TomLamb

Consumers Union’s Approach to Improving Drug Safety Surveillance is Misguided

You have presented a very good idea about how to improve the FDA's performance as regards its drug safety oversight mission.

The problem of not reporting serious side effects caused by prescription drugs seems to ingrained in medical doctors, generally, and this problem apparently goes beyond the U.S., as is seen
in this February 2008 article from the British Medical Journal:

"Most doctors still don’t report adverse reactions to drugs" (www.bmj.com/cgi/conten...).

Your idea about how to cure this problem is sound, and would be implemented if we were ready to spare no expense to further drug safety in in the U.S. Unfortunately, in our nation today your idea may not be feasible, practically, due to its costs.

Another idea which may be not as good as yours -- but would serve as an improvement to how the system functions today -- involves medical information databases maintained by large HMO's and other medical insurance entities being searched, or "mined", by software programs to detect possible emerging drug safety signals.

Lastly, I applaud Consumers Union for seeking to raise awareness about the MedWatch program and how patients can report their serious side effects to the FDA.

In closing, thanks for your article and effort towards improving the safety of prescription drugs.


Tom Lamb

www.DrugInjuryWatch.co...