Good Signs

I haven't blogged for a while, and much has changed in my absense.

-The FDA has finally recognized the suicide dangers that SSRI's pose and now requires that all SSRI's recieve it highest "black-box" warning. As a result all direct to consumer advertising is now banned.

-The impotence of the FDA has been exposed by the recall of the pain medication Vioxx, which is now linked to thousands of deaths. A lead whistle-blower has testified before congress that the failure to remove Vioxx from the market was the direct result of the pro-insustry structure and funding of the agency. There is an appetite on capitol hill for reforming, or possibly abolishing the FDA alltogether.

- Documents have surfaced making clear that Pfiser knew about Prozac's suicide danger from day one, and hid that knowledge.

- Corruption in the process of submiting articles to medical journals has forced leading medical journals to change their practicies. Also, pressure has been successfully been applied on drug companies to reveal the results of all their clinical trials, even those that fail. (Usually only successful trials are published) Several firms have commited themselves to polling all their information in a government-run database.

All of these developments are positive, and the tide seems to be turning against psychopharmacology. People are finally becoming more skeptical of these "miricle drugs". Sadly, little attention has been paid to the so-called "anti-psychotics", even though they are far more dangerous than the SSRIS. Anti-psychotics are typically perscribed to lower economic classes than the SSRI's, and thus problems with them attract little attention.