The reason FDA and SSRIs manufacturers banned Survector from the market

Survector, amineptine, disappeared from the market and I always ask myself the reason. I've just found out this:

"I'm no fan of the corrupt bureaucrats at the FDA. In particular, I think drugs widely tested & prescribed in Europe but not vetted by the FDA should be available in the US with that caveat. Let the public decide for themselves.

An interesting case is the drug Survector, a novel tricyclic antidepressant which was marketed by Servier in France & widely prescribed in Europe. Unlike serotonin reuptake blockers like Prozac, Survector is a dopamine reuptake blocker & mild psychomotor stimulant. Among its effects:

• Clinical trials tested favorably against imipramine, Ludiomil, Elavil, & Prozac
• Its psychomotor stimulant effect resulted in a rapid onset of treatment, critical in severe depression, & a drawback of SSRIs & older tricyclics which can take 6 to 8 weeks for onset
• Of particular use in depression of the elderly
• Did not cause sexual dysfunction endemic to SSRIs (which can exacerbate depression), enhanced orgasms, & reported to cause spontaneous orgasms (!)

Because of the latter as well as its mild psychomotor stimulant effect, Survector was deemed to have abuse potential (hardly the case with side-effect rich drugs like Prozac). Pressured by the FDA, Survector's EC license was withdrawn in 1999. Yet studies of dependence (here & here) showed that those most at risk were people with serious psychiatric disorders & histories of substance abuse (duh).

There were also cases of hepatotoxicity (perhaps due to genetic predisposition). Alcohol, of course, has abuse potential & causes liver damage, but don't look for it to be withdrawn from the market. As it shouldn't be: why should a minority of substance abusers set public policy?

The orgasm effect also engages America's Puritanical pleasure phobia. MDMA is a valuable drug that's been useful in PTSD & psychotherapy, but due its being scheduled is now almost impossible for scientists to study. Its misuse by kids doesn't change its potential usefulness.

FOOTNOTE: Survector's manufacturer Servier is now offering a related drug called Tianeptine, which shows promise, altho there are no plans to market it in America. It's also self-evident that manufacturers of the multibillion dollar SSRI industry have a vested interest in keeping substances like Survector & Tianeptine off the US market.

(Survector's not, however, completely unavailable.)

Posted by jeff at 01:51 PM

From this site.

France became the first country in the world to remove transgender identity from the list of mental diseases - what will DSM-5 do?

Today I talked to an amazing person who is a transgender. I cried and got angry, cried and got angry... and cried...

Of course she took all antidepressants available, Ritalin at the age of 8 and... many medical wrong treatments, a surgery before her decision included.

I will talk to her another time and I just want her to know that this blog support transgenders.

This is a post I took from this Egyptian site. I only changed the word transsexualism to transgender.

France has become the first country in the world to remove transgender from its list of recognised mental illnesses.

The decision was announced by France’s Minister of Health, Roselyne Bachelot, on the eve of last year’s International Day Against Homophobia, but did not come into effect until last month.

Bachelot made the announcement parallel to the launch of a campaign petitioning the World Health Organisation to do the same. The campaign was endorsed by some of the country’s leading minds who put their names to a letter published in French newspapers.

In France, hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery are funded by the state.

However, transgenders must complete their surgery, effectively sterilising them, before the state will recognise their new gender.

The announcement comes as the American Psychiatric Association (APA) considers proposed changes for the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), scheduled to be published in 2013.

The DSM is the primary manual used for diagnosing mental illnesses in the English-speaking world. In it, transgenderism is currently referred to as ‘gender identity disorder’.

The working group assigned to revising sections covering gender identity disorder have published their proposals for change on the APA website. They have suggested dropping the word ‘disorder’ and changing the official name for the condition to ‘gender incongruence’ for the entries for “Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents or Adults” and “Gender Identity Disorder in Children”.

Members of the working group wrote that the proposed name was more appropriate because “[it] is a descriptive term that better reflects the core of the problem: an incongruence between, on the one hand, what identity one experiences and/or expresses and, on the other hand, how one is expected to live based on one’s assigned gender (usually at birth)”.

They also noted that a survey of organisations representing transgendered people carried out by the APA found widespread rejection of the term “because, in their view, it contributes to the stigmatisation of their condition”.

Proposals for a related entry, “Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified”, are yet to be published.

Another entry, “Transvestic Fetishism”, also has a name change proposal — to ‘transvestic disorder’ — in order to better distinguish between people with a cross-dressing fetish and those for whom it presents “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning”.