Fast drug approvals costing patients' lives

FDA’s rush to approve drugs is killing Americans

I bet you’ve seen the routine a thousand times.

Whenever Big Pharma wants to rush through approval of one of its new meds, it’ll trot out some desperately sick mother, father or child who will die without it.

It’s heartbreaking — and it usually works.

Well, there are thousands more victims who never make it onto TV — but their stories are just as important.

I’m talking about all the people who are harmed when our government rushes a drug to market before taking the time to see if it works or if it’s safe. And with the feds rubber-stamping new meds at a record pace, there are more of these victims out there than ever before.

Two new studies in the journal BMJ show that the FDA is not only rushing drugs to market based on shoddy evidence, but these sped-up measures are causing more people to end up in the hospital or even dead.

You see, fast-tracking dangerous drugs without adequate testing turns us into unsuspecting guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry. It’s a scam to gouge the consumer without having to prove the drug works.

And plenty of patients are paying the price. Here are just a few examples:

• Hundreds of Americans died after the FDA rushed the dangerous blood-thinner Pradaxa through a short six-month review.

• The FDA had to revoke its approval of Avastin to treat breast cancer after research proved it didn’t work and could cause fatal bleeding.

• Since 1992, there’s been a 25 percent increase in the number of drugs that are slapped with black box warnings or pulled from the shelves altogether over safety disasters. Most of these drugs should never have been approved in the first place.

The worst part is that researchers found that 90 percent of these newly approved drugs don’t offer any clinical advantages over meds that are already on the market. They’re both unnecessary and dangerous.

So how can you find out if a drug you’re taking may have been approved after a rushed, shoddy review? You can actually search the FDA’s database for detailed records on any approved med.

Just search, click on the drug and scroll down to “approvals history.” If you see a med that was rushed through in six months or less — especially over the past 10 years or so — that should trigger a red flag and a conversation with your doc.

Sources:

2 new studies show the FDA is rushing more drugs to market based on shoddy evidence

(vox.com)

Do FDA’s Fast-Track Reviews Skimp on Important Data?

(medpagetoday.com)

Fast drug approvals costing patients’ lives