At no point did I say we were immune to unintended consequences. Just that demanding every drug be used for 30+ years before you’ll touch it is not actually making an analysis of the tradeoffs involved.
Also, the drug classes you listed are not great examples. Benzodiazepines don’t fit what we’re talking about at all: it’s common to develop tolerance and get serious withdrawal symptoms from a few months of heavy use. You definitely don’t need to take them for 10-20 years (or even the 8 years since Ozempic was approved) to notice the serious side effects. If Ozempic killed you if you quit it cold turkey, we would already know. Psychiatrists were not unaware of what happened when you took too much Valium back in the 60s when it was first introduced. It’s just that they (and society in general) had an attitude toward risks that is totally alien to modern sensibilities (and to be clear, I think it was bad).
First-generation antipsychotic’s incidence of TD was strongly correlated with dose, which was strongly correlated with having schizophrenia and other mental illnesses involving psychosis specifically (as opposed to other indications like bipolar without psychotic features or major depression). Getting TD later in life but being able to live outside of an asylum (they were still around when first-generation antipsychotics were commonly prescribed) is probably a tradeoff many of these people would have taken, even if they knew about it.
> Just that demanding every drug be used for 30+ years before you’ll touch it is not actually making an analysis of the tradeoffs involved.
Your replies are unnecessarily aggressive, and you’re not reading comments in a charitable way, or keeping track of the usernames writing them. Nobody is saying this.
I also never said we were “immune to unintended consequences”. How charitable was putting those words in my mouth?
Also not sure where your quip about me not keeping track of usernames came from - I responded to specific examples given in each individual comment. They just both happened to bring up benzodiazepines.
Also, the drug classes you listed are not great examples. Benzodiazepines don’t fit what we’re talking about at all: it’s common to develop tolerance and get serious withdrawal symptoms from a few months of heavy use. You definitely don’t need to take them for 10-20 years (or even the 8 years since Ozempic was approved) to notice the serious side effects. If Ozempic killed you if you quit it cold turkey, we would already know. Psychiatrists were not unaware of what happened when you took too much Valium back in the 60s when it was first introduced. It’s just that they (and society in general) had an attitude toward risks that is totally alien to modern sensibilities (and to be clear, I think it was bad).
First-generation antipsychotic’s incidence of TD was strongly correlated with dose, which was strongly correlated with having schizophrenia and other mental illnesses involving psychosis specifically (as opposed to other indications like bipolar without psychotic features or major depression). Getting TD later in life but being able to live outside of an asylum (they were still around when first-generation antipsychotics were commonly prescribed) is probably a tradeoff many of these people would have taken, even if they knew about it.