Popular prescription flu treatment might cause abnormal behavior?

[Aenlic]

This is nice:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/11/13....ap/index.html

Seems that Tamiflu might be causing abnormal behavior in children, including delerium, hallucinations and other unusual psychiatric behavior. Especially in Japan, where Tamiflu is the most popular.

The response of the pharmaceutical company, Roche (and the FDA, which is nothing more than a rubber stamp for the pharmaceutical industry these days), said that the problems weren't caused by the drug but that instead the flu can cause such things. The flu? I don't recall ever seeing someone go psychotic just because they had the flu. Hmm....

And then it gets even better!

"In documents released Monday, FDA staff acknowledged that stopping treatment with Tamiflu could actually harm influenza patients if the virus is the cause of delirium, hallucinations and other abnormal behavior, such as aggression and suicidal thoughts."

So damned if you do and damned if you don't? Hurray.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Who takes pills for the flu? So weird.

[BigTex]

Who takes pills for the flu? So weird.

The people who thinks its bird flu.

Thats awsome though, this might actually make me want to be medicated if i get the flu. Tamiflu here I come!

[Aenlic]

The people who thinks its bird flu.

Thats awsome though, this might actually make me want to be medicated if i get the flu. Tamiflu here I come!

Actually, Tamiflu is believed to be one of the only semi-effective treatments should a human acquire the H5N1 bird flu strain. So, you're faced with a choice, take a drug which appears to cause psychotic episodes, if there is a pandemic of H5N1; or keep your brain biochemistry functions intact and risk dealing with a virus strain which appears to have a better than 50% mortality rate when it jumps to humans.

[BigTex]

Actually, Tamiflu is believed to be one of the only semi-effective treatments should a human acquire the H5N1 bird flu strain. So, you're faced with a choice, take a drug which appears to cause psychotic episodes, if there is a pandemic of H5N1; or keep your brain biochemistry functions intact and risk dealing with a virus strain which appears to have a better than 50% mortality rate when it jumps to humans.

You must have missed the joke. Yes I know that tamiflu is the only reasonably effective treatment of H5N1. But there are alot of hypocondriact around who run to the doctor as soon as they have a cough for some tamiflu.

[BDC]

You just have to get exposed to the weaker earlier strains, then laugh as everyone who avoided them dies from the horribly dangerous later strains. That's the plan anyway...

Backup plan is to go and live in the mountains for 6 months.

[Ronin]

I don't do illegal drugs anymore. Now I just do the legal drugs. Tonight I'm on NyQuil and Sudafed. Let me tell you something, folks. Forget about cocaine and heroine. All you need is NyQuil and Sudafed. I'm telling you right now, I took the NyQuil five years ago. I just came out of the coma tonight before the ******* show! Claus Vanbulo was standing over my bed going, "Denis, get up! There's something the matter with Sunny! Hurry up!" I love NyQuil. Man, I love it! I love it. I love it. I love it. It's the best thing **** ever invented. Isn't it, huh? I love the name alone. NyQuil - Capitol N, small Y, big ******* Q! I love that ******* Q, don't you!? What a great advertising idea! Put a huge ******* Q on the box. They'll get high and stare at it. "The Q is talking to me! The Q is talking to me!"
-Denis Leary

[Aenlic]

You must have missed the joke. Yes I know that tamiflu is the only reasonably effective treatment of H5N1. But there are alot of hypocondriact around who run to the doctor as soon as they have a cough for some tamiflu.

Ah, OK.

The flu is the flu. People should just make some soup, grab the remote and zone out in front of the TV for a few days, and violá! the flu goes away.

We over medicate in this country. In Japan, too. Makes it worse when the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to advertise prescription only meds on TV. Turns doctors into nothing more than drug dispensers. Patients go to their doctor and insist that they be given such and such that they saw on TV, and the doctors give in to the demand.

It's why we have such a problem with antibiotic resistant bacteria strains now. Because for years parents have whined and moaned and insisted that doctors prescribe something for their darling little child who has a simple rhinovirus (head cold) and even though an antibiotic does absolutely nothing against a viral infection, the doctors gave in just to shut the parents up. Result, overuse of antibiotics which gives the real bacteria more chances to evolve resistances. Now we have bacteria out there, especially in hospitals, which are resistant to every known antibiotic. And people are dying from infections which used to be treatable.

Doctors need to learn to say No!

[Adrian II]

Backup plan is to go and live in the mountains for 6 months.

And have birds crap on you all day long so you will be infected. Thanks, but no thanks. It is not going to happen anyway. All flues are bird flues, they follow the same track, and the most lethal strains always autodestruct, just like other highly agressive viruses such as Ebola.

The bird flu story is just another health scare designed to make us run for medecines, doctors and finally the woods. Relax, BDC. Have a beer. Live. Enjoy.

[BDC]

And have birds crap on you all day long so you will be infected. Thanks, but no thanks. It is not going to happen anyway. All flues are bird flues, they follow the same track, and the most lethal strains always autodestruct, just like other highly agressive viruses such as Ebola.

The bird flu story is just another health scare designed to make us run for medecines, doctors and finally the woods. Relax, BDC. Have a beer. Live. Enjoy.

Well it depends on the incubation period...

But worrying is not a way to live. More likely to be hit by a car or something. Live each day as it comes...

[AntiochusIII]

Doctors need to learn to say No!

They'll get sued.

"But what if Little Timmy will die!..."

[Xiahou]

Actually, Tamiflu is believed to be one of the only semi-effective treatments should a human acquire the H5N1 bird flu strain.

I dont think there's any evidence to support that is there?

[Kralizec]

It's why we have such a problem with antibiotic resistant bacteria strains now. Because for years parents have whined and moaned and insisted that doctors prescribe something for their darling little child who has a simple rhinovirus (head cold) and even though an antibiotic does absolutely nothing against a viral infection, the doctors gave in just to shut the parents up. Result, overuse of antibiotics which gives the real bacteria more chances to evolve resistances. Now we have bacteria out there, especially in hospitals, which are resistant to every known antibiotic. And people are dying from infections which used to be treatable.

Two years ago my grandmother became blind in one eye because she contracted MRSA after surgery- a bacteria that probably wouldn't have existed if people didn't jump to antibiotics so quickly

[Hepcat]

The bird flu story is just another health scare designed to make us run for medecines, doctors and finally the woods. Relax, BDC. Have a beer. Live. Enjoy.

That is what all the science teachers are saying. It will probably just be a really bad case of the flu, the average healthy person shouldn't have much to worry about. There was the huge bird flu scare and the media sturred up a frenzy with people buying extra water thinking that when it came the water system would somehow become contaminated with it.

Then what? ... then the news programs moved on and I haven't seen anymore on it for months.

[Samurai Waki]

The Bird Flu hit the west and decided we're much healthier than people living in 3rd world countries.

[Xiahou]

That is what all the science teachers are saying. It will probably just be a really bad case of the flu, the average healthy person shouldn't have much to worry about. There was the huge bird flu scare and the media sturred up a frenzy with people buying extra water thinking that when it came the water system would somehow become contaminated with it.

Then what? ... then the news programs moved on and I haven't seen anymore on it for months.

Don't worry, they'll either dredge it up again when news gets slow- or they'll just find a brand new disease that's going to kill us all.

It really irks me that so much of what we see and hear as news is really so much sensationalist crap. It almost completely desensitizes me to virtually any warnings that you see/hear/read nowadays.

[Aenlic]

I dont think there's any evidence to support that is there?

You may be entirely correct, Xiahou. Good call. I've been looking into it, surfing the online medical journals and such, and it appears that Tamiflu has an entirely unwarranted reputation for being effective against the H5N1 virus. In fact, the Vietnamese doctor who heads up the Center for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi called the drug useless. Considering that the most experience with H5N1 comes from the Vietnamese, I'm inclined to be suspicious of the drug now.

One other thing makes me very suspicious, as well. Back in 2005, when Tamiflu was being touted the most for such uses, the Bush administration requested that Congress allocate $7.1 billion in emergency funds to beef up the nation's flu preparedness, the bulk of this money to go to buying stockpiles of Tamiflu. Interestingly, the former chairman of Gilead Sciences, which is the patent holder for oseltamivir (Tamiflu being just Roche's trade name), happens to be one Donald Rumsfeld. He appears to own somewhere between $5 million and $25 million in Gilead stock, according to federal disclosures. It's estimated that he made between $2.5 million and $15.5 million from the increase in Gilead stock after the stock increased from the government windfall. At the time, dear old Rummy was still high in the administration's favor.