Women who use antidepressants while pregnant are being warned by health chiefs about the risks to their unborn child. The Government’s medicines watchdog advised doctors there is an increased risk that babies will be born with a rare lung condition if expectant mothers take drugs such as Prozac and Seroxat.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the government agency in the UK responsible for medicines and medical devices, has issued a warning about potential SSRI birth defects related to the use of fluoxetine (Prozac). The MHRA issued the warning in its monthly drug safety update. The agency warns that there is a small risk of congenital cardiac defects in infants of mothers who took fluoxetine during the first trimester of pregnancy.
Is there any reason why Pfizer shares are down today? Just yesterday, shares were trading at ~ $17.30. Today, with the DJIA up by 0.7%, Pfizer is down by nearly 1%. A clue to this sell-off MIGHT be due to the anticipation by investors of increasing pressure to change the way drugs are prescribed. This could also trigger several lawsuits down the road.
The FDA has been approving psychotropic drugs, heart medications, birth control pills et al, with horrendous track records and mortal consequences since its inception. Some of those drugs have been taken off the market, but most like antidepressants are still available even though it is widely known they depress patients. Now we have the latest US government agency the FAA, which will now allow pilots to medicate and fly.
Psychiatric drugs sales generate $80 billion per year with Big Pharma spending $4.7 billion per year on TV and print ads, and $1 billion per year on internet advertising.
As a result the number of people worldwide taking psychiatric drugs has skyrocketed to 100 million (20 million of them children) with documented side effects of worsening depression, mania, psychosis, violence, suicidal and homicidal ideation, diabetes, birth defects, heart attack, stroke and sudden death – to name but a few.
International drug regulatory warnings have increased by 400% in the last 10 years, yet the general public has nowhere to go to find this information online in an easy to search, concise format. Until now.