Free Republic

Alf Clayfield, a custodian with the Kitchener-Waterloo school board poses at his Waterloo, Ont., home on April 24, 2009. Photograph by: Aaron Lynett, National Post A labour arbitrator has reversed the firing of a veteran elementary-school janitor who sucker punched his boss, ruling that an experimental arthritis drug the man was taking as part of a clinical trial helped trigger the angry outburst. It may be the first time in a Canadian legal hearing that pharmaceutical adverse effects have been successfully invoked to justify violent behaviour. The custodian, Alf Clayfield, had put in 22 years of generally exemplary service...

Seniors are 12.6% of population but 33.6% of serious adverse drug events Senior citizens represent a disproportionate share of adverse drug events as the number of serious outcomes reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) more than doubled between 1998 and 2005, as did deaths associated with adverse drug events, according to a report in the September 10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. A serious adverse drug event, as defined by the FDA, means an adverse event that resulted in death, a birth defect, disability, hospitalization, or was life-threatening or required intervention...

Tokyo Japan's health ministry says it plans to reissue a warning of dangerous behavioral side effects linked to the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu. This comes amid reports that several children in Japan died after taking the medication. Governments around the world are stockpiling the medicine amid growing fears of a possible human pandemic of avian influenza. Japan's health ministry says it is looking into reports of a number of sudden deaths of young people who had taken prescribed dosages of Tamiflu. The ministry confirms that it has concluded that the death of one boy was the result of side effects from...

FDA 'Incapable' of Protecting Public, Federal Reviewer Says The Associated Press The American public is "virtually defenseless" if another medication such as Vioxx proves to be unsafe after it is approved for sale, a government drug safety reviewer told a congressional committee Thursday. "I would argue that the FDA as currently configured is incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx," said David Graham, who warned that the arthritis drug had been linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. He told the Senate Finance Committee that there were at least five other drugs on the market today that...