The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may finally be taking a step in the right direction. After being publicly scrutinized by Congress, medical experts and consumers for its slow response to emerging information about cardiovascular risks prompted by pain medications, the FDA is starting to offer risk information to the public much sooner.
How? The agency has launched a new Web site, Drug Watch, which will issue alerts to patients and doctors regarding drug safety concerns.
So far, the safety alerts posted on the site are significant, as they highlight the risks posed by doctors prescribing drugs for purposes never approved by the FDA -- an approach known as "off-label prescribing."
Making a Change
The site is certainly a notable change, considering how the FDA used to communicate drug risks: For months or years they privately weighed and debated risk information with drug companies until a final decision was made on the scientific significance of danger.
The agency will still give drug companies a heads-up before posting new, potentially damaging information about safety concerns they find. However:
But, while the FDA seems to be making a move in the right direction, one hang-up remains: The site calls on patients to find drug information on the Internet instead of it being given to them when they pick up prescriptions.
Seattle Times May 21, 2005
It appears as though the enormous amount of negative PR the FDA has recently received from Congress, medical experts and the public may finally be making a difference. The creation of this new informational Web site will hopefully provide another tool you can use to protect yourself and your family from the potential health risks posed by drugs.
Vioxx is a perfect example of why such a change needed to happen. Many of the 55,000 who were killed by taking this drug would have appreciated having a resource like this to check out their drug before it killed them.
Please remember that you can always use my site to research some of the potential dangers of any drug you are currently taking or considering. Tens of thousands of physicians regularly use this site for that very purpose, as we have nearly 60,000 pages of free archived content.
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