Posted by SLS on September 20, 2006, at 4:20:22
In reply to Re: Here's my first and last word(s) » SLS, posted by Tomatheus on September 19, 2006, at 23:46:18
> > I think these drugs work better than many of the current clinical studies indicate, and at least as well as they did 30 years ago.
> I'm sure that those who experienced decades worth of remission from the "old" Nardil and have been suffering from the return of their depressive and/or anxiety symptoms since the formulation was changed would beg to differ. Even if antidepressants as a whole are more effective than they were 30 years ago, I don't think that an industry can claim progress if some patients received more benefits from the meds that were available 30 years ago than they do from the meds that are available now.You know, the funny thing is, I never thought of our new drugs as being any better than our old drugs, just sufficiently different to get some people well that had not been made well by the old drugs. I thought everyone thought the same way. I have NEVER heard one of my doctors come right out and say that our new drugs are better than our old drugs. I have had one or two point to certain drugs and deem them as being pieces of sh*t, though. I guess I have been lucky. For the past twenty years, the best the drug companies could do was to bring up from their R&D their SSRIs. That is exactly what they had in their pipelines. It was a cohort of drugs that were developed at the same time 35 year ago. What would you expect? We were lucky to get Wellbutrin, Effexor, Serzone, and Remeron. These were not me-too drugs. Give the pharmaceutical companies a break and look at the timeline. Look at the lack of breakthroughs in the understanding of mental illnesses. You can't design an elegant drug to attack a black box. If you want to complain, do so to your congressman for the lack of funds allocated to the NIMH for the researching of mental illness. It is not the responsibility of private enterprise to do this research, and it is obvious that they have not come up with the answers necessary to produce effective treatments. So, go ahead and rant against the drug companies. They refuse to make better drugs because they prefer not to make more money. Go ahead and rant against the researchers. They have no interest in learning new things and winning Nobel Prizes. Go ahead and rant against doctors. They have no moral or ethical constitutions nor monetary investments in their reputations.
No, today's drugs are no better than those of 30 years ago. Ask anyone who has been in practice or has been a patient since 1980.
We have orders of magnitude more data on what exists inside the brain than we did 30 years ago, but barely a clue as to what it all means. Basically, we are no smarter.
Who's fault is it?
Let's look for someone to blame.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:686696
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060919/msgs/687600.html