Monday, May 07, 2007

What Risks are Acceptable Risks?

On April 16th, Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people, and wounded many more, in a shooting spree termed the "Virginia Tech massacre." The massacre took place on April 16, 2007 on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, just four days before the eighth anniversary of the Columbine shooting. Cho committed suicide after law enforcement officers breached the doors of the academic building where he shot most of his victims, including faculty and students.

On April 17th, in an example of incredibly poor timing, Scientific American and other science news outlets carried a news item about a study that came to the conclusion that the benefits of antidepressants outweighed the risks.

As news reports indicate that Cho was on psychiatric medications before the shooting, This leads us to the natural question:

What risks are acceptable risks? Surely the authors of the study and the outlets that reported it do not mean that the occasional school massacre is acceptable. It is apparent that school shootings and other similar incidents were not on the radar of those who wrote the student.

The possibility that they knew, and did not take the risk seriously is too horrifying to contemplate.

But if true, then maybe it is time to storm the castle Frankenstein and bring the doctors who made this monster to justice.

On May 3rd, the FDA issued an updated requirement for the black box warning that appears on the packaging of antidepressants.

The question of the supposed benefits vs side effects of the drugs is another matter entirely.

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