FDA Protects SSRI Makers With Misleading Suicide Warning
On May 2, 2007, the FDA announced its most misleading warnings to date about selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants when it said the drug makers would revise the current black box warning of an increased risk of suicidality in children and adolescents to include adults, but only young adults ages 18 to 24. Apparently at the ripe old age of 25 the increased risk no longer exists.
An FDA advisory committee held a public hearing on December 13, 2006 to review drug company data that show SSRIs to be associated with suicidality in adults. The commonly prescribed SSRIs in the US include Prozac, by Eli Lilly, Paxil by GlaxoSmithKline, Zoloft by Pfizer, and Celexa and Lexapro by Forest Labs, along with various generic versions of the drugs.
Many of the world's leading experts on psychiatric drugs traveled to Washington to appear at the hearing, some of whom have spent years investigating the adverse events associated with SSRIs, to testify about the need to extend the back box warnings about suicidality to all age groups.
Needless to say, advocates and experts alike are outraged over the limited warning, which is widely viewed as another gift to the drug makers by the FDA. "Keeping up with its support of the Psychiatric community and pharmaceutical industry the FDA has again taken the low road," says Kelly Patricia O'Meara, author of "PSYCHED OUT: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill."
"Not only is it continuing to minimize the adverse reactions of the antidepressants on the entire population," she notes, "it has now become a cheerleader for the psychiatric community." "When will the well-being of the American People," Ms O'Meara asks, "get the protection it needs and deserves from the nation's leading drug watchdog and when will this nation's lawmakers stand up and be counted on this issue?"
Attorney Karen Barth Menzies is one of the nation's most relentless advocates in the legal field when it comes to pushing the FDA to add warnings about adverse events to the labels of SSRIs. In fact, she has traveled to Washington to speak on behalf of SSRI victims numerous times.
"As I stated in my testimony before the FDA in December 2006," Ms Menzies notes, "it is not the FDA's job to promote the virtues of particular drugs nor is it FDA's job to suggest what treatment people should receive for a particular medical problem."
"Even the FDA's Dr. Robert Temple said as much during the December hearing," she points out.
"Yet that is what the FDA has done with its announcement of the expanded warnings on antidepressants," she says.
"Aside from the very serious risks of these drugs," she explains, "there is an overarching issue related to their over-prescription and drug manufacturers preying on vulnerable people by telling them they have a disease that must be treated with their medication."
A partner in the Baum Hedlund law firm, Ms Menzies considers the FDA's expanded warning a hollow victory. "While it appears that the FDA has finally taken the issue more seriously," she notes, "it is 20 years and thousands of lives too late."
In addition, in the agency's press release and accompanying Q & A document, Ms. Menzies warns, "The FDA has made some seriously misleading statements that will lead patients and physicians into a false sense of security."
Ms Menzies says she believes "without question" that drug makers are putting pressure on the FDA. "Despite the controversy over the failures of the FDA in the past several years," she points out, "it appears that the FDA simply cannot muster the guts to act without industry influence."
Critics say the nation's regulatory agencies under the Bush administration have evolved into a protection network for drug makers, in large part, because the industry has created a revolving door where top officials move directly from their government employment into high-paying positions with drug companies.
The latest evidence of this charge appeared in the media on May 4, 2007, with a press release by Prozac-maker Eli Lilly, announcing that Alex Azar II will be joining Lilly as senior vice president, who until February 3, 2007, was the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and served as the "chief operating officer of the largest civilian department in the federal government."
Even though my case is only one case and one of the first falacies we learn about in elementary logic is hasty generalization, I find it extremely dificult, in fact virtually impossible, to believe that prozac could have such a dramatic effect in my case and the assertions in this article, despite all the studies it cites, could be true. I've suffered from chronic depression since the age of ten (I will be 67 in September) and it got worse as I got older. The older antidepressants, that this article claims to be so much better than the present ones, did not have much effect. It was only after I started taking prozac that I noticed much benefit, Post prozac, it's wonderful not to be depressed!
This year, prozac finally stopped having any effect and I had to switch to sertraline. Within days, I experienced the same dramatic lifting of depression.
If the effect on me of prozac and sertraline is due to the placebo effect, then it is hard to explain why I did not experience the same placebo effect when the older antidepresants were prescribed.
And I am disgusted and fed up with white coated pontificators who sit behind desk and spout ineffectual, platitudinous "talk therapy."
R. W. H.
by
rhalfhill (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 252 comments)
on Monday, May 21, 2007 at 2:50:36 PM
Prozac made me feel suiciidal within one week of starting it. I was in my 40's. It's about time the FDA stopped lying to the American public who pay their salaries.
by
Alison Hymes (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 5 comments)
on Monday, May 21, 2007 at 3:05:11 PM
