Posted by Althea8869 on February 12, 2004, at 16:38:31
In reply to Re: effexor lawsuit - petition to sign first, posted by flyingdreams on February 12, 2004, at 11:54:38
Ok - I have read the petition and just want to comment on it briefly. I agree with about 95% of it.
Here is where I see some trouble.
"...and that Wyeth-Ayerst knew of these risks but failed to communicate those risks to the consumer and their physicians." --- Given that independent medical organizations did many of the trials during the initial testing for FDA approval and forwarded those results directly to the FDA or regional governing body for dissemination, Wyeth would not have been in much of a position to cover them up. SSRI discontinuation problems have been known about since long before this drug was approved. Yet the FDA never required specific documents regarding study of this. I looked today at their boiler plate, and they still dont seem to.Here's the other problem:
"we have found that the disclosure regarding the side effects and efficacy of Effexor that we were given and which is still being propagated, is significantly misleading to the consumer." This talks about side effects and efficacy, not discontinuation. I dont think it would be wise to attack Wyeth on an efficacy front- Here's an abstract from PubMed:
"Remission rates during treatment with venlafaxine or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.....Remission rates were: venlafaxine, 45% (382/851); SSRIs, 35% (260/748)....CONCLUSIONS: Remission rates were significantly higher with venlafaxine than with an SSRI." This was just one of many results showing it superior to SSRI's and in some cases TCA's.
The other thing is that in terms of "side-effects" which means individual responses seen during use of the drug which are directly attributable to the drug, Effexor's side effects are no worse, and in many cases better, than any of the other SSRI's.Here's what i'm driving at - the petition needs to be re-written to account for some statements that simply dont bear out. If the petition were about the severity of discontinuation symptoms and the neeed for the FDA to begin studying this and requiring drug companies to submit discontinuation trial results, than I'd actually sign it - especially given how bad mine were.
poster:Althea8869
thread:53462
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040210/msgs/312537.html