Hmmm…as if Dawdy’s blog isn’t filled with much of the same… as I certainly feel it is missing different and/or contrarian points of view through his need to excommunicate those who do not agree with his thoughts.

I came across an interesting piece relating to an investigation of one of those doctors, who in Dawdy’s blog comments amongst other attributions labels the individual a “Nazi,” and yet no one cares to take the time to share the information or in the words of Paul Harvey share “The Rest of the Story”. Most importantly at least in my opinion are whether the research was tainted and/or the care for patients.

“The University’s investigation, to date, has found no evidence that Dr. Nemeroff’s outside speaking activities affected clinical care for patients or persons enrolled in clinical trials, and no evidence that his activities biased scientific research in which he was engaged. Dr. Nemeroff has contended that his lectures were not product-specific but were limited to general medical topics such as depression and bipolar disorder. A review to date, based on his speaker slides and on interviews with attendees at presentations, supports that contention.”

http://www.emory.edu/home/news/releases/2008/12/conflict_of_interest_action.html

It is shameful that individuals are often easily led to judgment lacking facts and/or evidence.

A belated Happy Chanukah to you Liz and your readers as well as a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy, Peaceful and Prosperous New Year.

Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com

What was bad about the show was not so much literally what they said although some of it was almost juvenile and full of assertions, but the tone and the patronizing, arrogant attitude they had both to the media and to victims. They seemed insulted that anyone would even dare to bring up that a school shooter was on an antidepressant as if somehow this was an affront to their profession. As for the scores of victims and survivors who testified at FDA hearings in 1991, 2004 and 2006, of which I was one, when one of the guests was asked about it, he actually never directly replied about what it was like to hear those stories. They seemed to think that if someone was troubled then ergo the medication could not in any way be implicated in the violent act that followed which is a non sequitur. Also they seemed to be at pains to treat suicidal ideation and suicide as two distinct and almost opposing phenomena which is just ridiculous. It’s not credible. Finally they latched on to prescriptions going down and suicides up as if this were some holy grail of proof that antidepressants prevent suicide when countless other factors could be at play. It’s not even clear that those trends move in synch over time anyway. Even if they did it’s no proof of anything. To say that warnings should not be in place because they frighten people away from treatment when we already have 25-30 million people taking antidepressants is absurd. We have a serious overtreatment problem, not an undertreatment problem. Finally their assertions of efficacy were just that — assertions. I agree with one comment about the show — that there was no science in it whatsoever and that it reflected religion more than anything else, biological psychiatric religion. These guys were out to protect their territory, not provide any new insights into the relationship between antidepressants, suicide and violence. And they should be ashamed of how they did it.