Damn good article. The doctor's points make sense and we should heed his warnings about 'extravagant' and sometimes dangerous claims made by Big Pharma about its products.
The point he makes about Merck and its antiinflammatory drug Vioxx strikes a chord with me. The fact that Merck knew from its trials that the drug could bring on strokes and heart attacks and the fact that the corporation still went ahead and marketed it was an act of extremely unethical behavior - one that was completely unforgivable.
I occasionally took Vioxx for my sore back and it worked OK, so when I saw an article AAAS's Science magazine about worries about Vioxx's side effects I read it with interest.
After looking at the stats and graphs I immediately concluded that the drug would be banned. If I recall correctly that was about three years before the ban on Vioxx was put in place and it withdrawn from the market.
That the ban took so long from the time the article appeared in Science still troubles me. Why did it take so long to ban the drug and how many deaths occurred
unnecessarily in the intervening period? It's a question I've still no complete answer for.
As I alluded to in an earlier post on Purdue and its role in the opioid epidemic, it seems to me that the FDA and Big Pharma spend too much time in bed with each other and that this is a problem for the nation's health.
Please note, nothing I've said above conflicts with my view that it was the correct decision to rush the approval for this vaccine. In this instance, clearly the dangers outweigh the risks of not doing so.
All that said, I would still risk taking this vaccine as I know that the risk would be less risky than risking the likely worst effects of COVID-19.
The fact remains that we need to be very cautious about anything Big Pharma says.
The point he makes about Merck and its antiinflammatory drug Vioxx strikes a chord with me. The fact that Merck knew from its trials that the drug could bring on strokes and heart attacks and the fact that the corporation still went ahead and marketed it was an act of extremely unethical behavior - one that was completely unforgivable.
I occasionally took Vioxx for my sore back and it worked OK, so when I saw an article AAAS's Science magazine about worries about Vioxx's side effects I read it with interest.
After looking at the stats and graphs I immediately concluded that the drug would be banned. If I recall correctly that was about three years before the ban on Vioxx was put in place and it withdrawn from the market.
That the ban took so long from the time the article appeared in Science still troubles me. Why did it take so long to ban the drug and how many deaths occurred unnecessarily in the intervening period? It's a question I've still no complete answer for.
As I alluded to in an earlier post on Purdue and its role in the opioid epidemic, it seems to me that the FDA and Big Pharma spend too much time in bed with each other and that this is a problem for the nation's health.
Please note, nothing I've said above conflicts with my view that it was the correct decision to rush the approval for this vaccine. In this instance, clearly the dangers outweigh the risks of not doing so.
All that said, I would still risk taking this vaccine as I know that the risk would be less risky than risking the likely worst effects of COVID-19.
The fact remains that we need to be very cautious about anything Big Pharma says.
'Truth' and Big Pharma aren't easy bedfellows.