Public Citizen Urges FDA to Ban Avandia
On March 8, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen sent a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration urging it to ban the diabetes drug Avandia.
In the letter, Public Citizen Director Sidney Wolfe MD notes the recent FDA recall of products that contain hydrolyzed vegetable protein because of salmonella concerns. Yet, drug safety has not received the same level priority.
Public Citizen highlights the FDA’s failure to ban three harmful prescription medicines, diabetes drug Avandia, the painkiller propoxyphene which includes Darvocet and the diet drug Meridia.
As Wolfe notes, last year a large Canadian study found that heart failure and death was much higher people who used Avandia instead of its safer competitor Actos. For every million people who received Avandia, there were 8,300 more instances of heart failure and 3,500 more deaths than among the patients who were prescribed Actos.
As a result, the American and European Diabetes Associations have unanimously advised against using Avandia.
Wolfe writes:
By deciding not to ban three drugs in particular, the FDA has endangered the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of people. For each of these drugs there is unequivocal evidence that their dangers, resulting collectively in hundreds of deaths each year, clearly outweigh their health benefits.
If you or a loved on suffered a heart attack after taking Avandia, contact the attorneys of Carey, Danis & Lowe. We can help. Carey, Danis & Lowe is a national law firm that represents individuals injured by America’s largest corporations.
