Vioxx Whistleblower Blasts FDA

Katie Merx of the Detroit Free Press writes:

The FDA whistleblower who turned a public light on the dangers of pain medication Vioxx, told an Ann Arbor audience on Friday that the government needs to restructure the agency or more Americans will die.

Dr. David Graham is a scientist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. His job is to evaluate the safety of drugs after the FDA has approved them. Last year, he testified before the Senate that an FDA failure to act on research resulted in 140,000 Vioxx patients suffering heart attacks and 60,000 of them dying.

That death count “is the equivalent of the Vietnam War,” he told an audience of about 250 doctors, academics and the public at the University of Michigan Hospital.

Death count equivalent to the Vietnam War? That certainly puts this into perspective.

It’s interesting how things like the Iraq War get so much coverage, whereas, according to this data, 140,000 Vioxx patients have suffered heart attacks and 60,000 of them have died.

That’s what, more than 50 times the number of US fatalities in Iraq?