An FDA advisory panel has ''unanimously rejected Acomplia, a weight-loss drug from Sanofi-Aventis, on concerns the drug increases the number of psychiatric events like depression and suicidal thinking among users,'' Dow Jones Newswires linkurl:reported;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118174200915533871.html yesterday. That means it's at least the second time in under a year that Steven Nissen has been wrong about the promise of new drugs. Nissen, of course, is the well-known Cleveland Clinic cardiologist whose efforts were largely responsible for toppling Vioxx, and he just co-authored a linkurl:NEJM study;http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMoa072761 raising serious doubts about Avandia. Nissen had something to do with the Acomplia trials, too. In October, I moderated a linkurl:panel;http://www.healthjournalism.org/secondarypage-details.php?id=51 at a regional meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists in Cleveland. Nissen was among the four panelists. I asked them all in advance to bring story ideas to the panel, since this was a group of journalists. Nissen brought two: Acomplia, which he said...
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