is the Federal Drug Administration FDA guilty of neglect? Vioox and Bextra?
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at
9:55 am
VIoOX By MERK was APPROVED by the FDA to be a SAFE DRUG. It went on the market after the FDA said it was safe. Now we find that it causes all kinds of problems. We know that the FDA DOES NOT TEST the drugs before approving them. Shouldn"T MERK be fined for giving FALSE TEST RESULTS to the FDA? Who caused the health of many thousands of our citizens to worsen. TheFDA or MERK? Neither did what they are paid to do. Bextra is another example of how crooked the FDA and drug makers are.
Vioox may be spelled incorrectly. Spell checker did not know either.
At the top of the FDA is a political appointment. All of the good honest people that work below are subject to the whims of the people at the top. If they have ties to drug companies, lo and behold, approval for a questionable drug.
Laws can only take us so far, good people can take us the rest of the way. My favourite example of this is NASA, a so-so bureaucracy that did extraordinary things with the right people, and is now wallowing in mediocrity.
The FDA has cause many thousand of our citizens to suffer through their inability to be consistant in approval of safe drugs and disapproval of unsafe ones. Merck is guilty of lobbying for drugs they have that they don’t know fully about. One hand washes the other here, i’m sad to say.
Every drug has side effects and risks. Merck had conflictiing data as to whether or not it produced clot risks, so they went forward with it. ther are grey areas in science. they didnt give false test results, they didnt think they had suffecient evidence that it was a signifcant risk and the FDA agreed, and they turned out to be wrong. Youre more likely to have a heart attack from smoking than taking Vioxx- its not like they were selling rat poison.
on a side note, i bet that had it been a published side effect, people wouldnt care and just as many would be taking it.