{"id":511,"date":"2016-07-30T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/?p=511"},"modified":"2016-09-18T14:38:01","modified_gmt":"2016-09-18T18:38:01","slug":"can-you-please-put-some-sugar-on-this-crap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/30\/can-you-please-put-some-sugar-on-this-crap\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Please Put Some Sugar on This Crap?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
I was reading the NY Times this weekend when I saw a story about a celebrity dermatologist who had a SWAT team descend on her office and arrest her for illegal use of narcotics (Percocet). Seems she had been writing prescriptions for the nanny and popping a few each evening to relax. Something about “celebrity dermatologist” and her picture rang a remote bell and I thought “I wonder if she’s the dermatologist who was spewing crap about Accutane and suicide.” Sure enough it was, and here is the original post<\/a> I wrote on the topic.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
[Originally posted October 13, 2008, on the Huffington Post]<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
\n
\n
\n

I had some time I didn\u2019t expect to have yesterday since my anticipated appearance on Fox\u2019s Mike and Juliet Show <\/a>to talk about the link between the acne medication Accutane and depression and suicide was canceled, so I thought I\u2019d write about how my day was going so far. I guess someone told Fox that they are getting a lot of advertising dollars from the pharmaceutical industry, and what I had to say might not make some people happy. At first they asked if I would like to go on the show and \u201cdebate\u201d someone. When I didn\u2019t seem too excited about that they said they would \u201cget back to me\u201d and then later left me a voice message saying that I wouldn\u2019t be going on the show but that I would be \u201ccredited\u201d for my work. So I checked out the clip on the internet<\/a>, and low and behold Fox set up the story by starting out with a family\u2019s complaints about Accutane causing their son to commit suicide, followed by an attractive dermatologist named Cheryl Karcher, MD, who sat there in her white coat and said \u201cI\u2019m soooo<\/em> sorry for the Zimmers but there is no evidence that Accutane causes depression or suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"2008-09-09-bio_Karcher.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Well, I thought to myself \u201cwho the hell is this person?\u201d I mean, she didn\u2019t even offer any reasons<\/em> for her opinion, and we are just expected to sit back there and say \u201cOK!\u201d Was she a researcher? What was the basis for her opinion?<\/em> I asked myself. So I looked up her bio on the internet<\/a> and found that she was a \u201cnationally recognized expert\u201d whose qualifications included acting as a consultant to the Miss Universe Contest! The bio went on to state that \u201cArticles detailing the results of Dr. Karcher\u2019s research have been published in numerous peer-reviewed scientific journals including The New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>, The Journal of Investigative Dermatology<\/em>, and The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.<\/em>\u201c Well I looked her up on pubmed<\/a> and I couldn\u2019t find any<\/em> articles that she had written. Then I realized that by saying \u201cresults of her research\u201d might indicate that she was part of a clinical trial but wasn\u2019t listed as an author of the paper.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Like the 5,000 authors of the advantage<\/em> trial of Vioxx? Pretty misleading!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Next FOX-y Juliet said \u201cafter the break, see pictures of what your brain looks like on Accutane.\u201d Well I thought, that\u2019s great, maybe we\u2019ll get a little more balance in this story. Little did I know that the worst was yet to come. After showing images<\/a> of my brain scans showing how Accutane is associated with a decrease in function of the frontal lobe, a part of the brain that regulates emotion, they had a psychiatrist named Petros Levounis, MD<\/a>, come on the show and state that yes, Accutane changes your brain function, \u201cbut I 100% agree with Dr. Karcher that there is no evidence that Accutane causes depression or suicide.\u201d Again, stated with absolutely no reason<\/em> for his opinion! A quick check of Dr. Levounis\u2019s profile <\/a> showed four publications, none of which were about Accutane.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

I mean, viewers are supposed to look at the victim family and look at the doctor and say \u201cOK, poor family but the doctor says there\u2019s nothing there, so I\u2019ll believe the doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

I have presented the evidence elsewhere<\/a> that Accutane is associated with depression and suicide. So if people want, they can go read it themselves. I have never met anyone who wasn\u2019t on the payroll for Roche who has read the evidence who doesn\u2019t agree, and I have never met any dermatologist who could look me in the eye and tell me that she never had a patient become depressed or feel like they were in a haze while on Accutane.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

So there you have it, folks. Out-FOXed again. That is how the media presents things to you. Nothing is ever \u201cproven\u201d and there are always two viewpoints that balance each other out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

So, the next time you turn on your tube to feed yourself, why don\u2019t you send FOX an email asking \u201cCan you put some sugar on that crap you\u2019re feeding me?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

I guess we got it, sort of, with Dr. Karcher.<\/p>\n

Doug Bremner MD is author of The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg: Accutane, the truth that had to be told<\/em><\/a>. Now available as an audiobook<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Follow Doug Bremner on Twitter: www.twitter.com\/doug_bremner<\/a><\/div>\n
\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reading the NY Times this weekend when I saw a story about a celebrity dermatologist who had a SWAT team descend on her office and arrest her for illegal use of narcotics (Percocet). Seems she had been writing prescriptions for the nanny and popping a few each evening to relax. Something about “celebrity dermatologist” and her picture rang a remote bell and I thought “I wonder if she’s the dermatologist who was spewing crap about Accutane and suicide.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[309,254,67,23],"tags":[233,183,257,73,283,234],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accutane","category-depression","category-pharmaceutical-industry","category-psychology","tag-accutane","tag-depression","tag-isotretinoin","tag-pharmaceutical-industry-2","tag-roche","tag-suicide"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":596,"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions\/596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beforeyoutakethatpill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}