Propecia Kills Another Innocent Man in the UK

[mahhong]

I myself don't take finasteride due to experiencing some side effects whilst trying it several years ago (they were mild but they did persist whilst on the drug, they discontinued when I stopped it).

 

With that having been said, whilst I don't doubt finasteride may be able to cause serious and sometimes possibly long lasting effects, it's important to say just because a man attributes his depression, sexual dysfunction and/or suicidal feelings to finasteride that doesn't make it so.

 

Suicide is the leading cause of death in men under 40 here in the UK - there are a great number of men who become suicidal or severely depressed, sometimes without any blindingly obvious trigger. It goes without saying many of them do not take or never have taken finasteride. Similarly, sexual problems are incredibly common in men, not just in their 50s or 60s but increasingly in their 20s and 30s too.

 

I only say this in the interest of balance. Whilst I do think there is perhaps more to finasteride with regards to potential side effects and doctors should be upfront about this and not gloss over it, similarly I feel it's a little premature to label finasteride poison and claim it's causing sexual dysfunction in large numbers of men, or driving many of them to suicide. There isn't any definitive medical evidence this is the case - though I welcome further investigation into it and do see how there is plausible science behind it. In addition, as others have pointed out, this is a drug taken by tens of millions of men internationally, yet the community of those ardently claiming Post Finasteride Syndrome is probably less than ten or twenty thousand members, perhaps not even half that number. If it was ten times that number who were suicidal or sexually destroyed, that would probably still only represent maybe 0.5 - 2% of finasteride users at most.

 

In the same way we must not be overenthusiastic to minimise the uncertainties over finasteride, I think we mustn't be overenthusiastic to proclaim it a killer of men too. I hope we do get further investigation into the drug and better data on what it's doing and, if PFS is definitively discovered, we can develop a protocol on how to stop it or reverse it. However correlation does not equal causation and just because a man says finasteride drove him to depression or made him suicidal or destroyed his sex drive that doesn't categorically mean it's true. Many men suffer such problems and cannot find any particular cause, and often put it down to stress, to lifestyle problems, to other medication or other physiological problems.

 

The same potential issues are happening in a small number of men who take, for example, SSRI based drugs too. Again, a definite causal link has yet to be found but similar causes are being investigated (endocrine and genetic etiologies etc.). It seems some men are particularly fragile and any imbalance in their hormonal system may cause far longer lasting damage than usual - this could be drug based imbalances, poor lifestyle etc.

 

I think the bottom line is the problem is far more complex than simply finasteride = depression and sexual dysfunction. Some men suffer both with no drug usage, some men suffer nothing even though they're on finasteride, antidepressants, recreational drugs and more. We need to better understand the endocrine system and root causes of these problems in general.

 

It comes down to the rather mundane but usual truth - you have a very slim but real chance of serious, long-lasting side effects if you take finasteride, or any other endocrine altering drug most likely. In the case of finasteride, it's a purely elective medication, so you simply have to make a choice whether you take that risk or not.

[Dolph1969]

Great post.