WE had to put one of my kids on accutane this year...he had cystic acne very, very badly...as it is he will go through life with some scarring on his chest (family trait..his dad and his brother all had cystic acne)...
It really worked, but oh the expense! Even with good insurance! Even with Generic!
And you have to test the blood once a month too...a very, very powerful drug. The drug has great risk for causing bad birth defects, and is used by people at an age where the girls aren't necessarily smart about it. But it did do a great job at bringing his acne back under control.
But the costs...I wonder why...is it because they need such a cash flow to deal with the lawsuits involved with the drug, or is it because they can get away with it?
I have no idea. When I needed drugs for myself without any coverage, I called a number of pharmacies and found the prices could vary wildly.
a few months later, she had to go off....cholesterol was elevated...
but then she developed another major health problem.....generalized dystonia....
she swears that it started shortly after she stopped Accutane...
I see no reference of it in the literature....except a "nervous" condition in the side effects category...
long story short.......EVERY drug you put into your body is a toxin of some sort....EVERY one.....
whether it be extra vit. E or Bextra......it has an effect of some sort....
so why are we surprised to find new problems when we take drugs all the time?
Well, you also have the costs of getting through the FDA, and then the liability and risk of the FDA being idiots and banning it or just killing it through an inappropriate "warning."
Remember PPA?