Amidst the nearly unanimous "I told you so!  Pharma has been lying to us!" the most important question of all goes unasked: why was this article written?  Did no one think about the consequences?

An article like this has consequences, widespread social consequences.  They are massive, you just don't see it.

Let's say antidepressants really don't work, and this could/should have been known.  Have the last 10 years of psychiatry been a lie? It was all a shell game?  If so, is anyone going to step up and apologize, take responsibility?  "We were wrong, we've been pushing sham treatments-- sorry?" I don't want to hear, "we suspected this..."  I want someone to stand up and announce, "you know, I've been prescribing these for years, and I now realize I was duped."

If it's true, then what were we doing to all those patients all those years?

These guys write this as if to say, "I told you so."  It's all so clear to them.  And to read the interviews, you'd think they were sipping on a Diet Coke-- poured into a glass, with a lime-- smugly announcing what they've known all along.

These guys are hailed as some sort of heroes, exposing the lies of Big Pharma.  But they aren't, they are the worst possible self-promoters; they should be ashamed, they should be ashamed to show their faces in public, let alone practice medicine.  They are worse than hypocrites, they are unconscious hypocrites.

Before you email me saying, "what-- you didn't want this published?   You want them to simply pretend everything is ok, that the data for the meds really isn't weak?  That data isn't really being suppressed?" let me state my point as clearly as possible:

THE PROBLEM ISN'T THE STUDY WAS PUBLISHED, THE PROBLEM IS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED 10 YEARS AGO.

It's the exact same data they had 10 years ago, the exact same data.  This isn't a discovery, this isn't Woodward and Bernstein, this is a bunch of academics who are no longer on Pharma payrolls who have now decided that they have nothing further to gain from pushing antidepressants.

Now they can pretend to be on the side of science.   We reviewed the data, and found some of it was not published.

You knew that already.  You were the ones who didn't publish it-- it's your journal.  Turner worked for 3 years as an NIH reviewer.  He just notices this now?

Is no one wondering how it is that this study comes out now, when all antidepressants but two are generic?

As suspicious of Pharma as everyone is, no one seems to see that they are no longer getting Pharma money, they are now getting government money-- NIH-- so they're going to push the government line.  No one finds it at all suspicious that the two biggest NIH studies in the past two years both found the generic to be the best?

You think that in 2000 those studies would have been published?  But now-- 2007, 2008, if they'd found Cymbalta to be the best on the NIH's dime, you think that they'd get re-funded?  What's the difference?  Same authors, same studies, same data.  All that's changed is the climate.

People want a direct financial link to show bias, not realizing that bias is much more prevalent and more powerful elsewhere.

And oh boy, there is going to be hell to pay.

This study isn't just about antidepressants, it is a call to arms-- and I'm sure these guys had no idea they were playing with revolution-- it's the rally cry of the disenfranchised, the powerless, who will say, "look, see! Big Business!  Everyone leeching off the poor public!"   Do you think ABC News picks this story up because they care about antidepressants?

Again, I'm not saying hide the study-- but publishing this 10 years ago, with the same  fanfare and media attention, would have prevented the coming storm, the storm caused by them-- and others-- and others-- the building anger and resentment-- not to mention maybe altered psychiatric practice in the first place.  All of this could have been prevented.   IT'S THE SAME DATA.  But no one cared then.  Times are different, I guess-- because the people are not.

Huckabee wins Iowa; recession looms under the direction of an insecure but resentful, spiteful, Fed Chairman-- even as oil goes to $100 and no one cares; China rises, Pakistan falls, and Russia is a viable solar energy plan away from collapse; pointless obsession about NSA eavesdropping, while Google and others shuffle along archiving your DNA, voice, and existence, all for future governments to decide what to do with; a public anger and distrust of the "system" that rivals the 60s coupled with an apathy and narcissism that rivals, well, any time, ever.

We are doomed. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.  Nothing besides remains.

The Cold War ending had the reverse effect of making socialism ok to consider.  And socialism combined with public apathy and near total control over the existence of information is...

You want to salvage your kids futures?  Forget about bonds, forget about gold.  Buy Google.   You'll get your chance tomorrow, when we collapse.