Posted by med_empowered on August 12, 2005, at 16:30:58 [reposted on August 13, 2005, at 19:22:48 | original URL]
In reply to Re: Amphetamine derivatives for Parkinson's? » ed_uk, posted by lizabent on August 12, 2005, at 16:20:23
I found this research really interesting for a number of reasons...for one thing, it challenges our whole "say no to drugs" philosophy (in the US at least, this anti-drug thing is making psychiatric treatment less effective and causing a lot of pain management docs to just give up). I mean, if speed and Ecstasy can help people, with (it would appear at this point) a minimum of side-effects, how do we justify continuing on with this ridiculous "no to pot, yes to prozac" campaign? And there are other cases where "bad" drugs can be incredibly useful--opiates for depression, for example, or pot for bipolar disorder and illness/treatment-induced nausea. And...did you notice how the researchers suggested "new drugs" may come to the market some day (presumably, this will take at least 10 years). Well..the research was based on the current crop of meds...meds which are cheap and off-patent. Why should we wait 10, 15 years for Eli Lilly to develop some drug based on Ecstasy that will cost massive $$$ and cause side-effects of its own? I think if medicine was truly *humane*, and truly interested in both helping people NOW and developing better treatments in the future, we could go ahead and do some more widespread investigational treatments with Ecstasy and other amphetamine-derivatives. As for potential downsides of this kind of treatment..I don't think we'll have anything but theories about side-effects/adverse reactions until some really good, really in-depth research is done. Given how quickly "acceptable" drugs--atypical antipsychotics, antidepressants-- are used for "off-label" uses with a minimum of evidence, doesn't it make sense to go ahead and do some hardcore inquiry into the use of the drugs we have now for conditions such as Parkinson's?
poster:med_empowered
thread:541232
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/health/20050411/msgs/541238.html