This collection of articles from Bloomberg below is an examination of the recent wave of drug-testing scandals.
They include a look at the case of the patients who experienced potentially deadly reactions during a British drug test last month, and the cover-ups and conflicts of interest that led to the situation.
Other pieces track the progress of a U.S. Senate probe into New Jersey-based SFBC International, a drug-testing company that allowed a Haitian immigrant and tuberculosis patient to participate in a drug trial, infecting other patients as well as company employees.
Another article describes a doctor who volunteered for a drug-testing trial and died as a result of improper monitoring, poor care, and insufficient warnings.
Taken as a whole, the articles paint a dark picture of the current state of drug testing, in terms of the safety of both the final products and the tests themselves.
One of the patterns that makes me most angry with multi-national drug corporations is their commitment to the corporate mantra of maximizing the profit to their shareholders at any cost, including that of human lives.
Merck has and will take a major beating for following this rule, as they have already lost $30 billion and could easily double that loss with costs to sue Merck in court over Vioxx dropping from $1 million to $50,000.
You might have hoped the loss that Merck is currently experiencing -- due to their conspiracy to keep the lethal side effects of Vioxx secret -- would serve as a powerful example to other companies to not repeat such scandalous behavior.
It seems some companies just have to learn the hard way.
And, what about where those cover-ups usually begin: At the point drugs are being tested?
That's the theme behind this awesome collection of articles by Bloomberg, providing more insight about the more recent scandals, including the six British patients harmed in the TeGenero drug study conducted by Parexel in London not long ago.
Does the news of fatalities and safety violations during and after drug trials make a difference? Or, will the FDA slap on black-box labels that few people read, and bring the drugs to market anyway? Or, as in the case of the lethal multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri, will regulators simply ignore the results and reapprove it for use?
Folks, all this bad publicity is, by no means, the last time we'll learn about the toxic properties of new drugs or the flawed means by which they're tested after the fact. Nevertheless, your health belongs totally to you. No one else is responsible for it.
Drugs are rarely anything more than a short-term band-aid to your health problems. They are convenient short-term fixes for which many of us are grateful. The problem results when you believe the deception the multi-national drug corporations exude and choose them as the long-term answer to your health challenges.
Life would be grand if we could just swallow a pill and all our health problems would be solved. Believing this fairy tale will only make these companies wealthier and put you at risk for serious side effects or even death, like the 60,000 who chose Vioxx as their band-aid solution.
My best advice: Strive to better understand and treat the real problem behind your medical condition. There are tens of thousands of pages of free information on this site to help you achieve that goal. Additionally, I am working on changing the site into a health community that will serve you even better.
If Murphy's Law doesn't strike us too badly we hope to launch our new site by the fall. The site will deploy leading edge Web 2.0 technology and implement high-level social networking features.