What would happen if the Columbine high school rampage shooters who were psyched out on mind-altering antidepressant drugs had been piloting a jet airliner instead? On Friday, the FAA issued a new rule that says pilots taking psychiatric medications are now allowed to pilot passenger airliners while medicated!
This "permission to fly while medicated" decision by the FAA covers pilots taking the antidepressant psychiatric drugs Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa and Lexapro. Not coincidentally, these are the same drugs that, in the minds of many industry observers, are linked to acts of aggression, suicide and mass murder. People on these drugs may simply lose touch with reality and feel like they're playing out a video game rather than acting out in the real world.
It begs the question: Why is the FAA putting medicated pilots in control of jet airliners? What happens if a psych drug medicated pilot suddenly thinks he's in a video game and aims his Boeing 767 at a civilian target "just for the fun of it?" Or what if he goes raving mad, strangles the copilot and then crashes the jet airliner nose-first into the ground?
While this kind of scenario may seem remote, you have to remember: It only takes one such event to cost the lives of hundreds of air passengers (and perhaps thousands of people on the ground).
Today, air travel is remarkably safe in terms of the number of fatalities per miles traveled. It's far safer than traveling in your car, in fact, and a fair amount of the credit for that safety belongs with the FAA. So why is the FAA now making a decision that seems, on its surface, to endanger the lives of air passengers by allowing psychiatric patients to pilot airplanes?
According to the FAA, the answer is because modern psychiatric drugs have fewer side effects. That seems like a political statement, not a medical conclusion, because the side effects that are experienced by a very small number of psychiatric medication users can be so whacked out that they can pose a very real danger to the lives of those around them. The majority of U.S. school shootings that we've seen over the last 15 years have been carried out by shooters taking psychiatric medications.
