It seemed like a good idea…

In another egg-on-our-face medical moment, researchers have shown that giving anti-psychotic medicine to prevent aggressive behavior in patients with severe intellectual impairment is actually (drumroll please) worse than placebo. That’s right. The infamous, low-cost, no-side-effect sugar pill waayy out-performed new, expensive (or old) anti-psychotics in a true double-blind test that included the caregiver’s impression as well as objective measures of aggression. Sigh. Call me cynical, but I can’t imagine that the pharmaceutical companies that make these drugs are going to splash the results all over the news. Check it out here, and if you’ve got a family member on these meds for this reason, maybe it’s time to print up the study and take it in to discuss with a doctor. Sometimes what seems obvious…isn’t.

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