5 Drugs Under Fire

Taste for Life/January 2005

A 20-year veteran of the U.S Food and Administration (FDA), David J. Graham, MD. MPH, recently sent shock waves through the medical community and patient’s when he told a Senate hearing that five widely used drugs should be with drawn or sharply restricted-due to damaging side effects. The dangerous drugs, all of which the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has been fighting for years, include:

1. Abbott Laboratories Meridia increases blood pressure, while doing little to promote weight loss.
2. AstraZeneca’s statin drug Crestor raises the risk of kidney failure and a rare muscle disorder.
3. GlaxoSmithKline’s Serevent increases mortality rates in asthma.
4. Pfizer’s Bextra has cardiovascular risks similar to Vioxx, another COX-2 inhibitor recently pulled from the market.
5. Roche’s Accutane has caused birth defects when used by pregnant women.

“We are faced with what may be the single greatest drug safety catastrophe in the history of this country or…the world,” says Dr. Graham. Harvard Medical School associate professor Jerry Avorn, MD, says, “Since the mid-90’s, the FCA has seemed more concerned about meeting the needs of the average drug company than meeting the needs of the average patient.