Paxil Free

March 13th, 2001. (Basic Facts – continued)

Most doctors are completely ignorant as to the withdrawal effects of paroxetine (not that that ever stops them from prescribing these pills as if they were as harmless as Tic-Tacs). My doctor told me, “The great thing about Paxil is that you can stop taking it cold turkey.” It doesn’t get any more ignorant than that.

Chances are you wouldn’t be reading this right now if it wasn’t for your doctor’s ignorance and/or arrogance.

When my doctor told me that I didn’t have to wean myself off the Paxil — this was his trusted medical advice — he was relaying to me information from

“the year 2000 edition of the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties [the CPS] which is the information source most widely used by physicians in Canada.”

That’s a quote from an email my doctor sent me, and the italics are mine. (The U.S. equivalent of the CPS is the PDR or the Physicians’ Desk Reference.)

Unfortunately, the information on paroxetine withdrawal which appears in the CPS is based on fraudulent data provided by GlaxoSmithKline, the company that manufactures Paxil.

In order to get FDA approval in the United States, GlaxoSmithKline had to manipulate the results of the initial clinical trials of Paxil. Ethically and legally, this drug should never have reached the public.

Hypothetically, let’s say a company conducts 10 clinical trials for an anti-depressant they’ve developed. In 9 of those 10 trials the drug simply doesn’t work. Instead of presenting the results from all 10 trials which would show the drug fails 90% of the time, the company decides to present the results of the one positive trial and, from that single trial, claim a success rate of 100%.

I have just described the practices used by GlaxoSmithKline to obtain FDA approval for Paxil. It’s not hypothetical. To quote from a recent lawsuit against SmithKline Beecham (or GlaxoSmithKline):

“After a decade of juggling data in the 83 different trials, SmithKline Beecham was finally able to cite four ‘positive’ trials and three ’supportive’ trials to justify Paxil’s approval.”

That’s a grand total of 7 out of 83, which is less than 10% (but let’s be generous and call it 10%). In other words, Paxil failed in 90% of the clinical trials. But this data was never presented to the FDA — nor to the medical community.

Most if not all of the information that your doctor has about paroxetine withdrawal has been provided by GlaxoSmithKline and these so-called clinical trials of theirs. Not the 76 initial trials in which Paxil had adverse effects on nearly everyone who took it and tried to get off it, but the 7 “successful” trials that provided GlaxoSmithKline with the results that would look good on their FDA application.

This is the information that is provided to the medical community and to your doctor when he or she reads from their big thick medical book (e.g. the CPS) which is “the information source most widely used by physicians” in your country and says to you: “If you stop taking Paxil, the worst is that you might experience some nausea, headaches and dizziness for a few days.”

That’s the sales pitch used by GlaxoSmithKline to sell Paxil — a sales pitch that has been passed off as clinically accurate medical information but which is fraudulent, and it’s most likely the exact mis-information your doctor is feeding you when he or she tells you about paroxetine withdrawal but doesn’t tell you about the electrical shocks you might experience behind your eyes and in your head. Instead, you get to live through the hell of finding it out for yourself, terrified out of your mind from not knowing what’s happening to you.

There’s a very good chance that your doctor has done absolutely zero research or fact-checking when they tell you about the side effects of a drug. Most likely they’re simply reading from a book similar to the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialities. Here’s a quote from a critical analysis of the CPS:

The Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties (CPS) is the most widely used source of drug information in Canada, and is heavily financed by the pharmaceutical industry. A close examination of its contents comparing a computer-drawn, randomized sample of monographs from its “White Pages” to standard pharmacological reference works demonstrates certain of its characteristics: it uncritically includes many inadequate preparations; it overstates the benefits and understates the adverse qualities of many preparations; and it contains little or no information on relative indications, efficacy, or price. These characteristics serve to promote the marketing goals of the drug manufacturers and severely limit the volume’s usefulness as an objective source of drug information.

And this is where most doctors get their information about the drugs they prescribe. So please be careful when listening to your doctor’s advice. With all due respect to their training, they may not know what they’re talking about.

(More on GSK in Basic Fact #4.)