This is on point. I'm Begna Chakrabardi. A little more than two decades ago,

Pharma giant Pfizer began airing a commercial which was so effective, there's a good chance

you remember seeing it. It's that sad little hand-drawn blob whose life was changed by

Zoloft.

You know when you feel the weight of sadness, you may feel exhausted, hopeless, and anxious.

Whatever you do, you feel lonely and don't enjoy the things you once loved. Things just

don't feel like they used to. These are some symptoms of depression, a serious medical

condition affecting over 20 million Americans. While the causes are known, depression may

be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals between nerve cells in the brain. Prescriptions

Zoloft works to correct this imbalance.

P-depressants have been a godsend for millions of people who suffer from depression.

So today's show isn't about whether or not they work for some people because they do,

though they may not work for everyone. Today's show is about the fact that Pfizer and the

medical community don't know exactly how they work to relieve depression symptoms, especially

SSRIs or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Zoloft. So let me say that again. Doctors

and researchers do not fully understand why drugs like Zoloft work.

You could have been fooled by that Pfizer ad, though, and millions of people were because

remember how the ad talks about depression and a, quote, chemical imbalance in the brain?

That's the part of the ad with little line drawings of serotonin neurotransmitters floating

around in a synapse in the brain. Now, to be fair, the Pfizer ad does say depression

may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals, but the voiceover doesn't emphasize

the uncertainty. It doesn't say depression may be related to an imbalance of natural

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