Indeed. This is why the drug passed phase 1 (safety) trials when it was first approved in 1992 for treatment of prostate enlargement. Moreover, it subsequently passed additional rounds of clinical trials for the hair loss indication in 1998, and has been involved in more than 30 different clinical trials overall.
Now, I'm not going to argue that there can't be rare side effects that are only discovered with time. I'm also not going to claim that the original trials were perfect, or that research into the question isn't justified. But you're trying to assert that they didn't test for safety, and that's just factually incorrect.
I should take back my statement- I had a knee jerk reaction to someone saying that proof is required of harm for a drug, when I've seen so many cases of drugs being inadequately tested and then causing harm, and I think the precautionary principle is often not followed anywhere close to adequately when it comes to new chemical stuff we do to our bodies.
We probably mostly agree in principle. I'm not saying they didn't do safety testing. I would suspect that the safety testing was flawed as it has been in every other case that I have looked into, and failed to catch possible harms that may now be happening.
Whether those harms outweigh the benefits overall remains to be seen and likely will never be known unless it's really really bad, which is likely not the case here.
I'd agree more research is probably justified, but there's likely little profit in it for anyone.
> TFA cites eight peer-reviewed studies finding a link. Sounds like decent evidence to me.
There have been over 30 randomized controlled trials of this drug, and the author picked only eight papers, none of which were randomized, none of which were controlled, and all of which were based on mining self-reported data from patient databases.
There's an FDA-mandated warning label for every drug. The current label for Finasteride [1] includes depression only as a "postmarketing experience", which is based on the same data you're reading here (self reports), and is not reliable for determining causality. [2]
There is no current listing for suicide, suicidal ideation, etc.
[2] "Because these reactions are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequency or establish a causal relationship to drug exposure"
