Posted by SLS on July 2, 2012, at 22:11:15
In reply to who can we trust?, posted by johnLA on July 2, 2012, at 12:48:37
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18673220
That was a very stupid thing to do. GSK deserves to be sanctioned. Even if a drug is 100% safe and effective for off-label uses, it cannot be the position of an agent of a drug company to encourage doctors to prescribe the drug for an indication other than what it was approved for by the FDA. There is generally plenty of research data available in medical literature regarding off-label uses of drugs as they are discovered and studied. Lamictal was approved for use in epilepsy in 1994. However, it was previously noted in epilepsy studies that it had antidepressant properties, and became the focus of studies by the biological psychiatry department at the NIMH in 1992. It wasn't until 2003 that Lamictal was approved by the FDA for use in bipolar depression. By then, though, everyone had already been using it because the medical literature and clinical experience was so persuasive. Lamictal was found to work pretty well for treating bipolar depression by many study groups over a 10 year period. It is just that the pharmaceutical company representatives were not supposed to say so.
- Scott
Some see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
poster:SLS
thread:1020692
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120630/msgs/1020735.html