Posted by SLS on September 14, 2004, at 15:42:20
In reply to Re: where are the diagnostic tests?!! » SLS, posted by zeugma on September 14, 2004, at 11:32:39
> Part of the reason there is little effort is, paradoxically, that AD's have become such big business. Each pharmaceutical company wants their new drug to treat *all* depression, not just one possibly rare subtype of it. There was more incentive for pharmaceutical companies to look for a niche for their product when the market was seen as relatively small to begin with. Greed is the driving force behind a great deal of research and it is not leading to better treatments IMO, especially for depression, which has always been a heterogeneous disorder in presentation.
Definitely.The silly drug companies should realize that their drugs will be no less effective because tests are developed to match individuals to specific drugs. The nature of the illness isn't such that a drug is matched to an illness subtype, but that a drug is matched to an individual's unique circuitry. The drug companies are lucky in that their products will always match a sizeable percentage of varying phenotypes, despite attempts to categorize them.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:390599
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040909/msgs/390732.html