absolutely everywhere and was slightly too fond of pointing it out [...]. Meanwhile, and as I mentioned much earlier, the dominant images projected from the United States were of the attack-dog-and-firehose kind, with swag-bellied cops lying about themselves and the political succession changed as much by bullets as by ballots.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
...when the bullets fly and sundry erratic fragments of shell are seeking a fellowʼs life, and he has to lay low in the pits to keep his light from being snuffed out, then is a good opportunity to reckon up and balance accounts with the world in general and a fellowʼs near relatives and family in particular. Many, many, many a time have I thought of the careless word or deed never recalled, or amended, and during those midnight hours would I have given almost life itself to have the opportunity of making amends for them. Not through fear of what is beyond this life, but in order that after my flesh had turned to dust, and my bones to traces of white lime, those that knew me in life could say, “Charlie is gone, and though his life was full of inconsistencies, still he was a good hearted fellow, and if he did not amount to much as man, still he done no one any harm.” Charlie Biddlecom January 22, 1865
Katherine M. Aldridge (No Freedom Shrieker The Civil War Letters of Union Soldier Charles Biddlecom)
I want to be known as the 23 year-old who is foolishly in love with a Prince she can't see. I want to rejoice while holding the rose of singleness, even when my hands bleed from its thorns. I want to resist the urge to envy the pairs growing in the middle of my neighbors' gardens. I want to be rooted in the simple truth that unripen pairs taste like lies and lingering loneliness. 
I want to put Jesus on my bullet wound and cling to His heart wrenching hope because He was kind enough to be a Band-Aid when He should have stayed a King.
Katie Kiesler Nelson (22 and Single)
At the other extreme, the consumption tax rate should be very, very high for any products that impose massive negative externalities. Consider handgun ammunition. Currently, one can buy five hundred rounds of 9 mm ammunition for about $110 from online U.S. retailers—about twenty-two cents each. But each round of ammunition has a slight chance of falling into the wrong hands and killing someone. How slight? About 10 billion rounds are sold per year in the United States. There are about thirty thousand gun-related deaths in the United States per year (including suicides, homicides, and accidents). Assuming the typical gun death involves one round of ammo, the chance that any given round will end up killing someone is about thirty thousand divided by 10 billion, or three per million. Now, a person’s life is generally reckoned to be worth about $3 million, according to the usual cost-benefit-risk analyses by highway engineers, airlines, and hospitals. If each bullet has a three per million chance of negating a $3 million life, then that bullet imposes an expected average cost on society of $9. That’s about forty times its conventional retail cost of $0.22, so, by my reasoning, it should be subject to a consumption tax rate of 4,000 percent. This is obviously a rough calculation; it ignores the injury costs of nonlethal shootings (which would increase the tax) and the crime-deterrence effects, if any, of citizens having ammo (which would decrease the tax).
Geoffrey Miller (Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior)
Yossarian went to bed early for safety and soon dreamed that he was fleeing almost headlong down an endless wooden staircase, making a loud, staccato clatter with his heels. Then he woke up a little and realized someone was shooting at him with a machine gun. A tortured, terrified sob rose in his throat. His first thought was that Milo was attacking the squadron again, and he rolled off his cot to the floor and lay underneath in a trembling, praying ball, his heart thumping like a drop forge, his body bathed in a cold sweat. There was no noise of planes. A drunken, happy laugh sounded from afar. 'Happy New Year, Happy New Year!' a triumphant familiar voice shouted hilariously from high above between the short, sharp bursts of machine gun fire, and Yossarian understood that some men had gone as a prank to one of the sandbagged machine-gun emplacements Milo had installed in the hills after his raid on the squadron and staffed with his own men. Yossarian blazed with hatred and wrath when he saw he was the victim of an irresponsible joke that had destroyed his sleep and reduced him to a whimpering hulk. He wanted to kill, he wanted to murder. He was angrier than he had ever been before, angrier even than when he had slid his hands around McWatt's neck to strangle him. The gun opened fire again. Voices cried 'Happy New Year!' and gloating laughter rolled down from the hills through the darkness like a witch's glee. In moccasins and coveralls, Yossarian charged out of his tent for revenge with his .45, ramming a clip of cartridges up into the grip and slamming the bolt of the gun back to load it. He snapped off the safety catch and was ready to shoot. He heard Nately running after him to restrain him, calling his name. The machine gun opened fire once more from a black rise above the motor pool, and orange tracer bullets skimmed like low-gliding dashes over the tops of the shadowy tents, almost clipping the peaks. Roars of rough laughter rang out again between the short bursts. Yossarian felt resentment boil like acid inside him; they were endangering his life, the bastards!
Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
The world recoiled in horror in 2012 when 20 Connecticut schoolchildren and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. . . . The weapon was a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle adapted from its original role as a battlefield weapon. The AR-15, which is designed to inflict maximum casualties with rapid bursts, should never have been available for purchase by civilians (emphasis added).1 —New York Times editorial, March 4, 2016 Assault weapons were banned for 10 years until Congress, in bipartisan obeisance to the gun lobby, let the law lapse in 2004. As a result, gun manufacturers have been allowed to sell all manner of war weaponry to civilians, including the super destructive .50-caliber sniper rifle. . . .(emphasis added)2 —New York Times editorial, December 11, 2015 [James Holmes the Aurora, Colorado Batman Movie Theater Shooter] also bought bulletproof vests and other tactical gear” (emphasis added).3 —New York Times, July 22, 2012 It is hard to debate guns if you don’t know much about the subject. But it is probably not too surprising that gun control advocates who live in New York City know very little about guns. Semi-automatic guns don’t fire “rapid bursts” of bullets. The New York Times might be fearful of .50-caliber sniper rifles, but these bolt-action .50-caliber rifles were never covered by the federal assault weapons ban. “Urban assault vests” may sound like they are bulletproof, but they are made of nylon. These are just a few of the many errors that the New York Times made.4 If it really believes that it has a strong case, it wouldn’t feel the need to constantly hype its claims. What distinguishes the New York Times is that it doesn’t bother running corrections for these errors.
John R. Lott Jr. (The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies)
Questions surround nearly every aspect of the assassination. The chain of possession regarding each piece of evidence was tainted beyond repair. The presidential limousine, which represented the literal crime scene, was taken over by officials immediately after JFK’s body was carried into Parkland Hospital and tampered with. The Secret Service apparently cleaned up the limousine, washing away crucial evidence in the process. Obviously, whatever bullet fragments or other material that was purportedly found there became immediately suspect because of this. On November 26, the windshield on the presidential limo was replaced. The supposed murder weapon—a cheap, Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with a defective scope, allegedly ordered by Oswald through a post office box registered to his purported alias, Alex Hidell—is similarly troublesome. The two Dallas officers who discovered the rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, Seymour Weitzman and Eugene Boone, both swore in separate affidavits that the weapon was a German Mauser. As was to become all too common in this case, they would later each claim to be “mistaken” in a curiously identical manner. In fact, as late as midnight on November 22, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade would refer to the rifle as a Mauser when speaking to the press. Local WFAA television reported the weapon found as both a German Mauser and an Argentine Mauser. NBC, meanwhile, described the weapon as a British Enfield. In an honest court, the Carcano would not even have been permitted into the record, because no reliable chain of possession for it existed. Legally speaking, the rifle found on the sixth floor was a German Mauser, and no one claimed Oswald owned a weapon of that kind.
Donald Jeffries (Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics)
You know what they say about assassinations, Don Orsati. The important thing is not who fired the shot but who paid for the bullet.
Daniel Silva (Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Gabriel Allon, #22))
It was an odd bullet, a .22-caliber.
Enrique Krauze (Mexico: Biography of Power)
.22 bullet—very unlikely to kill
Enrique Krauze (Mexico: Biography of Power)
against the wall when the bullet struck him. I turned around and saw Nettie on the ground holding her stomach. Her dress was soaked
Rowan Wisce (Catch 22)
me. The force of the bullet knocked me backwards to the floor next to Nettie. John Sr. entered the room. “You fool,” he said striking
Rowan Wisce (Catch 22)
The truth is that there is no shortcut, no silver bullet, and no special sauce to building a winning campaign in the 21st century.
Elizabeth McKenna (Groundbreakers: How Obama's 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America)
She’s going to be fine,” he told Judd, clapping him on the shoulder. “It’s just a matter of time, now. You can stop holding your breath.” Judd thanked him and then went down the hall and leaned against the wall trying to compose himself. He’d been in hell for so long that the relief was devastating. She would live. She was going to live. He brushed away thquick moisture in his eyes. Cash came up beside him, a question in his eyes. Lawless 269 “She’s going to make it,” Judd said huskily. “Thank God,” Cash said with heartfelt relief. “What about Clark?” he asked suddenly, having only just remembered the man. “Patched up and in jail, probably for the rest of his life after the trial,” Cash assured him. He was watching the other man closely. “I think you should know what Tippy told me,” he added, hating to reveal it even now. It meant an end to all his own hopes. “Yes?” Judd prompted. “She saw Clark step out and aim the gun at you. She didn’t have time to react, and neither did Crissy. She saiCrissy realized you wouldn’t be able to save yourself, and she deliberately stepped out in front of the gun.” Judd’s intake of breath was audible. “Tippy was devastated when she saw it,” he continued. “She said she felt ten kinds of a fool for the trouble she’d caused between the two of you, when she knew how much Crissy cared.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have told you if Crissy had died. But you should know. I’ll go call Maude and give her the good news.” He turned and walked away. Judd stood there like a statue, absorbing the statement with a feeling of utter humility. Christabel had taken the bullet meant for him. She’d been willing to give her own life to save him. He’d never dreamed she cared so much. He was absolutelwithout words. Now he had to find a way to rebuild the bridges he’d burned. It wasn’t going to be easy.
Diana Palmer (Lawless (Long, Tall Texans #22))
She’s going to be fine,” he told Judd, clapping him on the shoulder. “It’s just a matter of time, now. You can stop holding your breath.” Judd thanked him and then went down the hall and leaned against the wall trying to compose himself. He’d been in hell for so long that the relief was devastating. She would live. She was going to live. He brushed away the quick moisture in his eyes. Cash came up beside him, a question in his eyes. “She’s going to make it,” Judd said huskily. “Thank God,” Cash said with heartfelt relief. “What about Clark?” he asked suddenly, having only just remembered the man. “Patched up and in jail, probably for the rest of his life after the trial,” Cash assured him. He was watching the other man closely. “I think you should know what Tippy told me,” he added, hating to reveal it even now. It meant an end to all his own hopes. “Yes?” Judd prompted. “She saw Clark step out and aim the gun at you. She didn’t have time to react, and neither did Crissy. She said Crissy realized you wouldn’t be able to save yourself, and she deliberately stepped out in front of the gun.” Judd’s intake of breath was audible. “Tippy was devastated when she saw it,” he continued. “She said she felt ten kinds of a fool for the trouble she’d caused between the two of you, when she knew how much Crissy cared.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have told you if Crissy had died. But you should know. I’ll go call Maude and give her the good news.” He turned and walked away. Judd stood there like a statue, absorbing the statement with a feeling of utter humility. Christabel had taken the bullet meant for him. She’d been willing to give her own life to save him. He’d never dreamed she cared so much. He was absolutely without words. Now he had to find a way to rebuild the bridges he’d burned. It wasn’t going to be easy.
Diana Palmer (Lawless (Long, Tall Texans #22))
On the plane I had read about a barber taken hostage in Paris, and felt a surge of darkly amused pride. “I’m going to be sixty-five the 22nd of December, I’m about to retire, I don’t want to die with a bullet to the head!” he’d told his captors, according to the news report. “Also, I would prefer that we didn’t tutoyer each other, given my age.”  •
Lauren Collins (When in French: Love in a Second Language)
There’s no ultimate manstopper, (Except for maybe a nuke.) Shot placement is the most important. The mob killed more people with .22 caliber bullets than any other. Fear is natural, embrace it, and learn to use it to your own advantage. Being fearless means you’re stupid. The more combat someone has seen, the less they talk about it. Courage is the first requirement of success in a crisis. Even a rugged, fully redundant, satellite enhanced, broadband, multimillion dollar tactical communications system will break down when you need it the most. Learn how to make decisions and carry out the plan without comms. A sense of humor will get you through anything from a gunshot wound to a divorce. Being alert will prevent 99% of the problems. Do unto others as they would do unto you; just make sure you do it first. There’s no such thing as a fair fight. If you fight, don’t be fair. If you know it all—you don’t. The first rule of a knife fight, is don’t get into a knife fight. The best defense to a knife fight is a full large capacity magazine used before the knife wielding person comes close enough to use their knife. Anything and everything can and WILL fail at the worst possible moment. If you don’t practice a movement at least 500 times, you’ll never do it under stress. You’ll never wake up knowing today is the day, so don’t sweat it. Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfectly practicing makes perfect. Our enemy is frequently smarter than we give them credit for. Train yourself to relax after the fight. We go into battle with what we have on our backs. The human mind is the deadliest weapon ever invented.
Ira Tabankin (Behind Every Blade of Grass (Behind Every Blade of Grass #4))
Yeah I'm one broken mofo. I still care for myself tho. Keep it tidy. Still fit. No one does blip for me. I still eat and mingle with nature. Still recovering. Depression is a bear. It doesn't help that my ever best friend spits bullets. I asked one innocent thing. I begged to drop g's no strings attached. I knew we'd hit it off, maybe for life. I ached for it. Your gift, my trampoline. A hug. Some fun. Some delightful brain food. A happy that would last ages. It's a catch-22 scenario. I begin in the negative to someday find happiness, but I need happiness to get me out of the negative. What am I supposed to do? Take drugs? I teemed for 24 hours anticipating you. That was quite a drug. You call it a conversation? Nah, we be flingin. It's something; a dash of hope. You guesser, judge, jury, executioner. Thinkin I'm some monster by default. Guesser of what I meant. Guessed wrong. It's a choice. You could help pull out the knife or stick it in deeper and twist it around. You do what you enjoy killa. For years I was the only one with a stable income. They told me I was too stupid for school. Instead, I worked to support my family. I worked near 24/7. Then wham, catastrophe. Eugenics at play. Without a support system or tools to defend, you're tossed. I had a lawsuit but I failed to act in time. From zero and stranded in the sticks, I failed lots, threw away lots, I managed to make some money with my skills. Eventually I helped get a house in a decent neighborhood. They let a drug addicted hooker in. I fought the drug fiends. I paid the mortgage debt, several months behind, to save the place, but in the end, I couldn't win. They insisted on moving here. I was the only one with money. I came with to battle the new crisis and to recoup my losses until I figured out what to do next. Couldn't just abandon the kids. Over time the situation improved. Drugs were defeated. I didn't intend to stay. This place got to me. I am ashamed and battered by it all. No, I don't mess with drugs. I found the landscape of my field where most of the jobs are at has changed extensively over the years. I wasn't concentrated on that area. I'm obsolete. Without a degree, you're auto discarded. Still ways in, but I need to be on my A-game. Not going anywhere without exuding confidence. I'm all twisted up inside. Loneliness eating at me. Cold cruel world. My best friend dodgin me. All work, all alone, as it's always been. Can't do it all alone. In the end, what do I get? A hostile mob? Walked in for a chat. What I got was wacked.
Anonymous
HE FELL DOWN HARD—stone-cold dead, next to my feet. It didn’t take much—just a pull of the trigger. The way I figured; a bullet always had its way of settling things. It asked no questions. Just did what it was told. And I hadn’t planned on resolving my disagreement with the Thin Man that way. But he left me no choice. He pulled his Luger, deciding that one of his .28s was the only way to resolve the issue. Trouble was, he missed. But a .22 from my Colt didn’t.
Oliver Dean Spencer (The Case of the Runaway Orangutan (James Cartwright Pi))
JFK Assassination The general premise of the situation is that President John F. Kennedy rode through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Shots rang out, and the resulting barrage of bullets ended with the President being fatally shot in the head. An event that was caught on tape by the famous film shot by Abraham Zapruder. [1] The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was caught the same day after shooting a Dallas police officer. Two days later, he was killed, again on camera, by Jack Ruby with one shot to the abdomen. The new President, former Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, put together the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination. They concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and closed the book on the case. This conclusion meant that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine with questionable marksman skills using an archaic bolt-action rifle, would have to fire 3 shots within 8 to 11 seconds. It required that he aim and fire at a moving target, pull back the bolt to release the shell, and then aim and fire again. He would aim and fire one more time before it was over, but was he the only one firing? This wasn't good enough for the American people, and the case was revisited with a new investigation in 1978. The House Select Committee on Assassinations simply concluded that the killing was the result of a conspiracy, and that was it. For 50+ years, we have been left to theorize and hypothesize about what happened in Dealey Plaza that day. A new idea was presented to the public on the 50th anniversary of the event in November 2013 that theorized the final shot that exploded Kennedy's head was accidental. This idea theorized that the shot came from a Secret Service agent in the follow-up vehicle. The agent had retrieved an assault rifle from the floorboard of the limo, and when the vehicle lunged, he fired the fatal shot. This action was followed by an extensive cover-up to save the agency from public embarrassment. I don't think we will ever know what really happened that day. [2]
Ava Fails (Conspiracy Theory 101: A Researcher's Starting Point)
On Monday, July 22, Giuliani, Volker, and Yermak had a three-way call for thirty-eight minutes where Giuliani received assurance from Yermak that Zelensky understood what was expected of him in a phone call with Trump. The investigation of the Bidens—not burden sharing with the West, not corruption in Ukraine, not saving lives from Russian bullets and bombs—was all that mattered.
Jeffrey Toobin (True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump)
The prescribing of psychotropic drugs to two-year-olds and three-year-olds began to become more commonplace about a decade ago, and sure enough, the number of severely mentally ill children under six years of age receiving SSI has tripled since then, rising from 22,453 in 2000 to 65,928 in 2007.
Robert Whitaker (Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America)
fact, the first legally proven fatality from domestic bioterrorism was the 1973 murder of West Oakland school superintendent Dr. Marcus A. Foster, an African American, who was felled by a cyanide-tipped bullet from the arsenal of the Symbionese Liberation Army.22
Harriet A. Washington (Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present)
At autopsy, the brains of twenty schizophrenics had 70 percent more D2 receptors than normal. At first glance, it seemed that the cause of schizophrenia had been found, but Seeman cautioned that all of the patients had been on neuroleptics prior to their deaths. “Although these results are apparently compatible with the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia in general,” he wrote, the increase in D2 receptors might “have resulted from the long-term administration of neuroleptics.”20 A variety of studies quickly proved that the drugs were indeed the culprit. When rats were fed neuroleptics, their D2 receptors quickly increased in number.21 If rats were given a drug that blocked D1 receptors, that receptor subtype increased in density.22 In each instance, the increase was evidence of the brain trying to compensate for the drug’s blocking of its signals. Then, in 1982, Angus MacKay and his British colleagues reported that when they examined brain tissue from forty-eight deceased schizophrenics, “the increases in [D2] receptors were seen only in patients in whom neuroleptic medication had been maintained until the time of death, indicating that they were entirely iatrogenic [drug-caused].”23 A few years later, German investigators reported the same results from their autopsy studies.24 Finally, investigators in France, Sweden, and Finland used positron emission topography to study D2-receptor densities in living patients who had never been exposed to neuroleptics, and all reported “no significant differences” between the schizophrenics and “normal controls.
Robert Whitaker (Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America)