Hiding or fabricating data about harmful side effects

Does the habitual use of antidepressants do more harm than good to many patients? Absolutely, says one expert in a new British Medical Journal report. Moreover, he says that the federal Food and Drug Administration might even be hiding the truth about antidepressant lethality.

In his portion of the report, Peter C. Gotzsche, a professor at the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark, said that nearly all psychotropic drug use could be ended today without deleterious effects, adding that such “drugs are responsible for the deaths of more than half a million people aged 65 and older each year in the Western world.”

Gotzsche, author of the 2013 book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare, further notes in the BMJ that “randomized trials that have been conducted do not properly evaluate the drugs’ effects.” He adds, “Almost all of them are biased because they included patients already taking another psychiatric drug.”

Hiding or fabricating data about harmful side effects
The FDA’s data is incomplete at best and intentionally skewed at worst, he insisted:

Under-reporting of deaths in industry funded trials is another major flaw. Based on some of the randomised trials that were included in a meta-analysis of 100,000 patients by the US Food and Drug Administration, I have estimated that there are likely to have been 15 times more suicides among people taking antidepressants than reported by the FDA - for example, there were 14 suicides in 9,956 patients in trials with fluoxetine and paroxetine, whereas the FDA had only five suicides in 52,960 patients, partly because the FDA only included events up to 24 hours after patients stopped taking the drug.
1 Like

While there is obviously some issues with how the pharma companies are required to report data, there is lots of evidence to the contrary regarding so called increased death rates, and new studies completely refute this viewpoint. This source is obviously very biased and is cherry-picking the data.

Gotzsche’s views were disputed in the same BMJ piece by Allan Young, professor of mood disorders at King’s College London, and psychiatric patient John Crace.

“More than a fifth of all health-related disability is caused by mental ill health, studies suggest, and people with poor mental health often have poor physical health and poorer (long-term) outcomes in both aspects of health,” they wrote.

and:

1 Like

I really took a hit from Zyprexa. If I had been warned in advance about the weight and diabetes problems, I would have refused the medication. Doctors and drug companies need to be more open with patients:

My mother died of diabetic complications and diabetes is all through her side of the family. I’m obviously at major risk here, so this was not a med I should have been put on.

Also, the folks at E-Lilly are a bunch of douchebags on a good day:

http://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2009/January/09-civ-038.html

I’m happy with my current med – Geodon – and also happy with the disclosure about possible adverse cardio issues. All I ask is that I be kept in the loop and allowed a say.

10-96

1 Like

“This would lead to healthier and more long lived populations. Because psychotropic drugs are immensely harmful when used long-term, they should almost exclusively be used in acute situations and always with a firm plan for tapering off, which can be difficult for many patients,” he added.

This is the paragraph I wanted to highlight concerning the post.

That is one person’s opinion that is refuted by this significant study that came out a few months ago:

1 Like

Understood. I am in no way qualified to give any treatment advice and will refrain from posting such articles.
I meant no harm.