Wow!
This is scary. I wrote two posts on Pharmacogenetics in January:
This is one of them:

"In 1995 Michael Adams-Conroy, a nine years old boy, died due to Prozac overdose. His parents were accused of giving him a premeditate overdose but it was discovered that the boy had a "CYP 2D6 gene defect" - lacked the enzyme that metabolizes the drug.

I've just discovered this site for DNA Drug Reaction Testing.

"Research shows that of all the clinical factors such as age, sex, weight, general health and liver function that alter a patient's response to drugs, genetic factors are the most important. This information becomes even more crucial when you consider the fact that adverse reactions to prescription drugs are killing about 106,000 Americans each year- roughly three times as many as are killed by automobiles. This makes prescription drugs the fourth leading killer in the U.S., after heart disease, cancer, and stroke." (emphasis mine)

I'm confused. So, adverse effects are due to genetics? Why are we having same side effects and withdrawal symptoms if...
I'm really confused especially after finding this article "The 5 Myths of Pharmacogenomics" which assures the Pharmas that they will not reduce their profits.
I'll be glad if anyone can help me understand it all.
http://justana-justana.blogspot.com/2009/01/pharmacogenetics-personalized-psych.html

(sorry for quoting myself but I'm confused.)
At the other post:
"To rescue the product's $200 million in annual sales, GSK is currently working with FDA to develop a PGx test to identify patients likely to have the adverse reaction."

This is strange to me. Are human beings really supposed to be born to metabolize these artificial drugs? Michael Adams-Conroy was born with a gene deficiency to metabolize Prozac and that's why he died at the age of 9 years old?

What better way for a psychiatrist who took speed in med-school to legitimize his or her drug abuse than by calling it "Adderall" and prescribing it to 6 year olds.

Nasrallah is correct regarding a coming revolution in the wealth of knowledge we will be able to discern from genetic studies. I have recently been reading about the emerging technologies, and their applications. The information is gonna be simply a totally different level compared to our usual concept of identifying a suspect gene, and figuring out whether it truly does play a role. Pregnant women are often checked for the gene for cystic fibrosis; if positive, the father is checked in ordre to determine the likelihood that the child may get this recessive gene from each parent. Alternately, newborns are often genetically screened for cf at birth. All this because the genetics people can detect this specific gene problem. same for specific mental retardation issues such as Down's Syndrome. With the emerging gene scans, one analysis will give the answer to both of these problems, plus a lot more inf o- info that we won't even be able to interpret because we will slowly 'grow' in our ability to read the info that is there- as if we discover some new cuneiform writing, and merely need to learn how to read it to know what it says, so we look for a rosetta stone. I have looked into this lately, and discussed it with genetics people, and it is honestly the most sci-fi thing I have studied. I believe Nasrallah sees the same horizon that I have been seeing lately. When I have mentioned the various dystopia scenarios that this genetic revolution will bring, the gentics people gave me the sci-fi look - they saw progress in their field, but had not yet looked up to see where this is taking all of us. We will go in these directions chaotically, or will go down well-considered paths only if we start considering what the various futures will look like. I probably generally disagree that these ideas from Nasrallah will be beneficial. I believe he is clever to see where we are headed.

Ana- great comment. Our genes are inherently crucial to why we are alive, not why we might die while trying to be saved by a pill.

Erroneous belief in a pill as a first line of treatment for some challenging-to-defend and challenging-to-diagnose disorder killed this boy.

If we as a community or society cannot even handle this, I don't see us handling the coming jump in the ability to discern gene-related health info from microarray analysis of genetic deletions/insertions.

Can people allergic to shrimp have their genes altered?
Poor people!

MedsVsTherapy,
I have already heard from a geneticist:
"The ethics will have to accept this. There's no way back."
He used the word ethics as if he was referring to a bunch of retrogrades who can not see the wonders of science.
We are dealing with highly serious issues. It's amazing that the society is not discussing it, worse, is not even aware of what is happening.

Psychiatry stands for sociopathic criminals..

My skeptical genes are expressed & that's why I don't respond positively to antidepressants.

This is basically eugenics, no?

This is all such horseshit. A modern day version of phrenology mixed with faulty genetics. Let’s get real: Despite all of the research, there is still no biological marker for Alzheimer’s disease, let alone schizophrenia. One would think biological psychiatry could at least provide markers for these two disorders, as well as, perhaps bipolar I disorder. But despite the claims, no such markers exist. I am hopeful that research will soon be able to provide such markers for these disorders, as anyone who has half a brain would see that there is some significant genetic contribution at work here. But Depression? Anxiety? Adjustment Disorder? Conversion? Somatoform? Malingering? Personality Disorder? In other words, the bulk of psychiatric disorders seen in practice? Genetic markers devoid of environmental contributions? All to be cured by a pill? Dream on you deluded nuts!

this makes me think of Minority Report where criminals are caught before they commit a crime...and well if you see the movie you know how bad that turns out...

Peace be with you

I will try to bite my tongue here, but isn't "genetic determinism" eugenics? Isn't that what those psychiatrists in Nazi Germany were working on? Despite psychiatrist Dr. Carlos Blacker's "crypto-eugenics," I believe history will declare this is just the continuation of the dark eugenics days.

In my opinion people who believe they can predict the future, and worse, are willing to endanger lives because of that belief, are not only psychotic, but are also homicidal. I think even the DSM agrees with that.

love eternal
tad

a commenter a few months ago hit the nail on the head with the future of psychiatry

the decoding of the human genome will prove once and for all what a crock of pseudoscience biopsychiatry is

not too long ago KR Jamison empirically stated "the ongoing search for the manic depressive gene has been unsuccessful, the search continues now in combinations of genes"

as if we didn't already know that was coming

then we heard about bio markers for testing for the presence of bipolar and sz and not a peep from them since then

the worst possible thing that could happen to Big Pharma's profiteering off the raging bipolar bandwagon would be for there to actually exist a real definitive test for BPD,

as far as they are concerned, misdiagnosis/over-diagnosis is just as profitable

honestly why would anyone who has their fingers in the drug money jar want a DNA cure for mental disorders? there is much more money to be made in 'maintenance' drugs for problems

don't expect bipolar tests or genetic cures anytime soon, that would destabilize the current system which is working quite well for biopsych's CVs and pharma profits

notice the explicit assumption of the ongoing use of drugs

""Pharmacogenetic screening in clinical practice soon will become routine—it already is at a few U.S. academic hospitals—and will enable psychiatrists to customize drug treatment to achieve better efficacy and tolerability for each patient. This will help us adapt therapies to address genetic variations within our ethnically diverse society.""

they are not using genetics to create cures, they are using the genetic data to create more drugs

big pharma wouldn't have it any other way

Hopefully insurance companies & Medicare/medicaid won't pay for this.

First they are drugging us when there is no actual proof that there is a chemical imbalance, then they give us drugs for life that they have tested less than a year. Then the doctors who are prescribing the drugs don't even know what happens when you come off them, either because they haven't done it before, they just don't know or they assume the withdrawl effects are your symptoms returning and they give you more drugs. At this point I know more about the effects of the drugs, withdrawl vs. symptoms and how these drugs can actually prevent you from getting better----because you can't really feel the feelings they are telling you to work on, and you don't have the energy to do the work or stick with it. If they start giving drugs to kids because they "might" get "sick" they never give them a chance. Maybe they never will get "sick" and they never give them a chance or a choice to see if they can find a way to cope withot drugs. They say there is a drug problem with kids---If they start giving them these drugs just because---we will have an even larger drug problem, and this one is with drugs legally pescribed!

What Nasrallah is getting at is that some in psychiatry believe they can identify people at-risk for developing psychosis and zap them with antipsychotics and, then, they'll never develop schizophrenia.

This is a two-part claim. The first part, simple prediction, is a huge break through, worthy of the Nobel prize. Just think what it is saying: Certain innocent features, perhaps patterns of thinking, perhaps measurements of metabolism, turn out to conceal a pattern that can be teased apart to yield accurate predictions of who goes on to develop schizophrenia.

If we knew such things we could very likely develop a taxonomy of the various kinds of schizophrenia. The simple act of splitting a family of diseases into its distinct parts would be a huge step forward for medical research. The knowledge behind our predictive power be rich in clues about the causes of schizophrenia, opening up a vast area of new theraputic possibilities.

The claim of predictive power is such a big, startling claim that it is bound to be disbelieved. Any-one who thinks they can really do it should be happy simply to prove the point beyond doubt, with sealed envelopes to be opened in five years time, saying who will fall ill.

Once they have proved the point, there will be a huge dog-pile, as every-one tries to develop interventions that work.

Think about two-at-once research, which combines a prediction with a therapy, and then claims the illness didn't develop because the prediction was true and the therapy effective. In our current circumstances, attempting two-at-once research, instead of settling for proving that one can really predict, is ill-judged and undermines the credibility of the researcher.

"If we knew such things we could very likely develop a taxonomy of the various kinds of schizophrenia."

This would be great if done in good faith but with the kind of model we have now that have renamed maniac-depressive psychosis into something that created more confusion - "bipolarity" - and create more and more diseases I fear what they would come up.
I wish that DSM-5 confabulations were not being done behind close doors.
Unfortunately the public is not aware that mental health is being treated as a commodity that reach every human being.
I believe that it would be easier if they made a list of "normal behaviour".
It would make things more simple.

Normal people list of symptoms - by APA, Harvard, Emory with a little help from others

Statistics shows that normal people:

1) laugh from 1 to 7 times a day;
2) cry from 0 to 1 time a month;
3) have the capacity to pay attention and focus on a subject for 50 minutes;
4) get sad 7 times a month;
5) get happy 35 times a year;
6) can grieve from 1 to 2 months;
6) never visit blogs like Furious Seasons and keep whining about psychiatry

Those who don't follow these patterns are mentally ill and need psych-drugs treatment.

"You are ugly" prove or disprove that, and once you believe you are ugly, do you take care of yourself? No, because you believe you are ugly.

People forget the effects of naming some one else a freak. The actual power to impose the bullying name, puts on-in the mind of the recipient-victim they are the description.

"You will become ugly, if you don't take this medicine. I've seen it before. You can trust me".

I wrote a post on fixing a roof that wasn't broken.
LINK