Friday, April 04, 2008

Suicide by Singulair

Singulair Suicide Risk

If you weren't getting enough suicide risk from your own anti-depressants, how about some suicide risk from Singulair to round out your day?
The FDA today announced that it is working with the drug company Merck to investigate a possible link between Merck's asthma and allergy drug Singulair and behavior/mood changes, suicidality (suicidal thinking and behavior), and suicide.

The FDA's investigation may take nine months. As of now, there's no proof that Singulair directly affects suicide risk.
Exactly. No proof. However, noting that the FDA does not regularly shit out money to debunk big sellers in their drug company conspiracy team, there's obviously some impetus behind it in the form of reports. Singulair has already had to adjust their warning labels to include "tremor (March 2007), depression (April 2007), suicidality (October 2007), and anxiousness (February 2008)." Is this an attempt to boost sales of Zoloft?

Wait. Just to be clear: Merck already knows and acknowledges that their drug can cause suicidal thinking and behavior, but will be awaiting the FDA's study results before they pull the trigger (so to speak) on actual suicide. That's like saying that attraction between two people is known to lead to hand-holding, kissing, fondling, nakedness, oral sex, and rubbing the head of the penis on the clit, but we're going to need a full nine-month study to determine if it actually leads to fucking.

Message from Merck to depressed asthmatics: we'll address your issues once we're done rolling naked in our money; you see, we're doing a study to see if money can lead to fucking.

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