All Press Releases for March 10, 2006
MHRA forbids Sweden to reveal Strattera suicide data
The British Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has forbidden Swedish authorities to reveal Strattera suicide data. A release in Sweden of data about suicides and suicide attempts from Eli Lilly's Strattera is said to hurt the relations between the two countries.
/24-7PressRelease/ - SWEDEN - March 10, 2006 - Data about the harmful effects from the ADHD drug Strattera were revealed in a document from 9 December 2005, written by the British MHRA and sent to the Swedish MPA (Medical Products Agency). The information was gotten as a result of FOIA-requests, and released by court order.
The document told about 130 reports of suicidality in one month from treatment with Strattera. It told about 766 spontaneous reports of cardiac disorders and 172 of liver injury, and about 20 completed suicides. The 130 cases of suicidal and self-injurious behaviour were reported September 23 - October 25, 2005.
The main part of the information was classified and not released. So was, for example, the full assessment of all data about suicidality withheld from the public. That review - on which MHRA based their conclusions - was made by the manufacturer, Eli Lilly, and was named Annex 4 to the report. It would of course be of tremendous value for independent researchers to read how Lilly has treated the statistical data, but this has not been possible.
And now MHRA has forbidden Sweden to release Lilly's review. In a decision made by the Swedish MPA, as a result of a new FOIA-request, it is written that contact has been taken with the British authority MHRA and that the release of Lilly's suicide review would hurt the relations between the two countries! Thus the review cannot be released.
The MHRA, as well as FDA and other national medical agencies are supposed to be "watchdogs", supposed to protect the public from harmful effects of dangerous drugs. That the MHRA now gives directive to other countries to hide the information about Strattera suicide data is a big medical scandal.
All information about the harmful effects of this psychiatric drug should now be made public by the medical authorities and an impartial evaluation of the data should be done. Psychiatrist should no longer be allowed to prescribe poisonous drugs to normal children; children who do not have any objective abnormality but whose behaviour are deemed inappropriate.
Janne Larsson
writer from Sweden - investigating psychiatry
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