(TIME MAGAZINE, May 17, 1999, p
(TIME MAGAZINE, May 17, 1999, p. 58)
Beyond Depression
What do those "mood drugs" really do?
A brand new drug can be like a license to print money. It certainly worked that way for Eli Lilly. When the company launched the antidepressant Prozac in 1987, nobody else had anything quite like it, and Lilly cleaned up. But then other pharmaceutical firms rushed in with their own versions, including Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and the recently newsworthy Luvox, found in the blood of Columbine High School shooter Eric Harris. The competition has already eaten into Lilly's market share, and things can only go downhill from here.
That's true, if you're talking about Prozac simply as an antidepressant. But if a drug turns out to be good for something new, that presents a fresh marketing opportunity. And while the search for new ills to conquer is part of any drug's life cycle, the scramble is especially furious with mood drugs like Prozac and its kin. Prozac has been approved for bulimia and obsessive-compulsive disorder in addition to depression, while Zoloft can be used for OCD, and Paxil for both OCD and panic disorder.
Now Paxil and its manufacturer, Smith Kline Beecham, are upping the ante. If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration agrees, and it probably will, Smith Kline will soon be pushing Paxil as the first-ever fomally sanctioned treatment for shyness. This isn't as bizarre as it sounds. Approval would actually be for the treatment of "acute social phobia," a pathological form of shyness, that's more akin to panic. For doctors, at least, it's no surprise that phobia and depression might be treated with the same drugs. "The big secret," says Dr. Brian Doyle, director of the anxiety disorders program at Georgetown Medical School, "is that we tend to use them all for the whole spectrum of depression and anxiety disorders."
The reason is that Paxil, Prozac, Luvox and the others all target the same brain chemical, called serotonin, which seems to govern mood. Too little serotonin, and the patients tend to feel negative about themselves and the world around them in one way or another. How that dissatisfaction manifests itself – clinical depression, anxiety, phobias, obsessions, even eating disorders – depends on a complex web of factors that researchers have yet to unravel. But they do know that drugs keep serotonin from being reabsorbed too quickly into the nerve cells – the so-called selective reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIS – tend to alleviate these symptoms.
It was only by educated trial and error, not from reading drug labels, that doctors learned how broadly useful SSRIS like Prozac, Paxil, Luvox and Celexa can be in treating not just depression, OCD, bulimia and panic disorder but also migraines, anmxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder, kleptomania, post-traumatic stress and even premenstrual mood swings. (Despite earlier claims about Prozac and attempts to link Luvox to the Colorado shootings, there is no evidence that SSRIS themselves cause violent behavior.) Although the FDA hasn't approved all these uses for all the drugs, doctors are free to prescribe them for anything they like.
Still, once a firm finds a new use for a drug, it makes sense to get formal approval. That's the only way the company can legally start pushing the treatment in ads and in marketing pitches to physicians. Paxil may be the latest example of an SSRI expanding its franchise. But it's not the first, and it won't be the last. - By Michael D. Lemonick. Reported by Alice Park/New York
|TAKE ONE FOR . . . |
| |Depression |Bulimia |Obsession |Panic |Shyness |
|Zoloft |APPROVED | |APPROVED |APPROVED | |
|Paxil |APPROVED | |APPROVED |APPROVED |PENDING |
|Luvox | | |APPROVED | | |
|Celexa |APPROVED | | | | |
Questions
1. What is the pharmaceutical industry’s role in America’s drug problem?
Read the article above and analyze it with the discussion of legalizing drugs in mind. Find sentences or information in the text that underline how medical advances or the creation of medications and big business are interconnected. Be prepared to give a response to this article in class and in your follow-up report.
2. What is the difference between legal and illegal drugs?
When answering the following questions, keep in mind that we are talking about all legal drugs – including pharmaceutical products and medicines – not just the recreational legal substances (alcohol and tobacco).
True or False?
| |Illegal drugs are mind altering substances, legal drugs are not. |
| |Illegal drugs are addictive and legal drugs aren’t. |
| |Legal drugs are created to treat or cure diseases. |
| |Legal drugs cure diseases, illegal drugs cause them. |
| |Legal drugs have medicinal value, illegal drugs do not. |
| |Illegal drugs are used for recreational purposes, legal drugs are not. |
| |Illegal drugs are marketed at children, legal drugs are not. |
| |Illegal drugs are sold only for profit, legal drugs primarily to treat medical conditions. |
| |Illegal drugs are abused, leading to many deaths (by overdose etc.), legal drugs are not. |
| |Legal drugs are associated with white consumers, illegal drugs are associated with non-white populations. |
| |Illegal drugs are “pushed”, legal drugs are not. |
| |Trade in legal drugs spurs legitimate economic growth. Illegal drug trade does not. |
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