Are Your Medications Safe?

We are the FDA and are here to protect ???

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science

It’s not just the public that’s in the dark. It’s researchers, too. And your doctor. As I describe in the current issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, my students and I were able to track down some 78 scientific publications resulting from a tainted study—a clinical trial in which FDA inspectors found significant problems with the conduct of the trial, up to and including fraud. In only three cases did we find any hint in the peer-reviewed literature of problems found by the FDA inspection. The other publications were not retracted, corrected, or highlighted in any way. In other words, the FDA knows about dozens of scientific papers floating about whose data are questionable—and has said nothing, leaving physicians and medical researchers completely unaware…

I had previously encountered bogus data on FDA-approved labels when a colleague and I were looking into a massive case of scientific misconduct —a research firm named Cetero had been caught faking data from more than 1,400 drug trials. That suddenly worthless data had been used to establish the safety or effectiveness of roughly 100 drugs, mostly generics, that were being sold in the United States…

The FDA wants you to take it on faith that its officials have the public’s best interest at heart. Justification through faith alone might be just fine as a religious doctrine, but it’s not a good foundation for ensuring the safety and effectiveness of our drugs. After all, the whole point of science-based medicine is to keep us from having to make a leap of faith every time we swallow a pill.