‘Cause Big Pharma sure isn’t coming up with anything. According to PRWeek:
Only twice in the past three decades has the Food and Drug Administration approved fewer than the 18 it gave a thumbs up to in 2007. Compare that to 53 drugs in 1996. Oddly, the FDA said they hadn’t finished tallying numbers […]

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Sooooo… the FDA says it doesn’t inspect drugs imported from China and India (and sold through U.S. pharmacies) for safety. Did you know that almost 80 percent of the active ingredients in prescription drugs sold in the U.S. come from these countries?
And yet, the FDA still wastes its time with the “issue” of U.S. […]

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The FDA is considering allowing consumers to purchase some medications after consulting with a pharmacist — but without a doctor’s prescription. The creation of this “behind the counter” class of drugs would be a welcome relief for patients who don’t have the time or, in many cases, the money for frequent doctor’s visits — […]

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Thanks to new legislation soon to be signed by President Bush, the scandal-rocked FDA will have a host of new powers designed to enable them to better regulate prescription meds. Here is a quick summary from OnPharma:
-Order warnings on drug labels
-Review drug ads before they air on television
-Make results of drug clinical trials available […]

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If you’re like me, you’ve had it with the FDA’s lax enforcement of Big Pharma on safety issues. It’s time to write your Congressperson about it:
U.S.PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), has put together an online petition for you to sign. The petition states:
Dear Chairman Edward Kennedy, Chairman John […]

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Since the rule change in 1996 that allowed Big Pharma to begin advertising directly to consumers, drug advertising budgets have exploded — while policing of such ads for accuracy has steadily declined, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The thing I find most troubling about the report is that even though […]

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From HealthDay News:
The widely used but controversial diabetes drug Avandia will now have a strong “black box” warning on its label, advising users of an increased risk of heart failure, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced late Tuesday. Another four diabetes drugs from the same class, including Actos, will also carry a similar black-box […]

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From the LA Times:
Dying people do not have the right to obtain unapproved drugs that are potentially lifesaving, even if their doctors say the treatment offers the best hope for survival, a U.S. appeals court in Washington ruled Tuesday. In an 8-2 decision, the court said federal drug regulators are entrusted by law with […]

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Maggie Mahar, author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much, argues at TPMCafe that our “me”-oriented healthcare system makes it difficult to permit terminal patients to purchase potentially life-saving drugs that have not yet been approved by the FDA.
Writes Mahar:
A recent study shows that fully 42% of the products that […]

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From Forbes.com:
The U.S. Congress is poised to pass a bill that would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco. But experts are divided on whether the bill will have significant impact on tobacco use, a habit that kills some 436,000 Americans a year — nearly one in five deaths annually.
Identical […]

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