RE: Education vs. Indoctrination
January 21, 2024 at 2:44 am
(This post was last modified: January 21, 2024 at 2:58 am by Belacqua.)
(January 21, 2024 at 12:45 am)Ahriman Wrote: Drugs do have serious side effects, but there is no way they are just placebo. I can attest to that personally.
The article I linked to has a lot of links to scientific studies. I'm not qualified to judge the research, but they are all published by professionals. If you wanted to read them and judge for yourself you could.
This is a study from 2004 which compares antidepressants to placebos:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...nistration
Quote: Prevention & Treatment, Volume 5, Article 23, posted July 15, 2002 Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association The Emperor's New Drugs: An Analysis of Antidepressant Medication Data Submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Irving Kirsch University of Connecticut
Thomas J. Moore The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services
Alan Scoboria and Sarah S. Nicholls University of Connecticut
ABSTRACT This article reports an analysis of the efficacy data submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval of the 6 most widely prescribed antidepressants approved between 1987 and 1999. Approximately 80% of the response to medication was duplicated in placebo control groups, and the mean difference between drug and placebo was approximately 2 points on the 17-item (50-point) and 21-item (62-point) Hamilton Depression Scale. Improvement at the highest doses of medication was not different from improvement at the lowest doses. The proportion of the drug response duplicated by placebo was significantly greater with observed cases (OC) data than with last observation carried forward (LOCF) data. If drug and placebo effects are additive, the pharmacological effects of antidepressants are clinically negligible. If they are not additive, alternative experimental designs are needed for the evaluation of antidepressants.
A key point of the article in Counterpunch is that one study which was used to promote antidepressants
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/epd...63.11.1905
has been re-analyzed
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/13/7/e063095
and its results have seriously been called into question
https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/09/the...and-scale/
This last article has lots of links to support its conclusions, if you want to follow up.
Here is a CBS news report announcing that the serotonin theory of depression is not supported by research. You can judge whether you want to trust CBS or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y70UaJd60-Y
The Counterpunch article goes into detail about how certain procedures in an influential study were conducted without proper scientific methods.
Obviously some medicines work better than others, and I see nothing in the papers to suggest that antidepressants never work for anyone. If you've had good luck with them I'm glad. I think that people who are struggling should try anything that has a chance of helping.
I took Zantac for heartburn for years, until they said "Oh by the way it's carcinogenic." So I stopped. But the Takecab I take now instead seems to work better. We'll see if I live long enough to get side effects from that one.
