FDA Links Antidepressants, Youth Suicide Risk (washingtonpost.com)

This article notes that hundreds of thousands of prescriptions are written each year in the United States antidepresants for children in the United States, although clinical trials for many of the drugs have not been done in children. The result seems to be a rash of suicides. The drugs may not be safe in children.

Similarly, some years ago it became apparent that there was a gender bias in the selection of subjects for drug trials, and that drugs not being equally safe and efficacious in men and women, women were suffering.

Unless the genome and proteome research gives us much better tools to extrapolate medical research results from one group to another, there will remain a need to see that pharmaceuticals work in the people they are to serve. (I am tempted to say, all pharmaceutical knowledge is importantly local knowledge.)

FDA Links Antidepressants, Youth Suicide Risk (washingtonpost.com)