"Different elements" is a hard sell on this post, because aren't they sequentially increasing protons, neutrons, etc? How can you not have elements on one periodic table vs another?
An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
81–90 of 118 posts
Re: An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
#82The analogies with room temperature superconductors and antigravity suggest that bromantane is some kind of super drug. But the only thing the author bases this on is the summary of a study in russian that the author can't even read.
> But the only thing the author bases this on is the summary of a study in russian that the author can't even read. Not true. He said that "they seem to have pretty good evidential support", and that russian study was used only as an example . Also while comparison tu room temperature superconductivity might be a hyperbole, apparently drug having "both stimulant and anti-anxiety properties" that "millions of Russians…
The possible evidence is in those other journal articles, but they are in russian as well, which the author admittedly can't read. So I'm wondering how he arrived at his conclusion when all the possibly hard evidence is in a language he doesn't understand?
Re: An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
#83The solution is to have a public pharma: someone, maybe the NIH, that takes unpatentable, unprofitable drugs through the FDA process.
Re: An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
#84It's important to look at the FDA's job in terms of diminishing returns, or maybe as a classification problem. You have some number of drugs coming in, some of which are helpful and some of which are harmful. But you don't have any perfect means of figuring out whether a drug is good or bad. If you start from no screening it's very easy to stop a lot of bad drugs without stopping many good drugs, but as you apply tig…
> And I should mention that this is in contrast to other countries such as most of Europe or Canada or Japan which have much saner drug regulation regimes.
Except for example, Canada tends to just accept whatever the FDA accepts.
Re: An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
#85It's important to look at the FDA's job in terms of diminishing returns, or maybe as a classification problem. You have some number of drugs coming in, some of which are helpful and some of which are harmful. But you don't have any perfect means of figuring out whether a drug is good or bad. If you start from no screening it's very easy to stop a lot of bad drugs without stopping many good drugs, but as you apply tig…
You have to keep in mind the history of the FDA. When kids were being born around the world with flippers instead of arms and legs because of thalidomide, that wasn't happening in the US because of the FDA. Incidents like that breed cautiousness. The pendulum swings back and forth. A decade ago, the FDA got hammered for being too cautious. Then Vioxx happened and they got hammered for being to lenient. I think the FD…
To say the least, the problems with the FDA are pretty well documented: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11750#toc
Re: An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why does the danger of thalidomide justify giving the FDA extensive powers to regulate the effectiveness of treatments? ... because it wasn't safe for use by pregnant women? Am I not understanding part of what you're saying? I wouldn't consider that to be truly "effective" when the side-effects are quite serious. And by the nature of the medication, all pregnant women taking the drug are necessarily at risk of thes…
The big debate is whether the FDA should approve a drug as being "safe and effective", or whether it should just declare a drug "safe" and then leave it to doctors to decide what they use. The later is what most of the world uses and what reformers want the FDA to adopt. Moving to the later would not have done anything to prevent the Thalidomide tragedy.
Most first-world countries have a form of socialized healthcare. Before any new drug is admitted to market in that kind of system you need to have proof that it offers an improvement to what is already available - you can't ask the taxpayer to pay premium prices for something that offers no improvement over what's already available.
Re: An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
#87I'm more worried about the fact that more and more drugs are reclassified as prescription only. Right now, I can only get green tea or alcohol without a prescription for anxiety - not exactly the best choices. No Adderall, Xanax or Provigil for me either - the only things I can get right now are Tofranil from a friend (which is technically illegal) and racetams from eBay.
Why can't you see a doctor about your anxiety?
Why should he have to?
Re: An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hyperbole. Marketing is how the rest of us sell things. Giant drug company would have many advantages there. They are likely to sell boatloads of product regardless of patents. The patent is a greedy attempt to dominate the market legally in addition to commercially by creating a monopoly.
To say that drug patents are nothing but greed is way off base. The cost of R&D together with the work needed for FDA approval is typically astronomical – the only way you're recouping that is with a monopoly and a high price.
If that was true, why do major pharmaceutical companies spend way more money on advertising than on R&D?
(Trivially searchable, for example here: http://adage.com/article/special-report-pg-at-175/procter-ga...)
Re: An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why does the danger of thalidomide justify giving the FDA extensive powers to regulate the effectiveness of treatments? ... because it wasn't safe for use by pregnant women? Am I not understanding part of what you're saying? I wouldn't consider that to be truly "effective" when the side-effects are quite serious. And by the nature of the medication, all pregnant women taking the drug are necessarily at risk of thes…
The big debate is whether the FDA should approve a drug as being "safe and effective", or whether it should just declare a drug "safe" and then leave it to doctors to decide what they use. The later is what most of the world uses and what reformers want the FDA to adopt. Moving to the later would not have done anything to prevent the Thalidomide tragedy.
Treatments that are safe but not effective can be dangerous as well, if they replace or prevent access to other more effective treatments. There is a pretty vast information imbalance between doctors and patients, and patients may not always have the time or knowledge to investigate the effectiveness of a treatment. The FDA does this research for the patients, and approves what claims can be made by doctors about a given treatment's effectiveness.
Re: An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology
#90> It is considered novel having both stimulant and anti-anxiety properties.
That would be handy. I did take an American anti-anxiety drug for a short while during a painful divorce, but I went from someone who gets hours of work done on the bus to work every day to someone who just stares out the window. Sure, I was happy and not worried and not desperate, but I wasn't getting half the amount of work done either.