One prescription for every man, woman and child Prozac was approved in 1987 in the US, and launched in early 1988, followed by a clutch of other SSRIs. Twenty-five years later, we now have one prescription for an antidepressant for every single person in the West per year. Twenty-five years before Prozac, 1 in 10,000 of us per year was admitted for severe depressive … [Read more...] about Prozac and SSRIs: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
The Antidepressant Era: The Movie
The Antidepressant Era was written in 1995, and first published in 1997. A paperback came out in 1999. It was close to universally welcomed – see reviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. It was favorably received by reviewers from the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps because it made clear that this branch of medical history had not been shaped by great men or great institutions … [Read more...] about The Antidepressant Era: The Movie
The Boy With The Ponytail Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest
In The boy with the ponytail who played with fire, we saw Jan Akerblom struggle up the side of a mountain in his attempt to drop the Ring of Power into Mount Doom. Where others, especially doctors, are seduced by the Precious he isn't. Why do it - because he saw lives destroyed and wonders if we are at risk of destroying society itself. Are any contracts anyone enters into … [Read more...] about The Boy With The Ponytail Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest
The Boy With The Ponytail Who Played With Fire
He is 6’4” at least - 192 cm. He has blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. When he first suggested making a program about SSRIs I was not very helpful – very little of the media coverage by 60 Minutes or anything else has ever seemed to make much of a difference. They may have just increased the sales of antidepressants by keeping the names of the various drugs in the limelight. … [Read more...] about The Boy With The Ponytail Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Was Not Heard When She Cried Wolf
Crusoe was called to see Lisbeth. The girl - young woman was mute and catatonic by day but after she fell asleep she had nightmares when she wailed piteously, rent her nightdress, walked in her sleep muttering ‘the children, the children’ or other such phrases. It was a similar pattern each night, the parents said. The dreams seemed to repeat. Crusoe came in the evening when … [Read more...] about The Girl Who Was Not Heard When She Cried Wolf
101 Uses for a Dead Journal
There used to be a wonderful cartoon series called 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, which led me 25 years ago to give a talk at a British Association for Psychopharmacology meeting entitled 101 Uses for a Dead Psychiatrist. That was back in the days when Psychopharmacology meetings were places of debate and the British Journal of Psychiatry was guaranteed to have something of real … [Read more...] about 101 Uses for a Dead Journal
The Shipwreck of the Singular
Crusoe’s first appearance was in The Creation of Psychopharmacology, where in recognition of the tensions inherent in medicine between the numerous who enter clinical trials and the single person being treated by a doctor, the book opened with a quote from George Oppen’s Of Being Numerous, in which he notes that: “Crusoe we say was rescued”. Since Oppen wrote these lines, … [Read more...] about The Shipwreck of the Singular
The Data Access Wars
This is the first of three Crusoe posts. For background on Crusoe, see Watch where you wave that wand, The Oedipus Effect, The Tree must go. Beta Centauri was unquestionably a long way from Massachusetts. Somewhat to her surprise Crusoe found breathing no problem, and the temperature seemed just about right. The scenery as they’d come in was not unlike that of a … [Read more...] about The Data Access Wars
Access To Clinical Trial Data: Privacy rights, property rights and phoney rights
At the European Medicines’ Agency meeting held on November 22nd convened to look at the issue of Access to Clinical Trial Data, the pharmaceutical companies came armed with an approach signaled a few weeks earlier by GSK’s Andrew Witty (see Won't get Fooled Again). The industry panelists came from Lilly and UCB along with a representative from EurorDis Francois … [Read more...] about Access To Clinical Trial Data: Privacy rights, property rights and phoney rights
Access to RxISK Data: Conflicts of Interest
Won’t get fooled again outlined a stunning propaganda coup by GSK. On the back of a campaign for open access to clinical trial data that has drawn its inspiration from efforts by the Cochrane Tamiflu reviewers to get access to Roche’s clinical trial data, Andrew Witty came out and proclaimed that GSK were all in favor of access to clinical trial data. The BMJ threw its hat in … [Read more...] about Access to RxISK Data: Conflicts of Interest