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Underground > Laboratory >

Prozac linked to increased cancer growth

18:59 / 27.03.02

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992090

'Prozac may encourage the development of certain types of cancer by blocking the body's natural ability to destroy the diseased cells, new research suggests.'

but wait:

'A spokesman for Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical firm that makes hundreds of millions of pounds from the drug, was also quick to reassure patients. A spokeswoman said: "There is no medical or scientific evidence of a connection between fluoxetine (Prozac) and cancer."'

fucking hell. weren't they supposed to test this stuff on death row inmates first?

08:33 / 28.03.02

I saw this article as well, and I have to say that I wasn't completely surprised - everything has a cause and everything has an effect, and long-term damage of some kind is almost inevitable. I suppose the question has to be whether or not people with depression would have a life worth living WITHOUT Prozac and prozac derivatives. And presumably it's only going to have a major effect on long-term users of the drug.

Bear in mind that 1) it doesn't CAUSE the cancers, it just stops the body benig able to fight them so well, 2) that this has not been tested within a human but only in controlled circumstances outside the body - so it's not really something we can do a lot about...

As someone who has used a couple of different SSRI-based drugs over a six month period a few months ago, I'm not particularly worried about this research...

09:23 / 28.03.02

The thing that bothers me is that all those people saying 'cheer up! might never happen' could have been right all along.
It's a killer point to ask whether it would be better to live with depression to avoid cancer, as they're both life-threatening and widespread. My question is - without prozac, would any depressed person be likely to produce significant amounts of serotonin anyway? If the research is headed in the right direction, then surely a depressive state would be just as conducive to ill health.

10:17 / 28.03.02

My question is - without prozac, would any depressed person be likely to produce significant amounts of serotonin anyway? If the research is headed in the right direction, then surely a depressive state would be just as conducive to ill health.

I'd agree. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that depressed and anxious people have poorer resistance to all illness - they are more likely to die from cancer, heart disease etc.

(I admit that depressed and anxious people in the west these days are likely to be on anti-depressants anyway, so it's rather hard to do comparative studies, but I'm sure I heard that there were enough patients who weren't that they could test that subgroup too.)

13:41 / 28.03.02

(Sorry about the repetition of posts. It's due to my inability to get links working properly. I've logged the above two to be deleted.)

From the link:
Gordon's team now hopes to develop a range of anti-cancer drugs based on serotonin.

Happy days are here again.

It's worth pointing out again that there's absolutely no evidence to even suggest that Prozac actively promotes the growth of cancers. This all seems to boil down to a decision on the part of a few news services to run some pretty alarming headlines.

Witness this fantastic bit of scaremongering, courtesy of abcnews.com.

Professor John Gordon of Birmingham University reported that Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) encouraged growth of a type of cancer called Burkitt's lymphoma in test-tube experiments.

Whereas, he's quoted by BBC Online as saying

I have looked at a number of large-scale studies looking specifically at these drugs in relation to cancer, and there is nothing to suggest that they increase cancer risk.

Fantastic. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh?

An American scientist involved in an international research project expressed outrage today at London media reports that said his study potentially linked common antidepressants to brain cancer.