In World War I, a group of soldiers ran out of painkillers. The army’s medical leadership did not publicize the shortage for fear of spreading unrest. The leadership quietly started giving water in medicine bottles to the sick soldiers instead of medicines. Few people complained about the ineffectiveness of the medicine, while the majority remained satisfied and continued to use the water as medicine.When asked how the medication was, he testified that the pain was relieved and that the medication was effective. They were drinking water as medicine and their thoughts were fighting their pain. Nature was doing its job. Eat the medicine or drink the water, if given in the name of medicine, its effectiveness was an amazing question. The answer to this question provides authoritative testimony to the strength of psychological responses and the weakening of drug-attributable properties, known in medical science as the placebo effect.
This is the best way to test effects in drug research. One group is given a placebo (water or an innocuous substance) and the other group is given a drug. If the effects of both are the same, it clearly means that the medicine has no effect. A true and deep observation of the effects opens the way to success. Obfuscation, assumptions and science fiction end up not being beneficial, but sometimes doing terrible harm.Depression is seen and understood as a mental illness. Depression and related mental health conditions are thought to be caused by low levels of serotonin. Science has clearly linked serotonin to depression for half a century. For years, people have been led to believe that depression is actually caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, or a lack of serotonin. It is believed that the drug can control depression and improve emotional response by increasing serotonin.
Millions of papers were published around the world promoting these ideas. Over the past several decades, many drugs from the SSRI group have entered the market. Morning, noon, evening fun ads ran on TV, radio, newspapers and magazines all over the world.Billions of dollars were traded monthly. Pakistan was not far behind. Here too, hundreds of pharmaceutical companies continue to make these medicines. Psychiatrists aside, general doctors also continued to prescribe this drug. Good sales and scientific conferences were held. Traveled around the world. Doctors read their observations around the world. Even today, millions of people are using these medicines for decades. Millions of prescriptions are being written worldwide every month.
We are well aware that drugs have some side effects and suicidal ideation is prominent among the side effects of these drugs. New research shows that the theory justifying SSRIs (antidepressants) for depression is just a myth. A link between chemical imbalances and depression is proving to be an unfounded hypothesis.In the most comprehensive in-depth systematic review of research ever conducted on the link between depression and serotonin, researchers from the UK, Italy and Switzerland looked at 17 major international scientific reviews, which included more than 260 studies involving 300,000 patients. Documented the results.
Accordingly, the truth of the relationship between serotonin and depression is not proven. One such integrated in-depth qualitative review rejected the hypothesis of a link between serotonin and depression and rejected the hypothesis with reliable evidence. Today, when we look back, we feel sand coming out of our fists. The edifice established on aerial and spatial points indicates the width of the gulf between our knowledge and information.
The problem is where the inventors made deliberate and less scientific errors in their research data. Ignored the signs of evidence. How did government officials fail to review and evaluate the research? The emerging findings have shaken the scientific research system, the drug approval process and, most importantly, patients. Doctors, who continue to consider these drugs to be beneficial, have raised serious questions about the validity of their observations. Similarly, general observations appear to be weak in providing strong evidence to prove the relationship between cause and effect in the medical sciences.
This series of denying the facts on the ground and looking at the research results in an arbitrary manner has reached the brink of destruction. Confidence is fragile and hope seems burdensome. The need is to strengthen the methodology of research, to know the testimony of the truth first, to increase the capacity to measure, to increase the capacity to feel.We have to know what we don’t know and why we don’t know it. How do those who know know? How much do you know? What do you know and what do you understand? What do they know but they don’t understand? What do you understand but do not know? They don’t even understand, they don’t even know. How sensitive and reliable is the research methodology? How strong is the evidence for a relationship between causes and effects? The process of denying the ground facts and arbitrarily reflecting the results as per their wish has created a crisis of honesty. It is incumbent on me, you and all of us to bear witness to the truth to prevent destruction.
