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The following news report on the tragic case of American murders involving Paxil (Prozac) appeared a few days ago in The Guardian newpaper in UK: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,503594,00.html> ---------------------------------------- Drug 'drove father to kill family' Sarah Boseley, health editor Friday June 8, 2001 The Guardian The family of a man who killed his wife, daughter and baby granddaughter before committing suicide has been awarded $6.4m (£4.2m) by a jury which ruled that the antidepressant Paxil - the British-owned version of Prozac - was to blame. Donald Schell, 60, was on Paxil, made by the British drug giant, GlaxoSmithKline, for just two days after a diagnosis of mild depression. In the early hours of February 12 1998, he shot and killed his wife Rita, his daughter Deborah Tobin and her one month-old baby Alyssa. Lawyers for the Tobin family successfully argued that his homicide and suicide were totally out of character. The jury, in Wyoming district court in Cheyenne, USA, took three and a half hours at the end of a two-week trial to decide that Paxil was 80% to blame. The verdict will have major repercussions. It is the first time a jury has blamed one of the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) class of drugs for causing violent acts. The manufacturers have always claimed that depression is responsible for the violence. GlaxoSmithKline says it rejects the verdict and will appeal, arguing that Paxil has been subjected to rigorous clinical trials. But evidence was presented in Wyoming by a British psychiatrist, David Healy, that a significant proportion of healthy volunteers could become seriously agitated and potentially suicidal on the drug. Yesterday he called for the Medicines Control Agency in the UK to act. "It is clear that physicians who use these drugs need to be warned about the hazards," he said. -------------------------------------- Dr Mel C Siff Denver, USA http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Supertraining/