Clozapine
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Is The Schizophrenia Mortality Study In The Lancet CREDIBLE?
A study purporting to analyze mortality rates of 66, 881 schizophrenia patients in Finland (1973 to 2005) was published in the prestigious journal, The Lancet. A critical analysis by psychiatrist, Grace Jackson, MD, identifies fatal flaws in the study design and numerous methodological artefacts that introduced bias which minimized the detection of drug-related mortality. The authors’ conclusions favoring the long-term use of second-generation antipsychotics, and Clozaril in particular, as Dr. Jackson demonstrates, are not supported by their study design: indeed, their "favorable" conclusions about patients' mortality were based upon numerous confounders (methodological tricks and problems) which mitigated the detection of actual drug-associated mortality.
Vera Hassner Sharav, AHRP/The Lancet

[2009 March] Hundreds of deaths linked to schizophrenia drug clozapine   Fifty people die each year and hundreds more suffer serious side-effects as the result of taking powerful tranquillisers prescribed by the NHS....Data from the medicine watchdog’s own reporting scheme suggests that clozapine, a drug taken by schizophrenia patients, has been linked to 950 deaths since being licensed in 1990 — equivalent to nearly one fatality a week.