“what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence” - C.Hitchens
So lets focus on what we do know. Finasteride was actually approved by the FDA for MPB due to its apparent safety treating BPH. There have been 1 million prescriptions for Propecia yet only a few hundred are involved in legal action. This website has only 2000 members of those only a small number are active and only 150 tried to take part in Dr Irwigs study. All evidence points to this being a very rare problem.
Did you pull the “1 in 1000 terriroty” out of the hole in your impotent dick? So someone has persistent fin side effects? they have to register on propeciahelp forum?
Its the only conclusion based on what we known. Based on teh internets and based on whats happening in the real world. You can also watch the video interview where Dr Irwig states sides to be around “1 in 100 or 1 in 1000”. The fact more havent registered on this website is not evidence that there are more sufferers who just have havent registered.
A chance of 1 in 1000 from the use of a cosmetic drug is still high and Merck should have been alert to this in post-marketing surveillance .
I believe Dr. Traish has mentioned there is sufficent evidence to suggest nearly all men would develop side effects at some point. Certainly it isn’t a stretch to suppose this website represents the tip of the iceburg.
I recall him indicating this in an interview at one time- seems brokenpecker remembers the same. He stated everyone would likely have some degree of side effects at some point. Your quote above isn’t contradicting that if I’m reading it correctly. He seems to be talking about very serious sides in that quote. As we all know from here on the site some guys were really hammered and some here were more mildly effected.
Where did he say this? Find your quote, it seems crucial. The quote I found does contradict it, in fact in context he seems to be reffering to the men with persistent sides not severity.
You might also be interested to know that most of the men inelligable to take part in Dr Irwigs study where unable to do so because they technically do not suffer from sexual dysfuncton. This points to most of the men who are effected in some way eventually finding their way to this website.
Traish said it here health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/womens-health/articles/2011/03/10/sexual-side-effects-from-propecia-avodart-may-be-irreversible
As for this affecting one in a 1000, by your own stats you are wide of the mark as 2000 members would mean two million users of the drug, and only half that number of prescriptions have been filled - some of which may be from the same users. That’s before we even get round to discussing lurkers and people who don’t link symptoms or cause, don’t know about the site etc. Irwig himself said we are likely to be the tip of the iceberg.
Regarding Irwig’s study, most of the men who were ineligible were because they had a prior history of depression or other med use.
Traish he has not said in that link if persistent sides are common. And thats the issue.
1 million scripts for Propecia does not include generics, proscar. Im also unclear if that 1 million is just the USA or global. Its also unsafe to assume all of the 2200 have persistent sides, some clearly do not, and theres only a tiny fraction of regular posters/study subjects too. At best the website represents 1% of users.
Dr Irwig has contradicted himself about the % of sufferers. But on TV he clearly says “1 in 100 or 1 in 1000”.
I have got some figures mixed up. In Dr Irwigs study there where ONLY 92 interviews. Of those 17 inelligible due to prior depression etc and 4 inelligible because they did not technically have sexual dysfunction. Thats still only 92 out of 1600.
To prove the negative of this being a common condition you would need 10s of thousands of ‘lurkers’. Or 10s of thousands of people too stupid to link their problem to Fin. Or 10s of thousands of people over the course of a 6 years unable to use google (despite most people buying the drug or learning about the drug online).
The issue in this thread was clearly whether or not Traish said most men get sides on the drug. This is vital as it addresses another important problem, that Merck knowingly downplayed the risks of sexual sides by a factor of ten without even mentioning the other problems it causes. For me, even prior to PFS any benefit of the drug was vastly inferior to the problems it was causing and this is likely the same story for a good proportion of users.
Going by this site the vast majority of users. like 80-90%, got finasteride from a doctor or dermatologist. This perhaps different in somewhere like the UK where there is no hairloss industry to speak of and you wait three months or so to see a ‘derm’ instead of a couple of days, and he or she would probably only deal with proper health conditions like dermatitis, eczema etc. So more people buy online.
Irwig correctly says no one knows, how can they? All we have are anecdotal reports like on here as the post marketing studies and regulatory procedures are inept and slanted to shielding Big Pharma. You can’t measure for erections or libido as Merck know, otherwise the stuff would have been off the shelves years ago.
I don’t think that was a bad return for an internet forum based study. Many members with bad sides go awol for months or years at a time unfortunately. We were even less organised when the study was conducted than we are now.
There are at least eight to ten lurkers on for every member, sometimes many more. Clearly not all will have PFS but doubtless a good number will have. I often had bad loss of libido and ED on fin but didn’t join the dots like many others. Once you start taking the drug regularly you don’t analyse it or google it as you do when researching. As I understand it you also took time to link your problems to the drug despite being hit with some of the worst sides when stopping. Does this make you stupid? Just from recall I can think of many users like nyer, keepup and ten year user who didn’t know what had happened or took years to find the forum.
I don’t think the degree of sides you or I experienced where your life truly gets turned upside down are common, then we are truly in the one in 1000 territory unfortunately, but PFS in its various manifestations seems to affect about the same number of men who were only meant to get temporary sexual sides in Merck’s slanted and self conducted ‘studies’.
Just ignore Oscar. He has history of making baseless claims on this forum. Go back and read his previous posts. In fact I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if he is actually an employee of Merck, working to slander all of us here. Why else would someone who claims to be a victim from this God awful drug always argue the counter point in arguments such as this one; and always with no merit.
There is a social embarrassment element of this drug and the side effects that it causes that needs to be considered, when factoring the potential number of victims. I know I personally dreaded the idea of making an appointment to discuss the topic of sexual side effects caused with my doctor. It’s entirely possible that the number of victims is far higher than most estimates, simply because many men are too embarrassed to admit they have a problem.
You think 99.99% of members and ‘lurkers’ went awol for a year? Remember, lots of men who dont post often took part in that study.
Maybe 92 is everyone with a problem? That surely must be one possible conclusion.
Says the nystatin enema guy… Im just drawing out the logical conclusions from known facts. Im not really countering points because everything is a guess and i cant disprove a negative.
Facts? Where are the facts that back up this little claim of yours, below? There are none. Unless your referring to one of the Merck studies and then we will all have a laugh.
Where do I ever state Nyastatin enemas are the cure? I didn’t and that is exactly why you didn’t post link to anything.
The mere fact that you weren’t offended by an accusation that you are a Merck Employee is a little troubling to me.
SA, no one needs to be reminded about being impotent. Given your own condition I would think you would be more understanding. This is a rotten thing to do to anyone suffering sexual dysfunction, especially one of us.
Boston makes a good point following Oscar’s post. Oscar is correct, we don’t have evidence yet, however we also have factors inhibiting the collection of evidence: not mentioning the recent label change many side effects are not listed on the packaging; men taking 5 mg finasteride for BPH are mostly in an age range where they are told ED sides are natural, making it less likely that side effects from finasteride would be properly noticed and correctly identified and associated; embarrassment of discussing the side effects; and the cognitive issues/depression/fatigue caused by finasteride inhibit understanding of their situation and finding this community. Oscar, I’m not sure of your experience but many people here report that doctors simply aren’t aware that finasteride can cause these serious side effects, so if someone isn’t thinking too clearly and their doctor tells them their sides cannot be caused by finasteride, the bias would be for the patient to listen to their doctor, which leads to under-reporting.
Try and remember that we are all here for a reason, to research and support each other while we look for a cure.
Furthering the previous post, here’s a post by “Qweezy”, who did not use finasteride, in the menshealth forum. Here’s someone who describes himself as a bodybuilder until he developed serious health problems at the age of 22 including fatigue, impotence, and loss of libido. He was told these problems were psychomatic by two endocrinologists despite his young age and borderline hormonal tests. Hmm, those hormonal values below look familiar… The only marker by which the cause of sexual dysfunction was identified by the endocrinologists were hormonal values - in reference ranges that are equally applied to both Qweezy and his grandfather. The conclusion by the endocrinologists, which they seem to have stubbornly adhered to, was that if the hormones fell within the reference ranges than the cause must be psychosomatic. Yet the family doctor identified them as indicating a possible tumor.
If Queezy hadn’t sought a second opinion and accepted the questionable diagnosis he would have walked away from the endos seeking a cure to his “psychosomatic” problem. Next stop, antidepressant land.
This example illustrates how lightly doctors can take - and brush off - serious symptoms in young men. Can you imagine what happens with older men?
I dont see the point being made here. There is clearly a difference between visiting an anonymous website and speaking to a doctor.
Older men might be told their problem is not due to Proscar and therefore not do much about it. But we are just guessing at how older men will react - and trust me 50yo’s use the internet! I have personally been told by a leading Dr that I (we) may have reacted badly to Finasteride due to being young. Anyway, none of this would effect the number of men taking part in Dr Irwigs study (40yr age limit).
I don’t either. But it seems you put a hell of a lot of faith in some guy who can manage to get through medical school. When to the contray the medical community has at large ignored our problems and IMO is horribly misinformed, I went to endo’s asking to have my 3-Adiol-G tested and they weren’t all that familiar with the hormone. I don’t know what your point exactly is but your last statement makes it seem that seeing a doc is a end-all/be-all for people. Even though out of the thousands of doc’s all of us here combined have talked to, none have been able to put a true dent in our condition.
