Excellent Blog Post By Doug:
“I had some time I didn’t expect to have yesterday since my anticipated appearance on Fox’s Mike and Juliet Show to talk about the link between the acne medication Accutane and depression and suicide was canceled, so I thought I’d write about how my day was going so far. I guess someone told Fox that they are getting a lot of advertising dollars from the pharmaceutical industry, and what I had to say might not make some people happy.
At first they asked if I would like to go on the show and “debate” someone. When I didn’t seem too excited about that they said they would “get back to me” and then later left me a voice message saying that I wouldn’t be going on the show but that I would be “credited” for my work. So I checked out the clip on the internet, and low and behold Fox set up the story by starting out with a family’s complaints about Accutane causing their son to commit suicide, followed by an attractive dermatologist named Cheryl Karcher, MD, who sat there in her white coat and said “I’m soooo sorry for the Zimmers but there is no evidence that Accutane causes depression or suicide….”

….I have presented the evidence elsewhere that Accutane is associated with depression and suicide. So if people want, they can go read it themselves. I have never met anyone who wasn’t on the payroll for Roche who has read the evidence who doesn’t agree, and I have never met any dermatologist who could look me in the eye and tell me that she never had a patient become depressed or feel like they were in a haze while on Accutane.

So there you have it, folks. Out-FOXed again. That is how the media presents things to you. Nothing is ever “proven” and there are always two viewpoints that balance each other out.

So, the next time you turn on your tube to feed yourself, why don’t you send FOX an email asking “Can you put some sugar on that crap you’re feeding me?”

I guess we got it, sort of, with Dr. Karcher.”

Keep Yelling Doug….maybe some day someone at Fox and all of the Media will get it.
Jenny Hatch
PS I was also asked to be on that same talk show last year to discuss my experience with Post Partum Psychosis. We were not able to make it work schedule wise, but I was impressed with the producer who called me. She seemed nice and was really interested in the alternative therapies I have used for healing my emotional illness. I challenged her to get Dr. Breggin on the show. She had never heard of him. When I watched the episode I was supposed to be on, they had a promo for Post Partum Depression on the web listing, but the segment never appeared, so I guess they just dumped the story.