Today’s Los Angeles Times has a feature analyzing the FDA’s so-called “black box” warning labels – and why some risky drugs receive them while others don’t.
The article specifically poses this question:

Cipro and the similar antibiotics are given the agency’s strictest label, while epilepsy drugs Lyrica, Depakote and Topamax may have escaped. Why?
There’s nothing earthshaking in [...]

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I wrote the other day about the hypocrisy –not to mention true gall — that pharma apologists like Peter Pitts have shown in their attacks on Canadian drug reimportation.
Essentially, Pitts argues that Americans should not be permitted to buy Canadian drugs because the FDA is incompetent to regulate these imports and keep the [...]

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You might think Big Pharma would give up its longstanding fight against Canadian drug reimportation — now that both John McCain and Barack Obama vocally support it (not to mention 80 percent of the American public).
You’d be wrong.
As it turns out, Big Pharma believes it has a trump card in its bid to maintain its [...]

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Comedienne Tracey Ullman debuted a new series on Showtime this season, and one of her funniest bits was making fun of FDA policy that — officially, at least — forbids American consumers from purchasing drugs from Canadian pharmacies. Check it out:

It’s funny stuff. Of course, the reality, for those familiar with the law, [...]

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‘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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