Latest Trustworthy News from Dr. Mercola - delivered straight to your inbox!

FDA Screws Up Again

Four days ago I posted a blog entry regarding Public Citizen's petition to the FDA to pull Crestor from the market as it has a 600% increase over all the other statins in a fatal muscle complication.

Couldn't be clearer that this drug needs to be pulled from the market. One of the FDA's own physicians, Dr. David Graham, agrees that it is one of the six drugs that needs to be yanked. The FDA is under major hot water for all the mismanagement and death and destruction they have unleashed on the public recently. 55,000 deaths from Vioxx when the evidence was clear that it should have NEVER been approved. I voiced these objections more than one year before it was approved

I looked like a fortune teller when I wrote the following in 1999:

"I would strongly advise against using these drugs. I suspect there is a high likelihood that they will be pulled from the market when the increased cardiac deaths are recognized."

Mercola.com 1999 archive issue

Please note that this was 18 months before the drug was approved and FIVE YEARS before it was finally taken off the market. As far as I can tell I was the first person to sound a warning about Vioxx publicly.

The FDA is getting it wrong big time again. Hard to believe they are choosing to do this in light of all the bad PR they have been getting. I suspect major heads will roll from this decision which clearly seems related to obvious conflict of interest financial ties to the drug companies. Crestor has sales of one billion dollars a year and that buys lots of influence at the FDA. I used to listen to Peter Paul & Mary in the early 60s and one of their great songs was "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?"

I am reminded of this song because one of the chorus lines is:

Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?

Yes indeed. When will they ever learn?

USA Today March 15, 2005