Posted by Alan on January 29, 2003, at 19:03:40
In reply to Re: Neurontin, etc., posted by Alan on January 29, 2003, at 18:52:25
The best way to receive the least comercially driven information would be to take oversight of clinical trials away from the FDA and give it to the NIH. That is, accept as evidence only trials designed and supervised by the NIH.
Failing that, ban cross-employment between the FDA and any company that it regulates for 10 or 15 years in either direction. Right now, there is a revolving door between the fox's house and the henhouse. It's bad enough that regulators are hired directly from the regulated companies. It's even worse that the FDA's "internal advocate" for a drug can and often does leave the FDA after approval of the drug to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year working for the maker of the drug.
Actually, we probably need both of the steps above.
And of course we need a law placing all directly or indirectly maker-funded research about a drug into the public domain when that drug receives FDA approval.
To review:
National Public Radio Reportage on Neurontin...
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_920362.html
It turns out there are a number of stories on the illegal mis-marketing of Neurontin at this page, both print and audio.
I think it's important to understand the ramifications of the mis-marketing of Neurontin. Many, many millions were spent to get out the news that it works magically for all these unapproved conditions (for which it doesn't work in reality). But who is going to spend comparable amounts to reverse that message now that it has been show to be illegal and usually false?
These stories also give you some insight into how pharmaceutical research works here in the US, where many of the articles published in medical journals are not written by the doctors whose names appear on them. Instead they're written by professional advertising writers and doctors are paid to put their name at the top.
There's no evidence Neurontin is systematically effective against anxiety. Of course there's always SOMEBODY who'll get a beneficial response from anything, including pickled herring. But the makers of Neurontin have faced FDA sanctions here in the United States, plus massive civil lawsuits, because they pushed Neurontin for ALL kinds of conditions for which there is either no evidence it's effective or for which there IS evidence that it's NOT effective.
Maybe one's doctor is unaware of these developments, or maybe he has had one or two of those patients with an exceptional response. Or maybe one's anxiety or panic is biologically related to seizures. There's good evidence for a connection like that, though it still doesn't prove Neurontin would help the anxiety.
I post this because I was on the receiving end of this kind of thing and as aresult, my anxiety went untreated in the mean time...the "side effects" of that untreated anxiety being much worse than the side effects of those medications that were actually theraputic such as, in my case, benzodiazepines.
poster:Alan
thread:136541
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030125/msgs/138217.html