A Portland doc flips on big pharma and reveals its “dirty little secret.�

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_http://wweek.com/editorial/3421/10752/_

(http://wweek.com/editorial/3421/10752/)

Bitter Pill

A Portland doc flips on big pharma and reveals its “dirty little secret.â€

(http://wweek.com/photos/3421/large/10752.jpg)

DOC BITES MEDICINE: OHSU professor k doesn’t expect the drug

industry to run clinical trials. “They would not want to touch me with a

10-foot

pole, unless it had a sharp end on it.â€

IMAGE: Vivian BY _PHILIP DAWDY_

(http://wweek.com/author/?author=PHILIP DAWDY) | 503-243-2122

[April 2nd, 2008]

Ten percent of Americans—children, teens and adults—take antidepressants.

Whether it’s Prozac, Paxil, Lexapro, Effexor or Cymbalta, 30 million of us

take

a pill daily in hopes it will keep dark moods at bay. Antidepressants are

the most prescribed family of drugs in America, an $11.9 billion market in the

U.S. in 2007.

In January, k , a professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health &

Science University and a clinician at the Portland VA Medical Center, shook up

the

medical community, provoked the pharmaceutical establishment and, perhaps,

disappointed millions of depressed Americans. He published a paper in the New

England Journal of Medicine that revealed antidepressants are not as

effective as we’ve been led to believe. For years, he implied, pharmaceutical

companies such as Pfizer (maker of Zoloft) and Forest Laboratories (Celexa and

Lexapro) have vastly exaggerated the performance of their drugs.

calls it the “dirty little secret†of the psychiatric world.

It was a disclosure that was felt ’round the medical world, and for the past

two months has fielded press inquiries by the dozens.

’s “is the kind of a paper that makes you wonder why someone didn’t

do

it a long time ago,†says S. Nassir Ghaemi, an associate professor of

psychiatry and public health at Emory University School of Medicine and a

leading

researcher on bipolar disorder. ....

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