Monday, May 23, 2005

Patient Rep Reverses Position On SSRI Black-Box Warning  Psychiatric News story on Gail Griffith - "The FDA's patient representative on the advisory committee on antidepressants and suicide recounts her perspective of why she and her fellow committee members decided to support a black-box warning—and why she changed her mind... 'Trotting out members of the public to air emotionally devastating, personal, and anecdotal stories and having those stories sit as evidence for the committee amounts to a barrage that can't help but sway how you feel and how you look at the data you are seeing,' Griffith said. 'Intellectual analysis does not happen [under those circumstances],' Griffith continued. 'It is an emotional exercise. After a day's worth of personal and anecdotal accounts—some pro, some con—if the committee could then be sequestered and thereby have the opportunity to fully examine the data in light of what we'd heard, then I think you would have some confidence in the notion that a scientific effort had been made to render a decision.' "