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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 06 2019, @11:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the depression-sucks dept.

Fast-Acting Depression Drug, Newly Approved, Could Help Millions

Of the 16 million American adults who live with depression, as many as one-quarter gain little or no benefit from available treatments, whether drugs or talk therapy. They represent perhaps the greatest unmet need in psychiatry. On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a prescription treatment intended to help them, a fast-acting drug derived from an old and widely used anesthetic, ketamine.

The move heralds a shift from the Prozac era of antidepressant drugs. The newly approved treatment, called esketamine, is a nasal spray developed by Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., a branch of Johnson & Johnson, that will be marketed under the name Spravato. It contains an active portion of the ketamine molecule, whose antidepressant properties are not well understood yet. "Thank goodness we now have something with a different mechanism of action than previous antidepressants," said Dr. Erick Turner, a former F.D.A. reviewer and an associate professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University. "But I'm skeptical of the hype, because in this world it's like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown: Each time we get our hopes up, the football gets pulled away."

[...] Esketamine, like ketamine, has the potential for abuse, and both drugs can induce psychotic episodes in people who are at high risk for them. The safety monitoring will require doctors to find space for treated patients, which could present a logistical challenge, some psychiatrists said.

The wholesale cost for a course of treatment will be between $2,360 and $3,540, said Janssen, and experts said it will give the company a foothold in the $12 billion global antidepressant market, where most drugs now are generic.

[...] One question that will need to be answered is how well esketamine performs in comparison to intravenous ketamine.

Also at STAT News, Reuters, and NPR.

Previously: Ketamine Reduces Suicidal Thoughts in Depressed Patients
Studies Identify How Ketamine Can Reverse Symptoms of Depression
Ketamine Shows Promise as a Fast-Acting Treatment for Depression

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:42AM (#811015)

    Well, here's the thing.

    So, personally I would not mind neoliberal fascism that looks something like the film Starship Troopers. I will bet in that world, either there is no institutional sexual harassment ironically called sexual harassment "training," or else it would be required for everybody and not just those legally male.

    There is the old conservative trope of "feminazi." When criticized, a feminist will reach for a copy of The Second Sex, which is good and all. It should be required reading instead of the drivel we're shoveled in neoliberal indoctrination education. There is nothing in the works that feminist consensus would say are foundational that is ethically objectionable. In fact, it's quite the opposite. So that's feminist theory.

    #metoo is post-second wave feminism in practice. A simple accusation has the capacity to completely wreck a man's life, as in homelessness is a very real possibility. I will try to not weigh socialism vs. capitalism more than is necessary here... we currently live in a capitalist era, and the problems this creates for legal males are not only tremendous but further compounded by a legal and cultural system of justice that implicitly accepts the very gender paradigm argued against in The Feminine Mystique.

    And the thing is? Wombyns don't want that contradiction between the actualization of women's liberation and the philosophy upon which it is founded to ever be resolved. Feminism is, for the most part, a capitalist movement. It operates within capitalist dynamics. The dynamics of capitalism (viz. competition) dictate an "ends justify the means" mode of competition of labor for jobs that pay a living wage. That means if wombyns can go for low blows, they will, and they will do it consistently as long as it works.

    As the feminist movement in Sai King's callas might say, feminism has forgotten the face of its mother. It was influenced by Marxism, but it is not a Marxist movement. It also drifts farther and farther from its philosophical moorings which are, if not entirely Marxist (the right-wing feminists have always been with us), at the very least based on ideas of egalitarianism. Feminism is no longer about equality. And for the record, the word equity is being used by feminists to spread FUD place like Reddit and stuff about Google's recent investigation into the gender wage gap.

    Feminism cannot possibly be about equality without incorporating Marxist ideas at this stage of its material development. Instead, feminism has been subverted by capitalism, and it is about capitalist domination.

    I think I'm gaining an appreciation for the word cuck. Personally I have no uses for word used in sexual context, but in usage it is not always sexual. A cuck is somebody who falls for the propaganda and gaslighting upholding capitalist feminism.

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