Why is the Center for Disease Control Downplaying the Risks?
By EVELYN PRINGLE
On July 27, 2007 the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control issued a press release apparently promoting the sale of anti-depressants to pregnant women. “Use of certain antidepressants, selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors most commonly known as SSRIs, during pregnancy does not significantly increase the risk for most birth defects,” the CDC wrote.
The press release cited a new CDC study released in the New England Journal of Medicine and further stated, “a second study on SSRI and birth defects, also published in the June 28 issue of NEJM, did not find such an association with birth defects overall, but did find significant associations between specific SSRIs and several birth defects.”
Since the CDC put out the press release, hundreds of headlines have flooded the internet citing the new studies as proof that there is a low risk of birth defects with SSRI use during pregnancy, and the results of the studies have been reported as breaking health care news by every major media outlet in the US.
The pharmaceutical industry as a whole has spent a fortune buying influence in the media since 1997, when the government lifted restrictions on direct-to-consumer advertising.In an article titled, Physicians and Bribery, published by News Target on July 7, 2005, Dani Veracty says the real story about prescription drugs is not being told because the drug makers are influencing the budgets of the major media companies by pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into TV, magazine, newspaper and online advertising.
“Because of this,” he states, “the media companies out there don’t want to say anything bad about these prescription drugs.”
In the July-August Columbia Journalism Review, contributing editor Judy Lieberman, reported that at the end of 2004, drug-company ad revenue for Time Magazine totaled $67 million; for Newsweek $43 million; and for the New York Times took in $13 million. By 2004, she reported, advertising revenues for the five networks including CNN and Fox news was $1.5 billion.
The drugs in the NEJM studies included Prozac by Eli Lilly, Zoloft from Pfizer; Paxil by GlaxoSmithKline, Celexa and Lexapro from Forest Labs; Luvox by Solvay, Effexor by Wyeth, and generic SSRI makers include Barr Pharmaceuticals, Ranbaxy Labs and Genpharm.
Prior to the arrival of SSRIs on the market, depression was estimated to affect only 100 people per million and patients with depression sought help from a medical professional trained in psychiatry and the treatment of disorder.
However, the rate of depression is now estimated to be in the range of 50,000 to 100,000 cases per million, or between a 500 to 1,000-fold increase, according to Jane Currie in “The Marketization of Depression”, published in the May 2005 journal Women and Health Protection.
In April 2004, the CDC reported that antidepressants topped the list of drugs prescribed to women at visits to doctor’s offices and outpatient departments, followed by estrogens and progestins, antiarthritics, and medicines for acid/peptic disorders, in the Journal of Women’s Health.
By 2005, the CDC recently reported, antidepressants were the most prescribed drugs in the US during visits to doctors and hospitals and were prescribed far more often than even medications used to treat high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, and headaches.
http://counterpunch.org/pringle07242007.html