Posted on 07/24/2004 5:40:58 PM PDT by neverdem
PING
Uh, lady, the evil Bush administration is protecting the public - from zealots trying to sue the drug companies into bankruptcy.
My wife went through major Paxil withdrawal for weeks and she even tapered off of it very slowly and the nasty withdrawal lasted for over a month. Fever, flu, vomiting, it was terrible.
With that said, I still support the administration on this one. I support the free market and am opposed to government bureaucracy putting their fingers in the system. Everyone should be aware that any medicine, prescription especially has inherent risks involved. If you need to take the medicine, you need to deal with the side effects.
I agree... people don't understand that the interests of companies that provide us with services are our interests if we want to keep enjoying their services. It's like people who think Bush's Labor Department is evil for siding with companies over workers... if Bush didn't side with the companies, if he raised the labor costs of these companies these companies would go out of business and the workers would be unemployed... so Bush is on the right side of this.
No kidding - who does she think pays for those huge lawsuits? It's every consumer who actually has to pay for their medications.
But I don't think this is much more than a step in the righ tdirection. What really needs to happen is for this to be the stepping stone to tort reform.
It sounds like a good angle for the Feds to get involved with medical tort reform, but it still has to happen at the state level to get protection from shysters like Edwards. I believe the case he won started a very large increase in the number of deliveries by Ceasarian section while the number of children born with cerebral palsy remained the same.
What is the shift...didn't want to wade through all that crap to get to it...
Uh, who protected the tobacco companies when everybody and their brother started suing...including several states. The only people to benefit were the scumbag layers...
sI agree with the Bush administration on this also.
Some time back, I had a bladder infection. I don't have any medical problems, and I don't take any meds at all. So when I was given an antibiotic, I did not want it, but the infection was very bad, so I took it.
The thing like to have killed me!
I did not realize it was the medication until after I had taken up the first set and had just taken the second pill in the second set. It almost put me in the hospital again.
I have not been this sick in forever!
The antibiotic is Nitrofurantn and Nitrofur Mac.
My Dr. said these were "the big guns" in antibiotics for bladder infection.
The furantn was for 14 days and the mac was a very low dose to take when I felt the infection returning.
These two are in the same family, and is a NO-NO for me.
I suffered terrible complications with both of these.
To these, I am highly alergic.
But there is no reason for me to sue anyone.
I just won't ever take them again.
I am glad that the administration is taking some effort towards the John Edwards, let's sue everybody, kind of people!
at least W is willing to try.....any attempt at tort reform is long overdue since my grandpa's day.
~"Uh, who protected the tobacco companies when everybody and their brother started suing...including several states. The only people to benefit were the scumbag layers..."~
I also wonder why none of the tobacco (you forgot to say "Big Tobacco" by the way) companies' lawyers tried to point out that the state who was suing the tobacco companies collected a considerable amount of money in sales tax and would seem therefore to be in partnership with the tobacco companies since they benefitted from the sale. Also the state gave cigarettes to prisoners and the federal government provided smokes for the military. They were in collusion with Big Tobacco all along. How did they get away with suing them?
###This is NOT the way to resolve the issue of tort reform###
I agree - I buy bad motor oil for my car and the engine blows, I should recieve some form of compensation.
I get a undertested drug and am incapcipated I should be compensated also.
you need some mechanisim to keep the drug companies honest.
I like the limitation idea on the lawyers take to keep them from raiding companies like the drug,tobaccoand food companies like Mcdonalds just because they have more money than they do.
How about only letting them sue the FDA/Government itself! IT is hard to imagine the trial lawyers convincing juries of how evil the government is, when they give $10 million every 2 years to the DNC to make the same government as large as possible.
The Washington Post ^ | July 6, 2004 | Shankar Vedantam
Posted on 07/06/2004 11:10:59 PM EDT by neverdem
Firms Violate U.S. Law By Not Registering Trials
The pharmaceutical industry has repeatedly violated federal law by failing to disclose the existence of large numbers of its clinical trials to a government database, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
Doctors and patients say that compliance with the law would go a long way toward addressing their growing concerns that they are not being given the full picture about the effectiveness of many drugs because they are not told about drug trials that fail. The issue has gained urgency with recent disclosures that the publicly available research on treating children with antidepressants obscured the fact that in most studies, the drugs were no better than sugar pills. Drugmakers chose not to publish those studies.
The 1997 law is so little known that scientific journal editors and professional medical associations have recently debated whether to create a system of private incentives for disclosure of trials. When she was told the law already requires companies to register trials, Catherine DeAngelis, editor in chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, said, "That's a surprise to me. Tell me why it's not enforced."
Although the law was primarily passed for other reasons, DeAngelis said it could very well address her concerns.
The FDA acknowledges it has not enforced the law -- officials said the statute did not spell out penalties or explicitly give the agency authority to crack down on violators.
____________________________________________________________
Now that the companies have to submit the results of all tests of their drugs prior to FDA approval, as long as the FDA approved the drug, that should be the end of the matter, at least if it was prescribed for the approved indications. Docs should have patients sign waivers for adverse or allergic drug reactions. The same holds true for medical devices. The Congress needs to amend the law to give the FDA enforcement authority in order to levy fines where appropriate.
Why did your wife give up Paxil in the first place? Paxil works extremely well in replacing whatever chemical the brain was deficient in. Paxil replaces that chemical day by day, just as eating and drinking provides a neccessity the body and mind require.
Stopping Paxil once the need is proven, is as foolish as quitting food and drink. The problems aren't caused by the presence in the body and mind of supplements needed for proper function, but the denial of these neccessities.
If you think denying her system of the deficiency that was sated by Paxil was bad-try cutting off her food, oxygen and water.
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