Slate: FDA systematically covers up fraud in medical research and drug testing

[Pointedstick]

Boy, it's a good thing the FDA is there soberly representing the public interest against those rapacious money-grubbing capitalistic… er, whoops.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... ingle.html

That misconduct happens isn’t shocking. What is: When the FDA finds scientific fraud or misconduct, the agency doesn’t notify the public, the medical establishment, or even the scientific community that the results of a medical experiment are not to be trusted. On the contrary. For more than a decade, the FDA has shown a pattern of burying the details of misconduct. As a result, nobody ever finds out which data is bogus, which experiments are tainted, and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. The FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud not just from the public, but also from its most trusted scientific advisers, even as they were deciding whether or not a new drug should be allowed on the market. Even a congressional panel investigating a case of fraud regarding a dangerous drug couldn't get forthright answers. For an agency devoted to protecting the public from bogus medical science, the FDA seems to be spending an awful lot of effort protecting the perpetrators of bogus science from the public.

[Libertarian666]

Surely this can't be true. The government is there to protect us!

[Benko]

Didn't MG post this recently?

[Pointedstick]

Oh goodness! I even commented in that thread! I must be getting old... MG, what supplements do I take for that?

[MachineGhost]

Oh goodness! I even commented in that thread! I must be getting old... MG, what supplements do I take for that?

Choline.  Hydergine.  The latter -- which i need to take too -- puts your brain back to when you were 25 and could remember quotes up the wahoo and hold seven things at once in working memory.  It was truly awesome.

[Benko]

Pug,

It is worth noting that hydergine is not a supplement, it is a prescription DRUG.  A number of the so called smart drugs are prescription pharmaceuticals which are  either sold in US withhout prescription through various quirks (e.g. piracetam) , or bought by US citizens from overseas pharmacies (QHI, IAS, others).  i did this myself a number of years ago for a number of substances.  I don't remember if this was one of them. 

Results from smart drugs are very variable and it is not like recommending normal supps for health issues.  I don't know that any of these did much for me.  I do know that getting enough sleep/rest, aerobic exercise and meditation can do a lot. 

bad side effects e.g. problems with heart valves were noted in related drugs and a quick search turned up this on a forum I used to frequent.:

"On the surface it looks really interesting [hydergine] , but one downside is it has 5HT2b receptor agonist properties, which used longterm, can induce a hypertrophic growth of heart valves, this is the problem that brought down the diet drug fenfluramine (notably fen-phen, a combination of fenfluramine with another anorectic, phentermine)

Although the problem with 5HT2b agonists is sustained, regular dosing, acute occasional use does not appear to present the same problem."

And WiseOne is probably having a stroke if she is reading this.

[MachineGhost]

MG, where do you buy hydergine? Would you provide a link?

http://www.antiaging-systems.com/103-hydergine

Indeed, this isn't technically a supplement, though it's a matter of semantics since 99%/100% pure extracts from whatever plant source are de facto drugs.  It's mostly a regulatory issue in the USA.  Elsewhere there's very little if any dividing line between a supplement and a drug. 

Anyway, I've been wary of nootropics because of overhype and I think just not ingesting the proper amount of choline (either from a supplement or eating 5+ eggs every day) can be the root cause of cognitive dysfunctions due to defenciency (hypothyroidism is the other).  There's a difference between being in your 20's and jacking yourself up on nootropics vs getting back to that natural baseline when you're older.  I'd advise the minimum effective dose necessary.  For me, that wasn't even 4.5mg when I was taking the liquid version but .5mg.

Now obviously if someone was, say, on a statin, this is not even remotely the correct approach to fixing mental issues.  The correct approach is to stop the statin, fix all the nutritional defenciencies and lifestyle factors.  Then again, I guess if someone is a SVOL with a couple of heart attacks under their belt...  you can only set your expectations so high.