JAMA Study Emphasizes Crucial Role of Lawsuits For Drug Safety
No great surprise to the readers of this blog, but a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals that litigation serves an important role in protection American from dangerous drugs. An excerpt is found below:
"In the past decade, several widely used prescription medications have been observed to cause life-threatening adverse effects, and some have been removed from the market. When an approved medication is found to be unsafe, the courts are sometimes called on to determine fault and allocate remedies for injured parties. But in modern prescription drug cases, litigation has taken on additional significance. There are often important gaps in the ascertainment and reporting of adverse effects associated with prescription drugs, and the balance of information presented to physicians about the risks and benefits of medications may understate the former and inflate the latter.1 However, once it approves a drug, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has limited authority to mandate further collection of data to better define adverse effects or to ensure compliance with suggested alterations in marketing practices."
You may buy the full article here.