Couched in some of the most legalistic terms, Tamiflu’s producers are forced to respond to mounting evidence that the drug may well be worse than the disease.
In an obvious attempt to both minimize perceptions of the problem and to make it go away, Tamiflu’s producer has volunteered to undergo a “labeling change” that will warn of potentially serious psychological side-effects of being both innoculated with Tamiflu and eventually getting sick with any flu. Side-effects like this:
“..25 incidences of paediatric deaths in patients taking Tamiflu reported to the FDA up until May this year..”
“…reports of delirium, hallucinations and psychotic behaviour in patients who are on the drug..”
“..596 cases linked to Tamiflu, 75% of which occurred in Japan, and these include five reports of delirium in pediatric patients that resulted in a fatal outcome and three adult suicides.”
In other words, a drug is causing significant percentages of flu sick asians to go crazy when they get any flu. There seems to be evidence of increase psychological disturbance even when not sick. Tamiflu can make people crazy enough to kill themselves, an outcome particularly common in the young. I wonder what the percentage of asians were in the drug’s human trials, even though it was obviously goig to be distributed primarily in Asia.
This drug was tailored by Western Pharmaceutical Companies and foisted upon the people of Asian nations due in part to US Government-stoked Hysteria over Bird Flu (check actual death rates,epidemiology of the illness), a disease that has killed only a few hundred people in a region with over 2 billion people in it. A region that loses many thousand times that number from many, many other diseases with much cheaper (and less Big Pharma benefiting) prophalaxis like malaria. A Hysteria spearheaded by an administration that included the drug developer’s President, Donald Rumsfeld.
Looks like lead in your kid’s toys isn’t the only downside of Globalization that effects children.
Safety is not the only hoax that Tamiflu makers are perpetrating on the general public. Tamiflu is “almost” totally useless in treating the flu. Results of studies show that, in this illness, which can last 7-10 days on average, sometimes two weeks,
My own doctor refused to prescribe it for this reason. It is a waste of money, but lotd of money at the high level this maker wishes to receive for its “almost” useless drug. Ineffectiveness will not stop the pharmaceutical companies from marketing any drug.
A further note:
A difference in outcome this small is easily explained by something called rater bias. In testing their drugs in the field, drug companies typically enlist large groups of practicioners, who are paid $1-2,000 per patient to test the drug. These doctors and the drug suppliers are under a double-blind. Neither of them know if the drug is being given or a placebo. But that is seldom true. Doctors are routinely tutored about a drug’s side-effects, so that in case of untoward consequences, the drug may be stopped. But that knowledge also breaks the blind, because side-effects is a clue that the patient received the drug.
Being paid, doctors are also motivated to please the drug company, which, coupled with knowledge of side-effects, will easily provide a collective aura of effectiveness, at least enough to satisfy a minimal criterion, but one large enough to get approval for production and sale by the FDA.
1.3 days of relief in a flu that lasts over a week, sometimes two, is trivial.