Our Daily Meds : Half of antidepressant studies found the placebo worked as well as the drug

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Saturday, January 10, 2009 11:55 am Email this article
"We just learned that with the antidepressants like Zoloft and Paxil, they found that in about half the studies... dozens of studies that were done of these antidepressants... the sugar pill, the placebo, worked just as well or better than the drug," Melody Petersen, author of a new book called Our Daily Meds: How The Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines And Hooked The Nation On Prescription Drugs told Bill Moyers.

"There is a lot of money to be made from selling drugs [ that work no better than the placebo ]."

"If the patient still has the problem, what happens in American medicine today, the doctor prescribes yet another pill [ to be taken in addition to the first drug ]."

"There's a lot of money to be made in selling drugs that don't work." Former New York Times Journalist

Melody former covered the drug industry for the New York Times

Melody, who formerly covered the drug industry for the New York Times, revealed this last Friday night, May 16th, 2008, in an interview with Bill Moyers on his PBS television program Journal.

REFERENCE

Petersen M. Our Daily Meds : How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

Book’s Website

 

 

Articles on the same subject can be found here:

• Book - Our Daily Meds