Medication is Not a Panacea
Jun 3rd, 2007 by Alex
Why it is that many of the popular prescription antidepressants may increase the risk of suicide? I’m not a doctor, but if depression is a catalyst for suicidal tendencies then shouldn’t antidepressants reduce the risk of suicide? You’d think, but now the FDA is mandating suicide warnings be placed on the labels and in the commericals of many antidepressants. I think I understand the value of double blind testing in clinical, but if a line of antidpressant is found to cause mania and agitatation then why would you even consider testing the medication on people who weren’t already depressed? That isn’t ethical or productive.
Testifying at both FDA hearings, Thomas Laughren MD of the FDA noted that a 20 percent success rate in pediatric clinical trials (three out of 15) “is clearly a concern.” [...] Dr Laughren pointed out that adult trials are also subject to high failure rates (50 percent). Thus, lack of success “is not the same thing as saying that we have proof that the drugs have no benefit.”
Not the same thing? No. It’s a crummy track record. Pharmaceutical companies spend all this money to cure or otherwise treat depression with flop results. Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, and now Cymbalta all have had suicide attempts in their trials. If depressed kids and teens in clinical trials exhibit suicidal behavior, who is to say that it is the result of the medication and not just the kid? If the net result of taking antidepressants could be the same result if the person hadn’t taken them, why risk it? The bottom line is that these scientists don’t have a clue what’s going on inside a patient’s head but are happy to continuing to try. Could it be that it’s not something that can be fixed through medication?
Behavioral scientists attempt to argue that teens have more behavioral problems than adults. No kidding. Who’s going to argue with that? This is science? It’s called growing up and it isn’t ever easy. I don’t understand why we medicate.
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According to Dr. Irving Kirsch in Prevention & Treatment, “there is now unanimous agreement that the mean difference between response to SSRI antidepressant drugs and response to inert placebo is very small. It is so small that, despite sample sizes involving hundreds of participants, 57% of the SSRI trials funded by the pharmaceutical industry failed to show a significant difference between drug and placebo. Most of these negative data were not published and were accessible only by gaining access to US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) documents.
Various methods were used to manipulate the results of SSRI drug studies to insure a favorable outcome:
1) Responders to the placebo are eliminated at the beginning of the study. (Placebo washout)
2) Benzodiazepine sedatives were given to mask the SSRI induced agitation.
3) Unfavorable drug studies are buried in the file cabinet and not disclosed to the public.
4) Miscoding suicidal events as “emotional lability”, and homicidal events as “aggression” to hide suicidal events from regulators.
5) False attribution of suicide to the placebo arm.
6) Hiring ghost writers to make the medical articles more favorable.
7) Cash settlements for SSRI drug litigants which seals records and withholds unfavorable drug studies from the public.
For more information and links see my Paxil, Prozac, and SSRI Induced Suicide Newsletter
Jeffrey Dach MD
Dr. Dach: Among other reasons, part of the problem in measuring the effectiveness of a new compound (either in use or in testing) against depression is that the condition (for lack of a better word) affects everyone differently. There isn’t a universally tangible condition we’re trying to treat; unlike testing an antibacterial creme (where there’s a physically measurable difference before and after application), a subjects vocal/written response to questions about their condition before/after medication/placebo is subjective at best.