PBS: Frontline - Dangerous Prescription

[adec]

What started as a program about drug safety vs. efficacy by PBS, turned into an indictment against the FDA and the drug approval/regulatory/monitoring process.

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From PBS' homepage, their own introductory essay on this report, "David Archer had high cholesterol but was otherwise in good health in the fall of 2000 when he began taking Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering "statin" drug that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had recently approved to be sold at a dosage four times higher than the originally approved dose. About two months after starting the higher-dosage drug, Archer would be dead.

What David Archer hadn't known was that more than five months before his death, the drug's manufacturer, Bayer, had received strong indications that Baycol might be many times more likely than other statin drugs to cause a rare, life-threatening muscle wasting side effect known as rhabdomyolisis. Following Archer's death, it would be another eight months before Bayer would voluntarily remove the drug from the market in August 2001 because of this side effect.

You can watch this entire powerful documentary for yourself on-line. I urge everyone here to do so.
*http://www.pbs.org/wgbh//pages/frontline//shows/prescription/view/

[tex62]

This is an amazing documentary. The disregard for human life is maddening. Everyone should watch some or all of the documentary listed in the above post.

[Biologist]

I recommend all of them.

Biologist