Study Shows Drug Lifts Children’s Depression By Andrew Stern - Commentary by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD

These are the same (at a loss for a word here) who have invented "diseases"
out of thin air, who drug infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their
grandparents and greatgrandparents...there is nothing they will not say for
their keepers, no matter the body count. No drug trial can be believed any
more than any "proof" of a new "chemical imbalance" of the brain. What is
the new one in, of all places, the science section of the NY Times;
"executive disorder." When, one day in the distant future, the house of
medicine once more has an ethic and is not drunk on pharma dollars--a gold
ring through their nose--all of this literature will have to be expunged and
burned, and replaced by honesty and science. This is exactly what Pam
called for in 1990. Supposing psychiatrists to be naïve, Pam, a scientific
psychologist sought to impose scientific standards. He wrote:
.any studies that do not meet standards for proper research procedures or
interpretation of data must not be accepted for publication or, if already
published must be discredited within the professional literature.the
possibility that that emotional experience (love, hate, fear, grief) may be
physiologically non-specific gets short shrift.If each emotion is not
physiologically distinctive, there can be no biological marker for each type
or subtype of emotional pathology, and thus most current research would be
methodologically inappropriate.the preponderance of research contributed by
biological psychiatry up to the present is questionable or even invalidated
by the criticisms just made.

Best wishes,

FB]

  Study Shows Drug Lifts Children's Depression
  Tue Aug 26, 6:06 PM ET  Add Health - Reuters to My Yahoo!
 
  By Andrew Stern
 
  CHICAGO (Reuters) - An antidepressant popular with adults also helped many
  depressed children in a study released on Tuesday, although questions remain
  about its effectiveness compared with a placebo and whether it might stunt
  growth.
 
  Sixty-nine percent of the children between 6 and 17 who had been diagnosed
  with major depressive disorder responded positively to sertraline, sold
  under the brand name Zoloft by Pfizer Inc., which funded the study.
 
  But 59 percent of those taking a placebo, or sugar pill, for test comparison
  purposes also showed improvement in the 10-week study.
 
  Lead study author Karen Wagner of the University of Texas, writing in the
  Journal of the American Medical Association (news - web sites), attributed
  the powerful "placebo effect" to various factors, notably the increased
  attention accorded the patients in terms of doctor visits and psychotherapy.
 
  In an accompanying editorial, Christopher Varley of the University of
  Washington in Seattle noted the difference in effectiveness between drug and
  placebo was "only 10 percent," suggesting a therapeutic approach might be
  preferable.
 
  Also troubling was that 17 of the 189 sertraline patients dropped out of the
  study compared with five on the placebo because of "adverse events" such as
  agitation, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and anorexia, which also affect some
  adults.
 
  WEIGHT LOSS
 
  Another potentially significant finding was the weight loss among children
  who took Zoloft.
 
  The finding paralleled a previous study in which the similar antidepressant
  fluoxetine, commonly sold as Prozac by Eli Lilly and Co., resulted in
  children losing weight and not growing as fast as those taking a placebo.
 
  Wagner downplayed the finding, saying depression could play havoc with
  appetite, and that over 24 weeks the Zoloft users gained more weight than
  those taking a placebo.
 
  "The mechanism may just be decreased calorie consumption, it may be
  something as simple as that," said Dr. Richard Gorman, chairman of the
  American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on drugs, in an interview with
  Reuters.
 
  Gorman said there was considerably less controversy over prescribing
  antidepressants to children than there was with Ritalin (news - web sites),
  a drug often prescribed to calm hyperactive behavior. If anything, he added,
  doctors may be too reluctant to prescribe a short course of antidepressants
  to children facing a depressing trauma in their lives, although diagnosing
  depression in children so young may be questionable.