Posted by linkadge on July 13, 2008, at 13:29:18
In reply to Re: caution.... » linkadge, posted by SLS on July 13, 2008, at 13:03:07
>Imipramine has been used since 1959.
>How would you factor this into evaluating its >lack of association with cancer?
Because an association has not been directly studied. There are likely thousands of carcinogens that have not been identified as such simply because they have not been directly studied as such.
Keep in mind, the overal risk of cancer is relatively low. Imipramine may double, triple, quadruple etc. the chance of getting cancer, but the overal risk may be still low and therefore an association is not generally abundantly obvious.
When somebody gets cancer, there is generally not an exhaustive search done on the part of the medical doctor to determine the exact cause. Cancer can also be a drug side effect that does not show up for decades. Its not like you take imipramine, then wake up the next day with a tumor.
Suppose I took imipramine for a year, 20 years ago, then I get cancer today. Who the hell knows what caused it? It could have been the small quanitiy of pot I smoked. It could have been the breif inadvertent inhalation of dishwasher detergent powder.
Sure, I envision a future where each indidence of cancer routienly entered into a sohpisticated computer system along with a comprehensive list of potentially carcinogenic drugs and environemental toxins, after which the information is then compared and crosschecked with the records of millions of others to produce a valid epidemological esimate model of which substances may the most likely contributor.But alas, we are living in today, where most diagnosis of cancer are essentaially comprised of: "I'm sorry to say, you've got cancer".
Linkadge
poster:linkadge
thread:839295
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080706/msgs/839566.html