AHRP Press Briefing Antidepressant Drug Risks

[Guest guest]

> SSRI-Research

> Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:49:26 -0000

> [sSRI-Research] AHRP Press Briefing Re:

> Antidepressant Drug Risks

>

> ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION

>

> (AHRP)

> 142 West End Ave. Suite 28; New York, NY 10023

> veracare

>

>

>

> ***PRESS RELEASE***

>

>

> September 11, 2004

> Contact: Vera Sharav, President, AHRP

> Tel. 212-595-

> 8974

>

> Cell: 917-375-5083

>

> AHRP PRESS BRIEFING

>

> Re: Antidepressants and suicide-related risks for children

>

>

> When: September 14, 2004, 12:00 P.M.

>

> Where: Holiday Inn, Bethesda, site of FDA's Advisory

> Committee Meeting

>

> Specifically: Washington Room opposite FDA's

>

>

> The FDA bears responsibility for a credibility

> crisis in medicine.

> The FDA has allied itself with the pharmaceutical

> industry, adopted that industry's culture of arrogance and concealment

> of evidence ­even as children's life-safety were put on the line.

 

The hazardous side- effects of SSRI antidepressants were concealed for

> 25 years with FDA's tacit approval­lest the truth impede

> industry's mega-profit goals.

 

Indeed, FDA's limited review of selective evidence, its

> reliance on information supplied by psychiatrists

> with financial conflicts of interest, and the invited presentations

> by Pfizer and Eli Lilly, are calculated to minimize the scope of

> the problem.

>

> The Alliance for Human Research Protection will

> convene a press briefing at which five independent experts will

> review scientific and clinical evidence, shedding light on what was known

> 20 years ago, what is known and not known today about the safety

> and efficacy of antidepressant drugs.

>

> The issues to be addressed at the press briefing,

> and the documented evidence presented, will not be explored by the FDA

> advisory committee meeting ­in as much as independent analysts

> were excluded from the discussion.

 

All critical analyses and reports from outside

> independent experts have been excluded from the

> committee deliberations ­much as Dr. Mosholder's report and

> recommendations were suppressed for six months ­until it was made public

> by The Alliance for Human Protection who posted it on its website in

> July.

>

> The five independent expert presenters are:

>

> --Peter Mansfield, MD, University of Adelaide

> (Australia), Director of Healthy Skepticism will discuss the illusion of

> potency in light of the meta-analyses in the British Medical Journal

> (which he co- authored) and the Lancet

 

> --Peter Breggin, MD, a child psychiatrist, with a

> sub-specialty in clinical psychopharmacology, who was among the first

> to recognize adverse antidepressant drug reactions­

 

> --Lawrence Diller, MD, a pediatrician and family

> therapist who has evaluated and treated more than 2,500 children

 

> --Stefan Kreuszewski, MD, a clinical and academic

> psychiatrist, and Associate Medical Director of Physicians' Health

> Programs, Pennsylvania Medical Society, who will discuss the

> impact of over- prescribing SSRIs for children in state custody

 

> -- David Healy, MD, Director of the North Wales

> Department of Psychological Medicine and Visiting Professor,

> University of Toronto, who in large measure has brought pressure to bear on

> the FDA to examine the pediatric data. Dr Healy will shed light

> on FDA's asymmetric standards for evaluating efficacy and

> safety, and will present newly uncovered documents.

>

> Children's lives have been been put on the line by

> concealed hazardous side-effects of SSRI antidepressants. The

> FDA lent its support to the least forthcoming drug

> manufacturers--even exerting pressure on companies that were willing to

disclose suicide-related risks on their antidepressant drugs labels. FDA

> officials forced Wyeth and Forest to toe the line.

>

> Following the independent experts' presentations,

> questions from members of the press will be answered. Families will

> also share experiences that show the chilling reality of the

> life-threatening consequences of SSRI antidepressant drug use in

> children and adolescents.