Last year I was sitting in my car dealership waiting to get service on my car and working on my laptop while the television was droning on in front of me. I mean this was one of the rare times when I watch TV without the benefit of Tivo to pause the commercials or otherwise avoid them. And it was like one prescription medication ad after another! They were only punctuated by an ad for a device for diabetics to check their blood sugar at home. All I can say is they better get Ronald McDonald (“Don’t forget to feed the waste baskets…”) back on TV so that they can keep those diabetics rolling in to buy their blood glucose testers (not to mention their Avandia and Actos).

Anyhoo one of the ads that caught my eye was of a woman who droned on about how she needed a cigarette to wake up, one in the car, one at 10 am… Boy I know that drill. I kicked the habit by writing a book that advocated diet, exercise and lifestyle changes over prescription medications for health (works every time! No relapses!).

But enough of my narcissism, back to the “My Time to Quit” campaign by the makers of the anti-smoking drug Chantix, which was gleefully playing across the screen at my auto dealership and interfering with my ability to concentrate on more important things like write a book chapter that noone would ever read.

This drug affects the frontal lobe of the brain, which regulates emotion, and has been associated with depression, psychosis, and suicidality. It made headlines when a famous country music singer from Texas who was on the drug accosted a neighbor in an apparently psychotic state of mind and was shot dead.

Thanks Texas home invasion gun laws!

What’s really annoying is that the clinical trials of Chantix excluded people with mental disorders, but smoking is increased in this population, and these people are obviously at increased risk of suicidality. In spite of this the spokespersons for Chantix say it is fine for people with depression and other mental disorders to go ahead and take Chantix.

When I think of Chantix, in spite of the PR campaign to the contrairy, rather than thinking,

Time To Quit!

The image that comes to mind is of (Governor) Arnold Schwartenagger about to finally eliminate a robot in one of the terminator movies when he says…

Time to die!

I have the best method to quit smoking. DIE!

Oh well, maybe I’ll start humming along with the “life saving drugs” theme song one of these days.

Hat tip to Philip Dawdy.

Now it comes out that Dr. Wayne MacFadden, who was heading up the group that was performing clinical trials of Seroquel for bipolar, was banging: 1) one of the study investigators; 2) a ghost writer writing manuscripts and preparing posters and presentations about the drug; 3) two other research assistants and/or employees. He also offered sexual favors in return for getting inside scoops from the investigator about other competing drug companies, and tried to intimidate her about reading the literature related to other drug trials. I wonder if he was one of the early members of the ACNP who according to (ill founded, I’m sure) rumour opted to have their annual meeting in Puerto Rico cuz they had cheaper whores? And in the end, it looks like after all that aggravation, the investigator in question who was identified as a doctor at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, apparently didn’t even get her name on the friggin paper!

I’ve been through THAT aggravation!

WE SEL DRUGZ LEZ HAVE SOME WINE!

The funniest part is that Philip emailed the Editors of the American Journal of Psychiatry where one of the studies, with the cheesy name of “Bolder” was published, asking for a comment about whether this affected their opinion of the integrity of the trial results, and one of them responsed “Let’s not respond to this guy anymore.” But then copied Philip on the email! HA HA!

Sometimes these older generation guys are a little clueless on basic use of the computer. So let us digress now for a little lesson. When you get an email and want to respond to it, there are two choices: reply and reply all.

Don't hit the button on the right, unless you are absolutely sure.

More on this story here and here. And original post here.