Madam, - Further to Dr Terry Lynch's letter on the ineffectiveness of antidepressant drugs (April 8th), I would like to make the following points:
1. Allen Roses, vice-president of GlaxoSmithKline laboratories, is on record as believing that "the vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work on 30 to 50 per cent of people".
2. Dr Vernon Coleman, British medical doctor and author of over 90 books sold in more than 50 countries and translated into 22 languages, states in his book How to Stop Your Doctor Killing You (European Medical Journal, rev. ed. 2003, p.28) that "asthma and depression are being wildly over-diagnosed by drug company controlled doctors who are keen to prescribe more pills".
3. Nutrition expert Patrick Holford, in his best-selling book Food is Better Medicine than Drugs" (Piatkus, 2006, p.181), maintains that the evidence is that antidepressant drugs are "not very effective". According to a recent report on all treatments for depression from the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) "there is little clinically important difference between antidepressants and placebo for mild depression".
4. In Dr Lynch's letter, he makes the point, that although it is now six weeks since research was published "which raised serious concerns about the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs", the medical newspapers in this country have so far not referred to the matter - and that to the best of his knowledge these newspapers are "largely funded by the pharmaceutical industry".
Globally, this industry is worth over $600 billion, while that of the UK alone is worth some £10 billion. According to the 2005 Parliamentary health committee investigation in the UK, The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry, the industry "buys influence over doctors, charities, patient groups, journalists and politicians, whose regulation is sometimes weak or ambiguous". (ref. R.E. Ferner, "The Influence of Big Pharma", in BMJ, vol 330, 2005).
Surely the above facts - along with all the other existing references on the subject - speak for themselves? I would be interested to read a rebuttal from an informed member of either the medical or pharmaceutical professions, supported by relevant evidence. - Yours, etc,
Dr BRENDA O'HANRAHAN, Park Lane, Sandymount, Dublin 4.