An FDA Advisory panel voted not to put a black box warning on epilepsy drugs regarding the reporting of suicidal thoughts and feelings of some taking the meds. The reason?
"We have to be very careful about scaring the patients into not taking these drugs, and I think we have to be very thoughtful about that," says Rochelle Caplan, MD, a professor of psychiatry at University of California Los Angeles and a member of the expert panel.
Which is precisely why people like Jeanne Lenzer, Shannon Brownlee and the crackpots who cluster at pharmalot.com push for black box warnings on all meds for mental illness and pols like Bart Stupak and Chuck Grassley seek them. And it's why someone like Steve Nissen would use meta-analysis and press conferences to try to get them for Avandia and drugs for ADHD or demand that Vytorin be yanked from the market.
Fear mongering based on shoddy science advances a political agenda or a financial interest.
Sadly, I am sure the expert panel exposed themselves to both abuse and threats of physical violence, often stimulated by the kind of reporting or misreporting and blogs I have mentioned above. When chelation therapy becomes a subject of NIMH funding and black box warnings become a political tool to drive effective drugs off the market based on indiscriminate data amplified through the media and politician's press releases you know that Tabloid Medicine is replacing real science in guiding medical practice. Once in a while you have some brave souls who follow the facts. But for how long?
"We have to be very careful about scaring the patients into not taking these drugs, and I think we have to be very thoughtful about that," says Rochelle Caplan, MD, a professor of psychiatry at University of California Los Angeles and a member of the expert panel.
Which is precisely why people like Jeanne Lenzer, Shannon Brownlee and the crackpots who cluster at pharmalot.com push for black box warnings on all meds for mental illness and pols like Bart Stupak and Chuck Grassley seek them. And it's why someone like Steve Nissen would use meta-analysis and press conferences to try to get them for Avandia and drugs for ADHD or demand that Vytorin be yanked from the market.
Fear mongering based on shoddy science advances a political agenda or a financial interest.
Sadly, I am sure the expert panel exposed themselves to both abuse and threats of physical violence, often stimulated by the kind of reporting or misreporting and blogs I have mentioned above. When chelation therapy becomes a subject of NIMH funding and black box warnings become a political tool to drive effective drugs off the market based on indiscriminate data amplified through the media and politician's press releases you know that Tabloid Medicine is replacing real science in guiding medical practice. Once in a while you have some brave souls who follow the facts. But for how long?
