Medical community blames Dr. David Graham for warning about prescription drugs; medical McCarthyism now in full swing

How's that for distortion? Now telling the truth about the dangerous side effects of prescription drugs is being characterized as starting a panic. Apparently, Big Pharma and the FDA would much rather people be dead than panicked. After all, dead people don't ask many questions, nor do they sue drug companies for damages.

Big Pharma wants to keep everybody in the dark, and the Fraud and Drug Administration is doing its best to enforce that ignorance through indimitation and deceit. There is something wickedly evil about our national pharmaceutical industry and the corruption at the FDA. When the very people trying to warn the public about the safety hazards of dangerous drugs are discredited and blamed for raising awareness, we are neck-deep in nothing less than an era of medical McCarthyism. God help us all.

• Health care advocates, providers and FDA officials over the weekend 'sparred' over alleged problems with the FDA prescription drug safety review process and the safety of five medications currently on the market, after an FDA safety reviewer on Thursday testified before the Senate Finance Committee that the agency is "virtually incapable of protecting America," the Baltimore Sun reports (Kohn/Bor, Baltimore Sun, 11/20).
• At a hearing on the recent voluntary withdrawal of Vioxx, a COX-2 inhibitor manufactured by Merck, David Graham, associate director of drug safety in the FDA Office of Drug Safety, on Thursday testified that the company should have withdrawn the medication from the market years earlier and criticized agency actions related to the medication.
• Graham said that when he raised questions about the safety of Vioxx with other FDA officials, he was asked not to express his concerns or revise his conclusions.
• In addition, according to Graham, five prescription drugs currently on the market present significant safety risks to consumers.
• Graham cited in his testimony safety concerns about the COX-2 inhibitor Bextra, manufactured by Pfizer, which he said presents cardiovascular risks similar to those of Vioxx; the anti-cholesterol medication Crestor, manufactured by AstraZeneca, which he said is the only such medication to cause acute kidney failure and likely to lead to serious muscle problems; the obesity treatment Meridia, manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, which he said could cause substantial increases in blood pressure; the acne medication Accutane, manufactured by Roche, which FDA has said could cause birth defects; and the asthma treatment Serevent, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, which he said could lead to an increased risk in asthma-related deaths and life-threatening episodes (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 11/19).
• He added that as an FDA safety reviewer, Graham would "tend to see the risk in a different context than the people out there treating patients" (Cohen/Stewart, Newark Star-Ledger, 11/20).