It's very interesting and disturbing for me to read in the wake of Vioxx being pulled from the U.S. market and signs that patients were suffering from heart attacks during drug trials as far back as 2000, a federal drug safety adviser's invitation to a governmental meeting early next year was rescinded because he had already publicly expressed doubts about Vioxx and Bextra.
Dr. Curt Furberg, a Wake Forest University School of Medicine professor of public health sciences, was one of the expert scientists responsible for showing Bextra was no safer than Vioxx earlier this week.
Yesterday, when federal offices were closed for a national holiday, Furberg, a federal adviser on drug safety and risk management, received a call from an FDA official telling him he was no longer welcome at the meeting. Of course, the FDA says, due to conflicts of interest, these calls happen all the time.
Do the Feds understand what kind of message this is sending out to the public, meaning you and me? Do they even care?
Besides, if you want to take better care of your body and deal with the pain rather "painlessly," two steps that will help the vast majority of people with pain:
Penn Live November 12, 2004