AVANDIA is just one of many others. Vioxx, Bextra, Alleve, Oxycontin . . .

[Guest guest]

How it got approved is easy: MONEY!

 

Money talks while our health walks is the name of the game here. When

a major drug company invests hundreds of millions of dollars to

shepherd a drug through development and trials and on to market, they

do not intend to have wasted the money. And the agency that serves

them, the FDA, seldom fails to make sure they don't.

 

Even, imho, if that means leaving a known dangerous drug on the market

long enough to insure that massive profits have been reaped.

 

The Avandia scandal demonstrates the hidden toll of harmful drugs and

doctor errors.

 

When a patient dies from a harmful drug side effect, or from a

treatment such a chemo or radiation that destroys a major organ, it is

usually attributed to the original condition the patient was being

treated for.

 

Which means that deaths due to drugs and doctors errors, huge as they

are, are still grossly under-reported.

 

Deaths from natural alternatives in the meanwhile are very, very few -

even though every single one receives massive media coverage.

 

 

oleander soup , robert-blau wrote:

>

> [wddty.co.uk]

>

> AVANDIA: So. . .how exactly did it get approved in the first place?

>

> The sudden safety alert from America?s drugs regulator, the Food and

> Drug Administration (FDA), about the diabetes drug Avandia leaves two

> vital questions unanswered. The alert follows a study that has

> discovered that Avandia (rosiglitazone) increases the risk of heart

> attack by 45 per cent.

>

> Why, in the first place, did the drug get approved? It is part of a

> family of drugs known as thiazolidinediones, which were discredited in

> the earliest stages of their development. Another thiazolidinedione,

> muraglitazar, was withdrawn from the licensing process after early

> trials found it increased the chances of heart attack. On hearing the

> news, other drug manufacturers abandoned the development of their own

> thiazolidinedione.

>

> So how did GlaxoSmithKline?s Avandia slip through the net?

>

> The second question concerns ongoing safety checking. It?s well known

> that diabetics are much more prone to heart disease; it?s also known

> that the thiazolidinediones increase that risk further. So why is it

> that in the eight years since approval, GSK has not undertaken a major

> study into Avandia?s safety?

>

> In the event, it took two researchers from the Cleveland Clinic to

> review 42 small studies to come up with the alarming ? but hardly

> surprising ? conclusion about the drug?s dangers.

>

> Avandia is one of the most popular of the drugs for treating type II

> diabetes. It?s not known exactly how many prescriptions have been

> written for the drug, but GSK reveals that the drug?s quarterly sales

> stand at £414m, or £1.65bn a year, so it?s reasonable to assume that

> millions of tablets have been swallowed.

>

> This beggars a third and final question: just how many people have died

> because of Avandia, and all the time the doctor was blaming the

> diabetes?

>

> (Source: New England Journal of Medicine, May 21, 2007, published online

> as: 10.1056/NEJMoa072761).

>