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Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Eli-Lilly about to kill more children during Cymbalta clinical trials

The photography you see at my profile is Tracy Johnson's a healthy 19 years-old woman who hanged herself at Eli-Lilly's facilities in 2004 during Cymbalta clinical trials.
I just saw at Furious Season's this post "Cymbalta Being Trialed in Kids as Young as 7":

"The site is a recruiting tool for a 700-person study of Cymbalta as a treatment for major depression in kids aged 7 to 17 years. The study will include a placebo arm and also use Prozac as a known comparator (interestingly, Prozac is not approved for use in 7 to 17 year olds). The study is broken out into two separate clinical trials, one of 448 kiddos and the other of 336 kids. The studies are expected to be completed in early 2012 and each runs for 36 weeks, so this is no short-term clinical trial.

The two trials come on the heels of a smaller trial of Cymbalta in 72 kids aged 7 to 17 that was completed late in 2008. I cannot find its results published anywhere. It did not have a placebo or comparator arm.

So it's obvious that Lilly has its sights set on getting Cymbalta approved for use in kids. I cannot think of anything useful to say about that except to point out that since its introduction in 2004 Cymbalta has racked up 130 adverse events reports in the FDA's database among kid aged 0 to 17 (so the drug hasn't been used much off label in kids) and an astounding 14378 reports among all age groups." (emphasis mine)

I don't know what to say except that these children will have their health altered for the rest of their lives. There are even evidences that SSRIs antidepressants are teratogenic. When a nation don't care about the children I don't know any longer what to think and what kind of world we are living. This is beyond common sense understanding. Maybe it's because I don't have money. I believe that being a shareholder or have over a certain amount of money must affect people's ethics, behaviour, values... everything.

I thank the Lord I didn't reach this amount.

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