Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11954

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Cassels A.
Re: Beware of getting well too soon
Unpublished 2007 Oct 27

Notes:

Unpublished letter to the editor of Toronto’s Globe and Mail re:
Lorinc J. Beware of getting well too soon Oct 27 2007

Full text:

John Lorinc’s excellent exploration of the issues related to accelerated drug approvals (Beware of getting well too soon, Oct 27,07) resonates for me in a way that few examinations of this subject do. When I read clinical studies of new drugs, and then watch the reports of adverse effects slowly trickle in, I often ask myself whether we’ve lost a critical perspective on what prescription drugs should ultimately do.

Modern drug therapy seems to glibly trade the benefits of defeating the risks of one kind of disease at the expense of increasing the risks of another. You only have to look at our growing understanding of the harms related to newer drugs, such as congestive heart failure linked to the newest diabetes drugs, kidney failure linked to cholesterol-lowering drugs, even cardiac problems stemming from the ‘breakthrough’ drug Herceptin, and ask yourself: “As a society can we be that foolhardy to believe that disease substitution constitutes a medical advance?”