Polite Dissent

When I was watching NASCAR this afternoon, I saw my first commercial for a lawyer wanting to talk to people what had been on Vioxx about a “big cash settlement.” That phrase must have been used at least three of four times in the commercial: “big cash settlement.” The drug has only been recalled for four days and there’s already someone offering assistance in filing lawsuits. That was quick.

I have nothing against lawyers. Every lawyer I personally know is a credit to society. But people like this bring shame to the whole law profession. And I’m not just picking on lawyers here. I can’t stand any of those “hair loss for men” commercials, or all those infomercials with “doctors” on them, touting their latest plan for obesity, acne, or cellulite. We should go back to old days when professionals - lawyers and doctors - did not advertise on TV (or billboards).

(Personally, I didn’t prescribe much Vioxx as I have had little success in relieving pain with any of that class of drugs (COX-2 inhibitors). I was also aware of the negative results from recent studies and had been switching people off of Vioxx before it was withdrawn from the market. Hearing that I was doing this, one of the Merck reps pulled me aside in the office last week and gave me his “personal assurance” that Vioxx was s perfectly safe drug and that he would feel comfortable putting his own grandmother on it. I haven’t seen him back in the office since, but it should make for an interesting conversation.

Situations like these is when you feel sorry for the FDA. Thousands of people are complaining that they’re not approving new drugs fast enough, while thousands more are complaining that they’re approving drugs too fast. Personally, I think they’re doing a good job and wouldn’t change their policies. For all the fuss and furor, people don’t realize that we have the safest drug supply in this country by far. Not just in which drugs are approved, but the quality controls on these drugs. The things I’ve seen passing for drugs in other countries scare me. (And this is another reason why I have problems with many of these ‘herbal’ medicines — no testing and no quality control. How many reports of adverse effects did the makers of Metabolife hide from the government? Thousands and thousands. For all our complaining about pharmaceutical companies, they could never get away with something like that.))