4/18/2001 – Paxil Is Approved for Anxiety Disorder?!

Incredible! The FDA continues to undermine the health and safety of America
with this latest approval – as if doctors had ever noticed that Paxil was NOT
approved for anxiety before this. They have been handing it out like candy
for any and everything they can think of for years.

What is so disconcerting about this is that anxiety can be caused by two
disorders in particular – low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) or seizure activity.
Paxil can trigger both hypoglycemia and seizures. So, if a doctor does not
check to see if the patient is suffering from either of those disorders (and
that is hard to do in the three minutes it has been reported that it usually
takes for a doctor to recommend one of these SSRIs), the Paxil could throw
the patient into serious blood sugar problems or seizures.

Did the FDA consider any of that information before this approval?
Considering the number of drugs pulled from the market in the last few years,
chances are slim that they did.

So now many more ethical doctors who were not handing out Paxil for anxiety
before will feel that with the FDA’s approval they can do so without worry.
No one has warned them that the patient will be lucky to live through the
horrific withdrawal though. As Dr. Nancy Snyderman pointed out in the 20/20
special last August, it may take patients up to a year to get off this drug
safely. (Something I have been saying for years.)

Once again we have the FDA to thank. Isn’t it long past time for them to be
sued for the lives being lost to their incompetence? I guess I just see too
many families wiped out in murder/suicides and too many mothers killing their
children and too many school shootings and workplace violence incidences
induced by Paxil to be patient any longer about this.

Ann Blake-Tracy, Executive Director,
International Coalition For Drug Awareness
www.drugawareness.org

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/17/business/17GLAX.html?searchpv=nytToday

April 17, 2001

Paxil Is Approved for Anxiety Disorder

By BLOOMBERG NEWS

WASHINGTON, April 16 (Bloomberg News) — Glaxo- SmithKline P.L.C. has won the
Food and Drug Administration’s approval to market its antidepressant Paxil
for treating general anxiety disorder, a new use for the drug.

That makes Paxil the first drug in its class to be approved for the
condition, which affects about 10 million Americans and involves excessive,
often debilitating worrying, the company said today.

“Generalized anxiety disorder can paralyze sufferers with uncontrollable
worry, devastating people’s lives,” said Jack Gorman, a professor in the
department of psychiatry at Columbia University. “Paxil provides a new
alternative to help sufferers regain control over their lives.”

Paxil is already approved for treating depression, obsessive- compulsive
disorder, social phobia and panic disorder. With sales of $2.4 billion, Paxil
was the world’s seventh top-selling drug in 2000, according to figures
compiled by the prescription drug tracker IMS Health Inc.

New indications are important to the company’s efforts to defend Paxil, which
belongs to same class as Eli Lilly’s Prozac, against generic competitors.

In a different class of medicines, two antidepressants, Effexor from American
Home Products and Buspar from Bristol-Myers Squibb, are also approved to
treat general anxiety disorder.

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