Free Republic

Oh, dear Lord. The hapless Republican establishment has gone and made a public embarrassment of itself again. Can your hearts take much more of this? Mine can’t: Hoping to get things moving in a positive direction, House Republicans will on Wednesday begin rolling out their own policy agenda, trying to showcase their differences with Democrats on issues such as health care, the economy, energy and national security. In a memo to be sent to Republican members today, the leadership hints at a new slogan building on the change message that has already been shown to have political resonance with a...

There is good news today for those who suffer from depression: The largest study ever done on treating depression has found that patients who didn't get well with the first medicine they tried had a good chance of succeeding the second time around. The study found little difference among the five drugs tested: Celexa, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Effexor and Buspar -- and wasn't designed to compare them. All proved similarly effective and relatively safe. The clear message, doctors said, was that antidepressants should be given a 6-to-12-week chance to work and that if one doesn't help, another should be tried."It's important...

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandated a new warning label be added to antidepressants more than a year ago, cautioning physicians to pay close attention to patients taking the drugs for signs of suicidal behavior. Now the agency issued its second (much stronger) warning, urging the monitoring of adults who use antidepressants for signs of suicidal thoughts and deepening depression.FDA's New AdvisoryThe new warning, which is applicable to children and adults, was in the wake of recent studies that linked suicidal behavior in adults to their use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed class of...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Patients on some popular antidepressants should be closely monitored for warning signs of suicide, the government warned Monday in asking the makers of 10 drugs to add the caution to their labels. Although the Food and Drug Administration's investigation into the possible suicide connection initially focused on children given the drugs, its warning is aimed at both adult and pediatric use of the pills to alleviate depression. It isn't clear yet that the drugs actually do lead to suicide, the FDA stressed. After all, depression itself can lead to suicide. But until that is settled, advisers to...

Makers of popular antidepressants such as Paxil, Zoloft and Effexor have refused to disclose the details of most clinical trials involving depressed children, denying doctors and parents crucial evidence as they weigh fresh fears that such medicines may cause some children to become suicidal. The companies say the studies are trade secrets. Researchers familiar with the unpublished data said the majority of secret trials show that children taking the medicines did not get any better than children taking dummy pills. Although the drug industry's practice of suppressing data unfavorable to its products is legal, doctors and advocates say such secrecy...

Makers of popular antidepressants such as Paxil, Zoloft and Effexor have refused to disclose the details of most clinical trials involving depressed children, denying doctors and parents crucial evidence as they weigh fresh fears that such medicines may cause some children to become suicidal. The companies say the studies are trade secrets. Researchers familiar with the unpublished data said the majority of secret trials show that children taking the medicines did not get any better than children taking dummy pills. Although the drug industry's practice of suppressing data unfavorable to its products is legal, doctors and advocates say such secrecy...

Adding to the debate over using antidepressant drugs for depressed teenagers and children, a group of prominent researchers issued a report yesterday saying that Zoloft and similar medicines did not increase children's suicide risk. The group, drawn from members of the American College of Neuro- psychopharmacology, also found that the drugs were effective in treating children's depression. "Depression in children and adults is the major illness that underlies suicide, and we believe that the S.S.R.I. class represents the medication with the greatest efficacy against this very serious condition," said Dr. J. John Mann, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University...

With VERY few exceptions (thanks to the people that were human and to people that wrote me privately) you people are a bunch of fundamentalist zealots. You aren't conservatives...you're fascists. You make me embarrassed to be a Republican.