Posted by Eddie Sylvano on September 24, 2002, at 14:56:49
In reply to Re: Antidepressants versus placebo smackdown! » Eddie Sylvano, posted by MattDDS on September 24, 2002, at 14:32:29
>The only problem I have with that is that, over the last 40 years, we have not made much progress, if at all! Many people feel that the older AD's such as MAOI's and TCA's are more effective at treating depression than the SSRI's.
-----------------------------It's true, and it makes me wonder if this trend is due to the growing overhead placed on drug development by litigation. I'm sure that if the typical pharmaceutical company discovered MAOIs (or aspirin, for that matter) today, they'd junk it for fear of lawsuits.
If Pfizer could make an antidepressant that cured 90% of the users, but injured or killed .01% of the users, they'd still make more money off of a moderately effective drug that didn't damage anyone. The public's demand for absolute safety (and jury punishments for failure) effectively limit the feasible drug choices companies have.
I hope that we see a change in the near future, with drugs being intelligently designed to have a specific mode of action, on a well understood receptor, instead of our current shotgun approach (screw with all the receptors in a class, and maybe a few other things).
Actually, it's quite feasible that some disorders may be beyond ever addressing by specific medications. Nobody really knows right now.
poster:Eddie Sylvano
thread:120924
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020922/msgs/120964.html