This past weekend the FDA announced that new warnings would be issued regarding antidepressant drugs and a suicide link to children and teenagers.
That notice came out right after this column revealed a likely FDA cover-up in the suicide death of teenaged Traci Johnson in the midst of a safety trial for an antidepressant drug.
However, the suicide link information only came out after an internal FDA memo was leaked to the press.
A senior FDA researcher last year noted almost twice the suicide risk in children and teenagers taking antidepressants in his analysis of 22 studies.
The FDA bosses of this senior researcher didn't like his conclusions and suppressed them. The information was then sent to other researchers outside the FDA. Last week it was revealed that the outside researchers came to the same conclusions.
It then took a leak to the press for this information to come out last week.
Even then the FDA put off until next month a meeting to discuss the possibilities of warnings.
All this came out only one week after FDA approval of a new antidepressant in which the teenaged girl, Traci Johnson, hanged herself without warning or a note. This fact has somehow escaped the notice of the media.
In a further development I have since discovered that the initial autopsy of Traci Johnson did not find any antidepressant medication in her system, but then further investigation revealed that the antidepressant she had been taking was not checked for during the autopsy. This also has somehow escaped the notice of the media.
Money, money, money
Another story just this week is of a renowned plastic surgeon to Hollywood stars who has been an enthusiastic promoter of the drug Botox. The famous doctor has been disclosed as a highly paid consultant for the drug with payments to him in excess of half a million dollars by the drug company. The doctor is being sued for alleged damage caused by his use of the drug with a woman who says she would not have followed through if she knew he was a highly paid spokesman for the drug.
Often the medical profession complains that people who promote nutrition are only doing so to make money. Yet this case has opened up the fact that the medical profession is making exorbitant sums of money just for promoting drugs.
In another big money medical development last week a new device was excitedly promoted that detects tumor cells in the blood of breast cancer patients. It was noted that this testing could be used to indicate survival times.
Yet for more than 30 years there has been good documentation that a simple blood test for selenium indicates survival times of breast cancer patients. That simple testing is simply not done.
The difference is that the new blood test being hyped for tumor cells may indicate use of expensive therapies to perhaps kill tumors and hopefully extend lifespan, while the much older blood test for selenium indicates use of inexpensive supplements to definitely boost levels of a nutrient directly noted to enhance survival times.
That is a big difference in money. It may be the difference between life and death.
Why the holdup? Isn't it odd that a holdup is also how we describe a robber stealing money from another by fear?
Does your doctor keep you taking expensive drugs with fear of what will happen if you don't take those drugs that keep getting more and more expensive?!?
