Michael Fumento Skewers Claims about Accutane and Suicide
After 15-year-old Charles Bishop smashed a plane into the 28th floor of a Tampa, Florida building, the news media highlighted the fact that Bishop may have been taking Accutane — a drug prescribed for acne which has been dogged by false claims that it is causally associated with suicide. In a story for Reason, Michael Fumento dispensed with such claims in pretty short order.
The thing about the latest Accutane incident is that an autopsy found that Bishop had no trace at all of Accutane in his system. Of course, although the news media was more than willing to suggest the drug may have caused Bishop to start on his suicidal path, few media outlets could be bothered to follow-up with news that exonerated the drug. The fact that there is no crisis is hardly newsworthy after all.
But the most obvious thing to ask is whether or not Accutane is indeed linked to an excess of suicides. And of course, it is not. Fumento notes that while the suicide rate of the general population is 11.1 suicides per 100,000 people, the suicide rate of those taking Accutane is only 1.8 per 100,000. Or to put it in raw numbers, since 1982 there have been a total of 167 suicides that have been reported to the FDA because the deceased was taking Accutane. In that same period, there were a total of 90,000 suicides in the United States.
Which will not, of course, prevent people from claiming that Accutane caused their child’s suicide, but does show that if the media actually cared about getting at the truth rather than simply promoting sensationalism, the data is out there to debunk the Accutane-suicide link.
Source:
Bumps in the Night: The Accutane story is all scare, and no science. Michael Fumento, Reason, January 23, 2002.
Tags: Michael Fumento