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New Rheumatoid Arthritis Medications: The Life Threatening FDA Drug Approval Process
Your doctor may not be telling you about all the risks associated with any new drug that comes to the market, including new arthritis drugs:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/01/deadly-medicine-201101
This well documented article, in the Jan 2011 edition of the respected magazine, Vanity Fair, is important because it exposes fraud and testing issues within the FDA drug approval process. These problems allow potentially life-threatening drugs to be approved for use in the United States.
I recommend not using any newly approved drug (including arthritis drugs) until it has been on the market for a while. In this way, any undisclosed problems will come to light first.
Remember Celebrex? It is one of the many drugs mentioned in the Vanity Fair article. It developer and manufacturer, Pfizer, apparently knew before it ever applied for drug approval, that Celebrex increases the chance of heart attacks and strokes among those who take this long term (like people with arthritis).
However, Pfizer did not release this information to the public, to doctors, or to the drug approval committee. The Vanity Fair article explains how the drug trial process makes it easy for companies to avoid disclosing the results of trials with negative results.
Instead of dropping Celebrex or disclosing this known danger, Pfizer aggressively marketed Celebrex without disclosure. It sold $3.3 billion of Celebrex in 2004, the year it was finally pulled from the market.
By that time many people were taking the drug. It became impossible to hide the fact that too many long term users were having heart attacks and strokes.
Pfizer was able to make a lot of money for many years by withholding information on one of the dangers of this drug and then aggressively marketing it while these dangers were still not recognized by doctors and the general public.
Ironically, the marketing for Celebrex suggested that this drug was safer than other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on the market.
Next time big pharma is pushing its next latest and greatest arthritis drug, don’t be the first to try it out. Leave that to other eager beavers. If the drug is really that great and that safe, you can try it later, after any problems with the drug have time to come to light.
In the meantime, I suggest other non-drug solutions, like the ones I advocate in my book, Conquering Arthritis.
I’d really rather you eliminate the underlying causes of your arthritis and no longer need any drugs at all.
Barbara Allen is the author of the best selling book, Conquering Arthritis. Visit her website for more info on rheumatoid arthritis medications.
