"This week brought big news in the mood disorder business. First, the New York Times previewed a study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, that found Prozac to be remarkably effective in treating adolescent depression. Then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced that he had filed suit against GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceuticals giant. The charge is that the company manipulated or suppressed research data, to make its drug Paxil appear safe and effective in treating depression in children and teenagers, when it is neither.

Which are we to believe? Should doctors prescribe medication for depressed adolescents or hold off?

One answer is that we just don't know—precisely because drug companies manage the information about antidepressants, promulgating positive studies and suppressing evidence of harm or failure."

Read Peter Kramer's article in Slate, "Should Teenagers Take Drugs?"

James Hughes of the World Transhumanist Association writes, "Last year, bioethicist Carl Elliott, our friend and critic, published the book Better Than Well, a fascinating critique of human enhancement medicine as a capitalist plot perpetuated on gullible American psyches. Apparently, says Elliott, pining for life extension is as pointless as pining for whiter teeth or tighter abs."

"Elliott's book helped us to coin a new slogan and mission statement that answers Houghton's question succinctly. After all, when they call you a queer it's not an insult, it's a flag to fly. So our first decision in Oxford was to adopt this slogan: "Better than well!" And this mission statement: "The WTA advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities. We support the development of and access to new technologies that enable everyone to enjoy better bodies, better minds and better lives." Read "Battle Plan to Be More than Well: Transhumanism is finally getting in gear" on Betterhumans.com.

"New York Times readers with troubled kids must be very confused today. Yesterday, a front page story claimed that antidepressants worked wonders on children. Then, 24 hours later, the paper of record gave similar front page treatment to news that New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer had sued GlaxoSmithKline for failing to reveal clinical trial data showing its antidepressant didn't work in kids."

"Why the discordant messages? The first story reported the early results from a government-funded clinical trial showing that Prozac was better than talk therapy or a placebo. An objective source? Hardly. The trial was conducted by Dr. Graham Emslie, a Texas-based psychiatrist who is one of the nation's leading advocates of medicating depressed children. Emslie's corporate client list reads like a who's who of the drug industry and includes Eli Lilly, maker of Prozac. Alas, the Times never told its readers this fact." See "Spitzer on Drugs" by Merrill Goozner of the Center for Science in the Public Interest at Gooznews.

A front-page story in the New York Times announces that Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, is suing GlaxoSmithKline, accusing the company of fraud in concealing negative information about its popular antidepressant medicine Paxil. "The civil lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, contends that GlaxoSmithKline engaged in persistent fraud by failing to tell doctors that some studies of Paxil showed that the drug did not work in adolescents and might even lead to suicidal thoughts. Far from warning doctors, the suit contends, the company encouraged them to prescribe the drug for youngsters." See "New York State Official Sues Drug Maker Over Test Data."

A related story in the Times examines the question of unpublished research studies conducted by the pharmaceutical industry. "These days, most drug trials are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. And for more than a decade, a growing number of medical experts have been urging drug makers to release more trial data and to create uniform means of disclosing results through central registries, so that policy makers and doctors can easily learn the results. Those advocates argue that such central databases are necessary because drug companies, as well as medical journals and researchers, tend to spotlight only trials that show positive results." See "Two Studies, Two Results, and a Debate Over a Drug."

"Although J.M. Barrie made use of the Llewelyn Davies boys when writing (and frequently revising) Peter Pan, the origins of “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up” lay in his own childhood in Scotland. When his older brother died in a skating accident on the eve of his fourteenth birthday, their grieving mother found solace in the notion that by dying so young her son would remain a boy for ever. This was an idea that had become common currency by the turn of the century. The astonishing popularity of novels set in public schools, mostly written by sentimental alumni, had inculcated the belief that boyhood was a perfect, enviable, but tragically fleeting, state... 'To die will be an awfully big adventure', Peter Pan declares at the end of Act Three, when he is stranded on a rock in the middle of a lagoon, the water rising about him." Peter Parker reviews Andrew Birkin's J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys in the Times Literary Supplement.

"'Cindy', 41, has just had a scary brain operation - and it shows. For one thing, the stubble now returning to the top of her fine-looking head doesn't yet hide the two holes where probes were inserted to burn part of her brain. For another, her movements are slow, and her answers to the doctor's questions are close to monosyllabic. But the medicos at the 999 Brain Hospital are adamant she will be back to normal in a month or two. Actually better than normal, they say, because she will be without the crippling urge for heroin which has ruled her life for the past 11 years." A Chinese hospital treats heroin addiction with neurosurgery. See "Brain surgery 'cure' for heroin addicts" in The Australian.

"US scientists are preparing to perform the world's first full-face transplant. The 24-hour operation involves lifting an entire face from a dead donor - including nose cartilage, nerves and muscles - and transferring them to someone hideously disfigured by burns or other injuries. A team at the University of Louisville in Kentucky has submitted a 30-page request to the university's ethics committee." See "Scientists prepare to turn fiction into fact with first full-face transplant" in The Guardian.

"They were meant to show that gender was determined by nurture, not nature - one identical twin raised as a boy and the other brought up as a girl after a botched circumcision. But two years ago Brian Reimer killed himself, and last week David - formerly Brenda - took his life too." See "Being Brenda" in The Guardian.

"'Where you stand depends on where you sit.' This saying usually applies to political issues, but it is also relevant to medicine. Consider the current controversy over the prescription of antidepressants to children, and the different reactions of British and American regulators and physicians." Sally Satel says British doctors are much less likely than Americans to treat children with psychoactive drugs in "Two Countries, Two Views on Antidepressants."

"The city of New York has sued drug maker GlaxoSmithKline, claiming that the company engaged in "anticompetitive, fraudulent, and inequitable conduct," when it acquired patents for its anti-depressant Paxil." See "New York City Sues Glaxo" in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.