(If you live in California, please at least read the last two paragraphs, if not the whole thing)
Although this issue is slightly old, I felt that it was important enough to be covered even now. An issue that deals with estimates of up to 55,000 deaths isn't something that ought to be set aside. Do I have your attention now?
I'm sure many of you are familiar with a variety of brands of prescription drugs. We've all seen commercials for them before, and perhaps you or someone you know has taken some before (which is very likely). There's a million of them: Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Viagra, Adderall, Ritalin, Vioxx and the rest. Even if you no idea really what they are for, I'm sure you're familiar with the names. That's not really the point though; the point is, these prescription drugs have become so almost ingrained into American society nowadays that they are something that is taken at face value. They're expensive pills that help sick people in ways that normal over-the-counter medicines can't. Such drugs are used by tens of millions of people throughout America on a daily basis, so you would think that special attention would be heeded to the safety of these products. Especially ones which had results showing that some of these drugs didn't work and/or killed people. You would think so, anyway... but then again, current laws allows drug companies to not disclose the results of negative health studies.
Take Vioxx, for example. Vioxx is manufactured by Merck Inc. and received FDA approval in 1999 as a painkiller, prescribed for patients with arthritis. They began to market the hell out of it then and it became very successful. However, in 2000, Merck's own clinical trial, known as VIGOR, showed that patients taking Vioxx had twice the rate of cardiovascular problems as patients taking a similar drug and five times as many heart attacks among those taking Vioxx as those taking another painkiller, naproxen. What did Merck do? It issued a press release saying that there was no difference in heart attack risk between Vioxx and other, older pain medications. A year later, Merck issued a memo to all of its sales representatives called "Vioxx Dodge Ball", which specifically ordered the representatives to "dodge" doctors' questions about the risks of taking Vioxx and to make false claims of superior cardiovascular safety. Sales reps were even encouraged to compare their efforts to the struggles of historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr. (I wish I were kidding). Keep in mind that all of this was happening while FDA was attempting to include a warning on Vioxx's label about these dangers. Amusingly enough, Merck then issued a press release titled "Merck Confirms Favorable Cardiovascular Safety Profile of Vioxx". The FDA would later warn Merck that "[Y]our claim in the press release that Vioxx has a favorable cardiovascular profile' is simply incomprehensible'. It wouldn't be until 2004 that Merck finally withdrew Vioxx from the market, after over 100 million Vioxx prescriptions had been filled. FDA estimates put the number of Americans suffering heart diseases as a result of Vioxx at around 140,000 and the number of deaths resulting from it at 42,000 to 55,000.
Another example would be the anti-depressant Paxil, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. Analyses of 15 clinical trials, many hidden for years from the public by GlaxoSmithKline, showed a consistent link between Paxil and suicidal behavior. There was an increase in suicidal thoughts and depression among teenagers and children. The drug, according to the studies, worked for adults, but for teenagers and children, not only did they have no effect on depression, but, out of every 100 children and teenagers, 2 or 3 would become suicidal who otherwise would not have had they given placebos. So, basically, Paxil didn't work for non-adults and actually did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do.
Despite all of this, how much action has the government done to attempt to remedy this problem and prevent another scandal, one that may cost thousands of more lives? Not very much. There are no laws that specifically make it illegal for drug companies to hide negative test results for their products and so these companies continue to get away with this kind of appalling behavior. It is not particularly surprising. In 2004, the pharmaceutical industry contributed $17 million to federal candidates and $7.3 million for the parties' conventions (neither of the major parties are particularly innocent in this case). Also, the industry spent $158 million on lobbying in 2004, with more than two lobbyists for every member of Congress. It is no wonder that Washington has done almost nothing to fix this problem.
These companies are playing with the lives of consumers in order to make a profit and it has to be stopped. The currently most realistic solution comes from legislature which will hopefully be passed in California next year. CalPIRG (California Public Interest Research Group) and a number of other consumer advocacy groups have been pushing for what is known as the Prescription Drug Right-To-Know Bill, a California state law which would require that prescription drug companies to register their clinical trials, require them to publish the results of these trials whether they produce positive or negative results, and then would fine the drug companies that fail to comply with this law. Obviously, there is intense pressure from the pharmaceutical industry to weaken or defeat this bill (Assembly Bill 72). A national version of this would be great too, of course, but it would be understandably much harder to pass and this would essentially achieve the same results. If prescription drug companies wanted to do business in California (which they would of course want to, seeing as how large the economy is in the state), they would have to publish these trial results for the world to see.
If you'd like to help and live in California, (and seeing as how this only takes 20 seconds or so, I would hope that you'd be willing), go to
this website and add your name and information to send a message to your Assemblymember asking them to support this bill when it comes up for a vote in January.