Dr Reg Peart, BSc, PhD
Story
Résumé
He studied at The University of Reading where he was awarded a BSc (Special) in Physics and a PhD in Atomic Physics.
He has held various appointments in academic and industrial research establishments including The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) Harwell, Associate Professor at The University of Illinois and Manager of the Radioisotope Laboratory at the world renown IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York.
He has published many papers in Atomic Physics, Metal Physics and Semiconductor Physics and is a member of The New York Academy of Science.
Subsequent to being prescribed Valium for vertigo, he suffered many years of misprescribing, misdiagnosis and mistreatment including over 30 sessions of ECT, many while in *cold turkey* Valium withdrawals. He finally became unemployed and unemployable with severe cognitive impairment and other long term damage. He was rejected and neglected by all the doctors he approached for treatment.
During his years of very slow recovery he became involved in voluntary work with addicts of various kinds. In 1992 he helped form Victims of Tranquillisers (VOT) and was responsible for leading a group of litigants consisting of persons from the foiled Benzodiazepine Litigation through to The European Court of Human Rights where the UK Government is being sued for the denial of the right to a fair trial.
He currently spends most of his time working as The National Coordinator and Activist for VOT.
Announcement: Dr Reg Peart passed away on October 4, 2009.
Dr Reg Peart - A tribute
"When I heard of Dr. Reg Peart’s passing, my first thought was the Lord’s Word, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Those words have been used by various people at various times. During WWII, they were changed a bit to say “brother” instead of “friends” and were put on advertisements to sell war bonds. It was a war that Reg was fighting. Not a war that many people even know about, but a war nevertheless. A war that is worldwide, just as WWII was. It was the war against drugs. And it wasn’t the drugs that were sold on the streets. It was, and still is, the drugs that are prescribed by doctors who usually mean well, but are destroying lives and producing stories like Reg’s, repeated all over the world many times over:
Reg spent almost every minute of his life, following his own recovery, researching benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome. He spent countless hours on the phone and writing people. He helped people all over the world overcome the hideous withdrawal too often seen from this class of drugs.
Many people, once recovered from this syndrome, desire to put it all behind them and want nothing more than to try their best to forget it. Once in a while a special person comes along and says, “This isn’t right. I have to do something.” Reg was such a person. And he ‘did something’ until he no longer could. Reg is gone from this world now, but the legacy of love and care he left still remains. It remains in the years of research he did for those who needed proof that benzodiazepines do cause neuron receptors changes that can take months or years to return to normal. It remains in the papers he wrote to help people learn more about what was happening to them. It remains in the memory of the gentle English voice that told so many, “You will get well.”
As I suffered my own withdrawal, I often stopped and asked myself, “Why?” I’ve never expected the answer while here on earth, but I have always imagined it was so that I would learn some things. And maybe one of those things was that there are still people on the world who care about others more than themselves. If so, I had the pleasure of knowing one of those people, an older, English gentlemen, a good man, a man who gave more to others in one year than many of us manage in a lifetime.
We will miss you, Reg. "