Quotes about Off-label Prescribing from the world's top natural health / natural living authors
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 "Many patients have no idea that this goes on and just assume that the physician is writing a prescription for their indication."20 off-label prescribing for drugs in general has soared, nearly doubling in the period between 1997 and 2003.21 One of the taglines used in the ads for Zoloft tacitly acknowledges the never-ending applicability of its formulary—"Zoloft—#1 for Millions of Reasons."
So, if not for a serious mental illness, what exactly is Julie taking the antidepressants for? There are a couple of alternatives. First, there is the catchall term depression."- Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.) |
 "Lawrence Diller, author of the book, "Should I Medicate My Child," stated in language relevant here, while testifying before an FDA advisory committee in September 2004, regarding the conduct of companies concealing the adverse effects of drugs and promoting off-label prescribing:
"The blame is clear: The money, power and influence of the pharmaceutical industry corrupt all. The pervasive control that the drug companies have over medial research, publications, professional organizations, doctors' practices."- Dr David W Tanton, Ph.D., Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, And Stimulants - Dangerous Drugs on Trial (Get the book.) "The study also stated that almost half of the children did not appear to even have a valid diagnosis warranting the use of the drugs in the first place! "Off-label prescribing" of medication (especially to children, and especially these dangerous atypical antipsychotics), is a serious concern, and William Cooper, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of Pediatrics in the Child and Adolescent Health Research unit at the Monroe Carell Jr." - Dr David W Tanton, Ph.D., Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, And Stimulants - Dangerous Drugs on Trial (Get the book.) "And of course, far more women take antidepressants for various reasons, (the typical off-label prescribing). Thus, Sarafem?will still be prescribed for the very same things that Prozac?was, plus one new conveniently created condition, (or possibly the same condition, with a new name). Although Sarafem?contains the exact same chemicals as Prozac? it also contains some inactive ingredients that are even more of a concern than the inactive ingredients in Prozac? While evaluating the "very active" inactive ingredients in Sarafem?" - Dr David W Tanton, Ph.D., Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, And Stimulants - Dangerous Drugs on Trial (Get the book.) "This is actually a prime example of what's often referred to as the "off-label prescribing" of a drug. Clonidine was only FDA-approved for treating hypertension (high blood pressure). It's obvious that young children would not be experiencing hypertension. Although there is absolutely no justification for allowing this very risky practice, an M.D., (irrespective of his or her experience, or area of expertise), can prescribe a drug for pretty much anything that he or she might choose." - Dr David W Tanton, Ph.D., Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, And Stimulants - Dangerous Drugs on Trial (Get the book.) |
 "The practice is called off-label prescribing. Doctors can prescribe a drug for children after it has been approved for use in adults, the assumption being that they will administer it responsibly. As proven by the exponentially swelling ranks of normal children being forced to ingest drugs for unproven disorders, that assumption is no longer warranted.
One of the most incredible things about the ADHD epidemic is that over the years of its evolution all proffered "proofs" have been found false. Not a single benefit of diagnosis or drugging has been found."- Fred A. Baughman, Jr., M.D. and Craig Hovey, The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes "Patients" of Normal Children (Get the book.) "Prescribing drugs approved for adults but never tested in children, or approved for use in that population, is the off-label prescribing Pfizer got in trouble for with for Neurontin. It seems that pharmaceutical companies can promote the practice without leaving behind the kind of trail that lands them in court. So, if a child has mood swings from the Adderall (which isn't surprising with an amphetamine cocktail) he is on, why not add the adult diagnosis of bipolar disorder and treat it with adult drugs like Depakote (primarily an anticonvulsant drug)?" - Fred A. Baughman, Jr., M.D. and Craig Hovey, The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes "Patients" of Normal Children (Get the book.) |
 "The same goes for off-label prescribing of chronic disease meds in general. Today the FDA says that at least 8,000 people a year become seriously ill because of it. Since physicians report only about one in ten such instances to the agency, the figure is in reality more like 80,000.
Less dramatic but far more extensive is the harm to the tradition of patient-physician independence. In a review of sixteen studies of drug company-physician interactions, Dr. A."- Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) "Putting aside all of the off-label prescribing and the taking of supplements, seniors were using more pills than ever before. Over-the-counter medication use was also at an all-time high. Among seniors and, for that matter, the general population, polypharmacy was no longer seen as a problem. It was an opportunity. And it was, when one backed up and looked at it all — away from the political Sturm und Drang of Medicare drug benefits and HMOs — a strange and wonderful thing to behold." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) "After all, how different was self-prescription from what was happening at physicians' offices, where off-label prescribing was rampant? Was it really so surprising that "what works now" should become the dominant force in prescribing drugs, rather than "what is proven safe and effective"? Whatever the answer, one thing was clear for Gen-Rx2: a new prescription culture — expanded, self-justifying, increasingly outside the domain of the physician — was exploding inside and outside their own office doors." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) "Often, this type of advertising involves the distribution of medical journal articles that discuss such uses — Paxil for shyness, for example — with the intent of subtly encouraging physicians to, let's just say it, experiment. off-label prescribing, particularly in the last-ditch treatment of acute diseases, like cancer, can often hold tremendous promise, but when it comes to chronic diseases, it often causes more pain than relief." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) |
| "Doctors can recommend FDA-approved drugs for any purpose, an act called off-label prescribing. However, a pharmaceutical company cannot promote an approved drug for a use that has not received approval. How can doctors be "educated" about this new use for Drug X? Enter Madison Avenue research firms. Their pseudo-research shows that Drug X is wonderful for the treatment of some disease or condition for which it has not received FDA approval. Madison Avenue —not the pharmaceutical that financed the research — issues a press release. Voila!" - Brent Hoadley, Ph.D., Too Profitable to Cure (Get the book.) |
 "There is little doubt that each of the mental-health experts that sat on the FDA committee was well aware of the off-label prescribing long before their participation in the February 2004 hearing and, therefore, the fact that a number of families felt compelled to share the intimate and often gruesome details of young children lost to the alleged adverse effects of the antidepressants could be of little surprise. A 2003 survey by Express Scripts Inc."- Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill (Get the book.) "This mention is about off-label prescribing of antidepressant drugs - currently the only antidepressant approved by the FDA for ADHD is Eli Lilly's Strattera, which carries with it its own set of potentially life-threatening problems that will be explored later in this and other chapters. As has been well-demonstrated in Chapter Three of this book, the pharmaceutical manufacturers of the most popular antidepressants, the NIMH and the FDA don't "completely" understand how the mind-altering antidepressants work on other targeted mental illnesses." - Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills That Kill (Get the book.) |
 "Mehlman, Maxwell J. "Off-Label Prescribing" www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/articles/bioethics/offlabel_ll/ Accessed August 2005.
3. "Merck Announces Voluntary Worldwide Withdrawal of VIOXX" www.vioxx.com/rofecoxib/vioxx/consumber/index.jsp Accessed August 2005.
4. "FDA Public Health Advisory: Safety of Vioxx" www. fda. go v/cder/drug/ infopage/vioxx/PH Avioxx. htm Accessed August 2005.
5. Bellis, Mary. "History of Antiseptics" inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blantisceptics.htm Accessed August 2005.
6. Starfield, Barbara. "Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death."- Pat Sullivan, Wellness Piece by Piece: How a Successful Entrepreneur Discovered the Pieces to His Chronic Health Puzzle (Get the book.) |
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