Where The Holistic Rubber Meets The Scientific Road

Safety Issues With Quarter Of New Drugs

Well, I don’t have to beat this to death. We all know drugs are pretty iffy, don’t we?

Those of you new to my list may not be familiar with my saying: almost all drugs poison something. For example, pain killers poison part of the nervous system.

But the real issue, of course, is poisoning the patient when that’s not intended. Bad bad bad!

Now a Canada study (oh yes, the US authorities will pretend it has nothing to do with them) which reviewed new active substances (NASs) introduced between 1995 and 2010 has found that a quarter of them were dangerous.

By that, I mean that later problems forced regulatory bodies and manufacturers to face the fact the drugs were hurting people. In some cases, naturally, that meant approval was withdrawn. In other cases, the box label had to be altered to include a severe warning of death or damage.

Jeeez, these guys like to play with fire, don’t they?

Trouble is, we are the ones that get burned, not them.

[SOURCE: Arch Intern Med. Published online October 8, 2012. Research letter abstract, Commentary extract]

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