Notes from the Prozac Nation, Vol. 1, No. 3

• The CDC didn't really tell you the whole truth about SSRIs and birth defects. Evelyn Pringle points out how the CDC, under the tutelage of the Bush administration, is in cahoots with Big Pharma, hence why they underplayed the real results of a study published in the NEJM that established there were "significant associations between specific SSRIs and several birth defects."
  
• Depression is the top obstacle preventing women from workplace success. This claim comes from a survey put out by the National Mental Health Association and the American Women's Medical Association.
  
• The AMA sells information on the prescribing records of physicians to pharmaceutical companies. The SF Chron reports that the AMA made $44 million dollars last year selling this information, which Big Pharma used to successfully market brand name, more expensive drugs that patients recognize from TV ads to physicians.
  
• Taking SSRIs gets in the way of falling into deep, obsessive romantic love. Helen Fisher and J. Anderson Thompson "believe that Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other antidepressants alter brain chemistry so as to blunt the intense cutting edge of new love."