Some 40 million people worldwide take the antidepressant drug Prozac. But according to a new study, it's actually no better than placebo.
What's even more damning is that the scientists got the data from studies that the pharmaceutical companies chose not to publish, through the Freedom of Information Act:
The review breaks new ground because Kirsch and his colleagues have obtained for the first time what they believe is a full set of trial data for four antidepressants.
They requested the full data under freedom of information rules from the Food and Drug Administration, which licenses medicines in the US and requires all data when it makes a decision.
The pattern they saw from the trial results of fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Seroxat), venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone) was consistent. "Using complete data sets (including unpublished data) and a substantially larger data set of this type than has been previously reported, we find the overall effect of new-generation antidepressant medication is below recommended criteria for clinical significance," they write.
Link - via Blue's News
Regardless of whether Prozac works for humans, it seems that it works very well for parrots: Owners Give Prozac to Depressed Pets - via Look at This
Without access to the raw data, I cannot comment on specifics. My prediction is that this study combined results from multiple trials that should not have been grouped together.
http://www.badscience.net/?p=619
(I'm no expert, I just happened to read the above article before coming here)
they'll approve anything to make a buck. pharmaceuticals (sp?) are so dangerous anyway; they're turning us into chemical-dependent robots. they would rather see us spend money on a drug with numerous side-effects than recommend a form of hollistic or preventative care. on commercials you'll hear them say "this product has been approved by the FDA" which really only means they reviewed the product and get a cut of the profit.
they're the ones who allow antibiotics and growth hormones to be injected into our meat. they're the ones that recalled all those drugs after approving them. they're the ones that shot my ma! well, not literally, but it could be tied to the incident.. my step-father was at an unusual part in his life and he was prescribed lexipro, an anti-depressant. it apparently wasn't helping his case, so they took him off of it. a week later, he killed my mom and himself. i do know that lexipro has been known to cause suicidal tendencies (yet it remains available on the market). i also know that these tendencies are enhanced when the person is taken off the medicine abruptly. whether or not i can attribute lexipro's unknown side-effects to my mother's death will never be known, but it's the closest to an answer i can get through deductive reasoning, and i don't have enough evidence to sue. SO moral of the story: don't trust the FDA. :)
And they've done the opposite. Google prozac and suicide.
http://www.google.com/search?q=prozac+suicide
252,000 reusults
http://www.google.com/search?q=prozac+murder
639,000 results
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Q4dMy5aF8
> better then a placebo. I have severe bipolar
> disorder, and the difference between when I am on
> my meds and off my meds is staggering.
That's what a placebo does. It makes you THINK you are being helped a great deal.... when it's actually doing nothing really.