A Philadelphia federal court has issued a decision that, in contrast to much recent jurisprudence, resolved FDA pre-emption issues favorably to tort plaintiffs. Beck and Herrmann sort out the significance.

The case was one blaming the antidepressant Paxil for a teenager's suicide, and a report last week (summarized in the Washington Post) raises further questions of whether the panic a few years ago based on claims of such a link may have done more harm than good:

Suicides among U.S. children appear to be on the rise after a 15-year decline, and the trend may owe, in part, to fewer teens being prescribed antidepressants, a new study suggests. ...

One possible explanation for the increase could be that antidepressant use among children has been the subject of intense controversy in recent years, making doctors and parents more reluctant to use them.