Not logged in
Death knell for “poison in a pill” finally being sounded?
By Alice Wessendorf on 07/05/2010
What exactly does it take for a drug to be pulled from the market? How many people have to be made sick? How many people have to die?
Whatever those numbers are the FDA sure isn’t revealing them and apparently GlaxoSmithKline’s dangerous diabetes drug, Avandia, somehow still hasn’t reached them.
But at an estimated 100,000 extra “complications”…including heart attacks, strokes and deaths… from the drug a year and thousands of pending liability cases it’s certainly not from lack of trying.
It’s been three years since the red flag was first raised -- and frantically started waving -- on Avandia users’ increased cardiovascular risks. Yet unbelievably a doctor can still, to this day, pull out his pad and write you a prescription for this poison.
Now a new study by Dr. David Graham, the same researcher who blew the whistle on the death drug Vioxx, has once again brought to light some numbers that will be tough for the FDA to continue to ignore. And that might finally help signal the death knell for this killer.
Looking at data from almost 230,000 Medicare patients Graham and his colleagues found that Avandia raised a user’s risk of heart attack by 25 percent and risk of stroke by 27 percent. And scariest of all was that Avandia users risk of death was increased by as much as 17 percent.
After some serious toe-dragging, the FDA reluctantly gave Graham permission to release his paper for publication. But only after he made some noise last month when he feared his findings were being suppressed from the public.
The FDA is finally set to review the safety risks of Avandia in a public meeting this month. However, don’t expect them to support Graham’s findings. In their scramble to stay in the good graces of Glaxo they’ve already distanced themselves from the study by forcing Graham to add a disclaimer that his conclusions were not those of the agency.
But really, no disclaimer was necessary. His report clearly puts the health of the public ahead of the needs of the drug company. We KNOW those are not the conclusions of the FDA.
Printer-friendly versionAbout the author
An enthusiastic believer in the power of natural healing, Alice has spent virtually her entire 17-year career in the natural-health publishing field helping to spread the word.
She is an advocate of self-education and is passionate about the power of group knowledge sharing, like the kind found right here on HealthierTalk.com. Alice loves to share her views on holistic and natural healing as well as her, sometimes contentious, thoughts on the profit-driven inner workings of traditional medicine.
Follow Alice and HealthierTalk on Twitter.
Email this Article
Comments
The Grim Reaper
Food for thought. Why not get a way that every person working for the FDA especially the higher ups who are on the take of Big Pharma, be required to take the drugs that THEY approve of. I think that would help out a lot of people that get hurt by there approved DRUGS.
mediadawg
Avandamet seems to work for me. I was on Avandia, taken off of Avandia, watched my sugars go up under "other" diabetes medicines and decided to return, this time with Avandamet and now the sugars are under control along with diet and exercise. What do you say to those who use this drug and it is working? Stop taking it? Do you have an alternative?
Anonymous
The FDA plans to review Avandia for the 2nd time on July 13th and hopefully after that, there will be enough evidence to pull this drug off the market. Avandia has caused several problems among its users. People need to know about the risks.
Rabbit
I heard that they had said that Avandia should only be prescribed if all else failed. I was astounded that my friend came home from a bout in the hospital with a prescription for Avandia. She has recently been diagnosed with Type II diabetes and heart problems. Then she fell on a stairs and broke her leg. I told her about the worries I had with Avandia and she confronted her doctor and he removed Avandia and prescribed something else. There had been no effort to find any other drug for here diabetes. This was the first drug of choice for him. I just couldn't believe this doc hadn't heard aabout the problems with Avandia.
Post new comment