Re: Accutane help list IS helpful but there is a but, imho...

Hi there!

Here's the problem with accutane. It's political, due to the definite correlation between accutane use and birth defects, often severe.

Although the company has always warned would be users against using it if there was even a chance they could be or get pregnant, although the packaging makes it impossible for users not to know this (the multi-material, multi-bubble, requires knife or scissors to open it individual pill packagine additionally shows a big pregnant belly with a bid red line through it), anything that poses harm to human in as opposed to out utero is going to outrage a substantial, well organized minority of the American population. To wit, from that law-firm's website (doesn't sound like straight legalese to my ears):

"Perhaps the birth defects caused by Accutane are the saddest of all the adverse side effects of the drug. Tiny little babies are either killed by the drug, or suffer from horrible defects caused by the drug for as long as they live.

"They have no choice in the matter and are completely innocent. There have been thousands of elected abortions because the mother became pregnant while taking Accutane. There have also been thousands of spontaneous abortions as a result of the mother taking Accutane while she was pregnant. Either way, it means the death of a baby."

Please not that I am not speaking as a pro-life or pro-choice woman but as a medical consumer who used accutane for a decade or so in the past and as long-time pharmaceutical industry and litigation 'watcher' (non professional unless you count journalism).

Clearly any politicans who'd take up the cause against accutane in particular given how much poison the big six drug companies produce are well-aware birth defects provide extra publicity bang for the buck (which is not to say their commitment to the pro-life movement isn't genuine in some cases or in any way belittle such a commitment).

See, the other diseases/disorders listed on that website have thus far not be statistically correlated with Accutane which isn't to say they won't be in future.

However, for now, it is meaningless to imply for example that Accutane caused or even contributed to attempted and completed suicides without comparing the rate of suicide with accutane to the rate for that group of the general population which most represents accutane users (many of whom are in their teens and twenties and suicidal behavior by American teens is off the charts!)

Moreover, how do you separate it out? I have one suicide attempt in my past but was it related to my accutane use, my problem drinking and then drug use, an abusive marriage at the time, the stress being less able to function in a high-profile job in a shrinking industry, the many and varied health problems I had/have. (was my ad/hd a health problem? were the huge number of Antibiotics I took causative in any way? And were the ad/hd meds I took causative of hormonal ailments that came after? You get the drift).

The only longer-term 'solutions' I found so far were invisible to me until I finally became sufficiently sold enough on the Curezone to fully exploit the resources here for improved health. My particular causes proved fairly irrelevant to the solutions I found.

You probably already know that a fairly small number of therapies and treatments seem to do pretty well almost everybody in here to greater and less degrees, whether their problems are physical or mental, transitory or life-threatening:
radical (by USJF(junkfood standards) improvements in diet, overall decrease in internal/external chemical exposure, application of healing therapies, herbs, protocols, etc. (the flushes, Hulda Clark 's protocol, zappers seem to get especially good feedback, but it could be the forums I'm frequently).

Plus exposure to the Curezone makes you far more judicious about ingesting future medicinal/altered food substances whether it's a prescription RX or the latest ballyhooed 'all-natural' formula. i.e. 'Made From Sugar? Tastes Like Sugar?' But it's not sugar? Well, what is it?

You end up doing your own independent internet research and making appropriate individual queries to practitioners (naturo- or allopathic) before you swallow anything instead of blindly obeying a specific medical professionals marching orders or taking drug/food manufacturers adertisements/handouts at their word.

The net result is, your health becomes far less conditional upon future prolonged 'side'-effects.

BTW, what a bogus term, as whatever processes a given substance sets off are all, equally, effects; the word side serves solely to marginalize the effects you won't like from the ones they use to make a sale.

Ummm, did somebody ask a question in here? ;}