Barry Blackwell: The Baby and the Bathwater

Jay Amsterdam’s comment on Leonardo Tondo’s comment

            Tondo’s comment that an estimated 1% of his depressed patients may have experienced antidepressant-induced suicidality is not insignificant and is far in excess to that reported by the drug makers! If antibiotics worsened bacterial infections to a point of death in 1% of pneumonia patients taking the antibiotics, this fact would raise a cry of outrage from the field of infectious disease. Moreover, if this finding occurred at the same time that makers of antibiotics were hiding adverse event data and corrupting the evidence base for pneumonia therapy for the sake of sales and profits, the cry of outrage from the field of infectious disease would be even worse. My question is not whether there is a baby in the bath water; but who is trying to hide the baby’s shortcomings by stirring up the bath water!

April 11, 2019