Skeptical about side effects
According to [link|http://www.house.gov/stupak/accutane_stupak_statement.htm|Representative Bart Stupak's testimony], there were a possible total of 84 suicides between 1983 and 1998 attributable, or so Stupak said, to Accutane use.
According to a later PDF document on [link|http://www.house.gov/stupak/accutane.htm|the overall Accutane page], there were 54 suicides between 1998 and 2000, and a similar number of attempts. That sounds pretty scary, doesn't it?
But wait. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in people of ages 15-25. It's depressingly hard to get exact figures via a Google search (lots of pages, few with hard stats), but according to [link|http://www.jaredstory.com/teen_epidemic.html|this page], 5000 young people between the ages of 15-25 commit suicide each year.
Those suicides being blamed on Accutane? Well, you'd have to take suicides vs. overall usage and compare that with the same statistics for the general population to make a good case, but given the number of young people who commit suicide, I'm finding it hard to believe that Accutane "caused" it.
