http://www.camh.net/journal/journalv1no1/prozac_debate.html
"...Drs. Kirsch and Sapirstein's argument is based on questionable science.
In the studies they drew from, there were different levels of illness severity, as well as different drugs, dosage levels, durations of drug use and measures of response.... In studies that used active drugs rather than placebo as comparisons, the drugs used had some antidepressant actions in three out of four cases.
Butler also points out that some studies didn't follow subjects for long enough. "Clinically, you need four to six weeks before you determine the effectiveness of a drug," she says."
--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, mike larkin wrote:
>
> > But of course, many of the so-called "placebo
> effect"
> > studies are themselves open to withering
> criticism,
> > and have been subjected to such. I saw one
> co-authored
> > by a UConn professor where the controls were just
> > laughable. So the evidence there is far from
> > conclusive.
>
> For a drug to be approved by the FDA, placebo-drug
> trials
> must be conducted. Thus virtually every drug study
> is in fact a "placebo effect" study. To be blunt,
> the evidence is conclusive: for psychological
> disorders like depression, the effect of placebos
> is about 75% of the effect of SSRIs. This is
> an estimate based on many studies conducted by
> psychiatrists, not just a single study conducted
> by a psychologist who's trying to fraudulently
> justify his therapy approach.
>
> Also, I don't get "the controls were laughable". If
> we randomly assign people to drug or placebo group,
> we've controlled all the plausible confounds. Are
> you just saying they didn't do random assignment?
> In any case, arguing that one study on placebo
> effects is representative of hundreds of studies
> is pretty dubious. According to the same type
> of casual anecdotal reasoning, I should reject the
> idea of drug therapy because SSRIs didn't help
> a friend of mine who suffered from depression (about
> 25% of depressed people don't respond to SSRIs).
>
> Miles
>
> ___________________________________
>
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