More Fodder for All Bark No Bite FDA Black Box Warnings
A recent article in the USA Today looked into the effectiveness of the FDA's black box warning. This is the most stringent warning the FDA can place on a drug, and most recently placed the warning on antidepressants and the arthritis drug Celebrex...
The problem with these warnings is they fail to adequately warn of the dangers of the drug. Either the warnings themselves are not known or they go unheeded.
Clearly, the track record of black box warnings, MedGuides and "Dear Health Care Professional" letters--often sent to doctors and pharmacists when a new warning is added to a drug label--is uneven. "There are a lot of examples that, at best, don't provide you with much reassurance that labeling changes work."