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New Drugs Have Allure, Not Track Record

This report was in the New York Times Online – May 18, 2009
My favorite excerpt – “No wonder: drug company spending on consumer advertising skyrocketed 330 percent from 1996 to 2005, according to a 2007 study in The New England Journal of Medicine.”

By Richard A Friedman, MD

Recently, one of my residents told me about a patient with bipolar disorder whose psychiatrist had prescribed an exotic cocktail of drugs, a new mood stabilizer and the latest anti-psychotic medication.

I was puzzled — not by her case, which the resident described as textbook manic depression, but by what was left out. This patient, it seems, was never offered lithium, the single most effective treatment for bipolar disorder.

via Mind – New Drugs Have Allure, Not Track Record – NYTimes.com.

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