Monday, October 29, 2007 - (Byron J. Richards, CCN)
Trasylol is a drug that promotes clotting and is given during heart by pass surgery. It is one of the new and expensive biotech drugs of Bayer. Patients generally don’t know they are getting it, and it significantly increases kidney failure and the likelihood they will die at a significantly increased rate in the next few years following surgery. You can imagine that giving a clotting drug to patients with clogged arteries may have some problems. There are other options that are inexpensive and don’t carry the risks.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - (Byron J. Richards, CCN)
Billions of dollars of profit are at stake. The new generation of biotech drugs is upon us. Will they help or will they kill? The answer, it appears, depends on the dose. More importantly, the answer depends on the moral integrity of oncologists that treat their patients. What should society do with doctors that put money in their pockets as a priority over the lives of their patients?
Monday, October 15, 2007 - (Byron J. Richards, CCN)
Since mid summer I was the primary drum beat warning of the grave consequences to health freedom and health in general about turning the FDA into a pseudo drug company by giving it control over the licensing, patenting, and profits of the very drugs it is supposed to be regulating. Congressional birdbrains failed to even debate the most sweeping change of the FDA in a hundred years!
Wednesday, October 10, 2007 - (Byron J. Richards, CCN)
The Wall Street Journal has outlined for the world the rapidly expanding Chinese drug market. Many of the ingredients in brand-name drugs people already take come from China. China is already the largest producer of chemicals for drugs. For example, AstaZeneca’s Seroquel, a powerful anti-psychotic medication that is routinely (and inappropriately) prescribed in an off-label manner to children for mild behavior issues is produced with chemicals that come from China.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007 - (Byron J. Richards, CCN)
The New York Times reports that the FDA fails to ensure the safety of millions of people who participate in experimental clinical trials. In fact, the government doesn’t even have any idea how many of these experiments are taking place. The FDA haphazardly follows up on less than 1%, and when problems are found little or nothing is done.
