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by avgDev
2553 days ago
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I mean big pharma creates mistrust time after time. Look up Bayer selling HIV infected blood products in Africa after removing it from the North American market. Opiates were marketed as sleeping aid for babies. Synthetic opiates, such as tramadol were marketed not to be addictive that turned out to be a lie. Many medications were taken of the market due to side effects, and often the pharmaceutical company knew and downplayed the side effects. Anti-depressants were also supposed to be safe and non addicting, but withdrawals are actually insane. I have been nearly crippled by an antibiotic and again side effects are downplayed, and FDA is updating the label year after year adding more and more side effects and not recommending the medication as first line treatment anymore. |
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For example as a teenager, I desperately needed accutane. Other solutions weren't working and some had actually more severe side effects than accutane; one tetracycline gave me heartburn so severe I basically couldn't eat anything, whereas the most accutane did was dry out my skin.
But because of studies that found a link to increased rates of depression/suicide among people taking accutane, it took years for me to work my way up to taking it, with very bad damage to my self esteem over that time. And if you look up the studies that promote this link, they are obviously not properly controlled, because they compare accutane users to the general population, and not to a subpopulation that has acne bad enough to need accutane. Which is dumb because lots of people (like me) who were taking accutane already had depression not because of the medicine, but in part due to very low self esteem and social ostracization due to the acne that was bad enough to warrant taking that drug.
So the symptom they were trying to prevent was something I already had, and withholding the drug because of concerns about that symptom contributed to making the symptom even worse for me.