The campaign against the Black Box Warning has been relentless since it was added to the labeling of antidepressants in 2004. Here are a dozen major articles along the way opposing the Warning: The relationship between antidepressant medication use and rate of suicide. Gibbons RD, Hur K, Bhaumik DK, Mann JJ. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005 […]
a·nach·ro·nism (-nkr-nzm) noun 1. The representation of someone as existing or something as happening in other than chronological, proper, or historical order. 2. One that is out of its proper or chronological order, especially a person or practice that belongs to an earlier time. from Latin anachronismus, from Greek anakhronismos a mistake in chronology, from […]
Black Box Warning Should Remain on Chantix®: Panel WebMD October 17, 2014 A black box warning about suicide risks should remain on the anti-smoking drug Chantix® until it can be reevaluated using findings from thorough scientific studies, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel of experts said Thursday. Chantix® has carried the FDA’s strongest warning […]
Prozac Is No Magic Pill, but It Works New York Times by Robert Gibbons and J. John Mann October 7, 2014 The changes in treatment and attitude brought on by Prozac prompted two colliding points of view. One was that antidepressants were overprescribed and people were encouraged to turn to a pill to solve all their […]
Smoke This: Pfizer Wants Serious Warnings Removed From Chantix Pharmalot: WSJ By Ed Silverman September 24, 2014 In a boost to Pfizer, the FDA has updated labeling on its Chantix smoking-cessation pill to indicate the drug may not carry the risks of suicidal behavior, a controversial issue that prompted the agency to include a serious […]
It looks as if the Windy City of Chicago is taking the lead in figuring out if people are depressed without even asking them. Dr. Robert Gibbons of the University of Chicago is planning an an iPhone App that lets the cloud figure it out [insider trading…], and now Dr. Eva Redei of Northwestern’s Feinberg […]
The only "author’s response" I’ve ever seen where the author of a medical paper admitted culpability in response to criticism was when Dr. Gibbons, Dr. Kupfer, et al apologized for lying about COI after being exposed. And in that apology, they didn’t get around to apologizing to Dr. Carroll for their initial nastygram in response […]
Re: Changes in antidepressant use by young people and suicidal behavior after FDA warnings and media coverage: quasi-experimental study by Catherine W Barber, Matthew Miller, and Deborah Azrael British Medical Journal 2014 348:g359. In the spirit of Lu et al’s [1] warning not to sound alarms about antidepressant use prematurely, we used readily available national […]
It has been eight months since this apology was published in JAMA Psychiatry. After over a decade of Dr. Kupfer self-righteously swatting away accusations that his DSM-5 Task Force was riddled with members who had conflicts of interest, he was forced to acknowledge that he had a whopper of a conflict of his own – […]
First off, thanks to Suzanna for sending along a tutorial about QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH DESIGNS [I must’ve cut that lecture in psychoanalytic training]. Likewise, thanks to Dr. Carroll for his looking over Dr. Lu’s article [how does he see all that stuff?]. The tips are a big help in reading the article without my eyes crossing. […]