Sometimes I feel like giving up and spending the rest of my life sighing.
Some of the theory is sound but it makes me want to flush my medication down the toilet and just chuck a rope over something. Deedee Ramona says it better than I; personally, I’m just incredibly weary at these types of articles. I appreciate the discussion, I get tired of somehow being refered to in the “”.
Also I am still exhausted and ill feeling and haven’t seen my friends for ages due to both factors. There you go, detailed entry for you there.
Carry on with the poll tickybox extravaganza!
Filed under: Bipolar Disorder
Stumble It!
No matter what Big pharma does, it’s somehow evil. Despite the fact they spend billions on developing and rigorously testing potential drugs which end up on the scrap heap. Boo, hiss – how dare they make a profit out of people whilst adhering to codes on creating useful medications.
Lithium works for some.
Antipsychotics work for some.
Antidepressants work for some.
Just because they don’t work in every eventuality doesn’t mean they’re useless or that the science is flawed.
Speaking of flawed science – no matter what the pharmaceutical companies are researching, there are tons of bog standard labs all over the world who recieve funding regardless of results. These show that mental illness arises from biochemical changes in the brain.
Also, science can’t explain many, many things.
We don’t know why cholera causes diarrhoea.
We’re pretty clueless about prion diseases.
We don’t know why some of the chemotherapy drugs work.
There are many, many common diseases which have ‘accepted models’ of development, but which aren’t fully known.
But does this mean we don’t treat these things? No.
Articles like this will come up time and time again, but they do NOTHING to help the problem. Whereas scientific research (including that by Big pharma) does.
Eh, we do.
But of course that was not your main point. So i’ll go quiet again.
We don’t. We know it interferes with adenylate cyclase, and this results in diarrhoea… but many other chemicals have the same effect on adenylate cyclase but don’t cause diarrhoea. I don’t have the journal ref. on this – it’s something I came across when studying G-proteins.
Strictly speaking, medicine isn’t a science. Not in a true sense that is. What would be required for medicine to be a science is for it to produce a theory that would make experimentally verifiable predictions that succeed. Medicine doesn’t satisfy that criteria for a variety of reasons. Here’s one: if serotonin was so involved in depression, then SSRI’s would just work. But, what we see is that one of them might not work, whereas another will. This implies that SSRI’s have a different action(s) that cause the true positive effect (assuming there is one).
There is also the fact that the FDA defines ‘clinically significant result’ as 20%+ having benefit from a drug. That’s pretty damn low. Not at all even remotely respectable IMO. I would imagine that other countries have similarly low criteria.
It should also be mentioned that publishing negative results is just as important as publishing positive ones. But, that’s what Big Pharma doesn’t do. So, they actually hurt the research by giving a false and misleading impression of the item under research. Not to mention that Big Pharma has been caught creating there own journals to publish ‘results.’
In short, medicine has no clue how the brain works; it doesn’t even have a workable theory. Not science. But, god bless them for trying. It’s too bad the lions share of the research is privately funded and public funding is being chopped into non-existence. Perhaps one day medicine will turn into a science. But, that day isn’t today.
That said, I agree that we just don’t toss out the work done. But, a different approach is clearly needed. What medicine does now is to hit the problem over the head with a sledge hammer; no finesse. So, a lot of people are going to be on *way* more drugs than necessary. Starting low and going up slowly would be a better approach (assuming that one isn’t crawling up the walls or about to take that plunge). It gives the drug time to work and for the patient to see what that dosage is doing. This way, the patient is on as little of the drug as possible. Which is a good thing given how nasty some of the side-effects are.
The shrinks also forget a few words at the end of the definition of ‘therapeutic range’. Those being, ‘for most people’. Those three words are rather important. It’s really irritating to see these people trying to force minimum dosages like the brain will just ignore the drug until it’s at a certain point. That notion is just ludicrous and there IS literature to support that (I’ve found it for Lithium, Seroquel and Divalproex – take a guess who funded that research, hint: NOT Big Pharma).
But, articles like this DO help. They promote discussion by bringing up problems such as this. And that can lead to change and improvements. That is, assuming there is a discussion and people just don’t yell there opinions at each-other.
Big pharma is evil because they charge exhorbitant rates for their drugs here in the US, where they know they can get away with it. You can get the exact same drugs for pennies on the dollar in nearly every other country, so obviously they can afford to charge those rates. Instead they charge the maximum amount they feel they can get away with, forcing many of our elderly and poor citizens to choose between much needed medication and food (some actually eat dog food). Yes, I would agree that the pharmacological companies have made some very impressive advances with medications, but does that give them the right to charge as much as they want? The commercials they broadcast are quite creepy as well. I do not wish to be sold dangerous drugs as though it were a snickers bar.
“You can get the exact same drugs for pennies on the dollar in nearly every other country”
Isn’t that because drugs are subsidised by the governments in other countries? I can’t imagine the drug companies would specifically charge the US high rates while charging other first world countries less.
My medicine cabinet is so full of meds from a doctor who has just thrown the variable at me at a rate of acceleration that by any means I cannot take all of them that he has prescribed an actually function at all . so I have acquired a vast array of crazy pills . what to do with them I have no idea . I guess one day maybe they may be useful but to whom ? anyways the direct effect is that gee I had to stop some of them to a point to be able to move an get off the couch . An after all I have found that life in a way is better without the mind numbing effects even if I am a little tiched in the head is better than drooling away the day’s so much that a logical trac of time gets lost I spent nov. , dec. , jan. thinking it was stlll just before thanksgiving upon realizing that somewhere in the time christmas past an the new year was way over I realized hey it was time to stop for awhile . but the big picture is if I tell the doctor I dont take them they may take me off the support system all together so I lie to them the best I can take a few pills each visit an only loose those days rather than the entire month but without the health insurance an disability my ability to survive is impacted greatly . any one have any suggestions . As to what to do ? dealing with the meds an doctors .
Makes a mental to read that article after I’ve slept…
Hiya Seaneen, I want to come to london just to give you a hug